First PC Build

Gbear17 · August 21, 2019

Hello! I will be building a PC for the first time and have been researching parts and how computer hardware works in general for a few months now.

My budget is $2500 US but I am willing to go up to a few hundred dollars above if need be.

I will be using it for school including writing (lots of tabs open at once), programming (mainly visual studio currently) and other general tasks as well as gaming on a regular basis (Games such as Space Engineers, Just Cause, Battlefield, NFS, Command and Conquer, War Thunder and, World of Warships and Tanks, etc.), I will be playing at 120hz, 1440p.

I plan on starting with one monitor (see PC Part Picker List) and saving for a second monitor for sure, both 1440p.

I already have a mouse but I do want to get the Ducky Shine 7 with Brown switches (see PC Part Picker List).

I am currently using the ASUS ROG Strix 17in laptop (I7 7700HQ, GTX 1070, 1080p 120hz screen, 16GB RAM, 500GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD).

Here is the build plan so far;
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Gbear17/saved/MnVCLk

Let me know what you think about my part choices!

EDIT: I do plan on getting the Red Devil 5700xt, not the reference card.

EDIT: I also have been looking into overclocking and considering learning how to overclock memory (if I got a 3200 kit instead of 3600) and the CPU and that is why I was looking at a better motherboard. I don't know much about the pros and cons of getting an x470 or any other kind of motherboard over the x570.

Edited August 21, 2019 by Gbear17
Additional information on parts choices

DisfiguredBob · August 21, 2019

Looks good. The only change I would make is an upgrade from a 5700XT to a 2070 Super. But if you don't care about Nvidia specific features, (RTX, Geforce Experience, etc) you should be fine. The CPU also might be a little overkill for those workloads.

SpookyCitrus · August 21, 2019

I would personally do a Custom 5700XT over the original blower style card. You could also drop the price by going for a B450 or X470 board(Only reason for an X570 board is if you are going to use a Gen 4 Nvme SSD. And unless you're doing some serious video editing and rendering the 3700x is pretty overkill for your needs, the 3600 would be a better fit.

Gbear17 · August 21, 2019

1 minute ago, DisfiguredBob said:

Looks good. The only change I would make is an upgrade from a 5700XT to a 2070 Super. But if you don't care about Nvidia specific features, (RTX, Geforce Experience, etc) you should be fine. The CPU also might be a little overkill for those workloads.

Thanks for the response!

I honestly don't care about the NVIDIA specific features such as GeForce Experience and Ray Tracing, and on that note, the 5700xt (source being popular youtubers) performed on average almost as well as the 2070 Super in just about every benchmarking situation. The monitor I was looking at also supports Freesync 2. The 5700xt just looked like way more bang for the buck, even with the $440 US Powercolor Red Devil partner card.

DisfiguredBob · August 21, 2019

1 minute ago, Gbear17 said:

Thanks for the response!

I honestly don't care about the NVIDIA specific features such as GeForce Experience and Ray Tracing, and on that note, the 5700xt (source being popular youtubers) performed on average almost as well as the 2070 Super in just about every benchmarking situation. The monitor I was looking at also supports Freesync 2. The 5700xt just looked like way more bang for the buck, even with the $440 US Powercolor Red Devil partner card.

I agree. They are basically the same card. It really depends if the RTX tax is really worth it for you personally.

Gbear17 · August 21, 2019

9 minutes ago, SpookyCitrus said:

I would personally do a Custom 5700XT over the original blower style card. You could also drop the price by going for a B450 or X470 board(Only reason for an X570 board is if you are going to use a Gen 4 Nvme SSD. And unless you're doing some serious video editing and rendering the 3700x is pretty overkill for your needs, the 3600 would be a better fit.

I'll adjust my original post to reflect this, but I do plan on going for the Red Devil 5700xt once it is more widely available. Also, I was looking at the 3700x as a sort of future proofing as I have been considering getting into and learning more about virtual machines and machine learning. I was just thinking I would like the extra processing power for the bit of speediness it may add to multitasking and code processing situations. Is the memory more important than the CPU for that?

EDIT: On the note of the motherboard, I have been looking into memory (if I was to get a 3200mhz kit instead of 3600) and CPU overclocking and wanted to play it safe with a better motherboard.

SpookyCitrus · August 21, 2019

38 minutes ago, Gbear17 said:

I'll adjust my original post to reflect this, but I do plan on going for the Red Devil 5700xt once it is more widely available. Also, I was looking at the 3700x as a sort of future proofing as I have been considering getting into and learning more about virtual machines and machine learning. I was just thinking I would like the extra processing power for the bit of speediness it may add to multitasking and code processing situations. Is the memory more important than the CPU for that?

EDIT: On the note of the motherboard, I have been looking into memory (if I was to get a 3200mhz kit instead of 3600) and CPU overclocking and wanted to play it safe with a better motherboard.

The 3700x will be more beneficial for virtual machines and machine learning as it has more cores you can utilize for those projects, however for your main workload the 3700x would be overkill. But if you do plan on doing other things where the better processor and more cores would be a big help then I can see it being worth it. The amount of ram is usually more important for multitasking and running multiple applications at once. As for the X570 motherboard it really is up to you but from my experience with them the only benefits that they bring to the table are Pcie Gen. 4 and of course more wiggle room with overclocking ram, but unless those are absolutely necessary there is no problem using a B450 or X470 motherboard.