Assembling a new one

[Commaster]

0. Prelude:

In 2008 I assembled my first PC via a proxy: a shop representative helped me with the parts list and assembled the whole tower. It was i7-920 with Radeon HD4890. Only several years later while looking inside I discovered that they cheaped out on parts by removing many back panel connections from the motherboard, leaving just bare solder pads.

 

The lifetime plan was to acquire/build a new rig every 5 years while each rig has to perform sufficiently well for at least those 5 years.

 

Many delays later in december 2015 I got around to assembling the new PC completely manually for a €2000 budget. It has i7-5930K, 32GB RAM, Radeon HD7970 with a 1000W PSU, all hooked up to two 27" 1080p 16:10 monitors. Short time later I started traveling for work and lost physical access to it, only remote access is now possible.

 

The work laptop gave up the ghost a couple years later and it was decided to purchase a replacement laptop for the time being: a €2200 laptop with i7-7700HQ, 16GB RAM and a GTX 1070. It offered great performance at the beginning but nowadays thermal throttling and power limits are pretty common.

 

Nevertheless, the experience with a NVIDIA GPU really pointed out the downsides of AMD GPUs: lack of dedicated encoding circuitry which leads to reduced rendering performance (That is if the GPU is even supported by OBS, otherwise the CPU encoder eats up quite a few resources)

 

1. Budget & Location:

I'm in Europe and aiming at €2000 for the whole tower, but no strict limits, the lower - the better. The only requirement is (as mentioned in 0. Prelude) to provide satisfactory performance for at least 5 years. Given that requirement I should probably avoid used parts or manual overclocking. There is no need for "fps-boosting RGB" all over the place either.

 

Parts which I've guesstimated so far:

CPU: Team Red instead of Team Blue to get the free box cooler, avoid scary thermals of intel chips we've seen in reviews and maybe even reduce the overall cost. Either Ryzen 5 5600G (€130-€170) or Ryzen 7 5700G (€200-€260). The idea is to use the build-in iGPU for desktop compositing and leave the dedicated GPU exclusively for heavy lifting (see 2. Aim). The included box cooler should save me the hassle of purchasing a 3rd-party air cooler.

Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M AORUS Pro-P (€140-€150). Looks like this will be a rather small PC. This motherboard has suspiciously way fewer sellers compared to AORUS Elite and DS3H, which are even cheaper.

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX dark 2x16GB, 16-19-19-36 (€170-€200). If the extra low timings don't really matter I could upgrade to 2x32GB 18-22-22-42 (€230-€270).

Drive: Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 SSD 500GB, M.2 (€70-€90). This is a TLC drive so it should wear out slower than modern QLC models, right? I also have a NAS for bulk storage so this is only for my use cases (see 2. Aim).

PSU: Seasonic Focus SGX-750W SFX 2021 (€150-€180). Should be sufficient to power the whole thing?

Case: Fractal Design Define 7 Black TG Dark Tint (€180-€210). I think the PSU and the Case should fit together and leave enough space for the motherboard.

 

Total so far: €840-€1160.

 

GPU: As we know the GPU prices don't make sense nowadays, but seeing as my current laptop has a xx70 GPU maybe I want a RTX 3070? Quite a few choices should be compatible with the Case while still using the normal 8-pin connectors and having at least 2 connections both in HDMI and DP to relax my monitor choices (see 3. Monitors):

 - ASUS Dual GeForce RTX 3070 V2, DUAL-RTX3070-8G-V2 (€730-€840)
 - Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming OC 8G (Rev. 2.0) (€600-€700)
 - Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Vision OC 8G (Rev. 2.0) (€630-€750)

 

2. Aim

For work I read and write a lot of text in notepad/vscode and compile software often, benefiting from the multi-core CPU.

For free time I play/stream the only game in existence (Warframe) at 720p 60fps, benefiting from NVENC circuitry on the GPU and high single-core performance of the CPU)

Currently I see no interest in higher refresh rates or resolutions.

 

3. Monitors (beyond budget)

At least two 1080p 16:10 60Hz monitors. Not OLED due to a lot of static elements on the screens. Ultrawide would really hinder the text writing part, maybe vertical ones if 720p still fits horizontally. Not really interested in exact picks for now.

 

4. Peripherals (beyond budget)

Mouse: Recently purchased a G305.

Keyboard: Tried to find the most basic (and quite, no mechanical clicking) keyboard, looks like it will be Cherry Stream 2019 (Currently using Microsoft Wedge Keyboard from many years ago).

OS: I will continue using Kubuntu as on the previous desktop.

 

5. Upgrading reasons

It's been over 5 years since my last desktop build and then we got COVID lockdowns and the current :cough: situation in Europe.

The thermal throttling (I can see the CPU sitting at 93+C even after a fresh dusting) seems to be impacting the game experience the most.

Estimating to acquire the new parts in the first half of 2023, soon after Europe wins.

[Dedayog]

"GPU: As we know the GPU prices don't make sense nowadays, but seeing as my current laptop has a xx70 GPU maybe I want a RTX 3070?"

 

No, this does not work.  The 7970 and any of the new xx70 cards are NOT the same thing in any way.  You want any GPU that fits your use case and budget, that is all.

[trevb0t]

What are prices like on the 6700XT units in your market? They are usually a big savings from the 3070.

Generally speaking GPU prices have chilled out.

[Commaster]

6 hours ago, Dedayog said:

"GPU: As we know the GPU prices don't make sense nowadays, but seeing as my current laptop has a xx70 GPU maybe I want a RTX 3070?"

 

No, this does not work.  The 7970 and any of the new xx70 cards are NOT the same thing in any way.  You want any GPU that fits your use case and budget, that is all.

my current laptop has GTX 1070, this is the xx70 I was referring to.

5 hours ago, trevb0t said:

What are prices like on the 6700XT units in your market? They are usually a big savings from the 3070.

Generally speaking GPU prices have chilled out.

I'd prefer to get a NVIDIA GPU to (ab)use NVENC for streaming. AMD AMF doesn't have separate circuitry and impacts the rendering performance. 6700XT go for €530-€620.

[trevb0t]

18 hours ago, Commaster said:

I'd prefer to get a NVIDIA GPU to (ab)use NVENC for streaming. AMD AMF doesn't have separate circuitry and impacts the rendering performance. 6700XT go for €530-€620.

Frankly with the power of a 5600 or 5700 series CPU, there isn't any reason to throttle your stream performance. CPU bound streaming via OBS is still better quality than NVENC and has much more in place for recording and editing power. I would just get the most powerful CPU and GPU you can manage within the budget, and skip the APU.

[NF-A12x25]

On 10/31/2022 at 8:36 AM, Commaster said:

CPU: Team Red instead of Team Blue to get the free box cooler, avoid scary thermals of intel chips we've seen in reviews and maybe even reduce the overall cost. Either Ryzen 5 5600G (€130-€170) or Ryzen 7 5700G (€200-€260). The idea is to use the build-in iGPU for desktop compositing and leave the dedicated GPU exclusively for heavy lifting (see 2. Aim). The included box cooler should save me the hassle of purchasing a 3rd-party air cooler.

Get a locked Intel 12th gen CPU, 12400f being probably the best buy, and you will get a good box cooler and a decent iGPU. The Ryzen G series has some significant disadvantages, the 5600g is basically a 5500 with an iGPU tacked on. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nYWpMb 

 

here’s a significantly better build. You could substitute a different 3070, whatever model is cheapest in your region- this is currently the cheapest one in the U.S. market.

[Commaster]

On 11/1/2022 at 2:01 PM, trevb0t said:

Frankly with the power of a 5600 or 5700 series CPU, there isn't any reason to throttle your stream performance. CPU bound streaming via OBS is still better quality than NVENC and has much more in place for recording and editing power. I would just get the most powerful CPU and GPU you can manage within the budget, and skip the APU.

This is a very valid point. I also discovered that 5600/5700 APUs downgrade the PCIe lanes to 3.0. I hope it won't affect the performance of the Gen4 M.2 SSD and the RTX 3070 GPU.

On the other hand, 5700X (which has proper PCIe 4.0 lanes) costs about €40 more than 5700G and doesn't ship with a "free" cooler. Surprisingly the B550 mATX motherboards without iGPU connectors also cost more than the originally mentioned one. If the performance impact mentioned above is significant I will consider this option.

Currently looking into switching to a ASRock B550M Pro4 motherboard (€100-€140) as well as settling for 5700G for slightly more cores.

On 11/1/2022 at 7:02 PM, NF-A12x25 said:

Get a locked Intel 12th gen CPU, 12400f being probably the best buy, and you will get a good box cooler and a decent iGPU. The Ryzen G series has some significant disadvantages, the 5600g is basically a 5500 with an iGPU tacked on. 

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nYWpMb 

 

here’s a significantly better build. You could substitute a different 3070, whatever model is cheapest in your region- this is currently the cheapest one in the U.S. market.

The problem with Intel is significantly lower base clocks (2.5GHz vs 3.8GHz). Even the next model (12600) has lower base clocks on the E-cores. However, base clocks are pretty important for lengthy software compiles.

[NF-A12x25]

55 minutes ago, Commaster said:

I hope it won't affect the performance of the Gen4 M.2 SSD and the RTX 3070 GPU.

It will significantly affect the performance of the gen4 m.2 as it will be running at gen3. You probably won’t notice it though. Your 3070 will run fine on 3.0.

 

55 minutes ago, Commaster said:

However, base clocks are pretty important for lengthy software compiles.

Doesn’t matter with these chips, IPC matters too. The Intel chip will compile better than a 5600g for sure, maybe not as fast as a 5700g because of the two extra cores the 5700g has. And most of the time the chip will be much closer to max boost than to base clock even during lengthy compiles.

 

55 minutes ago, Commaster said:

Even the next model (12600) has lower base clocks on the E-cores

12400, 12500, and 12600 do not have e-cores

[trevb0t]

On 11/30/2022 at 10:12 PM, Commaster said:

The problem with Intel is significantly lower base clocks (2.5GHz vs 3.8GHz). Even the next model (12600) has lower base clocks on the E-cores. However, base clocks are pretty important for lengthy software compiles.

as @NF-A12x25 pointed out, the IPC for 12th gen is pretty excellent. They are outperforming Ryzen in many tasks, so some research might not hurt if it could save you a bit.