Is this an appropriate gaming/workstation setup?

[Justis]

I’m building a completely new system to hopefully handle competitive gaming as well as function as my workstation (or both at the same time).
I went budget on some parts in order to be able to afford to go higher end with others, but my largest worry is that I won’t be able to get what I’m paying for out of those higher end parts due to limitations with the specs of those I went budget on.

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	Purchased For $300.00
Memory	G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$188.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Seagate FireCuda 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive	$99.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB GAMING OC Video Card	$409.99 @ Newegg
Case	Thermaltake Level 20 XT ATX Desktop Case	$204.48 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Corsair RMx (2018) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$134.99 @ Newegg
Monitor	AOC C24G1 24.0" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor
Custom	ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero X570 ATX	$350.00
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1688.44
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-29 10:12 EDT-0400

Might I need to upgrade/expand anything in order to have three displays, or is that a needless worry?

 

Bonus question! Would this build be capable of playing competitive games on Windows 10 while also running a MacOS workstation on a VM? If not, which area(s) will I need to upgrade?

 

Thank you in advance for your awesome support. This community has already saved me hundreds of dollars.

 

[Alienware 15 R2]

Shit Man!

You had me at RYZEN 7 2700X.

 

That setup will play nicely with Games and KILL VM's.

[Justis]

1 minute ago, Alienware 15 R2 said:

Shit Man!

You had me at RYZEN 7 2700X.

 

That setup will play nicely with Games and KILL VM's.

I just checked my ebay purchase history and realized it was actually the 3700x that I bought. Whoops. Updated.
This is my first time building a PC, but I was pretty sure that the CPU was hardly used for games compared the the GPU.

[Snowarch]

My setup is this. a p106 6gb+ 8086k build and 2400 2*8gb ram @ 2133, way slower than your list ram. can get 30-60 fps 4k depending on the game. 120-200 unstable at 1080p with a 60 refresh screen. so long as your processor can handle it, yeah could do single monitor 1080p easy. not sure on refresh rate tho.

[Jurrunio]

Do you already have some of the parts? Some prices are missing

 

and no it wont do 1080p 144Hz gaming well, Zen and Zen+ CPUs (includes 1st and 2nd gen CPUs, 2nd and 3rd gen APUs), including the 2700X just don't do well there. 3rd gen is much better in this regard but at the same time, gives less cores for the same price and is not as good for VMs.

[Justis]

7 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Do you already have some of the parts? Some prices are missing

 

and no it wont do 1080p 144Hz gaming well, Zen and Zen+ CPUs (includes 1st and 2nd gen CPUs, 2nd and 3rd gen APUs), including the 2700X just don't do well there. 3rd gen is much better in this regard but at the same time, gives less cores for the same price and is not as good for VMs.

I've only purchased the CPU and storage, everything else is sitting in my shopping cart waiting for me to settle my mind and commit to them.
I haven't heard of Ryzen being a poor choice for high resolution gaming, do you have anywhere off hand where I could read more on that?

[Jurrunio]

7 minutes ago, Justis said:

I've only purchased the CPU and storage, everything else is sitting in my shopping cart waiting for me to settle my mind and commit to them.

Then I have problems with almost all of them...

CPU I already talked about

That board can be limiting in connectivity

$20 for RGB on the memory kit, could trade that for 400MHz extra on frequency

SSHDs are only sometimes faster than HDD, i.e. accessing small bits of data that's frequently used, but 5400RPM means it's slow even by HDD standards otherwise.

Samsung drives are overpriced

1080Ti is rarely available new (if at all)

 

12 minutes ago, Justis said:

I haven't heard of Ryzen being a poor choice for high resolution gaming, do you have anywhere off hand where I could read more on that?

1080p is not high resolution, but 144Hz is high refresh rate.

[ErA.l]

3700x will be great for gaming. 

 

Some changes I'd consider :

 

Motherboard: Asus TUF B450M-PRO GAMING Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($94.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  ($83.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Crucial P1 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($69.95 @ Adorama) 
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($54.98 @ Newegg) 
 

No RGB here, not sure whether that is important to you 

[Justis]

23 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Then I have problems with almost all of them...

CPU I already talked about

That board can be limiting in connectivity

$20 for RGB on the memory kit, could trade that for 400MHz extra on frequency

SSHDs are only sometimes faster than HDD, i.e. accessing small bits of data that's frequently used, but 5400RPM means it's slow even by HDD standards otherwise.

Samsung drives are overpriced

1080Ti is rarely available new (if at all)

 

1080p is not high resolution, but 144Hz is high refresh rate.

Yeah, I definitely messed up on the SSHD. I didn’t realize until after I'd bought it that the listing was for the 2.5" laptop version. The 3.5" version has 7200RPM, and that’s the one I thought I was purchasing. Very big whoops.

Swapped out the memory with the one suggested by @ErA.l Thanks both of you. Cheaper and faster.

On the matter of the Samsung SSD, @ErA.l you suggested Crucial P1, but I did a speed comparison between the two and there seems to be a really big difference. Wouldn’t it be worth the extra $40 to have my operating systems running off of the Evo Plus?

I’ve got my sights on few refurbished 1080Ti cards on Ebay. Is there something else you’d recommend? I’d prefer not to go any lower on performance, but also don’t want to go much higher in costs. It looked like the card hit the sweet spot for me, even if I have to buy second hand.
Also, what connectivity might I find myself wishing I had on this board? I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.

@ErA.l that board looks to be almost exactly the same layout as the board I already have in basket, with no more connectivity, yet an additional $30. What were the added benefits you thought of?

[ErA.l]

Quote

On the matter of the Samsung SSD, @ErA.l you suggested Crucial P1, but I did a speed comparison between the two and there seems to be a really big difference. Wouldn’t it be worth the extra $40 to have my operating systems running off of the Evo Plus?

 

On sequential copy speed you might notice a difference. In OS operating ad load speeds, you won't notice a difference. Maybe check out:

 

 

 

Quote

@ErA.l that board looks to be almost exactly the same layout as the board I already have in basket, with no more connectivity, yet an additional $30. What were the added benefits you thought of?

The one on pcpartpicker had a $15 dollar difference is saw, i see on newegg there is a version that is $30 cheaper. For that price, it's probably not worth it. The Asrock Pro4 has a bit of a bad reputation, with more than average out of box failures, and a weak-ish VRM. If it was me, i'd rather spend $10 more and get the MSI PRO B450M PRO-M2 MAX  Any MSI board would be good.

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, Justis said:

On the matter of the Samsung SSD, @ErA.l you suggested Crucial P1, but I did a speed comparison between the two and there seems to be a really big difference. Wouldn’t it be worth the extra $40 to have my operating systems running off of the Evo Plus?

Drives like the Corsair MP510, WD SN750, Silicon Power P34A80 and HP EX950 are what's comparable to the 970 Evo Plus spec wise at a lower price. For normal usage though (i.e. gaming and paper work) there's no difference between SATA or NVMe, which means you can save even more and get a WD Blue, Kingston KC600 or Crucial MX500.

 

1 hour ago, Justis said:

I’ve got my sights on few refurbished 1080Ti cards on Ebay. Is there something else you’d recommend? I’d prefer not to go any lower on performance, but also don’t want to go much higher in costs. It looked like the card hit the sweet spot for me, even if I have to buy second hand.

I dont know how much that 1080ti costs, but I prefer used cards over refurbs. No one knows how well they are repaired (yes, refurbs arent always processed by the manufacturer). You can check out EVGA's B-stock stuff if you want refurbs

 

$500 should be a fair price for the RTX 2070S, it is a bit slower than 1080ti in older games but faster in those that use new tech a lot (e.g. Red Dead Redemption 2). Same for workstation use, it has Tensor and RT cores available while 1080ti doesn't.

 

1 hour ago, Justis said:

Also, what connectivity might I find myself wishing I had on this board? I can’t think of anything off the top of my head.

SATA for example, the Pro4 only has 4 while some boards offer 6 (at lhe cost of the main M.2 slot)

 

19 minutes ago, ErA.l said:

The Asrock Pro4 has a bit of a bad reputation, with more than average out of box failures, and a weak-ish VRM. If it was me, i'd rather spend $10 more and get the MSI PRO B450M PRO-M2 MAX  Any MSI board would be good.

Pro M2's VRM is definitely worse than the Pro4's, not arguing out of that