New PC, looking for advice on spec

[Spider95]

can I respectfully suggest we re-orientate to answering the OP's questions, please?

Yes, please.

Re SSDs: I get the points that have been made, obviously there are differing (and passionate) opinions on this! I appreciate the debate and if people have more to add on pros cons of SSDs then great! But I'd really like feedback on the other parts of the build too

Yes I will make the decisions on what I will buy - I try and take on board all the opinions I get from people in the know but I also do my own research. So don't worry, I'm not necessarily swayed by one particular comment or so on one forum

Cheers all,

(\(\;;/)/)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks all so far for your replies, lots of interesting info to have a look at and digest.



Thanks CAT-THE-FIFTH, I do get your point here about cost effective now and upgrade the system more often - however I don't want to have to upgrade the system more often, I would prefer to pay more to have a really good solid base system (CPU, mobo, power, cooling and case) that will last me a good long time (yes I know that components may only have a particular life, that is a risk) - and only have to think about upgrades for more 'simple' replacements: RAM, GPU, Hard drives. Because that is the level I am comfortable with in terms of what I'm happy to fiddle about with inside the case. I'm going to be getting Scan (hopefully) to build the system for me, I'm not doing it myself (I am in no way interested in building a PC) - so want everything to be in there from the get-go so is all covered by the 3XS warranty (although I will maybe speak to them about possibility of reuse graphics card). Is this a cost effective approach? Maybe not in the long run - but that's only one part of the equation I'm considering. Not the approach everyone would take I know, but personally it's what I prefer to do.

Have not looked at all your links yet but thank you very much for all the info and suggestions.

Re GPU & CPU: I'm not sure I can wait until the end of the year, or indeed a few months - as I fear my current system is on its last legs. However good to know these are what to watch out for that are 'coming soon'.
Mobo: Part of the reasons for this one was it has PCIe 4, wifi and also a good number of USB ports and got good reviews. Expensive, yes: But seemed like a mobo that would last me a good long time and cover a lot of bases in the future - which is one of my higher priorities.
PSU: If I do go with the spec I plan then 750W I think is the minimum based on the values I put into a power calc (I forget which one) plus leaving a reasonable overhead so PSU is not too fully loaded plus future proofing in case in the future I went with a more power hungry graphics card. However if I end up going for a lesser spec then I'll need to redo the calcs and yes go lower.
SSDs: I see there is a lot of discussion on this in other posts here! I have not read the detail so cannot comment on this yet (other than saying I currently have a Samsung 850 EVO SSD I've been quite happy with). I'm still trying to decide what is best here for O/S applications and games. Possibly might consider smaller M.2 for the system and then get an SSD for game/apps - but then losing speed advantage of the M.2
Cooling: Yes I'm in a quandary about this. My big concerns with air coolers are having big lump of metal stressing the mobo, and also noise. However liquid coolers are not without risk!

Good point about considering smaller mobos and/or more compact cases & so less heavy/bulky. I'd kind of picked ATX because that is what I'm used to. I suspect smaller cases may mean smaller fans (noisier), not so good airflow and less space for drives etc. However I will go back and look at that in case I'm missing something!

Cheers,

(\(\;;/)/)

The whole of being cost effective,is to get the same performance for less money. That leaves money left from your budget,to put in a better CPU or GPU,etc at a later date. This is a better way of keeping a system upto date,as say a few years down the line,you add a better GPU,more storage,etc.

Also,anything over £150 is technically high end for a motherboard anyway.

Spending more does not equate to longer lifespan. For example,my mates had AMD 970 based motherboards which were sub £100 and lasted over 8 years,and they seemed to last longer than some of the fancy 990 ones I saw about. Those expensive X570 motherboards are made for overclocking with LN2,etc. The issue is you are running the CPUs at stock clockspeeds,so realistically it won't really yield any improvements IMHO.

The differences between the B550 and X570 are outlined here:
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3...450-x470-zen-3

So you need to ask yourself how much I/O do you really need.

The MSI Mag X570 is one of the best X570 motherboards out there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD65w5RVmtY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2KbpmMg44M

The MSI Mag Mortar B550M is also great of you want to go mATX,as the X570 choice is very limited in that form factor. Also most B550 motherboards don't have a tiny fan cooling the "chipset" heatsink. But "any" over £200 motherboard should last you years,with a stock CPU unless it has some serious design flaws.

The RAM recommendations are the same,ie, Samsung B-die or Micron E-die at 3600MHZ. The same goes with the CPU coolers,I think Corsair so far haven't been affected by the spate of AIO cooler failures from various brands such as EVGA but do some checking. Personally one of the air coolers,might have potentially less issues,over a 5~10 year period though but some of them do seem too weigh too much. OTH,if you are not overclocking,the stock AMD cooler is pretty solid(a bit noisy),so any reasonable £50 air cooler would probably be fine. However,I can only say I have only really tracked AIO cooler lifespan upto the 5 year mark,so have no experience beyond that.

WRT,power consumption,I am running a 450W SFX PSU with a GTX1080,and never gone past 520W for a PSU myself in the last 15 years. 650~750W will be fine for years,especially if you don't overstress it. Also remember,too high a wattage,means low loads will be massively outside of peak efficiency. Look for Gold/Platinum/Titanium effiency as these concentrated more and more on lower loads,with each of the newer tiers.

Ask if Scan do the OEM only Ryzen 9 3900 - its slightly slower than a Ryzen 9 3900X,but is cheaper. It also consumes less power,will be easier to cool,and should put less strain on the motherboard and need less cooling(TBF even a £160 b550 motherboard won't be strained by a Ryzen 9 3950X). Its why I suggested it.

The new consoles have PCI-E 4.0 SSDs,so its why I find Samsung charging so much for their PCI-E 3.0 2TB ones a bit rich. Don't get swayed by brand wars. For a technical forum,it's a piece of equipment inside the PC,not a whole Mac vs PC level argument! Also the whole reliability wars stuff is moot for a normal user,ie,as long as there isn't any obvious design flaw and as long as the RMA location isn't HK or something like that! My oldest SSD still in use is a Kingston from 2012,which I won on here. None of the SSDs mentioned here,are proper commercial grade stuff,ie,all consumer grade SSDs.

Like I said a 2TB PCI-E 4.0 drive is now close in price to Samsung and WD(seems the price on the WD went up a few days ago by around £60). However,SSD pricing is starting to drop,so don't get ripped off paying over the odds for older technology drives,especially with consoles using PCI-E 4.0 SSDs.

Look at the 1TB drives,Samsung and to a lesser degree WD,seem to add a bigger premium to 2TB drives,ie,they cost more per TB than the 1TB. The 1TB drives from WD,Samsung and Adata are a bit closer together in price. But the Adata is relatively cheap for a 2TB NVME SSD. So if you want a Samsung the 1TB drives are OK priced.

Personally my view with SSDs is that their failure mode tends to be not graceful at all,ie,they either just die,or start having BSODs. So always best to have backups,or even a clean OS install on another older drive just in case something happens. If anything I find Windows more of a PITA nowadays.

With the GPU I would wait. Ampere and RDNA2 will be at the start of their lifespans,and RDNA2 is used in the consoles. I wouldn't buy Turing or RDNA1 based GPUs now,especially as you keep parts for a long time.

Anyway,good luck!

Edit!!

Testing of some of the B550 motherboards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8d4C80Ub_o

They can be as good or better than many lower end X570 motherboards.

[DanceswithUnix]

The RAM recommendations are the same,ie, Samsung B-die or Micron E-die at 3600MHZ.

I'm trying not to get sucked back into this, but... officially that is an overclock and AIUI would void the AMD CPU warranty. In a pre-built, it should come with a Scan warranty, so you should be covered, and some ram kits go *way* higher than 3600 so it is hardly pushing the boundaries of overclocking, but there is still a "comfort level" consideration to be made there so raising a small flag.

I personally run at the official 3200 limit, but one of my recent builds for someone else is a 3900X with 32GB of 3600MHz ram and it runs flat out for hours every working day and hasn't missed a beat.

[Spider95]

Thanks for all that info again CAT-THE-FIFTH, working my way through the info.

Yes, looks like I was perhaps aiming too high with mobo with the x570 since I am not considering overclocking, so am now looking at B550 mobos as possible alternative - as you still do get some PCIe 4 support for what (I think) are the important things of M2 and GPU. I'm not sure if I'd ever actually have the 'need' of all the x570 PCIe 4 ? Since I'm not sure what would be out there even over the next few years (that isn't GPU or storage) that I'd need v4 for?

(\(\;;/)/)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The B550 has a single PCI-E 4.0 16X graphics slot,and a single PCI-E 4.0 NVME slot,and the other slots will be PCI-E 3.0,whereas the X570 has support for more than one PCI-E 4.0 NVME SSD(I think two are supported in total),and an additional PCI-E 4.0 4X slot.

Edit!!

TBF some motherboards such as the B550 and X570 Tomahawk are close in price anyway,but some other brands have more of a difference.

Buildzoid examines a lot of B550 motherboards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihg6XQiqW7A



A few more videos looking at other B550 motherboards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5PMp_7h59w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIprmPbJk8

BTW,if you are whacking an AIO on the CPU,just make sure there is airflow over the VRMs,ie,it will keep them cooler. It's one advantage of horizontal CPU coolers,ie,they keep air flowing over the VRMs.

There might be some other models from Gigabyte,etc which might interest you too.

[DanceswithUnix]

Yes, looks like I was perhaps aiming too high with mobo with the x570 since I am not considering overclocking,

There are cheaper X570 boards if you want to hedge your bets a bit.

My recent 3950X build had one of these in it:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASRock-X570...dp/B07TGHV63W/

Now that was specced just before the B550 boards came out which at the time was what I really wanted to use, but it had been performing well and the user is very happy with it. It gets a hard life, but it isn't overclocked which is where the excessive heat tends to kick in. The heatsinks aren't that big, so I would want a bit of airflow over a board like that.

You don't get Wifi on that board, but you do get an M.2 Wifi connector to plug in a laptop Wifi card. Wifi is something I wouldn't really want integrated directly on the board, the standards will change a few times if you are keeping the machine a long time.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I'm trying not to get sucked back into this, but... officially that is an overclock and AIUI would void the AMD CPU warranty. In a pre-built, it should come with a Scan warranty, so you should be covered, and some ram kits go *way* higher than 3600 so it is hardly pushing the boundaries of overclocking, but there is still a "comfort level" consideration to be made there so raising a small flag.

I personally run at the official 3200 limit, but one of my recent builds for someone else is a 3900X with 32GB of 3600MHz ram and it runs flat out for hours every working day and hasn't missed a beat.

It is technically running the RAM outside JEDEC spec(2400MHZ IIRC) and also the memory controller out of official spec. Basically its all the same RAM,but I assume its binned for higher clockspeed,etc. I faced the same dilemma with my build,and that was with a Zen+ CPU which 2933MHZ is the official spec. I got a 3200MHZ kit as it was the same price as slower kits(cheapest 3200MHZ kit at the time),and I had a good chance of getting Samsung B die,which I did. However,the motherboard has DOCP settings and has ran it at 3200MHZ,and memory testing seems to indicate it is fine.

AMD also confuse the matter by stating 3600MHZ RAM is the sweet spot in their official slides:
https://premiumbuilds.com/wp-content...ryzen-3000.jpg

Also 3200C14 is almost the same.3200C14 kits are not cheap sadly. However,the advantage of faster RAM is you can always run it slower,and tune it with lower CAS latencies,and then save a memory profile. The problem is I don't personally like taking slower RAM and overclocking it,as it would involve too much testing for my liking. But then I don't even overclock my CPUs anymore!

[Spider95]

You don't get Wifi on that board, but you do get an M.2 Wifi connector to plug in a laptop Wifi card. Wifi is something I wouldn't really want integrated directly on the board, the standards will change a few times if you are keeping the machine a long time.

Yes that is very true. Wifi wasn't something I was necessarily wanting for definite on the mobo, it was just that the ones I liked for other things happened to have it.
If mobo comes with that will use it to start with and if standards do change I could get a wifi card and disable the mobo one.
If mobo doesn't come with wifi, would get a wifi card from the get-go.

And with x570 boards, have not ruled them out completely because there are other cheaper options, just that B550s are now also in the mix! There is a B550 version of the Gigabyte Auros Master which seems quite good - has lots of USBs which I like (although it is one of the more expensive B550s).

I really just have to figure out how much full PCIe 4 really is going to matter to me in the next 5-10 years (well, hoping/assuming the PC lasts that long of course!).

(\(\;;/)/)

[DanceswithUnix]

I really just have to figure out how much full PCIe 4 really is going to matter to me in the next 5-10 years (well, hoping/assuming the PC lasts that long of course!).

I think that is largely down to how likely you are to replace the GPU in that time.

Right now PCIe4 is pretty pointless. But in 5 to 10 years it will be like having a PCIe2 motherboard now, not a disaster but might hurt performance a bit if you have a high enough end GPU.

I will confess it was part of my recent buying a B550 motherboard for a use case where B450 would clearly do. In 5 years time I might move hardware around, and that board could end up playing games and wanting a CPU update. But then I'm likely to rebuild machines occasionally as parts fail and family requirements change.

If you are more of a mind to put a machine together and just leave it, then go cheap on the mobo and plough the money saved into the GPU or CPU.

Talking of which, you haven't said what your current GPU was when there was talk of re-using it. If it is really old, then you probably don't want to do that.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wouldn't go for a GPU right now.... not with what is coming along. Talk of re-using the GPU is just for the next few months. The problem is Turing and RDNA1 are coming to the end WRT to primary driver optimisations and feature support. RDNA2 based GPUs will be in the new consoles,and Ampere will be the focus of Nvidia driver optimisations for the next few years. There is noise Ampere is being released next month,and Jayztwocents just made a video saying AMD is asking him to confirm his address details,hinting he will be receiving new RDNA2 GPUs in the near future.

For the £400ish the OP was looking at on spending on the RTX2060 Super,plus the money they are saving on the cheaper motherboard,they will probably have £500~£600 towards a new GPU. I think for that kind of money you could get a really nice RDNA2 or Ampere based GPU in a few months.

[Spider95]

Talking of which, you haven't said what your current GPU was when there was talk of re-using it. If it is really old, then you probably don't want to do that.

Current GPU is a Asus Strix NVidia GTX 970.

I'd really rather not have to reuse it, would rather keep it in the old PC.

Super2060 is where my initial thoughts were in order to have an 8Gb card to do me a good few years. Yes I know better ones are coming out, but I may not be able to wait (and ideally do not want to use old).

However compromise is perhaps I look for a slightly lower spec card in the 6Gb VRAM range - although some of the ones I've looked at only have 1 display port, whereas ideally I'd like 2 (but then they do have DVI which I could maybe live with ...)

GAH! too many decisions, too many shiny things

(\(\;;/)/)

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Current GPU is a Asus Strix NVidia GTX 970.

I'd really rather not have to reuse it, would rather keep it in the old PC.

Super2060 is where my initial thoughts were in order to have an 8Gb card to do me a good few years. Yes I know better ones are coming out, but I may not be able to wait (and ideally do not want to use old).

However compromise is perhaps I look for a slightly lower spec card in the 6Gb VRAM range - although some of the ones I've looked at only have 1 display port, whereas ideally I'd like 2 (but then they do have DVI which I could maybe live with ...)

GAH! too many decisions, too many shiny things

(\(\;;/)/)

Its not only speed but feature support. Both Turing and RDNA1 are transitory uarchs. RDNA1 is basically bridging GCN to RDNA2. Turing introduces a whole ton of new features,but is too slow to implement many of them effectively at the mainstream level.

RDNA2 will be the basis of most cross platform titles,as its what all the main consoles will have. So think next 5 years or so. Ampere apparently has some major improvements to RT performance(probably will beat AMD IMHO). TBH,is waiting 1~3 months really that long?

Both designs IMHO will be de-prioritised from primary driver optimisations,within a year of the new ones launching. The only reason why I think AMD Polaris/Hawaii stayed relevent for so long,as they had derivatives in the consoles.

ATM,you are seeing one of the biggest changes in PC graphics,for 20 years,with the more towards RT,upscaling,etc. The consoles are rumoured to have around RTX2070 Super to RTX2080 level GPU performance. Its also a launch of a new console generation,which also means the GPU makers,need to pull out the stops,to kind of draw attention back to the PC!

I have mates on older GPUs,who are waiting for the new ones,despite rebuilding the rest of their rigs during lockdowns,and mates who had Turing/Navi GPUs,who realised during lockdown,the secondhand prices were good,so sold them. One of them is now using a refurbished RX470(had an RX5700XT) as an example. I think they lost £50 over a year of ownership or something daft like that.

[DanceswithUnix]

Current GPU is a Asus Strix NVidia GTX 970.

OK, so at the risk of oversimplifying, from the relative performance chart on here:

https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...-gtx-970.c2620

that is equivalent in performance to an RX5500 or GTX 1650 Super. So you need to consider how much faster you need.

The worry with getting a current card is that if it has been out 2 years already, then you don't get that many years of driver support left. That's on top of Nvidia should be going from 12nm to 7nm silicon, packing a performance jump. Second gen ray tracing might be useful, or might not we don't know

OFC if they only release 3070 and 3080 then you could be waiting for ages for a 3060 to come out.

[Spider95]

OK, so at the risk of oversimplifying, from the relative performance chart on here:
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-spec...-gtx-970.c2620
that is equivalent in performance to an RX5500 or GTX 1650 Super. So you need to consider how much faster you need.
.

Ah that's good to at least get a general idea of relative performance with what I have, thanks.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

OFC if they only release 3070 and 3080 then you could be waiting for ages for a 3060 to come out.

TBF,they already put aside £420ish for a RTX2060 Super. If they went with a "cheaper" motherboard around the £200 mark,instead of the £350 one,that would mean closer to £600 on the GPU. If that doesn't buy a RTX3070 at least I would be surprised.

[Spider95]

TBF,they already put aside £420ish for a RTX2060 Super. If they went with a "cheaper" motherboard around the £200 mark,instead of the £350 one,that would mean closer to £600 on the GPU. If that doesn't buy a RTX3070 at least I would be surprised.

Cost is part of the equation yes (and very important), but there are other trade offs I need to consider (as I may not overall be able, or want to, wait a few months - that is just how it is for me). And just to note: Even if I did save that money on the mobo, doesn't mean I'd want to necessarily fork out £600 on a future GPU. That's not always the balance or trade-off that I would make (probably not what most others do, but it's just how I operate).

Having said all that, the info in your earlier post about the new upcoming GPUs is really useful to know, some interesting things there.

Although (from admittedly a VERY quick seach/look) there seems to be little concrete about specs, dates (other than 'probably soon'), price etc. for the new cards - thats a lot of unknowns for me to gamble on what I 'might get' by waiting versus getting something now when I need it. Again though, new cards being released may mean current cards come down in price as well.

Lots to consider, thanks again!

(\(\;;/)/)