New PC Build and recommendations for a Case

MrXaver · June 30, 2022

Budget (including currency): up to 3000€

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: MSFS, DCS, Star Citizen (the rest like F1 22, ETS2, etc. shouldn´t be a problem, right? VR (occasionally), Streaming, Video Editing (HD-Source Files)

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): - , no peripherals, see below, buy as soon as possible, Currently i have 2x 1920x1200p@60Hz Displays, i´m planning to get a 4k@120+Hz (HDR?) monitor further down the road.

Hello everybody,

first of all, sorry for spelling and grammatical mistakes, as english is not my first language obviously... Now with that out of the way, let´s begin:

I am currently using a PC that I build in 2014 and haven´t really upgraded since. It runs a Xeon E3-1230 v3, R9 290 GPU and 32 Gigs of DDR3 Ram. I wanted to get a new one as kind of a "reward" for finishing my apprenticeship. Also i wanted to go with a rather overkill system for my current games since im planning on using it for a long time again. You will notice there is no GPU in this Build, I figured it would be kinda pointless to buy a current Gen card, when the 4000 series is basically right around the corner. So my plan is to keep using my r9 290 at the moment (since i´m only playing on a HD Monitor) wait for the 4000 Series to come out and then decide if I want to go for a 3080/90 (TI) or a 4000 based on performance, power consumption and (obviously) pricing and availibility: So please rate the build as if such a GPU was included. The Budget however is for the system "as-is" so with my old GPU. I hope this makes sense. I´m currently at + 2200€ for the parts (without the Case, more on that later). So the 3000€ budget includes some leeway should one component be way underperforming compared to the others or upgrading to a more performance component would be not to expensive. So feel free to point those out to me. Here´s my shopping cart:

- Intel Core i7 12700K

- MSI Tomahawk WiFi Z690 DDR4 (On board WiFi would be good, since a wired connection is not really feasable for my room and i wanted to keep the expansion slots free for further upgrades)

- 64 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 (4 Sticks) (I´m not sure if changing the MB/Ram to DDR5 would be worth the additional price, please advise )

- Be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 (never used an AiO before)

- Be quiet! Straight Power 11 1000W

- 1TB Samsung 980 M.2 (OS)

- 2x 2TB Samsung 970 Evo M.2 (Games)

- 2TB Crucial MX 500 2.5" SSD (Recording, Video Editing)

- 4TB WD Blue HDD (Games)

- 6TB WD Blue HDD (Archival Storage)

And now for the Case:

I´m not entirely sure what case to get. If recommending me a case is beyond the scope of this forum, i´ll probably go for the Fractal Design Define 7 (since i´ve got the Define R4 for my current setup an really liked the simple design.) I would appreciate some other recommendations, thou. Obviously is should fit the GPU-upgrade, utilize the USB Connectors on the MB and have decent (filtered) airflow. Noise dampening would be nice, but i´m almost always using Headphones, so thats more of a secondary concern. One little caviat that´ll probably limit my choices significantly: If the case were to support a ODD Drive, that would be perfact, since i´m still owning a Blu Ray Player, but i can live with an external one as well. As far as asthetics go, i preferr basic simple cases with no fancy feet or shapes and I couldn´t care less for RGB and a side window. I´m not gonna look at the case admiring the looks, but rather the performance within However pretty much anything goes as long as it´s easy to work with, since i can always disconnect the RGB and its gonna sit underneath my desk so i wont be looking at it 24/7 anyways.

i´m looking forward to heraring your thoughts on this system. If you have any questions, please go ahead.

Greetings,

MrXaver

brob · June 30, 2022

For gaming DDR5 only makes a difference in one or two gaming titles and in some content creation tasks. DDR4 is still the optimal choice unless you are doing a lot of video editing. But get a 2x32GB kit.

Shadow Rock 3 is not sufficient for cooling the i7-12700K. The Dark Rock Pro 4 would be a good choice.

Instead of the Define 7 if you are really willing to use an external optical drive, consider the Meshify 2.

I see Fractal Design has introduced a new case line, Pop. Pop Air and Pop Air XL can house an optical drive. An oddity is the optional USB-C connector on the front panel.

maartendc · June 30, 2022

I would go for something like this:

- beefy cooler

- 32GB of RAM is more than enough for your usage. Can always add another 32 GB later.

- DDR5 does not make sense right now.

- I would get a high airflow case like the Corsair 4000D or the Fractal Torrent.

- I would say get a fast SSD for video editing, since it should speed up if the software has to read files from the SSD. SOmething like the 980 Pro. Now you are listing an entry level SSD for video editing, and quite fast SSD's for gaming. I would do the other way around. You could save money and get cheaper SSD's than the 970 Evo for gaming.

- Do you really need 4 TB of SSD's worth of game space + another 4TB on a HDD? Seems overkill. SSD's continually get faster and cheaper, so you can always add more if you run out of space later on.

- Motherboard is probably a good one, although there are cheaper options out there.

Good luck!

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700KF 3.6 GHz 12-Core Processor (€411.90 @ Alza)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler (€77.99 @ Galaxus)
Motherboard: MSI MAG Z690 TOMAHAWK WIFI DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard (€238.90 @ Alza)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (€117.31 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€185.99 @ Mindfactory)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€185.99 @ Mindfactory)
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€249.90 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 4 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (€78.00 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (€107.90 @ ARLT)
Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case (€109.15 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G6 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
Total: €1763.03
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-06-30 20:57 CEST+0200

MrXaver · July 1, 2022

Thanks for your responses, guys! I will definitely change the cooler then.

On 6/30/2022 at 9:02 PM, maartendc said:

- 32GB of RAM is more than enough for your usage. Can always add another 32 GB later.

- Do you really need 4 TB of SSD's worth of game space + another 4TB on a HDD? Seems overkill. SSD's continually get faster and cheaper, so you can always add more if you run out of space later on.

Yeah should have mentioned that in my original post. Doubling the Ram and adding more storage was basically the only upgrades i´v done to my old PC. However since both the 64 Gigs of Ram and all Harddrives would not put me over budget, I figured I might as well buy it now. Might overthink my storage solution however. As even the 2 NVMes would be more than double my old game storage (4TB compared to 1,5) i might drop the 4TB HDD, go full solid state for my games, and get another one further down the road.

On 6/30/2022 at 9:02 PM, maartendc said:

- I would say get a fast SSD for video editing, since it should speed up if the software has to read files from the SSD. SOmething like the 980 Pro. Now you are listing an entry level SSD for video editing, and quite fast SSD's for gaming. I would do the other way around. You could save money and get cheaper SSD's than the 970 Evo for gaming.

Thats why I mentioned that I´ll only edit 1080p Source material, thats currently sitting on a HDD. And I never really noticed any performance hits. So even changing over to the Crucial SSD should increase my performance, however I might use the money I save from ditching one of the HDDs (and potentionally RAM) to go full 980 Pro on OS, 2x Games and editing storage.

And a big thanks to the LMG team for releasing a video the 4000D pretty much the same time I ask about recommendations for a Case . So between this Video and your suggestion, @maartendc you might have me hooked on this particular case. Might have to get some USB-Hubs to connect all my Peripherals then...