First Hardcore Gaming PC

[Gentleflamingo]

Budget (including currency): Roughly 3,000 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Hardcore gaming in 1440p, for fun music editing, and will eventually become a server

Other details: 

I currently have a four year old gaming laptop that can't handle most of the new games I want to play, such as the newer Total War games, COD, and Battlefield. I also love music and did music composition and editing in college when I had access to the music departments computers which could run those types of programs and would love to get back to that. Along with that I am planning on building another computer in two or three years with completely new components and a new cases and want to use this computer as a server for my house. I know when I get to that point  I will have to add more memory and possibly other parts. my hope is that whichever motherboard I end up with for this build I can also use for running a home server in the future. I already have Cat 8 run through most of my house and that's why I picked a motherboard that has both 1 gig internet and 2.5 gig internet.

 

I say my budget is roughly 3,000 dollars but the actual number is a little different. I've had a pc partpicker list for about the last year with roughly what I wanted and my wife saw it a couple weeks ago and bought me the case, a samsung 2tb pro evo ssd, and the cpu I wanted, a Ryzen 9 5900x. I also just bought a 3080 graphics card so I have that. I also have a mouse, keyboard, headset, and 1440p 27inch monitor so I don't need any peripherals at the moment, though I do want a second monitor in the future. Realistically my budget is roughly 1,200 dollars for everything I'm missing. I've watched a couple videos on motherboards and ram and still don't really understand anything about them other than higher speed for ram tends to be better. I have two ram options selected since I am unsure of which is realistically better/worth the money and I am happy to do different ideas if those are bad options. As for a cooler I want an AIO since they tend to be a little quieter and I think they could fit my theme of a white and rgb build. As for power supply I just went 1000 watt since I figured it was better to have enough power than not enough. In the end my goal is to have a high end gaming pc that is as white as possible on the inside to match my case because I'm a nerd. Along with that I eventually want to turn this computer into a server after I build my next computer so part compatibility would be nice.

 

PC Partpicker LInk

 

White example build

 

CPU: Ryzen 5900x- already bought

 

CPU Cooler: Lian Li Galahad 360ml aio

 

Motherboard: Don't care on color just looking for something that will work with all the hardware I am getting and that I can eventually use when I turn this computer into a server

 

Ram: Trident Z Royal 2x16 either DDR 4-4000 or DDR 4-4600. This is one component I'm hoping to keep white or at the minimum silver. RAM confuses the hell out of me since the level of performance can be way different when you compare different sticks running at the same speed.

 

Storage: Samsung evo 500gig m.2 for a bootdrive then a 2tb Samsung pro evo for game and misc storage- 2tb already bought

 

Video Card: Rog Strix 3080- already bought

 

Case: Phantecs P400A- already bought

 

Power Supply: Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 1000W

 

TLDR: I already bought/was gifted several component and am trying to figure out what else I should buy to finish out my build. I am hoping to build an all white pc and be able to turn it into a server in the coming years.

[Shimejii]

Dont bother with 4000 or 4600 ram, Just stick with 3600. It wont make any difference, 3800+ can be a pain to actually get working, but you can certainly tinker if you want.

 

Get a x570 Board, should be better overall when you migrate to a server. If you want it to be white there are a few options, although its gonna come down to whats in stock and where you want to buy it from.

 

 

[Queen Chrysalis]

11 minutes ago, Gentleflamingo said:

Motherboard: Don't care on color just looking for something that will work with all the hardware I am getting and that I can eventually use when I turn this computer into a server

 

Ram: Trident Z Royal 2x16 either DDR 4-4000 or DDR 4-4600. This is one component I'm hoping to keep white or at the minimum silver. RAM confuses the hell out of me since the level of performance can be way different when you compare different sticks running at the same speed.

 

Storage: Samsung evo 500gig m.2 for a bootdrive then a 2tb Samsung pro evo for game and misc storage- 2tb already bought

Really no point in getting RAM that fast or getting 64GB of it.  3600MHz for 23GBs should be way more than enough, as 16GB is still sufficient.  You'll never break 20GB in terms of usage.  Just get a decent 2x16 kit of 3600MHz vengeance LPX in white if it's that big of a deal.

 

Also, just use the whole m.2 you already have and make a separate partition for windows before you install it, so reinstalls won;t affect your games or media.  Should only need like 60GB so buying a whole separate SSD is pointless.

 

This board should be white enough:

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/QVn8TW/asrock-x570-steel-legend-wifi-ax-atx-am4-motherboard-x570-steel-legend-wifi-ax

 

 

[Queen Chrysalis]

Also, why do you want to turn this into a server?  Would it not be better to just focus this as a gaming PC, and if you end up needing a server just getting something cheap and built to the purpose when the time comes?  I doubt all the extra money you are spending on aesthetics will  benefit a server much, nor will a 3080.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

29 minutes ago, Gentleflamingo said:

Ram: Trident Z Royal 2x16 either DDR 4-4000 or DDR 4-4600.

Are you a hardcore overclocker willing to daily a near 1.75v overclock on b die (4800+ cl16) or not? If not these rams are not worth it, if you are then these rams are still not worth it

 

If you would like fast rams ballistix has slightly worse timings but itll clock just as high while being cheaper, you can expect 4600+ cl18 ~1.6v from a 3000/3200 bin ballistix though as those speeds are usually not worth it you may wanna opt for the highest speed that you can run while syncing fclk (prob 3800-4000) and run cl16/15 at 1.5v so you dont need to use a fan (1.5v+ needs fan for cooling), you may be able to run lower timings if you run 1.6v+ but thats up to you to decide if you wanna run a fan and take the (slight) risk or not, ballistix tops out ~1.7v scaling wise so you shouldnt be degrading your imc much and ram ics should be fine considering there are some ppl running these 1.6v+ daily

 

If you are gonna run stock buy the cheapest 3200 cl16 or 3600 cl18 rams like literally everyone else, higher speed dont do much and are mainly just for bragging rights and for fun and any other bin is overpriced garbage ballistix can annihilate when overclocked, except for b die bins but those are meant to be dailyed near 1.75v to extract the most performance out of them and cooling is gonna be a problem at that kind of volt, any lower than 1.6v and its worthless to even consider b die

[Gentleflamingo]

12 hours ago, Shimejii said:

Dont bother with 4000 or 4600 ram, Just stick with 3600. It wont make any difference, 3800+ can be a pain to actually get working, but you can certainly tinker if you want.

 

Get a x570 Board, should be better overall when you migrate to a server. If you want it to be white there are a few options, although its gonna come down to whats in stock and where you want to buy it from.

 

 

Thank you! I'm not as worried about getting a white motherboard since It doesn't seem like there are a ton out there and some look a little gimmicky to me.

[Gentleflamingo]

12 hours ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

Also, why do you want to turn this into a server?  Would it not be better to just focus this as a gaming PC, and if you end up needing a server just getting something cheap and built to the purpose when the time comes?  I doubt all the extra money you are spending on aesthetics will  benefit a server much, nor will a 3080.

I like to keep a ton of games installed since I have a few that I only play with friends from school so I figured the extra storage isn't the worse thing ever. 32 gigs of ram was only because some of the music editing and composition programs I've used in the past can be really ram intensive. As for it not being cost effective for a server I'm fine with that for the most part since I'll be getting my moneys worth for the two or three years I use it as a gaming pc/music pc. My plan for the 3080 is to give it to my nephew or one of my younger cousins when I upgrade down the road. As for having a home server I have over a terabyte of music on a hard-drive so having more space for that, pictures, and random work stuff would be nice. Along with that I want to update my security cameras down the road and have them record to my own server and not use a webservice like Amazon. I know it sounds really dumb but this is the first time I've spent any considerable money on myself in four years so I want to deck it out for now and if it's a massively overpowered server down the road so be it.

[Gentleflamingo]

12 hours ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Are you a hardcore overclocker willing to daily a near 1.75v overclock on b die (4800+ cl16) or not? If not these rams are not worth it, if you are then these rams are still not worth it

 

If you would like fast rams ballistix has slightly worse timings but itll clock just as high while being cheaper, you can expect 4600+ cl18 ~1.6v from a 3000/3200 bin ballistix though as those speeds are usually not worth it you may wanna opt for the highest speed that you can run while syncing fclk (prob 3800-4000) and run cl16/15 at 1.5v so you dont need to use a fan (1.5v+ needs fan for cooling), you may be able to run lower timings if you run 1.6v+ but thats up to you to decide if you wanna run a fan and take the (slight) risk or not, ballistix tops out ~1.7v scaling wise so you shouldnt be degrading your imc much and ram ics should be fine considering there are some ppl running these 1.6v+ daily

 

If you are gonna run stock buy the cheapest 3200 cl16 or 3600 cl18 rams like literally everyone else, higher speed dont do much and are mainly just for bragging rights and for fun and any other bin is overpriced garbage ballistix can annihilate when overclocked, except for b die bins but those are meant to be dailyed near 1.75v to extract the most performance out of them and cooling is gonna be a problem at that kind of volt, any lower than 1.6v and its worthless to even consider b die

Thanks for the insight! I want to get into overclocking a bit but I've never done it before so I'll probably only mess with my cpu. Even then I'll probably just go off of a guide someone has written and not push it to hard. Thanks again for the advice.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

6 minutes ago, Gentleflamingo said:

I want to get into overclocking a bit but I've never done it before so I'll probably only mess with my cpu

Cpu overclock is dead, youll get more benifit out of ram overclock and gpu overclock

 

Ram overclock wise ballistix is a good choice due to how cheap it is and being capable of acheiving high freq with relative ease given enough volt (4600+ cl18 ~1.6v), you may see a slight increase in cpu performance but usually not, its mostly in games or benchmarks where you can see the diff. For certain ics like djr micron rev e/b, samsung b die, etc. You can run high volt without worry of degradation, just the imc being the main worry, even then except b die they mostly top out ~1.7v which is abit risky but mostly fine to daily assuming you are fine with taking a (slight) risk, over 1.5v needs active cooling with a fan due to rams too hot = destabilize

 

Gpu overclock wise just crank the power limit and off you go, even if your gpu is somehow really adjustable ocp and thermal throttling will prevent any sort of degradation that may occur when running too hot or prevent nuking the vrms