Ryzen 3700X build for running VM's and 1080P gaming

KerberosX · November 2, 2019

Hello,

I am looking to upgrade my current main rig (Core i7 4770K, 32GB, GTX 970, some SSD's from that era). The 2 most demanding tasks I do on this are setting up labo's with VM's (sometimes up to 20-30 VM's) and some 1080p gaming. I am currently lacking a bit in all area's (too few threads, too little memory, games cannot run on high settings, current SSD's do not have enough IOP's).

Currently I have following in mind:

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

- Mainboard: ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus

- Memory: 4x Corsair 16GB 3200Mhz DDR4 Vengeance LPX

- PSU: Corsair RM750X 750W 80+ Gold modular

- SSD (main): 1x Samsung 1TB M.2 NVME 970 EVO Plus TLC

- SSD (VM's): 2x Samsung 1TB 2.5" 860 EVO TLC

- GPU: Asus Geforce RTX 2060 Super Dual EVO 8GB GDDR6

I am looking mostly on some advice on intercompatibility of these components. In terms of performance it should be sufficient when I compare it with my current specs.

agent2 · November 3, 2019

Hey there bud I don't know what your budget is but you selection seems pretty OK to me but where I see where you can get some more performance are the SSDs. The PCIe 4.0 Corsair MP600 1TB variant is only 20$ more than the 970 EVO so your main system will benefit a lot from it. I don't know how important RAM speed is to you but 3600MHz memory is best for Zen 2 Ryzen so two of the G. Skill Trident Z Neo 2*16GB 3600MHz 16-16-16-36 kit would do the system good. Last but not least the GPU you selected isn't the best price to performance in that price range. You should rather go for the RX 5700XT here as it beats the 2060 Super in everything gaming. Good models are the PowerColor Red Devil or the Gigabyte Gaming OC. So here's my two cents and have fun!

KerberosX · November 3, 2019

3 hours ago, agent2 said:

Hey there bud I don't know what your budget is but you selection seems pretty OK to me but where I see where you can get some more performance are the SSDs. The PCIe 4.0 Corsair MP600 1TB variant is only 20$ more than the 970 EVO so your main system will benefit a lot from it. I don't know how important RAM speed is to you but 3600MHz memory is best for Zen 2 Ryzen so two of the G. Skill Trident Z Neo 2*16GB 3600MHz 16-16-16-36 kit would do the system good. Last but not least the GPU you selected isn't the best price to performance in that price range. You should rather go for the RX 5700XT here as it beats the 2060 Super in everything gaming. Good models are the PowerColor Red Devil or the Gigabyte Gaming OC. So here's my two cents and have fun!

Thanks for the feedback. For convenience I am trying to buy all parts at the same shop that I usually go as it has good service and competitive prices. Downside is that they don't have everything obviously.

For instance they don't have SSD's from Corsair. But as you say the Corsair has indeed overall 15% better performance, and especially excels in the writing part (https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-970-Evo-Plus-NVMe-PCIe-M2-1TB-vs-Corsair-Force-MP600-NVMe-PCIe-M2-1TB/m693540vsm843047). But I think I will stick with my choice here, as I am currently working on a 4y old SATA SSD as my main drive which still feels fast enough for me. So the 970 EVO NVME will be already a huge improvement.

The memory is a bit of mixed bag. I currently have 32GB which is not sufficient anymore when running too many concurrent VM's. So I want to go with 64GB. Since I have 4 slots, I need sticks of at least 16GB. When looking at 16GB modules, it's indeed mostly G.Skill which has choices in higher clocked ranges. But my shop only does Corsair, HyperX and Kingston. Corsair has some options in the higher clocked range, but the pricing is much higher than my choice. So it's more an economical choice here.

For the GPU in the same price range as the RTX 2060 I can indeed get for instance the Asus Radeon RX5700XT ROG Strix O8G Gaming 8GB GDDR6. From comparison it seems it performs around 5% better (https://www.gpucheck.com/en-usd/compare/amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-vs-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-super/amd-ryzen-7-3700x-vs-amd-ryzen-7-3700x/ultra/ultra/-vs-) but then consumes more power, runs hotter and is louder. I have been with Nvidia for ages, and this picture is not really convincing me to go to the "red" side

agent2 · November 3, 2019

2 hours ago, KerberosX said:

Thanks for the feedback. For convenience I am trying to buy all parts at the same shop that I usually go as it has good service and competitive prices. Downside is that they don't have everything obviously.

For instance they don't have SSD's from Corsair. But as you say the Corsair has indeed overall 15% better performance, and especially excels in the writing part (https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-970-Evo-Plus-NVMe-PCIe-M2-1TB-vs-Corsair-Force-MP600-NVMe-PCIe-M2-1TB/m693540vsm843047). But I think I will stick with my choice here, as I am currently working on a 4y old SATA SSD as my main drive which still feels fast enough for me. So the 970 EVO NVME will be already a huge improvement.

The memory is a bit of mixed bag. I currently have 32GB which is not sufficient anymore when running too many concurrent VM's. So I want to go with 64GB. Since I have 4 slots, I need sticks of at least 16GB. When looking at 16GB modules, it's indeed mostly G.Skill which has choices in higher clocked ranges. But my shop only does Corsair, HyperX and Kingston. Corsair has some options in the higher clocked range, but the pricing is much higher than my choice. So it's more an economical choice here.

For the GPU in the same price range as the RTX 2060 I can indeed get for instance the Asus Radeon RX5700XT ROG Strix O8G Gaming 8GB GDDR6. From comparison it seems it performs around 5% better (https://www.gpucheck.com/en-usd/compare/amd-radeon-rx-5700-xt-vs-nvidia-geforce-rtx-2060-super/amd-ryzen-7-3700x-vs-amd-ryzen-7-3700x/ultra/ultra/-vs-) but then consumes more power, runs hotter and is louder. I have been with Nvidia for ages, and this picture is not really convincing me to go to the "red" side

Hi thanks for the answer. The thing you mentioned with the SSDs: Corsair isn't the only manufacturer of PCIe 4 SSDs there are also one's from Gigabyte in the same capacities.

The RAM you mentioned: It's also no problem running 3200MHz RAM instead you'll can choose from the whole range in between. Just see that the timings aren't too lousy.

About the GPU I can tell you: I don't know how sensitive you are about the power consumption but Navi has improved a lot on that. As for it running loud or hot, that's mainly due to the reference models blower which ups the decibels and the bad heatsink making it hot. The Red Devil and Nitro+ for example run extremely cool and quiet, just check out Gamers Nexus' video.

Cheers mate