New build for programming / gaming

Stephen7 · July 25, 2023

Budget (including currency): 3,000 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Programming / compiling, DB restores. Gaming, I play most every type of game from simple 2d to latest 3d. As well as some VR gaming with a Valve Index

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):

I currently have a semi decent setup from about 4 years ago.

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9700K

MSI Z390-A PRO LGA1151

32 gigs of memory

Radeon 5700 XT

WD_BLACK 1TB SN850X

The main things I really want to improve are my writes to disk since I have to do DB restores which take a while and are very write heavy. As well as improving my video card, it's a bit dated for higher resolution gaming. I currently have 2 LG 27UD68-W 4k monitors that I'm pretty happy with. I would also prefer 64gigs of memory since I can end up with a lot of things running at the same time that all want a lot of memory (multiple dbs, IDEs, debuggers, etc....). I'm thinking about RAID 0, but I do hate to have the extra risk, as I don't really want to troubleshoot my system once it's up and running, but the extra write performance would be nice. I'm also not looking to spend all 3k, but that's probably my upper limit. I'm happy to take something not at the most extreme to save some money. One other thing that I would like is something that is power efficient at low loads. I realize that most cpus aren't designed for efficiency, but I would prefer to have a fairly quiet system and one that doesn't eat up a few hundred watts just sitting there. Not a fanboy for any company, so whatever works best is what I'm interested in.

Thanks.

SorryBella · July 25, 2023

1 minute ago, Stephen7 said:

I'm thinking about RAID 0, but I do hate to have the extra risk, as I don't really want to troubleshoot my system once it's up and running, but the extra write performance would be nice.

Are you really saturating it though? Nvme RAID is nice but can be very unreliable at times.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-13700 2.1 GHz 16-Core Processor ($379.00 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler ($35.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B760 GAMING PLUS WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($159.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory ($204.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial P5 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($97.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial P5 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($97.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Zotac GAMING Trinity OC GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB Video Card ($1599.00 @ Amazon)
Case: Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.99 @ Adorama)
Power Supply: Corsair RM850e (2023) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($119.00 @ Amazon)
Total: $2783.85
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-07-24 23:18 EDT-0400

NeverNotExhausted · July 25, 2023

27 minutes ago, Stephen7 said:

I'm thinking about RAID 0, but I do hate to have the extra risk, as I don't really want to troubleshoot my system once it's up and running, but the extra write performance would be nice.

You're playing with fire there. A good single drive these days is fast enough that going to RAID 0 isn't going to be noticeable 99 percent of the time.

If you're set on going RAID 0 make sure your drives have a good warranty and you have a good backup system in place

NeverNotExhausted · July 25, 2023

30 minutes ago, Stephen7 said:

I'm happy to take something not at the most extreme to save some money. One other thing that I would like is something that is power efficient at low loads. I realize that most cpus aren't designed for efficiency, but I would prefer to have a fairly quiet system and one that doesn't eat up a few hundred watts just sitting there. Not a fanboy for any company, so whatever works best is what I'm interested in.

Based on this, maybe have a look at some of the lower TDP variants of Ryzen chips. The 65w variants of Ryzen chips sip power if you tune them a little bit. Plus you'll see some good benefits in both single and multithreaded workloads compared to your current CPU. You could even look at picking up an AM4 platform if you wanted to carry over your current memory and save a dollar there, but that will limit your future upgrade path.

I'm in a similar boat where I end up with a lot of different things open at the same time. So I constantly have 20-25gb of used ram when not doing anything intensive, then far north of that when gaming or doing modelling/CAD work. I find that most of the time my 5700x/7900xtx combo is drawing about 90w from the wall most of the time, 60w of that is the GPU, which I think is pretty reasonable for my workload. So maybe something similar to that in either AM4 or AM5 flavours might be a good fit for you?