Planned build review wanted

[Obsid14n]

Hi there!
I'm looking for some eyes to help me verify a build I'm planning to execute twice.
One for me, one for SO.
It's taken me months to find one GPU but recently I've got a lead on a second and that has triggered me to start to plan the rest of the builds.

 

Aim
Light gaming, mainly e-sports\indie titles. We're not heavy AAA title gamers.
SO is a data scientist and actively works with ML and AI data modelling with libraries like TensorFlow.
I freelance locally as both videographer and editor next to boring dayjob that is 90% boring Teams meetings.
We both share "maker" hobbies and are novice 3d modelers.

 

Budget and Location
Less relevant here - Mainland Europe so we use €, I'm hoping to stay under 3k but I think the cpus will be the most influential there. I can go over if needs be.
 

I have a PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3.7 GHz 12-Core Processor 
CPU Cooler: Corsair iCUE H115i ELITE CAPELLIX 97 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  (€163.85 @ Megekko) 
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (€137.00 @ Azerty) 
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (€382.95 @ Megekko) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (€189.00 @ Paradigit) 
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card 
Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact TG Light Tint ATX Mid Tower Case  (€108.95 @ Megekko) 
Power Supply: Corsair HXi 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€265.00 @ Azerty) 
Total: €1246.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-04 23:08 CEST+0200

 

Other stuff
These machines will sit on our desks in the livingroom of our house and will be in view.
We spend 10 - 15hrs a day at our desks, either working from home @ dayjob (Thanks, pandemic) or working on pet projects / freelancing. We tried setting up an office space but quickly realized spending the majority of our day cooped up in a converted spare bedroom when we have an entire livingroom to live in was dumb.

 

Why the upgrade?
Currently I work on a 10yr old 3770k+HD7970 build... I think this says enough.
Working with proxies in Adobe is a godsend - I literally would not be able to edit some of my footage without proxies but DaVinci Resolve long since denied even starting on my machine, flatly producing a gpu error.
SO has a slightly more recent build, sporting a 6600K+GTX1070 but the performance is nowhere near where she believes it could be on the RTX platform and she's hoping she can rid herself of some cuda incompatibilities between driver versioning and hardware.

 

I think my main insecurity is motherboard and whether I did a halfway decent job of finding that sweetspot where it'll support fancy stuff without the fluff of being too "Gamer" or offering overclocking features which neither of us will use so I'm hoping someone can point at the MoBo and offer words of encouragement or advice. If there are any pointers on the rest - I'd be happy to take more advice into consideration!
We're good on peripherals and storage.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Obsid14n
Edited PCPP list for locality

[Chris Pratt]

Overall, looks fine. The 3080 is way overkill for your gaming needs, but given your work with tensor cores, it's probably necessary for that. It'll obviously help with the videography as well. Same goes for the RAM: way too much for gaming, but probably validated by the productivity applications.

 

That PSU is kind of ridiculous, though. It's not worth $400 for 850W. You're likely overpaying for the Corsair name and platinum rating, and neither is worth it. You should be able to find a very good 850W PSU for no more than $200. Check the PSU tier list.

 

Also, with the 980 Pro, be careful with what M.2 slot you use. B550 only supports PCIe 4.0 on the CPU lanes, so you'll only have one M.2 that's actually capable of those speeds. The rest will be PCIe 3.0.

 

[Jurrunio]

31 minutes ago, Obsid14n said:

Less relevant here - Mainland Europe so we use €,

Does other country's version of PCPP not work for some reason? Otherwise it's hard to judge the price you're paying.

 

36 minutes ago, Obsid14n said:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3.7 GHz 12-Core Processor 
CPU Cooler: Corsair iCUE H115i ELITE CAPELLIX 97 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler  ($134.99 @ Newegg) 
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550M MORTAR Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($144.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($349.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($179.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card 
Case: Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact TG Light Tint ATX Mid Tower Case  ($119.98 @ Newegg) 
Power Supply: Corsair HXi 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($358.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $1288.93

I'm not sure about the priorities here, the RGB bling or performance or being good value. The cooler is obviously fancy with a price tag to boot, but the motherboard looks bland and expansion slots (being mATX) is not as good as ATX boards. 3200MHz CL16 is pretty slow these days to the point where 3600MHz CL18 is sometimes at the same price, but there's the really expensive and supposedly best of the best PCIe 4 SSD which aside from bandwidth, is pretty disappointing for its steep price. The SSD's bandwidth may justify for analyzing data but for video editing hobby, not worth it. That PSU is very expensive, though European electricity can be very expensive so maybe it will pay for itself (compared to 80+ Gold units) by saving power in the long run.

 

Oh and the case and graphics card, Fractal rates it to have 341mm shared between graphics card and front radiator. A 323mm card and 25mm rad AIO like the capellix you picked won't fit.

[Obsid14n]

Chris, Jurrunio, thank you so much both for your valuable feedback!

6 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Does other country's version of PCPP not work for some reason? Otherwise it's hard to judge the price you're paying.

Ah, good point, good point! I have edited the PCPP list to show a more accurate localized version. I was not aware that was possible, thanks for pointing it out!

I hear you both on the PSU, luckily, I can report it's available for €200 from a reputable store not represented by PCPP - so less of an issue than the $400 shown previously.
Looking broader, I can drop €40 to €165 for a single rail Seasonic Focus PX 80+ Platinum or even stay on multi-rail for the same price on a Corsair HX850 V2 (not the HX850i)
An EVGA Supernova 850 rated gold is €150... with other brands and models being in the 110-180 bracket.
I reckon I'll stay on the Platinum rating but perhaps go for that Seasonic in place of the corsair. Choosing multi-rail wasn't a conscious decision and I don't think it really matters for my needs.

 

6 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

Also, with the 980 Pro, be careful with what M.2 slot you use. B550 only supports PCIe 4.0 on the CPU lanes, so you'll only have one M.2 that's actually capable of those speeds. The rest will be PCIe 3.0.

 

Ah, yep - good call out, thanks!

 

6 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

I'm not sure about the priorities here, the RGB bling or performance or being good value. The cooler is obviously fancy with a price tag to boot, but the motherboard looks bland and expansion slots (being mATX) is not as good as ATX boards. 3200MHz CL16 is pretty slow these days to the point where 3600MHz CL18 is sometimes at the same price, but there's the really expensive and supposedly best of the best PCIe 4 SSD which aside from bandwidth, is pretty disappointing for its steep price. The SSD's bandwidth may justify for analyzing data but for video editing hobby, not worth it.

Definitely the performance being good value.
We're the kind of people that get RGB and then set it to one color for all of eternity.
Don't get me wrong, looks is certainly "a thing to think about" hence the FD case instead of "random black metal box", but we're not going for unicorn barf here. =D

I'll be honest - the memory was a guess. I take this to mean I made a bad guess then. =P
I'd certainly be interested in hearing suggestions on improvement!

Thank you for pointing out the SSD!
Will look into other options.

And finally, cooler;

6 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

Oh and the case and graphics card, Fractal rates it to have 341mm shared between graphics card and front radiator. A 323mm card and 25mm rad AIO like the capellix you picked won't fit.

Ah - good catch, would it make sense to go for a top mounted 240mm instead, even shop around for something else like EK's 240 AIO instead of paying the corsair RGB premium or perhaps to ditch the AIO idea entirely and go for an air cooler?

[Jurrunio]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3.7 GHz 12-Core Processor
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 280 72.8 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	€101.90 @ Megekko
Motherboard	MSI MPG B550 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard	€139.00 @ Azerty
Memory	G.Skill Trident Z Neo 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory	€420.00 @ Azerty
Memory	G.Skill Trident Z RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-4000 CL18 Memory	€450.00 @ Azerty
Memory	G.Skill Ripjaws V 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory	€403.85 @ Megekko
Storage	Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	€127.85 @ Megekko
Storage	Corsair MP600 Force Series Gen4 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	€344.00 @ Azerty
Storage	Gigabyte AORUS NVMe Gen4 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	€314.60 @ Azerty
Video Card	EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB FTW3 ULTRA GAMING Video Card	€2252.95 @ Megekko
Case	Fractal Design Meshify 2 Compact TG Light Tint ATX Mid Tower Case	€108.95 @ Megekko
Power Supply	SeaSonic FOCUS PX 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	€189.00 @ Paradigit
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	€4852.10
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-05 21:10 CEST+0200

The cooler without RGB tax, tho it's gain in performance comes from being thick. Make sure you mount the radiator with the tubes under the radiator so bubbles in the loop wont enter the pump block on the CPU so easily.

Motherboard: Similarly priced, some LEDs under the chipset heatsink

RAM: 3600 CL18 kit that's similarly priced to your 3200 CL16 choice. 4000 CL18 here is for manual tuning (best potential, even though you could tune all of them), 3600 CL16 is the best without tuning but has no RGB. you only need to choose one out of three and honestly, the difference without manual tuning is very small.

Storage: 2TB PCIe 3.0 SSDs are so expensive that you might as well go with PCIe 4.0, but at 1TB the price difference is still large. So it's either 1TB PCIe 3 SSD or 2TB PCIe 4 SSD, or maybe different SSDs between you two. MP610 is faster than the Gigabyte but that comes from the price and the taller heatsink could get in the way of graphics card backplates. 

Graphics card: added from filter, anything on or below 300mm long will do (which limits you to some liquid cooled cards and EVGA/Palit air cooled cards). Or you could get a larger case like the Meshify 2 instead.