Bang for $1,400-1,500?

[MathiasEsq]

Much to my surprise, it looks like I'm building a PC after over 15 years of gaming laptops! The 2017 Clevo hoss I'm typing this on is ready to be put out to pasture, and I've got a budget of around $1,400 to $1,500 to do it with. I would love to include a solid IPS 1440p monitor for that, but that's very unlikely to happen. I'll probably be hooking up to my 65" 4K60 TV to start with. I'm strongly considering all-Team Red for this build, but I'm only about 90-95% sure on that. RGB is not important, but I might use it if I have it (same price or cheaper).

 

My current Steam library is kind of laughable (the most intensive game I currently own is Borderlands 3), but I'd like to be able to run just about anything I throw at it at 1440p-4K high-ultra, VR (I have an OG Vive set and may eventually upgrade) on high settings included. RT is not important. Realistically what I'm speccing is way too baller for me, but $1,300 worth is already guaranteed paid for.

 

CPU: Ryzen 9 7900X

MB: ASUS ROG Strix B650E-F

RAM: GSkill Flare X5 32gb DDR5-6000 (F5-6000J3636F16GX2-FX5)

 

CPU/RAM/MB total: $549.99 + tax, Micro Center bundle

 

GPU: ASRock Phantom Gaming Radeon RX 6950 XT PG 16GO or XFX Speedster MERC 319 AMD RX 6950 XT, either unit $579.99 + tax after coupon (exp 6/14)

Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin PA120 SE ARGB White, $37.90 + tax

PSU: CORSAIR RM850e Fully Modular 80 PLUS Gold, $114.99 + tax after coupon

SSD: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB, $119.99 + tax when bundled (Micro Center)

Case: NZXT H5 Flow, $84.99 + tax (price also available on Amazon) or Montech Sky Two, $89.99 + tax or Fractal Pop Air non-RGB, $79.99 + tax

 

Total before accessories: $1,492 + tax

 

My thoughts on various parts:

• GPU: I'm pretty sold on a 6950xt, especially at $580, but feel free to try to convince me otherwise. Both the XFX and ASRock are mildly factory OC'd, triple-fan designs with three-year warranties, so I'm not seeing much to differentiate them? I know XFX makes quality products, and I've had a good experience with ASRock (albeit mostly mobos) over time. The ASRock card is ugly as hell, but I'll never see its face. There's an argument to be made for a 6800xt at $480, which is currently available, the same XFX series at that. I like the headroom at 4K that the 6950xt offers me, but maybe the ~20% increase for ~16% perf doesn't make sense and would be better spent toward a quality 1440p display.
• CPU/MB/RAM: The value of this combo seems very hard to beat. Micro Center has a similar 13700K combo for the same price, but the reviews hate the board. The B650E-F and Flare X5 don't seem to be winners for everyone, but especially with the latest BIOS update(s) they seem to be a more okay combo than not. MC's 7700X combo is only a $100 savings - an 18% savings for potentially 30% less performance.
• Case: I'm not sure whether I want to go white or black yet. All three seem like they'd be good choices, but all have some caveats.
  • H5 Flow: no front fans included, which means at least $20 extra for a pair of 120-140mm. $104.99+ after fans
  • Montech: my SO has a Sky One Lite and digs it for the most part; TechPowerUp likes it; fans included, but a white option would be $10 extra. Side intake is kind of odd/unideal vs. mesh front but seems to perform well despite that per TPU. $89.99-99.99.
  • Pop Air: fans included, white's the same price (at least from B&H), but requires an extra part to get front USB-C. ~$94 with USB-C.
• SSD: I've been all-Samsung SSDs for a long time now but I'm open to other brands. Prefer not-DRAM-less, TLC (not a requirement), SED support worth a damn, good warranty, good performance. I'm open to other brands (hard no to Team, PNY, MSI, ADATA), and also considering (with fairly low research) the Crucial P3/P5 Plus and Solidigm P44 Pro.
• Cooler and PSU: I'm not the slightest bit attached to these. All bang-for-buck, all the way, period. PSU must be fully modular, prefer 80+ Gold but definitely don't require it. Is 850w going to be enough, with only mild OC of CPU (if any) and GPU?

Thoughts and recommendations welcome, thanks! I don't need any of this tomorrow - though if the 6950xt is the way, that $580 price goes away fast - so I'm willing to wait on a slick deal for some parts.

[rustable]

1 hour ago, MathiasEsq said:

Much to my surprise, it looks like I'm building a PC after over 15 years of gaming laptops! The 2017 Clevo hoss I'm typing this on is ready to be put out to pasture, and I've got a budget of around $1,400 to $1,500 to do it with. I would love to include a solid IPS 1440p monitor for that, but that's very unlikely to happen. I'll probably be hooking up to my 65" 4K60 TV to start with. I'm strongly considering all-Team Red for this build, but I'm only about 90-95% sure on that. RGB is not important, but I might use it if I have it (same price or cheaper).

 

My current Steam library is kind of laughable (the most intensive game I currently own is Borderlands 3), but I'd like to be able to run just about anything I throw at it at 1440p-4K high-ultra, VR (I have an OG Vive set and may eventually upgrade) on high settings included. RT is not important. Realistically what I'm speccing is way too baller for me, but $1,300 worth is already guaranteed paid for.

 

CPU: Ryzen 9 7900X

MB: ASUS ROG Strix B650E-F

RAM: GSkill Flare X5 32gb DDR5-6000 (F5-6000J3636F16GX2-FX5)

 

CPU/RAM/MB total: $549.99 + tax, Micro Center bundle

 

GPU: ASRock Phantom Gaming Radeon RX 6950 XT PG 16GO or XFX Speedster MERC 319 AMD RX 6950 XT, either unit $579.99 + tax after coupon (exp 6/14)

Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin PA120 SE ARGB White, $37.90 + tax

PSU: CORSAIR RM850e Fully Modular 80 PLUS Gold, $114.99 + tax after coupon

SSD: Samsung 980 Pro 2TB, $119.99 + tax when bundled (Micro Center)

Case: NZXT H5 Flow, $84.99 + tax (price also available on Amazon) or Montech Sky Two, $89.99 + tax or Fractal Pop Air non-RGB, $79.99 + tax

 

Total before accessories: $1,492 + tax

 

My thoughts on various parts:

• GPU: I'm pretty sold on a 6950xt, especially at $580, but feel free to try to convince me otherwise. Both the XFX and ASRock are mildly factory OC'd, triple-fan designs with three-year warranties, so I'm not seeing much to differentiate them? I know XFX makes quality products, and I've had a good experience with ASRock (albeit mostly mobos) over time. The ASRock card is ugly as hell, but I'll never see its face. There's an argument to be made for a 6800xt at $480, which is currently available, the same XFX series at that. I like the headroom at 4K that the 6950xt offers me, but maybe the ~20% increase for ~16% perf doesn't make sense and would be better spent toward a quality 1440p display.
• CPU/MB/RAM: The value of this combo seems very hard to beat. Micro Center has a similar 13700K combo for the same price, but the reviews hate the board. The B650E-F and Flare X5 don't seem to be winners for everyone, but especially with the latest BIOS update(s) they seem to be a more okay combo than not. MC's 7700X combo is only a $100 savings - an 18% savings for potentially 30% less performance.
• Case: I'm not sure whether I want to go white or black yet. All three seem like they'd be good choices, but all have some caveats.
  • H5 Flow: no front fans included, which means at least $20 extra for a pair of 120-140mm. $104.99+ after fans
  • Montech: my SO has a Sky One Lite and digs it for the most part; TechPowerUp likes it; fans included, but a white option would be $10 extra. Side intake is kind of odd/unideal vs. mesh front but seems to perform well despite that per TPU. $89.99-99.99.
  • Pop Air: fans included, white's the same price (at least from B&H), but requires an extra part to get front USB-C. ~$94 with USB-C.
• SSD: I've been all-Samsung SSDs for a long time now but I'm open to other brands. Prefer not-DRAM-less, TLC (not a requirement), SED support worth a damn, good warranty, good performance. I'm open to other brands (hard no to Team, PNY, MSI, ADATA), and also considering (with fairly low research) the Crucial P3/P5 Plus and Solidigm P44 Pro.
• Cooler and PSU: I'm not the slightest bit attached to these. All bang-for-buck, all the way, period. PSU must be fully modular, prefer 80+ Gold but definitely don't require it. Is 850w going to be enough, with only mild OC of CPU (if any) and GPU?

Thoughts and recommendations welcome, thanks! I don't need any of this tomorrow - though if the 6950xt is the way, that $580 price goes away fast - so I'm willing to wait on a slick deal for some parts.

Not that relevant but the ASRock one doesn't look that bad when installed

[SorryBella]

8 hours ago, MathiasEsq said:

Total before accessories: $1,492 + tax

Pick the Fractal Pop air and youre set. Though for 1440p id consider the 7600 bundle instead. Iirc its MSI board with the same Flare x5 right?

[MathiasEsq]

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

Pick the Fractal Pop air and youre set. Though for 1440p id consider the 7600 bundle instead. Iirc its MSI board with the same Flare x5 right?

The 7600X bundle is $469.99; it does have the MSI B650-P, and 16gb of Flare X5 at 5600. Extremely uncompelling at that price. I could assemble my own "bundle" for less, with better RAM and avoiding MSI. (I would go for an ASRock B650M/HDV and 32gb Trident Z5 Neo at 6000, unless other quality bundles arose. I would probably also step down to the 6800xt if I was going 7600, maybe even 7700.) Their 7700X bundle is less at $449, with the same MSI board of the 7600X one and the same RAM as the 7900X one.

 

I'd like headroom for 4K, and I will be at 4K initially at least.

 

The Pop Air seems like a solid choice, but why would you pick it over the other two? Value vs. the H5 Flow while still being full mesh front unlike the Sky Two?

 

Any thoughts between the XFX and ASRock cards?

[SorryBella]

41 minutes ago, MathiasEsq said:

avoiding MSI

They're actually the few that actually patched their BIOS properly, while Asus flunked theirs. MSI, Gigabyte, and Asrock are the few that actually restrict within that recommended 1.3V VSOC voltage.

44 minutes ago, MathiasEsq said:

I would go for an ASRock B650M/HDV and 32gb Trident Z5 Neo at 6000, unless other quality bundles arose. I would probably also step down to the 6800xt if I was going 7600, maybe even 7700.

The B650 HDV with 32GB of EXPO ram at 6000C30 is also a really good combo that people slept on pretty hard because of the DDR5 learning issue that is still plaguing both platforms. The 7700 non X would be a good one if you want a middle ground, because the extra cores on 7900X is just going to be unnecessary heat.

45 minutes ago, MathiasEsq said:

I'd like headroom for 4K

At 4K your CPU matters EVEN LESS. 4K is still a heavy burden on the GPU right now as it stands, same with 1440p but in that case your CPU does matter a little bit so don't completely bunk on it.

47 minutes ago, MathiasEsq said:

The Pop Air seems like a solid choice, but why would you pick it over the other two? Value vs. the H5 Flow while still being full mesh front unlike the Sky Two?

Ding ding. The Sky Two is nice but at 90$ it has to compete with other cases like Lian Li Lancool 216, Fractal Design Torrent and Asus AP201 which are all cooling beasts for its price and size in particular for AP201 even though it is limited to mATX board.

[MathiasEsq]

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

They're actually the few that actually patched their BIOS properly, while Asus flunked theirs. MSI, Gigabyte, and Asrock are the few that actually restrict within that recommended 1.3V VSOC voltage.

Asus allegedly fixed this in BIOS 1604, with further improvements in 1616, the latest, stable version. Maybe MSI is worth more of a look this gen, but personal experience in the past and their recent supply chain attack would still leave me leery. I don't feel good about Gigabyte either, between their malware-like auto-installing software (Asus at least makes Armory Crate easy to disable), declining support, and more, but they're not really on the table here.

 

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

The B650 HDV with 32GB of EXPO ram at 6000C30 is also a really good combo that people slept on pretty hard because of the DDR5 learning issue that is still plaguing both platforms.

MC's boardless 7900X combo is $409; combined with the B650M/HDV, which appears to have the features I need, I'd save about $15 and get a board brand I trust. It's somewhat tempting. Unfortunately, that combo is the same CL36 Flare X5 kit, and to get to CL30 I'd currently be looking at $350 + $125 + 118 = $593. Is it worth it?

 

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

the extra cores on 7900X is just going to be unnecessary heat

You're probably right for straight gaming. There's no telling what I might do with this thing, though (one reason why I'm looking longingly at the AI performance of team green's cards, even though there's no way I'll pay their 40 series prices, nor buy a used 3090), and both LTT and Gamer's Nexus seem to think the Peerless Assassin will handle any AMD CPU you throw at it with no issues whatsoever.

 

1 hour ago, SorryClaire said:

The Sky Two is nice but at 90$ it has to compete with other cases like Lian Li Lancool 216, Fractal Design Torrent and Asus AP201 which are all cooling beasts for its price and size in particular for AP201 even though it is limited to mATX board.

The Lancool 216 is interesting, it's only about another $5 (at MC) over the Pop Air when factoring in the USB-C accessory, and it comes with 2x160mm + 1x140mm fans vs 3x120mm for the Pop Air. Totally worth considering. The AP201 is a cute little thing, and if I went mATX with the ASRock+MC boardless combo option, the savings would probably make up for the cost of bottom/front fans.

 

My only remaining thought is on GPU: might it be worthwhile to wait and see what AMD announces for the 7800xt? General consensus seems to be expecting about 6950xt performance with equal or better RT, at a much lower power draw, for right around $599. We don't know if any of that will be true, or how long it will take, but if it works out like that (and releases soon) I might be kicking myself for buying a 6950xt and be just outside of the return period.

[SteveGrabowski0]

Personally I'd drop to the 7700X bundle so I could upgrade the gpu to a 7900 XT if trying to stay on a tight budget. Yeah you're dropping four cores for only $100 savings but now you're getting 15% more gaming performance when gpu bound, and the 7700X is such a strong gaming cpu you're not going to be lacking from performance in it vs the 7900X. There is almost no loss in gaming performance even dropping to a 7600X but the 7700X gives you some room to grow into as games get more challenging to run and like you said, the 7600X bundle sucks compared to the 7700X and 7900X bundles. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

Also I find a 2TB SSD massive overkill for a gaming system, so I'd drop to 1TB if Microcenter has some good deals there if you want to put some of your budget into more performance. I find my 1TB SSD already to be way over the top on my system. Though I tend to play one or two games at a time and then uninstall them when I'm done. But if you need data storage might as well buy a 6TB hard drive for $100 later on instead of using your boot+games drive for your porn, game roms for emulation, and pirated movies tbh.

[MathiasEsq]

10 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

upgrade the gpu to a 7900 XT

After more research, I don't think I'll be doing this. AMD still hasn't figured out how to get truly improved, truly stable VR performance out of the 7900 XT and XTX, but it seems to be good on the 6950. This also means the potential 7800 XT is right out unless "fine wine" actually happens before then. MC has an open-box 4070ti for about $750, which is cheaper than a 7900 XT and should net better VR perf (plus the green-only features) than both it and the 6950 (which it beats overall almost all the time), but I really don't want to support Nvidia's pricing shitbaggery. I'm still slightly considering it because of the better display stream compression, RT, and other features...

 

10 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

the 7700X is such a strong gaming cpu you're not going to be lacking from performance in it vs the 7900X

After lots of reading and watching today I'm really starting to lean in the 7700X direction. Any step up in gaming perf would be considerably more between base parts cost (7800X3D) or parts + cooling (13700K). The 13700K would net a bit more non-gaming perf too, but there's no upgrade path for LGA1700, unlike AM5. The 7700X will still be a solid non-gaming performer, if not quite as nice as the 7900X or 13700K.

 

10 hours ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

I'd drop to 1TB if Microcenter has some good deals

They do, $54.99 when bought with the other parts. I'm not 100% either way yet. 

[MathiasEsq]

Update: this has now been executed! Here's the final build, item prices before tax:

 

CPU: Ryzen 7 7700X - $313.98, Micro Center

RAM: GSkill Flare X5 DDR5-6000CL36 EXPO - $0.01, Micro Center (bundled w/CPU)

MB: ASRock B650M PG Riptide - $127.96, Micro Center (open box, complete, looks untouched, no bent pins)

Case: Lian Li Lancool 216 white - $91.96, Micro Center (open box, appears to be complete)

Storage: 1tb Samsung 980 Pro - $42.96, Micro Center (open box, manually applied bundle discount)

 

Total at Micro Center after $25 off coupon and tax: $487.50 + $97.48 (case)

 

GPU: ASRock Radeon RX 6950 XT OC Formula - $629.99, Newegg

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 GT, fully modular, 80 Plus Gold - $139.99, Best Buy (open box excellent, used $5 reward cert to drop to $134.99)

Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin PA120 SE ARGB White - $33.90, Thermalright Direct via Amazon

 

Total at other retailers after tax: $864.14

 

I'll be borrowing some thermal compound, and I have plans for the OS. Barring any issues, that's a final total of $1,449.12 - I feel pretty good about that.

 

Some work remains. I'll need to make sure that there's no cables missing from the PSU, that Newegg didn't F me (as Newegg does) by sending a used GPU when I bought new, and that ASRock's QC didn't suck on the card. I'll need to return a PA120 SE, because the price dropped twice and Amazon CS wouldn't refund to adjust. Should there be trouble with any of it (especially Newegg), Amex will have my back, plus I gain an extra year warranty on everything, and 90 days of return and accidental damage protection. Misc Q&A:

 

• Why mATX? It was cheap, and I got to avoid Asus and MSI while saving money. The B650M PG Riptide has the ARGB header(s) the /HDV lacks, and otherwise has the features I need. I'll eventually pick up an Intel WiFi card/kit (MC had an AX200 kit - card and antennas - which I had never seen before - great product but the wrong card for me) to stick in it, probably, but it'll be wired at first and maybe always. For sound I'll probably use an external DAC. Reviewers say it has great VRMs.
• An open box PSU? Are you an idiot? I've had really good luck with Best Buy's open box products, and if it's missing anything or obviously sucks, returning it will be a breeze. For $40+ off, on a current gen unit from a quality brand like EVGA, this was hard to pass up. I went up to 1000w from 850w as a safety margin for the GPU.
• Why the OC Formula 6950xt? I'll grant that this card is a little on the ugly side with the puke green accents, and it is huge, but otherwise... 1) It's fast as hell, basically the fastest (from the factory) 6950xt left on the market; 2) it OCs even further like a beast; 3) the cooler is built like a brick shithouse; 4) it comes with a support bracket, hoorah?; 5) I haven't had any bad ASRock experiences to scare me off; 6) reviews all say that the actual board design is excellent, with quality components all over. For $20 more than their lower-end Phantom Gaming card it wasn't a hard choice. These are supposedly "XTXH" binned chips, the cream of the crop.
• Where did you get the PA120 that cheap? Here.

Everything should arrive by the end of the week. I'll be flashing the BIOS before I even install the GPU, maybe even before installing anything, since the board has BIOS flashback. Wish me good fortune, LTT forum fam!

 

Thanks @SorryClaire for the mention of the Lancool 216 and dropping from the 7900X. @SteveGrabowski0, you were ultimately spot on with the 7700X, and while there will never be spinning rust in this box (any of that is for a future server), you definitely won on 1tb over 2tb because of the smokin' hot deal I got on the 1tb 980 Pro.