A $250 CPU cooler for a $200 Ryzen processor that isn't likely to ever hit 100 watts of power draw? That seems like a terrible use of funds. A $300 motherboard isn't going to help performance either compared to one costing half as much. For what this build spends on unnecessary fluff and RGB bling, you could throw in a decent 1440p 144Hz monitor and still have enough left over for some higher-performing components.
What a horrible way to spend $2000. Making it pretty, vs performance, is simply never a good idea. Far superior streaming, and gaming performance.
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor ($418.95 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: EVGA CLC 280 113.5 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($109.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($114.89 @ B&H)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Intel 660p 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($62.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial MX500 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($229.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER 8 GB BLACK GAMING Video Card ($699.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case ($69.98 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($114.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1981.76
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-13 10:58 EDT-0400
That's definitely a more practical and better-performing build than the one in the article, but a 3900X might be a bit overkill for most gaming-focused systems for the near-future, and a 3700X would result in virtually identical gaming performance for $130 less. You could also get away with an even less-expensive aftermarket cooler than that, or maybe even the stock Prism cooler. I also don't really see the point in getting a 2TB SATA SSD alongside a 512GB NVMe boot drive when the 2TB version of that NVMe drive costs the same as the SATA drive, and handles large transfers better than the smaller version. So, you could do without the second half-terabyte drive and still have more capacity than the build in the article. Those changes alone could save as much as $300 over your build, which would nearly be enough to move up to a 2080 Ti. Or maybe put it toward a monitor, or improve some other parts of the build instead, like a better case, X570 motherboard and perhaps some RGB RAM if we want it a bit more comparable to the build in the article.
I would rather have a brand new 2070 SUPER than a used graphics card with no returns accepted and only a year of warranty remaining for close to $500. A 2070 SUPER costs about the same, gets similar performance, and offers new features like raytracing acceleration, along with a full three years of warranty covereage on most models. With a card in this price range, I would want all the warranty I could get, unless you're fine with the idea of the card potentially failing after a year and having to buy a replacement. About the only benefit the 1080 Ti has over it is a bit more VRAM, but today's game's don't utilize that extra VRAM anyway.
A run of mill 9600K overclocks to 5ghz all core and blows the PBO overclocked 3800x away by 6% and the 3600x by 9% in gaming geomean of 99th percentile FPS in TH reviews.
Didn't Tom's Hardware just publish an article yesterday about how the 3600X is an all-around better processor than the 9600K... : P
https://www.tomshardware.com/features/amd-ryzen-5-3600x-vs-intel-core-i5-9600k
Sure, with an overclock you might be able to pull off slightly more performance in many lightly-threaded games at low resolutions, but the lack of SMT is already causing some frame rate instability in certain demanding titles, and that's only likely to become more of an issue in the future. And of course, we're not looking at low resolutions here, but rather 1440p, where graphics hardware will tend to be more of a limiting factor, especially when we're not pairing the processor with a super-high-end card like a 2080 Ti.
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