Motherboard and Processor Suggestions please

[AshwinRox]

Hi!

Ever since I built my first rig about 5 years ago, I've been having a blast with all that I can do, and how far it could get me. And ever since VR hit the market, I've been slowly getting ready to start my slow campaign of a new and more proficient build. 

 

Current PC

Right now, My current build has a 1tb hard drive, a Nvidia 660 graphics card, 16gbs of DDR3 ~1800 ghz of ram and a couple other things, and an AMD processor with air cooling.

I actually do a lot on this pc, I run 3 monitors, my art based programs, some music and sound editing, as well as gaming. 

 

To be honest, a big chunk of my build is actually second hand stuff. The graphics, mother board and processor was all part of someone elses build before I took them myself. As a first time buyer, I screwed up, and ended up missing a back plate for the mother board, and paid pretty much the same as new price for all the parts with the expectation that I would at least be taught how to put it together. I ended up doing it all myself unfortunately and the best i was offered was a static shock bracelet to prevent any unwanted zaps while I built it. 

 

Buyer's remorse was my motivator to start trying to research and figure out what is the best fit for me. I've actually been watching Linus tech tips for a long time trying to learn the ins and outs of how a computer works. And after all of that, I'm still lost as to what I should be looking for. 

 

Planned Use

My primary use of this computer is to turn it into a gaming rig and turn my previous computer into a streaming PC to decrease the load on my computer. I would however be expanding my uses, to editing, digital media, as well as hobby stuff. I know I was told a workbench was something that could handle anything and everything I want it too, but I feel, I'm not professional, though I have access to some professional programming, I'm still in the process of learning the tools of trade, like animation. It would take me some time, but all of this is in a hobby level, nothing professional, at least, I don't know if I can make it so. 

 

Searching

As for what I can say on my own, and what I want minimum in my build, I am aiming to right now start off with a motherboard and processor before anything else. I do have some requirements:

1. There is at least one m.2 slot on the mother board for me to install an SSD on it for my OS
2. I would like the max ram for it to take be either 32gb or 64gb. I would like to start off with two 16gb ram cards which I'm hunting for on Black Friday
3. I want to make sure the Board had ddr4 support on it
4. The possibility to have two graphic cards installed, but to be honest, I'll probably be only using one

Conclusion

At the end of the day, my plan for this entire build is to do something under a grand where I have a skeleton of a functioning PC that does all the basics. I would like a fast processor with hyperthreading, which would be awesome, cause I learned about it from Linus and I want to see it in action really. I'm looking for a good motherboard for where I can say in the future, instead of building a completely new computer, I can just do things along the lines of swapping out a processor or ram for better performance. Stuff that I can say, I have 32gb now, next year I'll upgrade it to 64gb or something along those lines. 

I hope I wasn't too detailed or demanding too much here. I just know that after looking at a lot, and talking to sales people, I tend to run into the problem of the best and meet my needs use. I don't want to have to go through and buy a whole new motherboard and processor just because I came up short. This is the first time I'm building on my own so I would love some advice on how I should even approach what I would need. 

 

Thanks for taking the time for reading all of this, I know it's a lot, but I read the pinned thread to include all of this info. 

[RAM555789]

Things to keep: The air cooler, the 1TB HDD (though you'll want to keep a careful eye as it ages), and possibly the PSU (depends on the wattage and how decent it is).

Now onto the actual build I suggest.

I'm just putting out a base for you, and you can kinda of pick and choose what you like and change what you don't like. May need to add a PSU to the build if you don't have enough wattage or its not the greatest PSU since its like the blood of your computer and could kill it if its not reliable.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor  ($165.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($154.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($97.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($43.90 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB Strix Video Card  ($319.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $937.64
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-11 15:58 EDT-0400

[LogicWeasel]

I like the looks of that build aside from paying almost $100 for a 250GB NVMe drive.

 

Here's an example of more bang/buck (it's double the size and still NVMe): https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820331219

The Sauce:

(here's the search I used to filter-out the Sata-based M.2 Drives: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100011693 600038515 600171532 600171533 600489717 600521287 600640786 601296941 601301243 600414919 600414920 601286602 )

[LogicWeasel]

So I started looking at the motherboard and various parts, just seeing what could be slimmed on the margin.  Ended up tweaking the build and found room to bump the graphics card to a 1070 Ti (woo!).  Note that I put the ADATA drive in as a placeholder for the one I linked above, which I find is a slightly newer/better drive.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor  ($165.99 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: ASRock - Fatal1ty B450 GAMING K4 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($79.99 @ Newegg) 
Memory: G.Skill - Aegis 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($64.99 @ Newegg Business) 
Memory: G.Skill - Aegis 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($64.99 @ Newegg Business) 
Storage: ADATA - XPG  512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($102.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($42.20 @ Amazon) 
Video Card: MSI - GeForce GTX 1070 Ti 8GB DUKE Video Card  ($399.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($54.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $976.13
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-11 17:33 EDT-0400

[AshwinRox]

Thanks for all the tips! I'm gonna look into it. 

 

I need to make a couple corrections here. 

1. The 1tb drive is SSD
2. The air cooler was second hand, but I have an issue where the fan doesn't want to keep being attached to it.
3. I want to swap out the PSU for a modular one. The one I have is good, Bronze rated, but it leaves excess wires which have been a pain for management. 

I appreciate all the suggestions and I'm gonna take a good look into all of it

[AshwinRox]

1 hour ago, LogicWeasel said:

I like the looks of that build aside from paying almost $100 for a 250GB NVMe drive.

 

Here's an example of more bang/buck (it's double the size and still NVMe): https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820331219

The Sauce:

(here's the search I used to filter-out the Sata-based M.2 Drives: https://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100011693 600038515 600171532 600171533 600489717 600521287 600640786 601296941 601301243 600414919 600414920 601286602 )

So I looked into the SSD, and currently, I've been actually interested in getting the Samsung M.2 mainly since I can get a cheaper one, but when I see the speeds:

VS 

The Left being the Samsung and the right being what you suggested. With about double the price, or I found the drive on sale for 100, I think there is twice the difference. However, there is also the pro, and I don't really know if there is another quality of M.2 I'm supposed to be looking at. If there is, teach me please, cause I am still new at all of this. I've mainly wanted to do M.2 cause I compared the speeds with a regular SSD for an upload speed of 500MBps

1 hour ago, RAM555789 said:

Things to keep: The air cooler, the 1TB HDD (though you'll want to keep a careful eye as it ages), and possibly the PSU (depends on the wattage and how decent it is).

Now onto the actual build I suggest.

I'm just putting out a base for you, and you can kinda of pick and choose what you like and change what you don't like. May need to add a PSU to the build if you don't have enough wattage or its not the greatest PSU since its like the blood of your computer and could kill it if its not reliable.

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4GHz 6-Core Processor  ($165.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  ($154.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($97.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Western Digital - Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($43.90 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: Asus - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB Strix Video Card  ($319.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Fractal Design - Focus G (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  ($54.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $937.64
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-09-11 15:58 EDT-0400

I really like this Build so far! Thank you for it. As much as I do, I actually need to include the PSU in there since I want to upgrade to a modular one. The hard drive is SSD, though I don't know if I am using the terminology wrong here, I am still new to all of this. Though thanks for the price on that 1tb hard drive, that is really nice! Same with the Corsair

[LogicWeasel]

1 hour ago, AshwinRox said:

So I looked into the SSD, and currently, I've been actually interested in getting the Samsung M.2 mainly since I can get a cheaper one, but when I see the speeds:

VS 

The Left being the Samsung and the right being what you suggested. With about double the price, or I found the drive on sale for 100, I think there is twice the difference. However, there is also the pro, and I don't really know if there is another quality of M.2 I'm supposed to be looking at. If there is, teach me please, cause I am still new at all of this. I've mainly wanted to do M.2 cause I compared the speeds with a regular SSD for an upload speed of 500MBps

I really like this Build so far! Thank you for it. As much as I do, I actually need to include the PSU in there since I want to upgrade to a modular one. The hard drive is SSD, though I don't know if I am using the terminology wrong here, I am still new to all of this. Though thanks for the price on that 1tb hard drive, that is really nice! Same with the Corsair

It makes sense that you'd compare speeds from the listed rates, but unless you're doing seriously I/O intensive tasks you likely won't see any perceivable real-word difference when it comes to NVMe-tier SSDs (not with game loading times or windows boot times).  That being said, if you already have a 1TB SSD (2.5" form factor I presume?) than you have a great game / scratch (for media/editing stuff).  It's your money, so if you like the higher (sequential and on-paper) numbers you do pay a price for it.  Do look to compare the performance benchmarks when the drives are actually doing the thing you want them for like loading project data or a game.  I'd wager that the difference is less than it looks here.

[AshwinRox]

1 hour ago, LogicWeasel said:

It makes sense that you'd compare speeds from the listed rates, but unless you're doing seriously I/O intensive tasks you likely won't see any perceivable real-word difference when it comes to NVMe-tier SSDs (not with game loading times or windows boot times).  That being said, if you already have a 1TB SSD (2.5" form factor I presume?) than you have a great game / scratch (for media/editing stuff).  It's your money, so if you like the higher (sequential and on-paper) numbers you do pay a price for it.  Do look to compare the performance benchmarks when the drives are actually doing the thing you want them for like loading project data or a game.  I'd wager that the difference is less than it looks here.

Well the main reason I was looking for those times were specifically for boot times. I already have a 1TB hard drive to store my data and games. I wanted to mainly place operational programs on it and operate off of that, then I was planning to reroute such things like pictures and major library folders with a different destination in the 1TB hard drive and run off of that, to mainly preserve me M.2 hard drive the best I can. 

Though I will say... those performance benchmarks sound pretty important for comparison, though, not entirely sure how to check that out myself. 

 

One other Question I got since I looked at the parts you sent, for that processor, I was wondering, what Cache is proper when using it? I used Dragon voice recognition for some dictation and I know there is some requirement to have a processor with a good enough cache to properly run tahat program

[LogicWeasel]

12 hours ago, AshwinRox said:

One other Question I got since I looked at the parts you sent, for that processor, I was wondering, what Cache is proper when using it? I used Dragon voice recognition for some dictation and I know there is some requirement to have a processor with a good enough cache to properly run tahat program

The CPU in both RAM's and my build is a modern (state of the art) 6-core CPU from AMD.  I would presume it will stomp all over the base-requirements for Dragon Voice, but I had to look up what you're talking about.  Found this from Dragon's system requirements: 

• Processor Cache: 512 KB

Assuming they mean total cache (not specifically level 1 or 2) then you have nothing to concern yourself with; considering these are software requirements posted in 2014 and it's a CPU released in 2018.  It's easily overkill.

 

Pulled directly from PC Part Picker for the AMD Ryzen 2600: 

CORES  6

L1 CACHE

6 x 64KB Instruction
6 x 32KB Data

L2 CACHE

6 x 512KB

L3 CACHE

1 x 16.0MB

Cache for days!

[LogicWeasel]

12 hours ago, AshwinRox said:

...mainly preserve me M.2 hard drive the best I can. 

Though I will say... those performance benchmarks sound pretty important for comparison, though, not entirely sure how to check that out myself. 

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-970-evo-ssd-review,5573-4.html
Here's how to get a real idea of how little difference you see in real-world between NVMe drives.  I know there's a lot on that page but specifically look through the charts below the heading that reads in bold "PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance"

 

Also here's some other good reading:

http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-970-Evo-NVMe-PCIe-M2-250GB-vs-Adata-XPG-SX8200-NVMe-PCIe-M2-480GB/m494033vsm482768

https://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php/784220-Why-are-m-2-SSDs-so-disappointing-in-real-world-performance