First build in... well, basically first build.

[Drago MkII]

Yeh, it's been a long time since I've done this and even then I never actually picked out the parts, so I could probably use some thoughts from folk who know much more than I on my planned build.

The intention is mostly to use it for 4k gaming but also likely some at 1440p. Total price is coming out around the £1500 mark with windows included. I'm hoping for it to last at least 5 years, maybe more (think my current is at least 8 years old, its running a 650Ti BOOST which was new at the time) though I expect I would probably at least need a processor upgrade at some point.

Parts I already have are:

3080FE £660

Deepcool CL500 case £70 (Does anyone have any experience or just thoughts on this, a mate has made me uneasy about cooling for the 3080 in it, I thought it would be fine with the mesh front)

Fractal Design Ion+ Platinum 860W PSU £130


My current plans for the remaining parts are:

Ryzen 5 3600 CPU £180

Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO £35 but also looked at the Vetroo V5 £25 and the Deepcool Gammaxx GTE V2 £27

Crucial Ballistix RGB 16GB 3200/3600MHz £80-90 if I can actually get hold of it from the UK, looked at PNY XLR8 3200MHz £70 as an alternative though I read that wouldn't be so great if I ever wanted to overclock it a bit.

PNY CS900 240GB SSD £28 to use for the OS (would an SSD with a cache like the Samsung 860 Evo make a difference here?)

1TB NVME SSD of some description ~£100 recommendations welcome

For case fans I looked at the Deepcool CF120 Plus for the front 3 £40, beyond that I haven't decided.

Motherboard is pretty up in the air atm, struggling to decide so suggestions welcome on this. All I know is I need a usb c header for the front case port and would like at least 2 m.2 slots to likely add another later. Been looking at the MSI B550 Tomahawk £160 the Gigabyte AORUS PRO V2 £160 and the ASRock B550 Steel Legend £170 but also wondered if the MSI B550M Mortar £120 would be enough.

Thanks for any help, sorry this has gotten a bit lengthy.

[wazzickle]

If you're wanting to do 4k gaming you should strongly consider upping your ram to 32gb. I'd personally also get a stronger CPU than that.

I can't comment on motherboards personally as I rarely go with ryzen but I'd be looking to copy someone else's build in terms of finding someone who seems to know what they're doing with regards to overclocking and power phases and so on.

The cooling ought to be fine for the gpu as long as you have ample airflow. Make sure to undervolt it to get the best out of it as well as keep temperatures down.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would ideally look for an 8 core CPU if you intend to keep the system for at least 5 years. So a Core i7 10700KF,Ryzen 7 3700X or Ryzen 7 5800X(as part of a bundle).. A Ryzen 5 5600X is too expensive currently. An MSI B550M Mortar or B550 PRO A/Gaming Plus should be fine.

[Drago MkII]

First off thanks to all of you for your suggestions, I don't know how to do the thanks thing on the board, couldn't see a button for it.

If you're wanting to do 4k gaming you should strongly consider upping your ram to 32gb. I'd personally also get a stronger CPU than that.

I can't comment on motherboards personally as I rarely go with ryzen but I'd be looking to copy someone else's build in terms of finding someone who seems to know what they're doing with regards to overclocking and power phases and so on.

The cooling ought to be fine for the gpu as long as you have ample airflow. Make sure to undervolt it to get the best out of it as well as keep temperatures down.

Maybe I'm going to invalidate myself here because I know I'm an outlier but I feel like perhaps I should mention having all the frames doesn't matter too much to me, I'm quite happy at 30fps, been used to it for plenty of years lol. Ultimately I could also just knock down to 1440p if I had to. I had also watched a video from jaystwocents where he said no gaming PC needs more than 16gb RAM, was the 32gb suggestion more for over time or would you just disagree with what he's saying?

As for the overclocking I actually wasn't planning on doing any of that really to be honest, would be far too afraid of breaking something messing with stuff I don't understand.

I would ideally look for an 8 core CPU if you intend to keep the system for at least 5 years. So a Core i7 10700KF,Ryzen 7 3700X or Ryzen 7 5800X(as part of a bundle).. A Ryzen 5 5600X is too expensive currently. An MSI B550M Mortar or B550 PRO A/Gaming Plus should be fine.

With regards to you both mentioning about a cpu upgrade I had a little look and I could get a 3800x for the same price as a 3700x at £270ish but don't the 3800 and 5800 run a bit hotter than the 3600? Would the coolers I was looking at still be alright for them?

Its still about £110 price increase over the 3600, the thinking I had with the 3600 was as thegreat88 mentioned below that I could upgrade that if needed when the higher 5000s come down in price.

I would recommend going for x570 motherboard instead. Something like Gigabyte Aorus Elite X570 can be had for around £170 and is a bit more solid and futureproof than b550 siblings. It will also make use of extra PCIe lanes available and games are expected to take advantage of them in the near future.

I would agree with Ryzen 3600 choice, once prices come down and availability improves you can easily swap it out to 5800x or even 5900x. The 3200Mhz looks like the sweet spot for gaming and going above that only get you very marginal improvement in FPS.

I would worry too much about the cooler, even stock cooler should keep the temps under control, all down to aesthetics. Your PSU choice is solid

Just glad you managed to bad a 3080 FE unlike myself

I thought all the x570s really had over the b550s was the PCIe Gen 4 across all of the slots, is that what you're meaning?

Ah man, hope you manage to grab the 3080 soon. Feel a bit guilty since I hadn't even intended to get the 3080 originally, was after either of the cheaper FEs but when I managed to get it in the basket I just grabbed it while I had chance to end the search. Not complaining though, just saves me upgrading for that bit longer. Really I wanted to spend around £1200-1300, the 3080 already pushed that to £1500-1600 which is what's making me not so comfortable about bumping the price further with a higher processor or ram. Especially when I'm also gonna need a new monitor. I try not to think about that.

[wazzickle]

First off thanks to all of you for your suggestions, I don't know how to do the thanks thing on the board, couldn't see a button for it.



Maybe I'm going to invalidate myself here because I know I'm an outlier but I feel like perhaps I should mention having all the frames doesn't matter too much to me, I'm quite happy at 30fps, been used to it for plenty of years lol. Ultimately I could also just knock down to 1440p if I had to. I had also watched a video from jaystwocents where he said no gaming PC needs more than 16gb RAM, was the 32gb suggestion more for over time or would you just disagree with what he's saying?

As for the overclocking I actually wasn't planning on doing any of that really to be honest, would be far too afraid of breaking something messing with stuff I don't understand.

The thanks button is on the bottom left but I think it might be one of those things where you need a minimum number of posts or something.

You're not an outlier in not wanting to overclock, I'd say it's outliers who want to overclock overall, but you can call this place Skew Gardens because this is where all the outliers come to compare notes.

You're really actually happy at 30fps? I suspect that's because you've never been exposed to higher. It's very much like a bigger screen and higher resolution in that once you go there it's hard to go back. Which I guess is actually a reason to stick with it. My understanding is that there's no logical or mathematical difference between 30fps @ 4k is the same as 120fps @ 1080p for which you don't need a 3080 - you could probably get away with a 3060 or 3060ti - and maybe even just 8gb ram, and not that fast a processor.

Jay2c obviously knows a lot more about these things than me, but I've seen it elsewhere suggested that true 4k gaming - i.e. getting high refresh rates and good enough detail level to satisfy enthusiasts - requires 32gb ram.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With regards to you both mentioning about a cpu upgrade I had a little look and I could get a 3800x for the same price as a 3700x at £270ish but don't the 3800 and 5800 run a bit hotter than the 3600? Would the coolers I was looking at still be alright for them?

Its still about £110 price increase over the 3600, the thinking I had with the 3600 was as thegreat88 mentioned below that I could upgrade that if needed when the higher 5000s come down in price.

I mean you could try and see if the Ryzen 5 3600 is OK and then get a better CPU down the line. However Hardware Unboxed did point out in CPU limited scenarios,Ampere really does need a decent enough CPU for their higher end models.

AWD-IT do essentially sell the Ryzen 7 5800X for around £380 in these bundles:
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-7...pu-bundle.html
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-7...pu-bundle.html

WRT to the Ryzen 7 3700X/3800X - my Ryzen 7 3700X doesn't seem too bad with its low profile Noctua cooler. The Ryzen 7 3800X/5800X might run hotter due to their higher TDPs though.

Edit!!

There are also some decent bundles on the Ryzen 9 3900 non-X too:
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-9...pu-bundle.html
https://www.awd-it.co.uk/amd-ryzen-9...pu-bundle.html

[Phage]

I have a 5800x and they run as hot as your cooler will allow. So under my 360 AIO i'm hitt6ing 4.85GHz across all cores without touching a thing.
A H100 is fine. the bigger the cooler - the faster the chip will run

https://forums.hexus.net/cpus/423576...teresting.html

[Drago MkII]

The thanks button is on the bottom left but I think it might be one of those things where you need a minimum number of posts or something.

You're not an outlier in not wanting to overclock, I'd say it's outliers who want to overclock overall, but you can call this place Skew Gardens because this is where all the outliers come to compare notes.

You're really actually happy at 30fps? I suspect that's because you've never been exposed to higher. It's very much like a bigger screen and higher resolution in that once you go there it's hard to go back. Which I guess is actually a reason to stick with it. My understanding is that there's no logical or mathematical difference between 30fps @ 4k is the same as 120fps @ 1080p for which you don't need a 3080 - you could probably get away with a 3060 or 3060ti - and maybe even just 8gb ram, and not that fast a processor.

Jay2c obviously knows a lot more about these things than me, but I've seen it elsewhere suggested that true 4k gaming - i.e. getting high refresh rates and good enough detail level to satisfy enthusiasts - requires 32gb ram.

Ah ok yeh the button isn't there so I guess that's it.

I was actually meaning I was an outlier for not being so bothered about the frame rate rather than the overclocking. But yeh, I've never really had a problem with 30fps. I have played some games with higher frame rate and it felt a bit like soap opera effect to me but as you say that would probably get better with more exposure. Given that Ive got the 3080 already I'll go to whatever frames it can manage, I just mean I'm not too bothered about spending a chunk more to eek out every last frame possible is all.

I mean you could try and see if the Ryzen 5 3600 is OK and then get a better CPU down the line. However Hardware Unboxed did point out in CPU limited scenarios,Ampere really does need a decent enough CPU for their higher end models.

So I went looking for videos from hardware unboxed on the 3600, I don't think I found the one you were referring to but I found one from them about pairing the 3600 with a 3080 (couldn't post the link due to less than 5 posts). He does say that the 3600 would be better paired with a $500 GPU (so I guess 3070) but he also showed that the difference between it and even a 3950x with a 3080 is pretty minimal at 1440p and basically nothing at 4k.

The 3600 has actually come down another tenner now so I can get it for £151. I just don't think it feels justified to spend 80% more for 2 extra cores and not much performance difference for gaming in the 3700/800x let alone the even more expensive 5800x. Perhaps if the 3700x was around the £220 mark it would seem a more attractive prospect.

I'm sorry, it feels like I'm just disregarding your suggestions but I do appreciate them and the effort with those deal links. I just don't really want to be spending more than I need to when it's already costing so much.

I have a 5800x and they run as hot as your cooler will allow. So under my 360 AIO i'm hitt6ing 4.85GHz across all cores without touching a thing.
A H100 is fine. the bigger the cooler - the faster the chip will run

Thanks for this, interesting to read.

[cptwhite_uk]

If you're 4K gaming, then you're almost certainly going to be GPU bottlenecked, even with an RTX 3080, so a Ryzen 3600 will be a fair choice I feel if you're working to a budget. It does seem a little off balance with a RTX 3080, but putting pricing aside, it's a fair option for 4K gaming.

In terms of FPS it really depends on the type of games you're playing. Personally I can't really imagine playing with less than 60fps in any game these days. I think 90fps is where the payoff starts to deminish. The law of deminishing returns comes into play above that. By that I mean to "feel" the same difference between 60 and 90, you'd need to get to 140-150fps to "feel" a noticeable improvement in fluidity to a similar degree than you perceive between 60 and 90, if that makes sense - going from 90 to 120, doesn't feel as dramatic as 60 to 90, even though you're adding 30fps on each jump.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

So I went looking for videos from hardware unboxed on the 3600, I don't think I found the one you were referring to but I found one from them about pairing the 3600 with a 3080 (couldn't post the link due to less than 5 posts). He does say that the 3600 would be better paired with a $500 GPU (so I guess 3070) but he also showed that the difference between it and even a 3950x with a 3080 is pretty minimal at 1440p and basically nothing at 4k.

The 3600 has actually come down another tenner now so I can get it for £151. I just don't think it feels justified to spend 80% more for 2 extra cores and not much performance difference for gaming in the 3700/800x let alone the even more expensive 5800x. Perhaps if the 3700x was around the £220 mark it would seem a more attractive prospect.

I'm sorry, it feels like I'm just disregarding your suggestions but I do appreciate them and the effort with those deal links. I just don't really want to be spending more than I need to when it's already costing so much.

I don't disagree at all the Ryzen 5 3600 is excellent value!

However,if you are running older games,which are more single core dependent,a Ryzen 5 3600 is easily beaten by a sub £200 Core i5 10600K. Stuff like Fallout,Skyrim,etc will generally run much better on the latter especially if modding games,etc. I say this as someone on Zen2 with a "lowly" GTX1080,it can be seen even with such a GPU.

Igors Lab tested HZD:
https://www.igorslab.de/en/driver-ov...own-drivers/5/

Under DX12/Vulkan AMD GPUs have less CPU issues - Nvidia seems to have more CPU issues now. AMD is more bottlenecked under DX11,but most games implementing RT use DX12/Vulkan,and Nvidia is showing problems already.

It seems Igor thinks Nvidia ASync compute is not working properly.

Its not about FPS,but FPS variance especially minimums. Its very easy to see CPU bottlenecks at 1440P and 4K because it manifests itself in poor frametimes and minimums. So the FPS looks OK but its not smooth. This is going to not improve as time progresses - the consoles have a CPU with 8 Zen2 cores running at 3.6~3.8GHZ which is a big upgrade over the previous generation.

Remember,we are at an intergenerational time in games. We went from a 4C/4T Core i5 7600K thrashing a 6C/12T Ryzen 5 1600 in 2017,to the latter now showing increasingly consistent gameplay despite loosing in single core performance. This happened in 3 years. This was in an era of consoles which had 8 Atom class cores. Now we have a console era,with double the thread count,and a few times the single core performance. The consoles basically have the CPU performance of a downclocked Ryzen 7 3700X(especially the XBox Series X). Games which you see now,are using the older console generation as the baseline,but over the next 12~24 months its going to shift increasingly to the next generation.

Hardware Unboxed were one of the few to point out this would happen with the Ryzen 5 1600,and it happened.

So as long as you realise the CPU is a stop-gap then its OK,but I wouldn't promise you won't have issues over time. The AM4 platform does have good options,so if the Zen3 CPUs drop in price it should be an easy upgrade.

Also,just to pick up on this:

Crucial Ballistix RGB 16GB 3200/3600MHz £80-90 if I can actually get hold of it from the UK, looked at PNY XLR8 3200MHz £70 as an alternative though I read that wouldn't be so great if I ever wanted to overclock it a bit.

Try your best to get the Crucial kit as it has a very high chance of getting Micron E-die. I would do some research on the PNY XLR8 kit and see what memory ICs it uses. Basically Micron E-die and Samsung B-die seem to be the safest choices with Zen2 and Zen3. Hynix CJR is not as good but you can tune it a bit. Ideally you want at least 3200MHZ DDR4 tuned to CL14,or 3600MHZ DDR4 at CL16 or lower.

I couldn't get the Crucial kit last year,so got the Adata XPG Gammix D10 kit which has a 50:50 chance of Micron E-die or Hynix CJR. I got the latter,which is OK but took some tuning to get it to similar performance to the Crucial kit at stock.

[wazzickle]

Cat, your public profile system seems.... misleading :-D

What do you use?

[kalniel]

It seems Igor thinks Nvidia ASync compute is not working properly.

That's really interesting - I've seen some odd results and had initially thought it was something unique to a particular reviewers set up, often an unusual variation in min frame rates for eg. but they keep cropping up and this might explain it. AMD were always strong on async compute and Nvidia seemed to be playing catchup, didn't realise they still might be.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Cat, your public profile system seems.... misleading :-D

What do you use?

I have been slowly upgrading my system over a few years. Had a Xeon E3 1230 V2/Core i7 3770 until late 2018(was on socket 1155 for nearly 7 years).

The following:
Ryzen 7 3700X with Noctua L12S low profile CPU cooler
Asus B450I mini-ITX motherboard
32GB Adata SPG D10 3600MHZ RAM(Hynix CJR)
GTX1080FE
Corsair SF600 600W SFX PSU
WD SN700 500GB NVME SSD
WD Blue 500GB SATA SSD
Crucial MX500 1TB SATA SSD
Toshiba E300 3TB HDD
Slightly falling apart Riotoro CR280 mini-ITX case as a stop-gap(was bought damaged off Amazon for £14)
Dell UP2516D qHD monitor
Xtrfy XG1-R mechanical keyboard(red keys)
Logitech G502SE
Sennheiser PC350SE headset

That's really interesting - I've seen some odd results and had initially thought it was something unique to a particular reviewers set up, often an unusual variation in min frame rates for eg. but they keep cropping up and this might explain it. AMD were always strong on async compute and Nvidia seemed to be playing catchup, didn't realise they still might be.

Its all rather fascinating and worth further investigation IMHO. But I also notice even AMD RT performance in some titles isn't as bad as you would think. So it makes me wonder whether like with tessellation,certain RT effects cause AMD more issues too.

[Ulti]

Ah ok yeh the button isn't there so I guess that's it.

I was actually meaning I was an outlier for not being so bothered about the frame rate rather than the overclocking. But yeh, I've never really had a problem with 30fps. I have played some games with higher frame rate and it felt a bit like soap opera effect to me but as you say that would probably get better with more exposure. Given that Ive got the 3080 already I'll go to whatever frames it can manage, I just mean I'm not too bothered about spending a chunk more to eek out every last frame possible is all.



So I went looking for videos from hardware unboxed on the 3600, I don't think I found the one you were referring to but I found one from them about pairing the 3600 with a 3080 (couldn't post the link due to less than 5 posts). He does say that the 3600 would be better paired with a $500 GPU (so I guess 3070) but he also showed that the difference between it and even a 3950x with a 3080 is pretty minimal at 1440p and basically nothing at 4k.

The 3600 has actually come down another tenner now so I can get it for £151. I just don't think it feels justified to spend 80% more for 2 extra cores and not much performance difference for gaming in the 3700/800x let alone the even more expensive 5800x. Perhaps if the 3700x was around the £220 mark it would seem a more attractive prospect.

I'm sorry, it feels like I'm just disregarding your suggestions but I do appreciate them and the effort with those deal links. I just don't really want to be spending more than I need to when it's already costing so much.



Thanks for this, interesting to read.

As someone with a 3600, I think it's excellent value. Mind you I don't actually play triple AAA titles though but I do play on 1440p and I do appreciate 144fps.

I've only got a more ancient GTX 1070 now and for the games that I currently play (FF14 and Genshin Impact), it's generally fine but I can't hit 144fps. My situation is different though in that my GPU is a lot weaker than yours but if I had a RTX 3080FE and I was on a budget, I would go for the 3600 too and worry about upgrading if needed in the future as it should be a simple drop in process.

The 5800 looks really good performance wise so maybe in the future you can grab one of them for cheap and not having to change motherboard or anything else should make it easy (depending on your cooler choice it may be a bit of hassle though to uninstall the cooler).

My thinking is pretty much the same as you though, I can't justify a 3800 for even £250 if 3600 only cost me £150. Those 2 extra cores should only cost me 33% more (as it's 33% more cores) so the max I'd be willing to pay is £200 or thereabouts for a 3800 really.

I have been tempted to get a 3900 back when I saw them for around £300 though - 12 cores and 24 threads with the same 65W TDP for basically double the price of a 3600 but for my general workload, it just wasn't needed, and it wouldn't have really helped in games.

I guess going for the mid-range is always the sweetspot - the low end is usually good value but just isn't powerful enough to last that long whilst the price increases on the high end is always exponential in that you pay like over 50% more for less than 20% of the next product down.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Evidence which shows issues with higher end Nvidia dGPUs and lower end CPUs. Some of those frametime variances seem to be an issue with Ampere more than with an RX6800XT. I just think if you can find £600 for a dGPU,a £150 spend on a CPU is a bit low. To put in context it makes for a more balanced system to have got a RTX3070FE for £470 and a better CPU. A good CPU will last more than one GPU upgrade.

This is the same issue GCN had under DX11 against Maxwell and Pascal. Nvidia enabled better DX11 multi-threading driver support,so until Vega/RDNA1,Nvidia simply scaled better in DX11 games with a slower CPU than AMD.

Now it seems with DX12/Vulkan the same is happening with Ampere,which has gone a very GCN like approach with a ton of shaders. Remember,RDNA1/RDNA2 uses hardware scheduling and AFAIK Ampere is still using a software scheduler.

For the last 10 years,I have always matched my CPU upgrades and GPU upgrades together,ie,if I have a slower GPU I can get away with a slower CPU. When I got hold of this GTX1080 it broke that typical mould of what I did,my Xeon E3 1230 V2 was definitely a bottleneck even at qHD. When I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 2600,it was noticeably faster,and the Ryzen 7 3700X shows CPU gains at qHD. I really surprised,and in some ways I should have gotten a Core i7 8700 at the start.

[Ulti]

The problem is people are ignoring the evidence which shows issues with higher end Nvidia dGPUs and lower end CPUs. Some of those frametime variances seem to be an issue with Ampere more than with an RX6800XT. I just think if you can find £600 for a dGPU,its kind of weird to want to spend £150 on a CPU. To put in context it makes for a more balanced system to have got a RTX3070FE for £470 and a better CPU.

For the last 10 years,I have always matched my CPU upgrades and GPU upgrades together,ie,if I have a slower GPU I can get away with a slower CPU. When I got hold of this GTX1080 it broke that typical mould of what I did,my Xeon E3 1230 V2 was definitely a bottleneck even at qHD. When I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 2600,it was noticeably faster,and the Ryzen 7 3700X shows even more CPU gains at qHD. I really surprised,and in some ways I should have gotten a Core i7 8700 at the start.

I can't speak for the OP but for myself, the problem is pricing. The 3800/5800 just isn't great value at the moment and I'm patient enough to wait for it to be better value. I can live with taking a 3-4% hit 1% of the time to my FPS and keep the ~£100 or so difference for something else.