Planning out a MicroATX or ITX build.

[Cinnaderps]

Budget (including currency): 2500$ USD

Country: United States of 'Murica.

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Pretty much all genres of games, Light audio editing for voice recordings, occasional streaming, light video editing. Primarily a gaming PC but I don't want to wait ages for a video render anymore.

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):

 

It's time to retire "Bessie"

 

Intel 5930k (Thanks Intel Retail Edge)

EVGA 2070 super

16gb quad channel ddr4 2600 mhz Corsair LPX vengeance

ASUS x299 Pro motherboard

Corsair RM850i 850w PSU

1TB samsung SSD think it's a 960 pro.

3 TB 7200 RPM WD Black HDD

Coolermaster HAF X case

Logitech g815

Logitech g502

HP Omen 27" IPS monitor 165hz at 1440p

 

Going to be making it a VR/media center PC for my living room and the peripherals are staying with the new machine. I'm running into a lot of roadblocks when it comes to a case for my new build. I try to plan a build to last for 5 years minimum so I try to get higher end components but I've been out of the enthusiast market for so long that even reviewing LTT vids, GN, Jayz, etc. I'm lost for choice and also running into GPU sizing issues. Planning to buy once the new 7900 XT/XTX cards are out and tested so I can make an informed decision on the best card around 1k. I plan to game at 1440p 150-165hz max. I'm not a profession FPS player so that is more than enough for me and is a good balance without having to drop an extra 3-400$ on just the monitor to get high refresh 4k monitor. While I see the difference, I don't think it's worth it at present when I can put that into a better GPU/CPU and still be quite happy.

 

Planned Build

CPU: 13600/700k or a 7700x/7900x Still weighing price to performance vs the new AM5 socket support

RAM: 32 GB of 5200 DDR5 maybe 5600

Boot drive: 2tb boot drive M.2 Samsung 980 pro maybe a Sabrent rocket.

Game Library: Would be nice to be able to fit a massive HDD 10-16 TB

GPU: Toss up currently, waiting for the new AMD cards to drop to see if I got team Red for once. Nvidia isn't instilling a lot of confidence atm and the 4080 is not worth the 1200$ imo.

PSU: Pretty self explanatory, I always get 80 gold at the minimum from trusted brands like Corsair/EVGA/Seasonic just need one that fits in case

 

I've been looking at a few cases which is where my biggest hang-up shows up. The Phanteks Evolve Shift XT caught my eye in a couple review videos, along with Fractal's meshify cases in the Nano/Compact variants. I'm trying to go smaller form factor because lugging around my current rig that is around 50ish lbs is not fun anymore. I try to stay air cooled on workstations as a fan failure is a 4 screw fix with a 10-30$ price tag but with SFF it might not be able to go this route and not have a jet next to me. I need advice on how to approach this type of build because I'm used to just slapping components together in a big case and routing cables into all the places you can hide your poor cable management. RGB is a nicety but not a major point for me. I'd consider a custom loop but it would definitely be soft tubing if needed to keep thermals and noise down.

 

[brob]

Have you looked at the Asus Prime AP201 or any of the Lian Li cases?

 

[Shimejii]

Do you live anywhere near a microcenter?

 

Otherwise VR tends to favor Nvidia from what ive seen. You can buy a 3080 for around 500$ on Ebay or hardware swap. I dont think the 7900XTX  is gonna be double the performance but  hey it should be a decent improvement. 

 

Other then that your specs should be okay, id reccomend 6000 DDr5 as its not much more expensive then 5200/5600 at this point, and microcenter is throwing in a free 32 gig kit with ryzen 7000.

 

Honestly the 7700x/7600x is not great in terms of pricing. They will be discounted by the end of the year/early next year, they didnt sell well at all and they already adjusted it in asia. 

 

Id dont think you should have 10-16 TB of games on a HDD if im honest lol. I know people like being hoarders and such, but if its in your steam library its not going anywhere and unless youve got garbage internet, you should be able to download it within 30 minutes or so.

[Cinnaderps]

1 hour ago, brob said:

Have you looked at the Asus Prime AP201 or any of the Lian Li cases?

 

I have looked at the Lian Li 205M, a couple of phanteks like the evolv and a couple NZXT like the H510 flow. They looks pretty good but with how much I'm trying to cram into the case with a higher end GPU/CPU I want to see if there any pitfalls with sizing, cabling, and fit I can run into before commit to a case. The Asus Prime AP201 I have not looked at but does look like a good contender for options and size. Thanks!

[Cinnaderps]

1 hour ago, Shimejii said:

Do you live anywhere near a microcenter?

 

Otherwise VR tends to favor Nvidia from what ive seen. You can buy a 3080 for around 500$ on Ebay or hardware swap. I dont think the 7900XTX  is gonna be double the performance but  hey it should be a decent improvement. 

 

Other then that your specs should be okay, id reccomend 6000 DDr5 as its not much more expensive then 5200/5600 at this point, and microcenter is throwing in a free 32 gig kit with ryzen 7000.

 

Honestly the 7700x/7600x is not great in terms of pricing. They will be discounted by the end of the year/early next year, they didnt sell well at all and they already adjusted it in asia. 

 

Id dont think you should have 10-16 TB of games on a HDD if im honest lol. I know people like being hoarders and such, but if its in your steam library its not going anywhere and unless youve got garbage internet, you should be able to download it within 30 minutes or so.

Nearest Microcenter is 3 hours away in Dallas.  I just have best buys here in Oklahoma City. I'm trying to stay away from the used market, too many bad experiences locally. A good enough deal with Microceter may merit a drive and I could pick up a 3d printer while I'm there.  

As for the Ryzen processors and this build all together, I am going to be waiting for price stabilization before buying anything. As soon as I saw the 13600k/700k performance and price. I knew amd would be bringing them down to compete. Ole Bessie is still chugging along, just that I'm finally seeing performance hits my 2070S and 5930k can't overcome with overclocking.

I do have gigabit internet but but... 16 TB of space! I could get a cheaper 2nd nvme game drive as most of the motherboards I'm looking at have two m.2 slots at least and a HDD would put tighter constraints on everything else for cooling. I would have to check PCIe lanes on the processors to accommodate the extra drive. I think the 7000 ryzen series has 4 more lanes than the 13th gen intel if they become close in price as they should.

[brob]

4 minutes ago, Cinnaderps said:

I would have to check PCIe lanes on the processors to accommodate the extra drive. I think the 7900x has 4 more lanes than the 13700k if they become close in price as they should

 

In addition to NVMe drives serviced by CPU PCIe lanes both Intel and AMD chipsets can service multiple NVMe drives. Unless one has a particularly latency sensitive use case I wouldn't think there was much difference between the two platforms when it comes to NVMe storage.

 

[Cinnaderps]

5 minutes ago, brob said:

 

In addition to NVMe drives serviced by CPU PCIe lanes both Intel and AMD chipsets can service multiple NVMe drives. Unless one has a particularly latency sensitive use case I wouldn't think there was much difference between the two platforms when it comes to NVMe storage.

 

The mo' you know. Thanks again!

[Cinnaderps]

Ended up buying a series of parts during the weekend because of the 100$+ reduction on Zen 4. ITX went out the window because all but one Mobo was sold out  still going smaller build with a 4000D vs my coolermaster HAF X. I did end up saving a bit so I can fit an 7900 XTX comfortably into the build now as long as it fits in the case. I have never bought an AMD GPU before because of driver concerns. Also EVGA getting out of the GPU game has me lost on a trusted brand, never bought anything but EVGA due to their stellar support for their products. What would you all recommend for an AMD card? Are reference based models good enough? Sapphire, Asus, Colorful are all brands I see but no idea on reliability, build quality, and support experience.

 

Ryzen 7 7700x

MSI MAG B650M MORTAR WIFI AM5

Corsair Vengeance 32gb DDR5 6000mhz

Liquid Arctic Freezer II 360 AIO

Samsung 980 Pro 1TB Boot

Seagate Firecuda 4TB HDD 256mb cache Library drive

Corsair HX1000 Platinum PSU

Corsair 4000D