build advice needed Help me build my first gaming rig please :)

[dpetrela]

Budget (including currency): $2500 USD

Country: United States of America

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mostly Gaming: Fallout, Arma 3, FS2020, X Plane, DCS, VR, Squad, KSP 2 (hopefully soon!) etc. - Music Production: Ableton 10, Pro tools, FLstudio -  Maybe some CAD programs in the future like NX12 or solidworks but that's not a main priority.

Other details I would like peripherals to be included in the cost. I assume I will need to purchase a windows license too. Eventually I would like to upgrade these peripherals to a multi monitor setup with HOTAS for flight simulators like DCS world but for now Id just like one nice monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I can't decide between 1440 or 1080. Anyways, I have never built a PC before but I am not afraid to try! I am just very intimidated by the process of selecting which components are going to be in the build and sorting out compatibility. My budget is pretty firm but I would like to buy once and cry once so to speak, so going slightly over budget isn't automatically a deal breaker. I would like to build this PC as a devoted gaming rig as the only programs other than games I may run for any significant period of time would be DAWs and other music production software. I guess the standard request is to maximize my performance as much as possible while leaving some room for potential future upgrades to try to fight my machine being obsolete after a few years. As I stated previously, the only taxing upgrade I plan on getting in the future is a better set of monitors but for now I only need one. I am not sure what other details may be relevant to help you all make your suggestions but please let me know if you happen to have any questions. I really appreciate the help and look forward to reading your suggestions!

 

EDIT: I wanted to add that I will have to transport this PC in long car rides occasionally so I was wondering if there is any hardware made to increase the number of mounting points between heavy components in the case and the case itself. My concern is that if I hit a bump in the road the mounting point for something like the cpu cooler or the graphics card may break due to the jostling. Please let  me know if you have any ideas!

[mahyar]

can you wait a bit until lower end rtx3000 drops or new ryzen cpus?

[dpetrela]

21 minutes ago, mahyar said:

can you wait a bit until lower end rtx3000 drops or new ryzen cpus?

I would be ok with waiting a while, I assume it will help me save money on a graphics card which I could spend on other components.

[mahyar]

5 minutes ago, dpetrela said:

I would be ok with waiting a while, I assume it will help me save money on a graphics card which I could spend on other components.

well yes but if you want i can make a list for you from components available right now

[VeganJoy]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.99 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	NZXT Kraken X63 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$149.99 @ Best Buy
Motherboard	Asus ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING (WI-FI) ATX AM4 Motherboard	$204.99 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	$164.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$104.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$104.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	Asus GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB TUF GAMING Video Card	$800.00
Case	Phanteks Eclipse P400A ATX Mid Tower Case	$70.98 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Fractal Design Ion+ 760 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$129.99 @ Newegg
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit	$0.00
Monitor	Dell S2721DGF 27.0" 2560x1440 165 Hz Monitor	$499.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2525.90
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-26 02:38 EDT-0400

lots of options can be changed based on what you like the looks of and all that, nothing really is set in stone at this price point. depending on the target aesthetic and space youve got to work with, theres a lot of ways to change this build with no effect on price or performance. a few caveats:

 

id see if zen 3 is worth the money, chances are that itll be great and youll want whatever theyre cooking. my build in my signature has a 3600 as a placeholder as im waiting to see what happens regarding that. a 3700x is a great chip though and if you dont wanna mess with it once its done it would be a perfectly fine chip for games and computational work. 

 

asus motherboards have an accessible bios and appeal to many people aesthetically, they run a bit of a premium for that though and a comparable board with a less intuitive bios and more subdued aesthetics from msi or something will be ~150-180. depends on what matters to ya. 

 

cooler will run nice and quiet, and supply some extra airflow for the case if you dont buy extra fans. looks are subjective and you may like how another looks. nzxt, corsair, arctic, and evga are some of the most reputable brands for aios. a tower cooler isnt out of the question but many people like how aios look. 

 

3600mhz cl16 is best for zen 2, get something that ya like the looks of that has those specs. 32gb will be great for multitasking and production/cad.

 

you can stripe the two sn550s together for an extremely fast and cheap storage solution that punches way above its cost, or get a varied pairing of ssds like an sx8200 pro and a crucial p1 or something. lots of options

 

p400a is a spectacular case for the budget, if you prefer the looks of something else that will likely work too. keep in mind that the 3080 is a chunky boi that runs a lot of wattage, good airflow is a big plus for its performance. a lancool 2 mesh, p500a, o11 air, etc would be great alternatives. 

 

you can get away with a 660w ion+ psu but the 760w is just 10 bucks more, which will handle the 3080 better. the 860w is a fine option too, its 139.99.

 

windows 10 can be used for free, if you dont mind dealing with a little watermark in the lower right corner.

 

the s2721dgf goes on sale a lot for under 400 bucks, was just on sale yesterday. its a spectacular monitor and may be the best 1440p monitor on the market, and for a good price too. you can look into ultrawides too but an ultrawide of comparable quality will likely run you 700-800 bucks on sale. 

 

basically lots of options lol. get these components at common sale prices and it should be closer to 2350 before tax. 

[dpetrela]

On 9/26/2020 at 2:49 AM, mahyar said:

well yes but if you want i can make a list for you from components available right now

I would really appreciate that, another thing I wanted to add to my description request was to maximize the amount of mounting points for the components in the tower because I will have to move the PC around and I don't want something like the cooler hanging off the cpu (which if it ends up being an air cooler would have one mounting point) to get damaged if I hit a bump in the road while I'm driving for example.

[dpetrela]

2 minutes ago, dpetrela said:

I would really appreciate that, another thing I wanted to add to my description request was to maximize the amount of mounting points for the components in the tower because I will have to move the PC around and I don't want something like the cooler hanging off the cpu (which if it ends up being an air cooler would have one mounting point) to get damaged if I hit a bump in the road while I'm driving for example.

 

[mahyar]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.99 @ Walmart
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler	$74.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI B550-A PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard	$139.99 @ B&H
Memory	Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	$54.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$89.00 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card	$779.99 @ Newegg
Case	Corsair SPEC-DELTA RGB ATX Mid Tower Case	$79.99 @ Corsair
Power Supply	Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$69.99 @ Newegg
Monitor	Dell S2719DGF 27.0" 2560x1440 155 Hz Monitor	$399.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2038.82
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-27 04:52 EDT-0400

 

[dpetrela]

On 9/26/2020 at 2:51 AM, VeganJoy said:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.99 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	NZXT Kraken X63 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$149.99 @ Best Buy
Motherboard	Asus ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING (WI-FI) ATX AM4 Motherboard	$204.99 @ Amazon
Memory	G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	$164.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$104.99 @ Newegg
Storage	Western Digital Blue SN550 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$104.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	Asus GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB TUF GAMING Video Card	$800.00
Case	Phanteks Eclipse P400A ATX Mid Tower Case	$70.98 @ Amazon
Power Supply	Fractal Design Ion+ 760 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$129.99 @ Newegg
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit	$0.00
Monitor	Dell S2721DGF 27.0" 2560x1440 165 Hz Monitor	$499.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2525.90
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-26 02:38 EDT-0400

lots of options can be changed based on what you like the looks of and all that, nothing really is set in stone at this price point. depending on the target aesthetic and space youve got to work with, theres a lot of ways to change this build with no effect on price or performance. a few caveats:

 

id see if zen 3 is worth the money, chances are that itll be great and youll want whatever theyre cooking. my build in my signature has a 3600 as a placeholder as im waiting to see what happens regarding that. a 3700x is a great chip though and if you dont wanna mess with it once its done it would be a perfectly fine chip for games and computational work. 

 

asus motherboards have an accessible bios and appeal to many people aesthetically, they run a bit of a premium for that though and a comparable board with a less intuitive bios and more subdued aesthetics from msi or something will be ~150-180. depends on what matters to ya. 

 

cooler will run nice and quiet, and supply some extra airflow for the case if you dont buy extra fans. looks are subjective and you may like how another looks. nzxt, corsair, arctic, and evga are some of the most reputable brands for aios. a tower cooler isnt out of the question but many people like how aios look. 

 

3600mhz cl16 is best for zen 2, get something that ya like the looks of that has those specs. 32gb will be great for multitasking and production/cad.

 

you can stripe the two sn550s together for an extremely fast and cheap storage solution that punches way above its cost, or get a varied pairing of ssds like an sx8200 pro and a crucial p1 or something. lots of options

 

p400a is a spectacular case for the budget, if you prefer the looks of something else that will likely work too. keep in mind that the 3080 is a chunky boi that runs a lot of wattage, good airflow is a big plus for its performance. a lancool 2 mesh, p500a, o11 air, etc would be great alternatives. 

 

you can get away with a 660w ion+ psu but the 760w is just 10 bucks more, which will handle the 3080 better. the 860w is a fine option too, its 139.99.

 

windows 10 can be used for free, if you dont mind dealing with a little watermark in the lower right corner.

 

the s2721dgf goes on sale a lot for under 400 bucks, was just on sale yesterday. its a spectacular monitor and may be the best 1440p monitor on the market, and for a good price too. you can look into ultrawides too but an ultrawide of comparable quality will likely run you 700-800 bucks on sale. 

 

basically lots of options lol. get these components at common sale prices and it should be closer to 2350 before tax. 

Thank you so much! I have a question that I forgot to talk about in the original request, is there mounting hardware that exists to increase the number of contact points between the case and heavier components inside the case like the graphics card or cpu cooler (if I end up getting an air cooler instead of an all in one cooler)? My concern is that I will have to move my pc around on long drives and bumps in the road may shake the system enough to damage the components inside that are hanging off of one mounting point. My worst fear would be jostling the machine enough to the point where a heavy cpu cooler might rip right out of the mounting bracket and break the motherboard since it is hanging and only supported in one spot. I'm not sure if some special hardware or some special case exists thats made to solve this problem, or if that hardware might have compatibility issues for certain components but I would love to hear your thoughts if you know anything about this.

[gloop]

1 minute ago, mahyar said:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.99 @ Walmart
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler	$74.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard	$124.99 @ Best Buy
Memory	Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	$54.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$89.00 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card	$779.99 @ Newegg
Case	Corsair SPEC-DELTA RGB ATX Mid Tower Case	$79.99 @ Corsair
Power Supply	Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$69.99 @ Newegg
Monitor	Dell S2719DGF 27.0" 2560x1440 155 Hz Monitor	$399.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2023.82
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-27 04:51 EDT-0400

 

Why are you using a CV (meant for iGPU office builds) with a 2080 super and 3700x?

[mahyar]

1 minute ago, gloop said:

Why are you using a CV (meant for iGPU office builds) with a 2080 super and 3700x?

oh it was from my last build forgot to change it

[mahyar]

5 minutes ago, mahyar said:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.99 @ Walmart
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler	$74.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI B550-A PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard	$139.99 @ B&H
Memory	Team T-FORCE VULCAN Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	$54.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$89.00 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card	$779.99 @ Newegg
Case	Corsair SPEC-DELTA RGB ATX Mid Tower Case	$79.99 @ Corsair
Power Supply	Corsair CV 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	$69.99 @ Newegg
Monitor	Dell S2719DGF 27.0" 2560x1440 155 Hz Monitor	$399.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2038.82
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-27 04:52 EDT-0400

 

some changes

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.99 @ Walmart
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler	$74.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI B550-A PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard	$139.99 @ B&H
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	$149.99 @ B&H
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$89.00 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card	$779.99 @ Newegg
Case	Corsair SPEC-DELTA RGB ATX Mid Tower Case	$79.99 @ Corsair
Power Supply	EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$288.98 @ Amazon
Monitor	Dell S2719DGF 27.0" 2560x1440 155 Hz Monitor	$399.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2352.81
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-27 04:57 EDT-0400

 

[gloop]

On 9/26/2020 at 7:14 AM, dpetrela said:

-snip-

You probably won't know, but do your music production programs prefer single or multi-threaded performance?

[dpetrela]

26 minutes ago, gloop said:

You probably won't know, but do your music production programs prefer single or multi-threaded performance?

Right now Im using ableton and I just looked up your question, this is what I found.

 

"Ableton Live supports multiple cores in the meaning different threads are spread over any available cores. It can be important knowledge to note that in Live a track (there are almost always multiple tracks happening btw) — or it's representation in machine code — is never spread over more than one core. As cores are in a relatively low maximum supply, that means each core is solely working on multiple tracks, on top of system and other processes running in the background outside of Live."

 

 

"Workflow types, plugin chains, and channel processing matter just as much as system hardware. Unless the user plans their workflow around Live's limitations, throwing as many cores and threads as possible at Live and expecting better performance vs fewer cores and threads is a bad idea and a waste of money.

Also regarding the information provided by Ableton regarding separating workload across threads or cores: keep in mind that there is a tradeoff between using a single instance of an effect to apply across several channels (limiting processing to a single core) vs creating multiple instances of the same effect to split across multiple cores. The more channels you need to create additional instances of that effect on, the smaller the benefit. It may be distributing the workload, but that same workload is then increasing exponentially because you're running several instances of a plugin/effect.

Live is optimized for live performance and cannot spread the load of certain workflow situations across cores and threads that other DAWs can."

 

 

 

Unfortunately I don't know all that much about interpreting this or if I will end up switching to FLstudio or protools in the future (according to that second explanation, these softwares may behave differently). What I do know is that my laptop I am using right now (really not a great one) has enough latency when I use a synth or a launchpad as a midi controller to be pretty irritating to use. I'm also unsure if a cpu well suited for gaming would be equivalent to a cpu well optimized for the music production software. I plan on immediately using the pc for a lot of gaming but I really want to expand into music production in the future so I guess when it comes down to it I would be willing to shell out a few extra bucks for a better cpu that can handle both well rather than sacrificing performance in one case for the other. Again I'm not sure if I can even have both options, it may just be that I have to pick what programs I want to have better performance, games or music production. Like I said in the request I would rather buy once and cry once than have to upgrade the cpu in the near future because I wanted to save a quick buck in the short term. I'm sorry if I couldn't answer your question well I'm really a noob when it comes to this but I hope what I said helped.

[VeganJoy]

7 hours ago, dpetrela said:

Thank you so much! I have a question that I forgot to talk about in the original request, is there mounting hardware that exists to increase the number of contact points between the case and heavier components inside the case like the graphics card or cpu cooler (if I end up getting an air cooler instead of an all in one cooler)? My concern is that I will have to move my pc around on long drives and bumps in the road may shake the system enough to damage the components inside that are hanging off of one mounting point. My worst fear would be jostling the machine enough to the point where a heavy cpu cooler might rip right out of the mounting bracket and break the motherboard since it is hanging and only supported in one spot. I'm not sure if some special hardware or some special case exists thats made to solve this problem, or if that hardware might have compatibility issues for certain components but I would love to hear your thoughts if you know anything about this.

lay the pc on its side so the components' "mounting points" are pacing downwards, that should prevent damage from occuring during transport. if youre really worried you should get an aio since theyre less heavy on the motherboard, and perhaps remove the gpu for the trip. 

 

7 hours ago, mahyar said:

some changes

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$294.99 @ Walmart
CPU Cooler	be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler	$74.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	MSI B550-A PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard	$139.99 @ B&H
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	$149.99 @ B&H
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$89.00 @ Amazon
Storage	Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$54.99 @ Newegg
Video Card	MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card	$779.99 @ Newegg
Case	Corsair SPEC-DELTA RGB ATX Mid Tower Case	$79.99 @ Corsair
Power Supply	EVGA SuperNOVA G2 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$288.98 @ Amazon
Monitor	Dell S2719DGF 27.0" 2560x1440 155 Hz Monitor	$399.99 @ Best Buy
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2352.81
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-27 04:57 EDT-0400

 

the evo is a bit of an overpriced drive, the spec delta has better alternatives for airflow (important for the 3080's power and heat output) and cable management, the supernova is wildly overpriced, and the s2719dgf is a TN panel whereas the s2721dgf is an ips panel (very big difference, you want IPS)