PC building help

[Fabian11]

Hello everyone, I would like to build a PC by myself. However, I have no previous experience in PC building or OCing, which is why I would greatly appreciate some help / tips from you guys, and whether my choices are reasonable.

 

Why am I upgrading?

There are two main reasons: Firstly, my current PC lacks performance in almost every aspect. I am working/gaming on my laptop (HP Envy 15-k265nz (2015)). It manages to run games like GTA V on the lowest graphics settings, but it sounds like a starting jet engine and produces similar amounts of heat while doing so. Secondly, I am interested in the process itself of fully building a PC from the ground up, as well as overclocking it.

 

Budget & Location:

I live in Switzerland and my budget is around 2000 - 2500 swiss francs, which equals roughly the same amount in US $.

 

Aim:

I would like to use my system firstly for gaming. At the moment I mostly play GTA V, Rocket League, Assasins Creed Unity and BeamNG.drive, but I would also like to play more performance hungry games like Assasins Creed Odyssey or Battlefield V in the future (which is not feasible with my current set-up). Secondly, I would use it for programming and maybe a bit of video editing in the future. Regarding the programs, I often use Android Studio, Unity, Gimp, Matlab and Visual Studio.
The system should be able to run also future games and not require an upgrade anytime soon.

Monitors:

Right now I have one 1920x1080 monitor running at 60Hz, but I plan on upgrading it to a monitor with a higher refresh rate soon.

 

OS:

On my laptop, I currently have a dual boot system with windows 8.1 and ubuntu 16.04. I plan to install windows 10 on the new system and only run linux on the laptop then.

 

Parts:

Motherboard:        ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming (LGA 1151, Intel Z390, ATX)
CPU:                     Intel i9-9900K
CPU cooler:          Noctua NH-D15
GPU:                     ASUS GeForce RTX 2070S ROG Strix A8G Gaming (8GB)
RAM:                     2x8GB G.Skill Trident Z (DDR4-4133, DIMM 288)
Storage:                Corsair MP600 (2000GB, M.2 2280)
Power supply:       Corsair AX (850W)
Case:                    be quiet! Pure Base 600 (Midi Tower)
Optical drive:         remove the one from an old desktop PC I have at home and reuse it

 

Thank you very much for your help!

[Kon-Tiki]

Hi Fabian,

 

your parts list seems reasonable so far. Just keep in mind that you would have to do some memory OC in order to get DDR-4133 to its full potential (if at all) and that the 9900K doesn't support PCIe gen4, so the MP600 SSD won't give you better performance than a PCIe gen3 SSD.

However, I recommend you also take a look at an AMD based system. I looked all the parts up on alternate.ch and some napkin math told me that you should end up at approximately the price point you were aiming at. Since 3rd gen Ryzen saw another performance boost over previous generations and supports PCIe gen4 I would opt for something like these specs:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (about the same price as the 9900K but with four extra cores)

GPU: ASUS GeForce RTX 2070S ROG Strix A8G Gaming (8GB)

Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 UD (future expandability due to 3 PCIe x16 slots)

RAM: G.Skill 16 GB DDR4-3200

Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Slim (has a lot of TDP headroom for OC but is also lightweight)

Power Supply: Corsair AX (850W) isn't bad, definetly gives you a lot of headroom

Storage: Corsair MP600 2TB (that's a PCIe gen4 SSD, the 9900K couldn't make use of PCIe gen4 but it would work, though)

Case: be quiet! Pure Base 600

 

This setup should be very future proof, I hope it helps

 

Best regards