My Friend's Build

[Jeditwo]

Budget (including currency): $1,500 - $2,000 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming, Schoolwork

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

My friend put this list together and I am just wanting to get a second opinion and fine-tune it a lot, but I am not very good with optimizing all the parts to work together best. What changes would you guys recommend?

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ITZV0LT/saved/#view=CYqrMp

[RONOTHAN##]

You can do quite a bit better for this system. 

1. The 12700F is quite a bit faster for basically the same price as the 5800X
2. That tripe AIO isn't needed for the 12700F, and also it doesn't perform better than the significantly cheaper Arctic Liquid Freezer 2. A $40 dual tower air cooler should do the job.
3. $300 for the B550-F is a ripoff. That's a $200 board at best, and personally I wouldn't pay more than $170 for it. It's basically a B550 TUF with some extra lights thrown onto it, not worth that premium especially when the B550 Taichi exists at $200. That said, the 12700F needs a LGA 1700 board instead, so swap that for the B660-A Pro
4. Does your friend actually need 64GB of memory? Given what you've listed they're doing, odds are 32GB would be overkill. 
5. There is no SSD in this system. You want an SSD. Besides, unless you were planning on running the HDDs in RAID 1 for redundancy purposes, you'd be better off just getting a single 4TB HDD instead.
6. Go for the airflow edition of that case, it's cheaper and will keep components cooler.
7. For this budget, I'd want an 850W unit.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nnQMC6

 

Doing all that, you can fit a 3080 in this price range rather than a 3050.

[BiotechBen]

Unless your friend already has an SSD for OS duty, add an SSD. And the sound card really isn't necessary unless you are gonna be running literal $1000 studio headphones. I personally don't like RGB, I don't like paying extra for something that doesn't improve performance, so you can spend significantly less on RGB and get a much better GPU.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/t6XdbK

 

The 4TB Ironwolf Pro drives are a good price rn as well ($89.99 @ bestbuy) if you don't want to do redundancy

 

[brob]

An i7-12700F with an RTX 3060 offers much better performance. 

 

I've included 32GB of memory, even though it is likely far more than what will be needed for the described usage.

 

A 2TB NVMe drive provides lots of fast storage. Its easy enough to add more storage when and if it's needed.

 

Consider a case with much better airflow. It has decent, but not flashy lighting.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700F 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor  ($302.99 @ Newegg) 
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock TF 2 CPU Cooler  ($85.90 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: MSI MAG B660 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($214.99 @ Amazon) 
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  ($134.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: ADATA XPG GAMMIX S7 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($184.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB VENTUS 2X Video Card  ($419.98 @ Newegg) 
Case: be quiet! Pure Base 500DX ATX Mid Tower Case  ($107.89 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2018) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($128.90 @ Amazon) 
Total: $1580.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-05-19 23:02 EDT-0400

[Somerandomtechyboi]

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fXXdbK

¯\_ (ツ) _/¯ 

[GeorgeMKane]

7 hours ago, Jeditwo said:

Budget (including currency): $1,500 - $2,000 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming, Schoolwork

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

My friend put this list together and I am just wanting to get a second opinion and fine-tune it a lot, but I am not very good with optimizing all the parts to work together best. What changes would you guys recommend?

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ITZV0LT/saved/#view=CYqrMp

Recommend going for lower latency memory, an air cpu cooler, nvme ssd (for the boot drive), better graphics card, and a more recent psu.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/hVdt3y

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($285.00 @ Amazon) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black 82.51 CFM CPU Cooler  ($99.95 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS PRO AC ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($179.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory  ($179.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Western Digital Blue SN570 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($89.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($44.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB XC GAMING Video Card  ($475.95 @ Amazon) 
Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case  ($94.99 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2021) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.99 @ Best Buy) 
Case Fan: Corsair LL120 43.25 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack  ($98.99 @ Newegg) 
$1669.83

[Guest]

What resolution is he gaming at ? If 1080p then you can drop down to a 3060 ti or 6600xt for example and save some money.

 

The cpu is another area to save on. A 6 core 12400F (Or 5600/X if going AMD). The cpu can always be upgraded later on.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700F 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor  ($302.99 @ Newegg) 
CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 Rev.B 39.44 CFM CPU Cooler  ($65.98 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte B660M GAMING X AX DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($149.99 @ B&H) 
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  ($134.99 @ Newegg) 
Storage: Kingston KC2500 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($161.72 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Western Digital Blue 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($64.98 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti 8 GB FTW3 ULTRA GAMING Video Card  ($777.99 @ EVGA) 
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox MB511 ARGB ATX Mid Tower Case  ($95.75 @ Amazon) 
Power Supply: Phanteks AMP 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($89.90 @ Amazon) 
Total: $1844.29
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-05-20 06:50 EDT-0400

[kylemarshmallow]

16 hours ago, Jeditwo said:

Budget (including currency): $1,500 - $2,000 USD

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming, Schoolwork

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

My friend put this list together and I am just wanting to get a second opinion and fine-tune it a lot, but I am not very good with optimizing all the parts to work together best. What changes would you guys recommend?

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ITZV0LT/saved/#view=CYqrMp

I would personally allocate more of my budget towards a better video card, and storage instead of 64gbs of ram. I use my pc for gaming and schoolwork and I have never even come close to using 32gbs of ram. If you don't take any of my advice PLEASE get an SSD. It is sooo much better than an hdd hardrive, coming from someone who used to not have an ssd, I literally had to wait 15 minutes to be able to open chrome.

 

I also suggest trying to maybe get a cheaper motherboard and or CPU and putting that money towards a graphics card such as a 3060 or 3070 for this price point. Also, is your friend doing things such as coding software or rendering videos, because that could be a use for that much ram but otherwise 64 gigs is overkill.