How is this build? 12700k, 3070ti, etc..

[dimforest]

Budget (including currency): Trying to keep it under 4k (USD)

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: I'd like to do some 4k gaming at 60fps (or higher) but my main goal is just to be able to run anything that comes out in the next 4-5 years without needing to feel like I'm playing on a potato. 

Other details: This will also double as my work computer. I work in tech but a majority of what I do just involves me remoting into servers, SSH'ing into crap, etc.. so there aren't a ton of resource intensive non-gaming things I'd be doing with possibly the exception of running a few VM's here and there.

 

I've gone back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and with the market the way it's been, I've basically given up hope on getting a 3080 or higher at a halfway reasonable price so I've settled on a 3070ti. I know it's not that much more performance over a 3070 or even 3060ti for significantly more cost.... but I can justify $1000 on a GPU and still sleep at night. I'm hoping there aren't any bottlenecks here as I originally designed a system in a bigger case (5000D airflow) with the intent of getting a 3080ti but as that pipe dream dwindled, I dropped the case size down, GPU down, and obviously AIO to fit. 

 

Anyway, here's my current part list. I'm also looking for a new 4k monitor but know very little about what's good other than I want high refresh rate and low ms? 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/H46D4s

[dimforest]

EDIT: Just realized I still had 64GB's of DDR4 on that initial list... and the significantly more expensive "snow edition" of the O11 mini (which I think the only difference is it's all white?) .... which is overkill. Here's an updated list with 32GB and the "normal" O11 mini. I struggled to figure out if I wanted CL16 at 3200 or CL18 at 3600...

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/cTwYcb

[dizmo]

Haha, oh boy...

• I wouldn't get an MSI motherboard, there are other companies that have far better support.
• Why do you have 2 different SSDs? If you're using one just for Windows, why not make it a 500GB?
• You don't need to get the Pro model of the SSD. There are also other SSDs that will feel just as fast for far less money.
• Having tons of fans in your case won't necessarily make it cooler. You need to have proper directional airflow.
• If there's not a huge difference in performance between the cards, overpaying doesn't make a ton of sense. Just get something cheaper, and upgrade a little sooner when card availability is back to normal.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bWXRsL

Cut cost by 700$ (w/o gpu)

 

If you really wanna have it last longer then get a 3080ti or something instead of wasting it all on overpriced rams, fans, cooler, aio, board, etc.

 

Basically cut cost on everything for a ~1300$ base build which leaves 2700$ for the gpu so you could get a 3090 if you want but 3080ti is prob good enough anyways

 

4x8 is a terrible ram config so swapped for 2x16 ballistix, didnt get rgb cause its either stupidly overpriced or just gone so if you can find rgb ones that dont have a 50$ markup then substitute for white rgbs. You also have the option of clocking the crap out of the rams (4500+ but cl18) though you are only gaming it seems so aim for tighter timings like cl15 or cl14, or you can just lazy oc to 4000 cl16 by changing freq to 4000 and finding a stable volt between 1.4-1.5v

 

Aio is stupidly overpriced so cut that in half

Fans are also stupidly overpriced, cut that by 2/3

Board is uneccesary and its also black so swapped for a z690 p wifi which mskes the build more white

2 ssds is non sensical i guess so swapped for a 2tb gen4 qlc, if you prefer a more reliable drive then go for a z440, rocket 4.0, or even aorus nvme if you can find one

Cheaper psu and its also white now

[dimforest]

4 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Haha, oh boy...

• I wouldn't get an MSI motherboard, there are other companies that have far better support.
• Why do you have 2 different SSDs? If you're using one just for Windows, why not make it a 500GB?
• You don't need to get the Pro model of the SSD. There are also other SSDs that will feel just as fast for far less money.
• Having tons of fans in your case won't necessarily make it cooler. You need to have proper directional airflow.
• If there's not a huge difference in performance between the cards, overpaying doesn't make a ton of sense. Just get something cheaper, and upgrade a little sooner when card availability is back to normal.

Thanks for the reply! To address your points:

• I had actually seen the opposite in reviews vs the ASUS boards and apparently the Z690 ASUS mobo's had a bunch of issues? I also noticed I/O wasn't as generous on other boards... the MSI's seemed to have the better reviews and better specs but I'm definitely open to suggestions if you think otherwise
• I will have a lot of file storage and considered doing a traditional SSD or even a spinning disc but for space I went with the secondary NVME (the 2TB). The primary 1TB is where I plan to install 90% of my applications and run them from.
• I don't really "need" any of this, honestly haha. I have working computers at home so this is me splurging on something more modern and fun. The savings for NVME's were less than the other components, so I didn't penny-pinch as much with the 980. 
• I plan on exhausting out the top, back, and then the AIO's fans I plan on exhausting too, so the bottom of the case would be the intake. 
• This is why I downgraded from getting a 3080 or above, actually 

[dimforest]

22 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bWXRsL

Cut cost by 700$ (w/o gpu)

 

If you really wanna have it last longer then get a 3080ti or something instead of wasting it all on overpriced rams, fans, cooler, aio, board, etc.

 

Basically cut cost on everything for a ~1300$ base build which leaves 2700$ for the gpu so you could get a 3090 if you want but 3080ti is prob good enough anyways

 

4x8 is a terrible ram config so swapped for 2x16 ballistix, didnt get rgb cause its either stupidly overpriced or just gone so if you can find rgb ones that dont have a 50$ markup then substitute for white rgbs. You also have the option of clocking the crap out of the rams (4500+ but cl18) though you are only gaming it seems so aim for tighter timings like cl15 or cl14, or you can just lazy oc to 4000 cl16 by changing freq to 4000 and finding a stable volt between 1.4-1.5v

 

Aio is stupidly overpriced so cut that in half

Fans are also stupidly overpriced, cut that by 2/3

Board is uneccesary and its also black so swapped for a z690 p wifi which mskes the build more white

2 ssds is non sensical i guess so swapped for a 2tb gen4 qlc, if you prefer a more reliable drive then go for a z440, rocket 4.0, or even aorus nvme if you can find one

Cheaper psu and its also white now

Some feedback/questions:

1. That board is great looking but I wish it had more USB. I'll swap it out though, thanks!
2. Why is 4x8 a terrible RAM config? Everything I've seen suggests the opposite? 
3. The PSU won't be visible in the O11 mini, so color doesn't matter. I'll be buying white cables on Amazon too. I only went with EVGA because I've had one cooler master die on me in the past but that was 5+ years ago.
4. The 980 will be where I do 90% of what I'm doing. The secondary NVME will be mostly just raw storage. To cut on cabling and space, I went NVME over traditional SSD or HDD. I'd be open to changing the model on the 970 to something else. 
5. The fans ARE absolutely stupidly overpriced but they'll cut back on cabling immensely. They're the locking mechanism Lian Li's and for aesthetics, I'd prefer if all the case fans were the same.

[Jonathan Lee]

Only thing I would say is to cut down on the fans. You already have 2 fans from the AIO, so 1 extra pack should be plenty for cooling. Maybe go 2 x 16GB so you can expand to 64GB in the future.

 

Asides from that, it looks good to me.

[dimforest]

13 minutes ago, Jonathan Lee said:

Only thing I would say is to cut down on the fans. You already have 2 fans from the AIO, so 1 extra pack should be plenty for cooling. Maybe go 2 x 16GB so you can expand to 64GB in the future.

 

Asides from that, it looks good to me.

I plan on replacing the two fans on the AIO with 2 of the Lian Li's, actually. I wanted all of the case fans to match.

 

I tried to justify 64GB's but can't come up with a good reasoning for it, even with some lofty work-PC scenarios. Anything I'd need that kind of memory for would teeter in the server category and at that point I'd be building something entirely different.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

7 hours ago, dimforest said:

The fans ARE absolutely stupidly overpriced but they'll cut back on cabling immensely. They're the locking mechanism Lian Li's and for aesthetics

Well atleast you are somewhat aware of how much money is being blown on crap xD

 

What kind of locking mechanism though? Id assume its not hard to just diy it and replicate on another fan, im guessing its just daisy chain or something so yea i dont think thats hard to replicate at all, literally just jam or solder some cables together between the fans. Soldering wise i think you can buy some cheapo mobo fan headers so that should still let you detatch the fans if neccesary

 

Yea i dont really give a fk about aesthetics and even if i did i would find the absolute cheapest way to implement it, whether that be painting stuff, soldering sht together, idc ill just save as much money as possible

[PapaAquaWet]

If you play competative games or just prefer higher hz, I would recommend to play on higher hz with slightly lower resolution. If you want to play on higher resolution than 1080p but 240hz you maybe could check out this monitor https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/alienware-27-gaming-monitor-aw2721d/apd/210-axsw/monitors-monitor-accessories I know that Shroud uses it but I don't know how good it is. There are probably many other monitors around with 144 or 166hz with higher resolution than 1080p but it's nothing I'm educated on. I know more about 1080p displays.

[dizmo]

2 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bWXRsL

Cut cost by 700$ (w/o gpu)

 

If you really wanna have it last longer then get a 3080ti or something instead of wasting it all on overpriced rams, fans, cooler, aio, board, etc.

 

Basically cut cost on everything for a ~1300$ base build which leaves 2700$ for the gpu so you could get a 3090 if you want but 3080ti is prob good enough anyways

 

4x8 is a terrible ram config so swapped for 2x16 ballistix, didnt get rgb cause its either stupidly overpriced or just gone so if you can find rgb ones that dont have a 50$ markup then substitute for white rgbs. You also have the option of clocking the crap out of the rams (4500+ but cl18) though you are only gaming it seems so aim for tighter timings like cl15 or cl14, or you can just lazy oc to 4000 cl16 by changing freq to 4000 and finding a stable volt between 1.4-1.5v

 

Aio is stupidly overpriced so cut that in half

Fans are also stupidly overpriced, cut that by 2/3

Board is uneccesary and its also black so swapped for a z690 p wifi which mskes the build more white

2 ssds is non sensical i guess so swapped for a 2tb gen4 qlc, if you prefer a more reliable drive then go for a z440, rocket 4.0, or even aorus nvme if you can find one

Cheaper psu and its also white now

Buying the top tier card to make it last longer, especially in the current state of the market, makes absolutely no sense. It's always been that you buy a lower tier card, and upgrade more frequently if you really want to get the most out of your system. The flagship cards are for people who want the best of the best, and don't care about the cost.

 

4x8 can actually produce better performance results when compared to 2 DIMM setups. White RGB? What do you even mean by that? Overclocking RAM is a very tedious task that usually doesn't produce favourable results.

 

2 SSDs can make perfect sense if you want to separate your Windows drive from another drive. Claiming that a 4.0 drive is more reliable is also incorrect. There are more reasons to choose a fan other than simply cost and colour.

2 hours ago, dimforest said:

Thanks for the reply! To address your points:

• I had actually seen the opposite in reviews vs the ASUS boards and apparently the Z690 ASUS mobo's had a bunch of issues? I also noticed I/O wasn't as generous on other boards... the MSI's seemed to have the better reviews and better specs but I'm definitely open to suggestions if you think otherwise
• I will have a lot of file storage and considered doing a traditional SSD or even a spinning disc but for space I went with the secondary NVME (the 2TB). The primary 1TB is where I plan to install 90% of my applications and run them from.
• I don't really "need" any of this, honestly haha. I have working computers at home so this is me splurging on something more modern and fun. The savings for NVME's were less than the other components, so I didn't penny-pinch as much with the 980. 
• I plan on exhausting out the top, back, and then the AIO's fans I plan on exhausting too, so the bottom of the case would be the intake. 
• This is why I downgraded from getting a 3080 or above, actually 

• While MSI's products may have improved since I used them, their customer service has not. There's a reason GamersNexus usually flames them. I'd honestly look elsewhere for the motherboard; with the multiple bad experiences I've had with their products, I'll never recommend them.
• Ah, makes sense. NVME is pretty close to the cost of SATA storage so it's sort of a wash. Still, the SSDs you've chosen are overpriced vs what's on the market. It's not so much penny pinching, as needlessly spending money on something that's going to have absolutely no effect. It's not even like it's RGB and you can enjoy the lights.

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

Overclocking RAM is a very tedious task that usually doesn't produce favourable results.

*laughs in stealing ram profile from hwbot and immedeatly gets my team ddr2 rams to boot 1560mhz*

 

Its literally just lazy oc, just search up some profile off yt and copy paste on your rams, for all i know 4000 cl16 on micron dies is literally a matter of set freq and set volt then thats it, for b die its the same thing but 4000 cl14

 

Theres always the option for properly tuning rams to get the most out of them but thats pretty much an 80/20 situation where most of the performance gain is easy but the last few drops of performance need stupid amounts of effort to get. Lazy oc is pretty much the 80% and proper tuning is the last 20%

 

if you are really that lazy to spend a total of 10-15 minutes of lazy oc plus an hour of p95 stability test once you get something that does seem stable with a short p95 test then might aswell just get some garbage 3200 for dirt cheap and call it a day cause garbage rams dont even overclock and even if they do theyll prob run garbage timings. 3600 cl18 is out of the question cause cl18 for not much freq gain, same for 3600 cl16 cause ludicrous price hike

 

I spent just 2 hours trying to get my 1x3 extreem dark 1066 to run at high speeds and its pretty much just steal a profile somewhere like yt or hwbot, test what timings affect ram clockability, test voltages, do some short 1-3min prime95 large ffts stability tests per adjustment to see if theres anything thats potentially stable, rinse repeat till i get the highest clockspeed i can run and tightest timings i can run. Ended up with 1480mhz 7-9-9-10 132trfc with 2.2v. Now i get to run upto 740fsb and get ram stability where i previously couldnt at a lower speed for the rest of the time im keeping this ram (prob a year or 2) just by spending ~2 hours to tune the rams

 

 

To judge whether or not its worth it you just gotta weigh the downsides and upsides, for me no downsides other than taking some time to tune the rams with the upsides being able to run stupid fast fsb and get ram stability where i prevoiusly couldnt at a lower speed

 

For most ppl since the days of painful bclk/fsb tuning are mostly gone and you dont need good rams to reach high clockspeeds anymore the downside is just spending time tuning and some system downtime while tuning (lazy oc reduces these downsides alot) with the upside being boosted ram and slight boost to cpu performance for the rest of the time youll keep that system

 

3200 cl16 shouldnt have too much of a diff compared to 4000 cl16 so if you just dont wanna tune rams or cant deal with downtime then just stick with 3200 cl16, maybe even do an ultra lazy oc which is basically just raise freq slightly and thats it (like 3200-3400)

 

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

4x8 can actually produce better performance results when compared to 2 DIMM setups

From what ive seen its mostly just marginal benifit, i guess it would work for ppl that really dont want to oc

 

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

Buying the top tier card to make it last longer, especially in the current state of the market, makes absolutely no sense. It's always been that you buy a lower tier card, and upgrade more frequently if you really want to get the most out of your system. The flagship cards are for people who want the best of the best, and don't care about the cost.

Ok now thats just a plain oversight by me, high end gpus do still last ~2-3 gens like the gtx 1080 so there is futureproofing there but gpus still havent hit a brick wall like cpus ipc wise so lower end is sensible if youd like the most value, maybe once they hit a brick wall theyll last 4 gens or something

 

2 hours ago, dizmo said:

There are more reasons to choose a fan other than simply cost and colour

Would have gone arctic if it werent for them not having white frames, and usually ppl that spend tons of money on a build dont like diying other than really small basic stuff so thats why i just completely cheaped out on the fans, if op is fine with doing abit of painting on the fan frames then sure go arctic fans

[dimforest]

If I were building a PC that didn't have a ton of aesthetics in mind, I would have 100% gone with Arctic P12's for my case fans and then Arctics AIO as well (I forget the naming of it). They all review fantastic and performance, from what I've seen online, is as good or better than what I'm currently buying. 

 

I wanted some stuff to look a certain way though. The O11 Mini has two glass panels so the guts are pretty visible.