First (and last hopefully, lol) build - which manufactures can you trust...?

[NGamer]

Budget: $3500+

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Work with music (VST) mostly - but would also be used for some video editing/rendering and game play (not first person shooter)

Other details: Just looking to build my "forever build"

 

Been looking at building my own PC for awhile... the pandemic came and I pretty much put it on the backburner... until now...

 

I have been looking at a few manufactures and reading their forums, etc. - and while I realize that 90% of the people who post on the forums have problems that need to be solved - some of these manufacturers forums really don't instill much confidence in their products! :)

 

So, I was wanting to get some feedback from some more seasoned builders...

 

For a case - I am looking at Corsair

For case fans - I am looking at MSI, Asus, and Corsair

For a motherboard - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For a CPU - I am looking at Intel i9

For a AIO liquid cooler - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For DDR5 memory - I am looking at Corsair

For storage (NVMe, 2,5 SSD) - I am looking at Western Digital Black and Samsung

For graphics card - I am looking at NVIDIA

For power supply - I am looking at Asus

 

Other than Intel and NVIDIA (which are who they are) - anything I should be "worried" about...?

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[saintlouisbagels]

It's not good advice to buy things based on brands (i.e. fanboys are bad).

Every brand makes a bad product in a certain price range.

[Alireza]

8 minutes ago, NGamer said:

Budget: $3500+

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Work with music (VST) mostly - but would also be used for some video editing/rendering and game play (not first person shooter)

Other details: Just looking to build my "forever build"

 

Been looking at building my own PC for awhile... the pandemic came and I pretty much put it on the backburner... until now...

 

I have been looking at a few manufactures and reading their forums, etc. - and while I realize that 90% of the people who post on the forums have problems that need to be solved - some of these manufacturers forums really don't instill much confidence in their products!

 

So, I was wanting to get some feedback from some more seasoned builders...

 

For a case - I am looking at Corsair

For case fans - I am looking at MSI, Asus, and Corsair

For a motherboard - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For a CPU - I am looking at Intel i9

For a AIO liquid cooler - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For DDR5 memory - I am looking at Corsair

For storage (NVMe, 2,5 SSD) - I am looking at Western Digital Black and Samsung

For graphics card - I am looking at NVIDIA

For power supply - I am looking at Asus

 

Other than Intel and NVIDIA (which are who they are) - anything I should be "worried" about...?

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

agree with @saint_louis_bagels

but I've never had a bad experience with Asus in about 10 years at this point

there product was always at the highest quality i could've expect from a manufacturer

i couldn't afford full asus for my personal rig but there always my go to brand

[svmlegacy]

9 minutes ago, NGamer said:

and while I realize that 90% of the people who post on the forums have problems that need to be solved - some of these manufacturers forums really don't instill much confidence in their products!

You're looking at the tail of the distribution... very few people post when nothing goes wrong and everything works normally, which is the case most often.

 

All manufacturers make their share of lemons.

[venomtail]

6 minutes ago, saint_louis_bagels said:

It's not good advice to buy things based on brands (i.e. fanboys are bad).

Every brand makes a bad product in a certain price range.

Word. I'd personally look at how well a brand deals with shortcomings eg. customer support and then friendly user design, eg. manuals that make sense, logical layouts, not skiping on costs.

Brands that I seem as trustworthy following what I believe would be Noctua, be quiet! and Edvard König.

 

Also remember that looking for complains is sort of confirmation bias. People who have a products that works perfectly well won't go out of their way to register onto forums just to make a thread how well something works. Most of the time people do this only when something doesn't work.

[RONOTHAN##]

For all of this stuff, you can't just rely on the brand to now what will be good and what won't. I can think of bad products all of those manufacturers have made, and I can think of good products all of those manufacturers have made. Brand has a little meaning, but very little. 

 

7 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For a case - I am looking at Corsair

Corsair makes some good cases, the 4000D Airflow is a very solid option, but there are a lot of other really solid cases made by other manufacturers. be quiet!, Phanteks, Lian Li, Fractal Design, etc. all make some really nice cases in that roughly $100 price point. This is more personal preference than anything.

 

8 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For case fans - I am looking at MSI, Asus, and Corsair

This just kinda seems weird. If you want good fans, you need to look at the specific model, but none of those manufacturers have really that good fans available. Arctic has some really nice fans that happen to be pretty cheap (see the P12s, you can get a 5 pack of really solid fans for ~$30), and if you want top end you go for Noctua A12x25s or Phanteks T30s. 

 

10 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For a motherboard - I am looking at MSI and Asus

Again, you need to look at specific models. All of the manufacturers have pretty good boards this generation and they all have some pretty terrible ones. ASUS's lineup (on LGA 1700 like I'm assuming you're looking) is the most consistently mediocre, they don't have anything really bad per say outside of the H610 boards, but at basically every price point one of the other manufacturers has something better. MSI has the best DDR4 motherboards IMO, with Gigabyte being close behind though they have a weaker memory topology, though if you're looking at locked SKUs it really doesn't matter if you go MSI or Gigabyte. 

 

The manufacturer really just means who's BIOS you'll get to look at and what general features to expect. ASRock will put 2 phase memory power on basically everything and usually end up with some really interesting feature sets for the price point (see the B550 Taichi), but on Z690 they are pretty overpriced. Gigabyte tends to put dual BIOS on basically everything (though not a good dual BIOS implementation and they have seemed to stop that a bit) and tend to have the best rear IO for the price, though they do have the weakest memory topology on LGA 1700. MSI tends to be roughly in the middle, usable rear IO, solid features at a good price, and generally some of the more balanced motherboards without a ton of quirks, though they do have some boards that are very rough and don't make a ton of sense. ASUS is like the Apple of PC motherboards, they have some very solid options but they generally cost 10-20% more than similar competitors products and remove features on the low end (*cough* *cough* Prime boards) but they do tend to have the most polished software. EVGA is just it's own beast, you buy one of their boards because you want to do extreme overclocking and that's it, their boards in recent years have been very good at that specifically. 

 

Personally, I've had issues with every single one of those companies (except EVGA, but unless you're going for DDR5-8000 odds are their boards don't make sense), so I'd say I'd trust none of them. Gigabyte boards have been the only ones to ever die on me, MSI boards I've had some really strange issues with in the past (though their Z690 stuff, in my experience, has been really solid), ASUS has had the weirdest issues that just resolve themselves after a month for no apparent reason, and ASRock is just bipolar (they have some fantastic boards for the price like the B550 Taichi, and then they have some dumb stuff like the Z690 Taichi). I'd go for whatever works best for you. As I've had issues with all of those companies, I've also had good experiences with all of them. The X570 Aorus Master is easily the most capable AM4 board I've used, the MSI Z690-A Pro DDR4 is an awesome bang for the buck motherboard on Z690, the ASUS X58 P6T Deluxe V2 had the best BIOS layout I've used (yes I know it's an older board, but I don't buy ASUS boards anymore since they're just really expensive for what they offer), and the ASRock Z170 OC Formula is the absolute best motherboard I've ever used. 

 

25 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For a CPU - I am looking at Intel i9

An i7 is likely a better option, the performance differences between an i9 and i7 are relatively little, and the i7 is a fair bit easier to cool under full load. 

 

26 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For a AIO liquid cooler - I am looking at MSI and Asus

Weird choices. MSI has had issues very recently with their AIOs just dying, and ASUS AIOs fall into the same issue as every other ASUS product on this list - the ASUS tax. An AIO from Arctic or EK will be both cheaper and will perform better while being more reliable. 

 

33 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For DDR5 memory - I am looking at Corsair

All memory manufacturers use the same DRAM chips, and the PCB design between them isn't really that different. You need to shop more in memory bin and what kind of heat spreaders they have rather than manufacturer, Corsair is fine but that doesn't mean TeamGroup, G.Skill, ADATA, etc. aren't. If it means anything the best kit of DDR4 I own is actually an ADATA kit, and that's from a whole bunch of different memory from all sorts of manufacturers, but that's because it just was lucky and had a good set of memory chips on it. 

 

Given the same timings, it doesn't matter who made the memory stick, it will perform the same. 

 

36 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For storage (NVMe, 2,5 SSD) - I am looking at Western Digital Black and Samsung

They've both had issues and they both have really great drive. The SK Hynix P31 is a really good option right now since it's on sale for $170 for the 2TB model, it's top notch for a Gen 3 drive and has very little power draw, but this really just depends on when you're buying it for what drive makes the most sense. Crucial, Sabrent, Corsair, WD, Samsung, etc. all make good drives, it's just what drive is currently the best. 

 

39 minutes ago, NGamer said:

For power supply - I am looking at Asus

This especially, you can't just look at manufacturer for. ASUS has some PSUs that'll blow up, they have some that are really solid. For the most part they just rebrand Seasonic PSUs, so odds are you can get the same PSU for less from Seasonic instead, though again, make sure it's actually a quality PSU first. Consult the PSU tier list.

[maartendc]

30 minutes ago, NGamer said:

Budget: $3500+

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Work with music (VST) mostly - but would also be used for some video editing/rendering and game play (not first person shooter)

Other details: Just looking to build my "forever build"

 

Been looking at building my own PC for awhile... the pandemic came and I pretty much put it on the backburner... until now...

 

I have been looking at a few manufactures and reading their forums, etc. - and while I realize that 90% of the people who post on the forums have problems that need to be solved - some of these manufacturers forums really don't instill much confidence in their products!

 

So, I was wanting to get some feedback from some more seasoned builders...

 

For a case - I am looking at Corsair

For case fans - I am looking at MSI, Asus, and Corsair

For a motherboard - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For a CPU - I am looking at Intel i9

For a AIO liquid cooler - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For DDR5 memory - I am looking at Corsair

For storage (NVMe, 2,5 SSD) - I am looking at Western Digital Black and Samsung

For graphics card - I am looking at NVIDIA

For power supply - I am looking at Asus

 

Other than Intel and NVIDIA (which are who they are) - anything I should be "worried" about...?

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all, not sure what you mean by "forever PC". Nothing lasts forever in PC land, and all products will eventually fail. Also, components get outdated at least every 5 years, no matter how much money you spend up front.

 

That being said, I think there are smart investments you can make, certain components that will last you many builds:

 

- A good case can last you 15 years and several builds/upgrades easily. If not longer. Currently I would recommend the Fractal Design Torrent, universally praised, great manufacturer that stands behind their products.

- A good Power supply can last you a long time, and makes sure your system runs problem free.

Seasonic make excellent PSU's. The Prime series comes with a 12 (!) yr warranty.

- A good CPU cooler can last you several builds, and good manufacturers provide brackets for future upgrades to newer CPU sockers.

Noctua NH-D15 is the gold standard in high end air coolers, and Noctua is a very well respected brand that will surely provide brackets for future support.

 

All other components are kind of in the upgrade cycle, and quality really depends from product to product. All can fail at any given time.

- CPU: i would go for a non OC CPU, if you want the system to run as maintenance free as possible.

- RAM: I think Corsair makes good reliable RAM, but other manufacturers do as well.

- Motherboards: Many people like Asus, but I have had good experiences with MSI, Gigabyte, Asrock, it just depends on the model.

- GPU: EVGA is known for good products and very good customer service. They even extend the warranty to second hand owners. I have yet to see much negative reviews of an EVGA product.

- SSD: Samsung is highly regarded, but other manufacturers make good products too: Crucial, Corsair, etc.

 

I don't really know what is needed for music production, but judging from your budget and usage, I would go for something like this:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700F 2.1 GHz 12-Core Processor  ($312.97 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler  ($99.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI PRO B660-A DDR4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($219.99 @ Adorama)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 LHR 8 GB XC3 ULTRA GAMING iCX3 Video Card  ($589.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Torrent ATX Mid Tower Case  ($174.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic PRIME Ultra Platinum 850 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($221.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1884.85
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-05 03:51 EDT-0400

 

Good luck

 

 

[Sans]

8 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

8 hours ago, NGamer said:

For storage (NVMe, 2,5 SSD) - I am looking at Western Digital Black and Samsung

They've both had issues and they both have really great drive. The SK Hynix P31 is a really good option right now since it's on sale for $170 for the 2TB model, it's top notch for a Gen 3 drive and has very little power draw, but this really just depends on when you're buying it for what drive makes the most sense. Crucial, Sabrent, Corsair, WD, Samsung, etc. all make good drives, it's just what drive is currently the best. 

 

I don't have the list in front of me, but in this case, I feel it is important to point out that several manufacturers have changed parts during a SSD model lifetime that changes the specs of the drive. 

 

I don't know if this is still going on or to what extent. But it is something to keep in mind.

[RONOTHAN##]

33 minutes ago, Sans said:

 

I don't have the list in front of me, but in this case, I feel it is important to point out that several manufacturers have changed parts during a SSD model lifetime that changes the specs of the drive. 

 

I don't know if this is still going on or to what extent. But it is something to keep in mind.

It is still going on, yes, but every manufacturer has done it so no one is safe. You're back to comparing specific drive models to see if it's one that's been swapping drive components. 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

8 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

ASUS is like the Apple of PC motherboards, they have some very solid options but they generally cost 10-20% more than similar competitors products and remove features on the low end (*cough* *cough* Prime boards) but they do tend to have the most polished software

Btw weakest ram topology on b550 and x570 as buildzoid has pointed out, dont buy them for oc

 

8 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

the ASUS X58 P6T Deluxe V2 had the best BIOS layout I've used

Yea asus bios is good, for these older boards though theyre rather mid as theyre amazing for beginners since not a crap ton of confusing asf options but also just nonsense like no ioh pll, cant go <1.8v vpll which is just stupid, etc. Not a fan of minimal bios options since im an oc nut but makes setting things up alot easier for beginners, also having sensible max voltages even with extreme voltage jumpers/setting enabled so i can pretty much trust that i will not kill my stuff even if i set maximum voltage, basically why i just cranked my rev f to 2.46v cause guaranteed cpu imc not gonna die, more of a double edged sword cause hey its a guarantee that you wont kill your hardware but maybe i can go higher without killing my hardware. Though lower end boards tend to have crippled bios but thats a matter of buying a ch341a and crossflashing since they use socketed bios which is a big + of theyre boards

 

 

Branding is just straight up unimportant, though it does give you an estimate of what you can expect so nzxt for example you can expect rather mid but overpriced products with the only "advantage" being aesthetics (real men dont consider aesthetics to be an advantage ). And specifically for stuff like rams its just not important at all since all ics come from the same few manufacturers anyways so corsair rams may come with microns, hynixes, etc. Only time its important is for ram ics as some brands are linked to a certain ram ic manufacturer (crucial = micron, klevv = hynix) so buy crucial = get guaranteed microns, buy klevv = get guaranteed hynixes, etc. You could also just straight up buy the rams directly from the ic manufacturer but only in used bare pcb form locally or ebay. Bare pcbs are just straight up op when crucial 2666 bin are 23$ off ebay and you can ask for specific ics like c9bjz (highest 2666 bin rev e ic) and start casually running 4800+ c18/17 (~1.7v) and demolishing everything except ~100$ good bin b dies like viper 4400 c19 which can do the same speeds but c16 at ~1.75v depending on silicon lottery but still demolishes that in price:performance, lets see how a 3600 c18 corsair kit does agains- haha no have fun doing laughable <4533 on lowbin djr which is literally the best outcome, you could just get c die and be stuck at a pitifull 3600 c16, i think older corsairs may have come with micron rev e and even samsung b die (laughable quality b die though) so maybe itd have a chance against op bare pcb but then pricing. Btw ddr5 has laughable price while not bringing much extra performance so dont even bother and get a ddr4 kit instead

 

Asus is a terrible brand for psus since its just rebranded seasonics sold at ripoff prices because GaMeInG pSu

 

Aio and fans are both dominated performance or price/performance wise by arctic, there is literally no better atm

[RONOTHAN##]

10 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Btw weakest ram topology on b550 and x570 as buildzoid has pointed out, dont buy them for oc

 

Though on Z690 their topology is actually really solid, so while their boards are super expensive for their feature set, you do get the advantage of 2 DIMM slots not being completely useless on DDR5. I still would stick to MSI boards on Z690 since they are overall probably the best value boards, though as every post in here has tried to say, you can't just say "MSI boards are best" or "ASUS boards are best" and need to compare specific models, ASUS has some crap boards on Z690, MSI has some crap boards, etc. 

[NGamer]

Thanks everyone for the great, and thorough, replies!

 

Much appreciated!

 

 

[NGamer]

18 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I still would stick to MSI boards on Z690 since they are overall probably the best value boards...

Unfortunately not the one I am looking at, lol.

[brob]

10 hours ago, NGamer said:

So, I was wanting to get some feedback from some more seasoned builders...

 

For a case - I am looking at Corsair

For case fans - I am looking at MSI, Asus, and Corsair

For a motherboard - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For a CPU - I am looking at Intel i9

For a AIO liquid cooler - I am looking at MSI and Asus

For DDR5 memory - I am looking at Corsair

For storage (NVMe, 2,5 SSD) - I am looking at Western Digital Black and Samsung

For graphics card - I am looking at NVIDIA

For power supply - I am looking at Asus

 

Corsair builds some very good cases, but also builds some less than good models.

 

While Corsair has some good fan offerings, if you are looking at A-RGB models you would essentially be locked into Corsair offerings. Better fans are available from Arctic, Bequiet, Noctua, and others.

 

Both MSI and Asus have excellent motherboards. Asus tend to have premium prices because of market share. I like the Asus BIOS but MSI tends to offer more value. All the major manufacturers have excellent current offerings.

 

Not a fan of AIO. But if you feel it necessary, Arctic Liquid Freezer II 280 or 360 would be best choice.

 

If you can live with 64GB of memory DDR5 offers real performance improvements over DDR4. Going beyond 64GB is not realistic at the moment for DDR5.

 

Don't discount the 5950X. For composition and the like it may be a better choice. It can handle 128GB of memory and its 16 cores offer 32 threads.

 

When choosing memory, G.Skill and Crucial along with Corsair have very good offerings. Choose a kit that fits the budget and offers the best combination of speed and low latency, brand is not so important.

 

All NVMe storage is possible within the budget. The system drive needs good performance and endurance. Storage drives not so much. A reasonably inexpensive 2TB or 4TB stick will be fine. Don't get put off by comments about low endurance. Do the actual math. A drive with 800 TBW (Terra bytes written) means about 435GB has to be written every day for 5 years to reach the limit.

 

Corsair RMx is an excellent PSU choice. Asus offerings are based on Seasonic platforms. A Seasonic Focus GX or PX is typically less expensive.

 

Consider a locked CPU. Can run cooler most of the time and the savings can be used to improve other areas of the build.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i9-12900F 2.4 GHz 16-Core Processor  ($489.99 @ B&H) 
CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 Rev.B 39.44 CFM CPU Cooler  ($65.98 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: MSI MAG B660 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory  ($229.99 @ Corsair) 
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($259.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Sabrent Rocket Q4 4 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($589.99 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: Asus GeForce RTX 3060 Ti LHR 8 GB TUF GAMING OC V2 Video Card  ($489.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case  ($94.99 @ Corsair) 
Power Supply: Corsair RM (2021) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($97.49 @ Corsair) 
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Home OEM 64-bit  ($119.98 @ Amazon) 
Total: $2438.39
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-07-05 13:43 EDT-0400