[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

 

[Belgarathian]

450W PSU seems low, I'd be pairing a 650W with it but that's just me. Usually you get maximum efficiency around the 80-85% utilisation. 

 

• 240mm Cooler instead of 360
• 650W PSU
• Maybe a 512GB NVMe SSD and a 4TB HDD?
• Go 3700 instead of 3700X
• AMD system MB doesn't effect performance (other than ram compatibility), so a good Asus B450 board which supports 3200mhz would be fine which will save $. X570 is always a better choice, but at the moment the price of X570 boards is high.

 

With those changes you should be able to either squeeze a 2070 Super in or 32GB of RAM.

[The Spectator]

Just by skimming through, if you sacrifice a bit of money here and there, you can get 32gb of ram

[Akira Shimazu]

3 minutes ago, Belgarathian said:

450W PSU seems low, I'd be pairing a 650W with it but that's just me. Usually you get maximum efficiency around the 80-85% utilisation. 

Agree. 550w is good but for future room 650W seems sweet.

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

[PurplDrank]

18 minutes ago, Magus said:

Part list updated!

 

After consulting the PSU Hierarchy, I went with SeaSonic Prime Ultra Platinum 550W.

 

The reason that mistake happened to begin with was just because I started-out with a lower-end $1500-ish build. Now I've worked-up to being considerably higher wattage since then, and that needed updated.

Normally i'd say go AMD all day everyday. Normally intel is like that overrated starbucks coffee...its good, but not worth the extra $300 or so price. Since the prices almost match, might as well go intel. 

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Zando_]

34 minutes ago, Magus said:

Ergh, but the Intel does make a pretty fair difference... https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i9-9900KS-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-3700X/m929964vs4043

 

I think I might need time to deliberate on this one.

UserBenchmark specifically altered their scoring system to favor Intel chips, they got a lot of flack over this but to my knowledge have not reverted it. 

That said, in games specifically the Intel chips still perform a bit better at the same core/thread counts, in other tasks the Ryzens can pull ahead. Neither is a terrible CPU, both absolutely slap in most workloads. 

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Magus said:

Well, it is mostly going to be a gaming machine. I'm aware of differences like AMD using, for lack of a better term, better instructions that reach similar performance at lower clock speeds and thus you can't really judge on the clock speed. I need to watch some comparison videos and stuff.

Zen 2 has a better IPC, yeah. Can even win in single core benchmarks, but Intel's ringbus arch still seems to do better in games (it's not a massive difference though, unless you're going for refresh rates above 144Hz, just go which whichever you feel like lol). 
 

2 minutes ago, Magus said:

Worth noting that like I said, the software mitigations for Zombieload/Meltdown/Spectre will be disabled considering the context of this machine, so I should be getting the full unfiltered might of the 9900KS.

From what I've seen average people aren't really in danger from those things, and the hardware mitigations hurt. At the same clocks (5Ghz in the tests I saw) the 9900K is faster than the KS. KS can usually clock a few hundred MHz higher though, so it can perform a few % better. Bigger advantage is it can do the same clocks at much lower voltages, useful if you have a compact build and want to keep temps down. 

 

4 minutes ago, Magus said:

I just need to consider things like "Will PCIe Gen4 SSD make a noticeable difference?" and "Is the better I/O worth conisdering?". I'll also need to look-up some reviews of PCIe Gen 4 SSDs as well it seems.

It's mostly an improvement in straight read/write, in other stuff they aren't really faster than PCIe 3.0 ones. Given current pricing, not really worth it unless you absolutely must have the very highest read/write speeds. Not very many games that need that tbh, and from my experience with the PCIe 3.0 960 Evo, 970 Evo, and 2nd Gen WD Black, PCie 3.0 drives are fast af for loading games. Noice snappy load times, it is noticeable over a spinning HDD or budget SATA SSD. Haven't compared them directly to nicer drives like my MX500 though, but in most benches I saw it was at most a 2-3 second difference. 

 

TL:DR: PCIe 4.0 SSDs aren't a massive help for gaming, unless you're playing at very very high refresh rates you'll have a great experience on either platform, just go with whichever you feel like or hell, the one that gives you the option for the prettiest mobos lol (speaking of which, for Z390 the Gigabyte Aorus line sports better VRMs than ASUS' line at a lower price and they're still pretty boards, meh BIOS tho). 

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Zando_]

Just now, Magus said:

Yeah I am looking at other Motherboards as well. I've just been a really heavy ASUS-Only on motherboards for a long time because ASUS has the best UEFI/BIOS in my experience. Gigabyte is something that looks tempting these days, but I got burned by them back in the early 2010's and that's what made me veer away from them for a long time. I'm considering their AORUS boards though.

Yes. My OG X58 board (Rampage III Formula I got in 2017 or late 2016 IIRC) had a hella nice BIOS. Better than the MSI I had and the EVGA boards I have now. I had their B450-F, Crosshair VII, Z170-something, and a Z370-A. All stellar BIOS/UEFI setups, only one to outdo it in my opinion is EVGA's UEFI (not the BIOS, that has a much clunkier and more eye hurty layout and color scheme).

3 minutes ago, Magus said:

I'd go for the 9900K over the 9900KS if I was promised 5.0GHz+, but the issue there is that it doesn't promise that. My consideration is that the 9900KS offers at least the same speed as the 9900K and does have the hardware mitigations. If I can push it above 5GHz then all the better.

True true. Great majority of 9900Ks can hit 5Ghz, but some may take more voltage than you're comfortable with, whereas the 9900KS sits there out of the box. 

3 minutes ago, Magus said:

t's really coming down to looks and I/O to be honest. I've really thought this out I suppose, to the point where they're almost identical and you may as well just go with what you know or what you think looks better. "What I know" would be Intel on ASUS boards, but I'm going to look into AORUS and such real quick too.

Some Aorus boards are real lookers, some are overbuilt. I suppose the Crosshair could be considered overbuilt in some ways, depends on personal preference. My CH7 looked really damn nice, and the Z370-A was clean af, I can tell you that. 

Just now, Magus said:

Oh my god the waterforce looks so crazy I want it but can't have it fuck.

Yeaaaah lol. If you want aesthetics tho, check out the stupidly expensive limited edition ASRock X570 Aqua. For performance you'd be better off with an aftermarket block (Heatkiller IV ftw), but damn it's a gorgeous board. 

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Zando_]

Just now, Magus said:

ASRock was a company I stayed away from for a long time, as I saw them as just an ASUS wannabe and there were QC complaints (this was at the same time Gigabyte was having QC complaints), but they seem to have made quite a name for themselves at this point, their QC seems far better than it used to be, and have far better looking boards than they once did

ASRock has been solid, I've used 5 of their B450 ITX boards, and one X370 ITX board. UEFI on those was simple, but all the settings are there and the simplicity actually makes it easier to navigate. ASUS is still slightly better, and EVGA's UEFI is on par with that or better. So in my experience with UEFIs, EVGA/ASUS > ASRock > IIRC I haven't used the others, but Gigabyte is known for still being eeeh on the BIOS front. Of course personal preference comes into it too, so it depends on who you talk to. 
 

As for the EVGA boards, I have an X58 Classy SLI 4-way, Classy SLI 3-way, and two SR-2s (one only boots with one CPU and the other isn't talking to me rn ), and I'm currently on an X99 Micro2 in the rig I use now. Big boye rig has an X99 Classy, both X99 boards use the UEFI and ofc the X58/5520 ones are BIOS. 

2 minutes ago, Magus said:

Do they all have the same "Multicore Enhancement" feature? By that I mean, the ability to make the processor just stay at the turbo frequency indefinitely. That's important. Also important is being able to adjust voltages manually and mess with memory voltage and timings, etc.

Uuuuuuuuh... IDK. I've always left stuff stock or pushed it manually, lol. Auto stuff tends to pull too much voltage IMO. 

 

Also to be fair on the VRM thing, people do push 9900Ks on LN2 with ASUS boards, it's not like they magically explode the CPU. Just a worse value, though if you want the UEFI really bad then that can balance it out. A lot depends on personal preference tbh, going full hog on performance/$ only doesn't always make for much fun. 

[St. Nick]

I personally would go with AMD but make a few more changes, if it's just for gaming, and for a younger person there are things you can do to stretch your budget that are worth considering, these are my opinions though and I'll explain why:

CPU:
So very few games leverage the 3700x's 8 cores and 16 threads and for Zen the clockspeed doesn't noticeably upscale much unless you get a 1950x, for pure gaming the R5 3600 will offer you the same clockspeed as a 3700x by just setting it to an all core 4.2 ghz which can easily be setup once and run safely at 24/7 use. Since it's basically a set it once never look at it again overclock and still runs relatively cool it's just straight up better value as more cores do not appreciably scale your gaming experience in any modern titles for the foreseeable future. Even so at 6 cores 12 threads and AMD's excellent productivity values it's perfectly acceptable for most workloads his dad might throw at it too,  Saves you a bunch of money here too which I will get to in a bit!

Motherboard:
The Asus Tuf and Aorus Elite X570 boards are more simple but robust boards with more then enough vrm headroom to run anything currently on the zen2 platform. there is no real reason to buy anything higher end and they currently go for about 150~180 bucks, another nice save here. The 'low end' boards for x570 are just so good you really get such overkill performance there is no real benefit to going higher. 

Cooler:
A beefy Aircooler like the dark rock pro 4 or noctua d15 will be more maintenance free then an AIO, no pump that can fail nor a radiator that can leak will in the long run be safer and less hassle since you are building it for someone who probably can't switch out an AIO themselves if it does eventually fail.

GPU:
You saved a bunch of money so far! You can upgrade to a 2080 super as you said GPU performance will be more important for gaming experience then any cpu choice in this build.

SSD:
I have gen 4 SSD's in my build too, but from what I have seen in online revieuws for random read access a 970 evo is still actually slightly faster, so unless your moving large files around regularly the current gen 4 SSD's may not actually be worth the price premium for a primarily gaming oriented build, this is mostly a preference thing though!

Powersupply:
I saw you already went with a 550w seasonic through input from other users, no argument from me there!

Monitor:
With the budget freed up and the fact your already dropping 200 on a 1920x1080 144hz monitor at 300ish you can go 1440p 144hz 1ms these days, might be worth considering if you take this advice, a 2080 super can handle it!

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Magus]

[deleted]

[Zando_]

8 minutes ago, Magus said:

 In that case I may just stick to ASUS, as I can be really touchy about what I get for a UEFI. In my opinion, better hardware and looks mean little if your software doesn't properly empower you to make use of those better hardware features. A beautiful motherboard with great VRMs doesn't mean much if the UEFI on it is crummy.

Facts. If you can't use it, what's the point?

9 minutes ago, Magus said:

I'm sure EVGA is even better, and if it were for me I'd probably be curious to try the Z390 FTW, but EVGA seems to explicitly avoid "loud aesthetics" and considering that I know my brother and nephew want something that looks cool I don't really think it's an option this time.

Drown them in hardware and it's less noticeable, but yeah EVGA is usually very subdued now (older Classy stuff is standard gamer black/red, though the GPUs are clean af, I have a pair):

Best pic I have of the last config of my big rig, needs to be rebuilt without the HDDs and with a second 360mm rad. 

 

10 minutes ago, Magus said:

feel like I may be sticking to Intel on ASUS here. It performs well and it's what I already know front-and-back so I won't need to spend a ton of time relearning things.

Dewit. People often gloss over the "I already know front-and-back" part, and Intel 6+ core chips still perform damn well. 

[St. Nick]

Yeah, the only real difference is that I would still be aiming for your 2000 dollar budget and be pairing a higher resolution high refresh rate monitor (something freesync thats Gsync compatible) with a 2080 super. In my opinion that is where you can really knock people dead right now. the Zen 2 cpu's especially at the lower end of the cost scale offer so much performance for just gaming at their cost that you get the most bang for the buck out of it. And you can bling it out with rgb if that's what you think will appeal to their aesthics. Mostly the experience for less tech savvy people will be more down to what do I see on the monitor and what feel will I get through my keyboard then what is actually under the hood. I'd compare it to driving a Japanese sportscar with a candy apple paintjob and a turbo charger versus an american muscle car with a matt black finish. For the enthusiast the raw power under the hood is great but the aesthetics and feel of a turbo charger more directly screams performance to someone with less indepth knowledge.

 

Also, a small disclaimer, I have been using AMD most  of my life because until my current build I just couldn't afford intel and have been saving every penny to pretty much get the sort of build I described. I haven't regretted it so far. (altough I did upgrade from then 3600 to a 3700x and am now looking at a 3950x just because I can. I can tell you from straight experience there was little gain between the two other then when I am doing things outside of gaming )