Post-AIT rebuild.

Queen Chrysalis · October 29, 2019

During AIT, I had been letting one of my old roommates use my PC to work on film projects. I have now finished AIT, but wanted to have a PC again while still allowing my buddy to finish his work with the system I had told him he could have until the end of the semester. So, I decided to use a combination of some of my old parts, the system itself, and some new parts to create two systems.

The old system:

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700 @3.9GHz

Cooler: NZXT Kraken x42

Motherboard: Aorus X370 Gaming 5

GPU: 2x Sapphire Vega 64 reference in crossfire

RAM: 32GB (4x8) G. Skill Ripjaws V. 3200

PSU: EVGA 1000PQ

Storage: Crucial MX500 512GB, 2x Seagate Barracuda 2TB

Case: Raidmax Monster II FE

His new system:

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700 @3.9GHz

Cooler: NZXT Kraken x42

Motherboard: Aorus X370 Gaming 5

GPU: Sapphire Vega 64 reference

RAM: 16GB (2x8) G. Skill Ripjaws V. 3200

PSU: Seasonic focus+ Platinum 850 (owned)

Storage: Crucial MX500 512GB, 2x Seagate Barracuda 2TB

Case: Raidmax Monster II FE

My new system:

CPU: Ryzen 5 1600 @4.1GHz

Cooler: Raijintek TISIS Core w/ 2x 140mm Cooler Master PWM RGB fans

Motherboard: ASRock Taichi x470

GPU: Sapphire Vega 64 w/ Raijintek Morpheus Vega and 2x 140mm Cooler Master PWM RGB fans (this is the best performance I've ever seen from a vega)

RAM: 16GB (2x8) G. Skill Ripjaws V. 3200

PSU: EVGA 1000PQ

Storage: Intel 660p 1TB, 5TB Toshiba x300 and Patriot Scorch 128GB tiered in AMD StoreMI

Case: Cooler Master MasterCase sl600m with 2x 200mm fans for lower intake and 2x 200mm fans for upper exhaust

Monitor: LG ultrawide 3440x1440 75hz curved 34 inch monitor

Sound: Logitech z625 400w 2.1 channel speakers w/ sub

I kept my old keyboard, mouse, and monitor, he is just using some basic dell stuff as far as I know.

The reason I went with the 1600 for this build is that at Micro Center, they were selling it for $80, and with the $30 motherboard discount, that's $50 for a hyperthreaded hexacore processor. I play at 3440x1440, so the clock speed advantages of a 3600 or 8700k were not worth spending 3x as much on a CPU. The motherboard was also a decent deal as it was discounted an additional $60 for being open-box, and it being a high-end x470 board, I am confident I will be able to drop in a 3700x or 3900x in a few years when those chips drop in price, if I decide to do that.