First PC Build

Darth Scoob · January 31, 2023

Budget (including currency): ~$3000 USD

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Fusion 360 (I’m going to switch to Solidworks as soon as I bother to pay for a student license), Blender, and a bit of light gaming (Minecraft etc.)

Other details: I have already bought the RAM and SSD but I don’t think that will be a problem because what I chose there does not have any bearing on my main question. For my application I am seeing that the 13900k and 7950x perform within margin of error of each other so I don’t know which to choose. The 13900k supports up to 4000 mt/s on 4 sticks of RAM while the 7950x supports up to 3600 mt/s. I plan to overclock the memory controller as far as I can go stably, however the intel will go farther. The 7950x supports AVX-512 which after my admittedly not very thorough internet search I have no idea if is useful for Solidworks. The price difference between these platforms is meaningless to me so I’d like suggestions on how to choose which one to go with. For now I don’t plan on buying a GPU because I can’t afford an NVIDIA GPU yet and I’m not sure I want such a ridiculously power hungry card in my system, but AMD and intel are both rapidly approaching major platform upgrades so I don’t want to buy a card that will be immediately obsolete. I’m considering an A770 16gb if I find I need a GPU because it has a lot of vRAM for the price and seems to be relatively good performance per dollar if you can get past driver bugs (which seems to be rapidly disappearing so I am willing to work with it). For a cooler I’m hoping to get a copper ProSiphon but it isn’t looking particularly likely so suggestions are welcome there. I don’t really like water cooling but I am willing to work with it if it will cool the CPU. The final part of the system that will likely be revised is the power supply. I’m not particular but I like SeaSonic and I like their Prime line of power supplies I haven’t figured out what msrp is for that thing yet but if I can find one sold by SeaSonic rather than a third party I will probably go for it. The motherboard is just a good motherboard from Asus with good I/O and good power delivery at a good enough price. The case was chosen because it looks good and has great airflow, however I may change to a Fractal Design Pop Air if I want a cheaper option. I will need an OS and monitor but I have a keyboard and mouse. I’m planning to buy mid-February to March. The monitor is 4k but I’ve never had anything better than intel integrated graphics so frame rates aren’t important to me (I’m lucky if I get 20fps with only occasional drops to 0-5fps in Minecraft so I’m used to stuttering and poor performance.)

A bit of a long read but I wanted to provide plenty of information.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/s2TBnt - intel

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/83dXrD - AMD

mdk777 · January 31, 2023

Yeah,

IDK why part picker has the PSU priced so high.

it should be more like $200.

https://www.newegg.com/seasonic-prime-ultra-titanium-ssr-850tr-850w/p/N82E16817151196?Item=N82E16817151196&quicklink=true

Here's one (850 titanium) for $160 = half the price

https://www.newegg.com/super-flower-leadex-titanium-sf-850f14ht-850w/p/1HU-024C-00011?Item=9SIAMNPAZB3485

Darth Scoob · January 31, 2023

19 minutes ago, mdk777 said:

Yeah,

IDK why part picker has the PSU priced so high.

it should be more like $200.

https://www.newegg.com/seasonic-prime-ultra-titanium-ssr-850tr-850w/p/N82E16817151196?Item=N82E16817151196&quicklink=true

Here's one (850 titanium) for $160 = half the price

https://www.newegg.com/super-flower-leadex-titanium-sf-850f14ht-850w/p/1HU-024C-00011?Item=9SIAMNPAZB3485

Thanks. I didn’t even consider thinking to check a titanium unit since platinum is already realistically more than necessary but it looks better than gold (yes, that is a *very* first-world problem) and I would have figured titanium would be more expensive.