My Black "Friday"* girlfriend birthday / Christmas / end of thesis build

[bejamartins]

*(not Friday yet, but since the deals where on one the most relevant websites relevant to me went ahead before stock was gone)

 

Already bought, just sharing my hunt result and asking for thoughts.

  

 

Yellow - not in discount

Green - discount

Grey - taken from my old rig

 

Budget (including currency): €200-ish (LOL) 

Country: Portugal

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Cities Skylines, Anno 1800, Tropico 6, Sims 4, ArcGis / OpenGis, future alike games

Other details: current res: 1080p @ 60Hz, to be upgraded 

 

[Guest]

Have you used PCPartPicker at all?

[bejamartins]

7 minutes ago, alabistyr said:

Have you used PCPartPicker at all?

No, I prefer to buy in places near where I can manage warranties better. PC part picker doesn't take in account stores and prices near me.

 

So I hunter store by store "manually".

 

Edit: apparently now it does. Things have come a long way.

 

Edit 2: I see a limitation though, which are stores in Spain that ship to Portugal don't show as options if I select Portugal.

[Guest]

Just now, bejamartins said:

No, I prefer to buy in places near where I can manage warranties better. PC part picker doesn't take in account stores and prices near me. So I hunter store by store "manually".

I see. Overall, your build looks fine, but I do have suggestions:

• Find a Zen 2 CPU instead of Zen +. An R3 3300X or R5 3600/X/XT would be much stronger for 1080p.
• Find RAM with lower CL. 3600 CL16 would be ideal, if possible.
• Unless you do heavy i/o work, M.2 SSDs are a space-saving luxury, not actually a noticable real-world performance improvement over SATA 2.5" SSDs.

[bejamartins]

18 minutes ago, alabistyr said:

I see. Overall, your build looks fine, but I do have suggestions:

• Find a Zen 2 CPU instead of Zen +. An R3 3300X or R5 3600/X/XT would be much stronger for 1080p.
• Find RAM with lower CL. 3600 CL16 would be ideal, if possible.
• Unless you do heavy i/o work, M.2 SSDs are a space-saving luxury, not actually a noticable real-world performance improvement over SATA 2.5" SSDs.

I considered a Ryzen 5 3500 that was in discount but since no mini-ITX board really supported Zen 2 (feature-wise) at a low price and I was over budget already, I took the discount. 3500 was at 149,00, discounted and 3300X is at the same price, without discount. What would make the big difference here, the clock speeds? I'd figure for the difference in price I can make a slight overclock.

 

Would less clocked RAM be performance beneficial or just have an expected lower price?

As for storage NVMe, simple M.2 and traditional SATA are about the same price here, I might as well go for NVMe I think.

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, bejamartins said:

What would make the big difference here, the clock speeds? I'd figure for the difference in price I can make a slight overclock.

They're almost comparable, with the R3 being slightly stronger. Get whichever is cheapest. Considering the silicon lottery, don't purchase assuming you can get a good OC -- it's not guaranteed.

7 minutes ago, bejamartins said:

Would less clocked RAM be performance beneficial or just have an expected lower price?

As long as the latency is low (CL16 or lower), going down to DDR4-3200 would be fine. I don't know if you have any good deals going, of course.

7 minutes ago, bejamartins said:

As for storage NVMe, simple M.2 and traditional SATA are about the same price here, I might as well go for NVMe I think.

As long as you can get decent capacity, go for it.

[bejamartins]

3 minutes ago, alabistyr said:

They're almost comparable, with the R3 being slightly stronger. Get whichever is cheapest. Considering the silicon lottery, don't purchase assuming you can get a good OC -- it's not guaranteed.

As long as the latency is low (CL16 or lower), going down to DDR4-3200 would be fine. I don't know if you have any good deals going, of course.

As long as you can get decent capacity, go for it.

RAM deals, not really, 3200 seem to be all in full price or with a low discount, I'd end up paying the same or more for the same configuration. Actually only G.Skill Aegis would pay less, but I'd save only €1,20 and aesthetically it would add Red to the black & white build.

[drexTech]

What about OS? I recommend checking out r/MicrosoftServices since you have a budget in mind.

[bejamartins]

18 hours ago, drexTech said:

What about OS? I recommend checking out r/MicrosoftServices since you have a budget in mind.

I think she still has access to Dreamspark keys, that shouldn't be an issue.