Five years in the making, First Time Build

[Darkwaxer]

Budget (including currency): £2000-£3000 (GBP)

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: RDR, Cyberpunk, BF1942 (yes.. 1942!) amateur video editing, programming and playing around with 3D rendering, VR and helping partner run her website and business (maybe home server type stuff).

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):

 

Already have 64GB (4x16) Corsair Dominator CL16 3466, Samsung 980 NVME 1TB and a handful of small storage SSD and a couple of HDDs. Also have a couple of Corsair Q140 fans and a Commander Pro. Have been buying bits and pieces over the years when I’ve seen things on offer.

——-

 

Hey everyone!
Just after a few opinions. I have the opportunity to build a PC with 40% funding so want to make the most of building something special. I’ve never had a top of the range PC but conscious not to throw good money at minor performance improvements. I’ve been slowly buying parts over the last five years but keep stopping when I’m trying to choose the meat of the machine and when work and life get in the way.. but this year is the year.

I relatively sensible on this and after honest ‘brought back down to earth’ comments. For example, the case and AIO on the parts list are things I’d never normally buy but thought they were cool but open to opinions on it all (tell me I should stick to air cooling). I know 13900k is best performer atm but since it’s a bit power hungry I think it falls into the category of ‘lot of money for minor improvement’ and does the 13700k. I’d normally lead towards AMD for energy consumption reasons but heard their upgrade path isn’t the great but I may never upgrade the parts in this machines anyway.  Plus I already have ram - DDR4 Ram and I am open to options when it comes to maybe selling it for DDR5 but I’m not sure that is worth it atm.

 

I’m particularly troubled with choosing the Motherboard.. I’m not sure what I should do.. z790 or z690 and is it better to get a poorly specced 790 (because they haven’t caught up with the market yet) or go for a older top specced 690. Looking at a tier list I should go with ‘b’ boards but I want the OC option. Anyway, thanks for any feedback for me.

 

Ok so parts list:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Darkwaxer/saved/#view=4J6Xf7
 

[SorryBella]

7 minutes ago, Darkwaxer said:

z790 or z690 and is it better to get a poorly specced 790 (because they haven’t caught up with the market yet) or go for a older top specced 690

Bad board stay bad, good board stay good. If you are looking at 2 chipset of same LGA with same CPU compatibility list, and you have that as option, go for the older chipset and flash the BIOS either through CPUless flashback or just taking it to any computer store that could do it.

 

Honestly you didnt fuck up a lot, most of your picks are wise except for your cooling solution. Enthoo Evolv airflow aged badly, and the X73 is not that good of a value. If youre chasing aesthetic though, i wouldnt intervene.

[Mark Kaine]

37 minutes ago, Darkwaxer said:

I’d normally lead towards AMD for energy consumption reasons but heard their upgrade path isn’t the great

well for the past years, that wasn't true at all, you could still run a 5800x3D on a cheapo old b350 board for example...

 

38 minutes ago, Darkwaxer said:

13700k

good cpu, but

38 minutes ago, Darkwaxer said:

I’d normally lead towards AMD for energy consumption reasons

its likely running hotter and more power-hungry than AMD.

 

39 minutes ago, Darkwaxer said:

but this year is the year.

theres still a lot of time then.

 

40 minutes ago, Darkwaxer said:

tell me I should stick to air cooling

stick to air cooling.  get a good,  beefy noctua,  air cooling overall is superior,  especially because its more long lasting and safer, and easier to install too.

 

 

My suggestion is wait a month or so how the new am5 3D chips do in reviews etc, and then decide to go intel or amd... imo it would be unwise to decide this now, because new 3D chips very well might be a good, possibly less power-hungry option, with very likely better upgrade path too, should that become necessary. 

 

 

[Darkwaxer]

27 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

Bad board stay bad, good board stay good. If you are looking at 2 chipset of same LGA with same CPU compatibility list, and you have that as option, go for the older chipset and flash the BIOS either through CPUless flashback or just taking it to any computer store that could do it.

 

Honestly you didnt fuck up a lot, most of your picks are wise except for your cooling solution. Enthoo Evolv airflow aged badly, and the X73 is not that good of a value. If youre chasing aesthetic though, i wouldnt intervene.

Thank you for that. Initially going for z790 was more about naivety and trying to stay close to the current gen as possible but since the socket will be changing next time around there’s no point in doing that. I just need to figure out what is a good z690 is. The tier list I saw had the Tomahawk as the best ranked z690 that wasn’t ITX, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14-CZ8-a4-UBMN5-0x_QYOrvLk4EfI4Kn2jmIG70CAss/htmlview

 

Now you mention it I remember people saying the Evolv X was a bit big to have solid airflow but the reviews at the time were overwhelmingly positive when it came out.

[SorryBella]

14 minutes ago, Darkwaxer said:

Now you mention it I remember people saying the Evolv X was a bit big to have solid airflow but the reviews at the time were overwhelmingly positive when it came out

Yeah because TDP of computer components, while still high compared to older times, was still under control. Now with the massive leaps of heat that started from the 9000 series Intel, good case design for airflow are getting more integral in thermal control.

 

If you need good modern recommendation, check out Corsair 4000D Airflow, Fractal Torrent, Bequiet Pure Base 500DX, And modern Lian Li Lancool series.