[SOLVED] Checks and advice would be much appreciated

[QuasarFaze]

Hi everyone. I'm a first-time builder looking for a bit of reassurance before I go spending a lot of money on components. First off, here's the list:


PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor ($329.00 @ B&H)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($89.90 @ B&H)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5 g Thermal Paste ($6.20 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS MASTER ATX AM4 Motherboard ($359.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($164.99 @ Best Buy)
Storage: Samsung 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($159.89 @ OutletPC)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($139.99 @ Adorama)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 570 8 GB NITRO+ Video Card ($259.14)
Case: Corsair 750D ATX Full Tower Case ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G3 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($105.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $1775.07
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-08-09 18:55 EDT-0400


There are a few points I'd like to get some feedback on please.


1. Is everything compatible? Specifically, I'd like to know if everything fits (I checked the RAM and cooler dimensions and they seem to clear just fine), but also if I'm missing anything due to my inexperience.

2. I'm building this system for productivity, not gaming. This involves some programming, data crunching, maybe some model rendering. That's why I'm not really focusing on the graphics card but I figure having 1080p for watching videos and such would be nice. Are there any better suggestions than what I put up? I'm not looking to spend a lot of money here.

3. Are there any particular thoughts about the motherboard? I've heard good things about the Master but if the chipset fan is loud like some say (this may have been said only before the BIOS update that gave fan settings) then I'd appreciate alternative suggestions.


Thanks a lot!

 

[AngelTech]

Everything should be fine if you can afford it tho I'd get a 3900X if the budget allowed it but the 3700X is a great choice and you can get an Intel 660P M.2 NVME for cheaper with more space on it (1 TB) also what sort of software will you be using? does any of them require a good GPU?

 

[QuasarFaze]

Everything should be fine if you can afford it tho I'd get a 3900X if the budget allowed it but the 3700X is a great choice and you can get an Intel 660P M.2 NVME for cheaper with more space on it (1 TB) also what sort of software will you be using? does any of them require a good GPU?

Thanks for the reply! I was actually tempted for a while to go for a 3900X, but I figure if I'm going to spend that much money on a CPU I may as well wait for the 3950X (and a price drop on it, haha) and just use the 3700X for now.

I appreciate the suggestion for the 660P, but I have concerns about its endurance so I decided to stick with the 970 Pro.

The software I've been using so far is pretty non-demanding graphically, mostly just putting up plots, heat maps, etc. That's why I've set 1080p video playback as the threshold, I really don't need anything else. If the 3700X had integrated graphics I would forego the graphics card altogether.

 

[AngelTech]

Thanks for the reply! I was actually tempted for a while to go for a 3900X, but I figure if I'm going to spend that much money on a CPU I may as well wait for the 3950X (and a price drop on it, haha) and just use the 3700X for now.

I appreciate the suggestion for the 660P, but I have concerns about its endurance so I decided to stick with the 970 Pro.

The software I've been using so far is pretty non-demanding graphically, mostly just putting up plots, heat maps, etc. That's why I've set 1080p video playback as the threshold, I really don't need anything else. If the 3700X had integrated graphics I would forego the graphics card altogether.

I see that's fair enough you could probably get away with a cheaper card such as this
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/VgYWGX/msi-geforce-gtx-1050-2gb-video-card-gtx-1050-2gt-oc

 

[QuasarFaze]

Thanks for the suggestion! That does look good enough for my purposes.

 

[scalx]

You know PCPartPicker.com is an affiliate link site, right? So you're probably getting a pretty awful deal in terms of pricing. You can find your graphics card for about $100 cheaper for instance.

 

[QuasarFaze]

You know PCPartPicker.com is an affiliate link site, right? So you're probably getting a pretty awful deal in terms of pricing. You can find your graphics card for about $100 cheaper for instance.

Yeah, I know, thanks. I'm buying from other places but I just put the PCPartPicker list up because it's easy to refer to.

 

[scalx]

Yeah, I know, thanks. I'm buying from other places but I just put the PCPartPicker list up because it's easy to refer to.

Just checking since it's your first build! If you're looking to shave down a few hundred bucks for pretty much the same performance, I'd go with the Samsung NVMe Evo (not the Pro since it's 2x more expensive for very marginal performance increase). The 1TB Evo is the same price as the 500GB Pro.

If you opt for a non spiffy looking mobo you can get one for $200 from Asus or Gigabyte, etc. and won't notice any real difference in performance. be quiet! cases are overpriced garbage but I'm not familiar with their coolers. If it's similiar build quality to the cases, I'd find an alternative.

If you're not planning on doing any gaming or GPU heavy stuff, you might go with a graphics card that doesn't double as a space heater at load since it'll make all of the PC's fans run significantly faster and hence noisier.

I'm using an Aorus mobo with an Rx 570 and the stock Ryzen cooler and honestly it's so quiet you can't tell it's on... until the GPU has to do anything.

Good luck with your build!

 

[QuasarFaze]

Just checking since it's your first build! If you're looking to shave down a few hundred bucks for pretty much the same performance, I'd go with the Samsung NVMe Evo (not the Pro since it's 2x more expensive for very marginal performance increase). The 1TB Evo is the same price as the 500GB Pro.

If you opt for a non spiffy looking mobo you can get one for $200 from Asus or Gigabyte, etc. and won't notice any real difference in performance. be quiet! cases are overpriced garbage but I'm not familiar with their coolers. If it's similiar build quality to the cases, I'd find an alternative.

If you're not planning on doing any gaming or GPU heavy stuff, you might go with a graphics card that doesn't double as a space heater at load since it'll make all of the PC's fans run significantly faster and hence noisier.

I'm using an Aorus mobo with an Rx 570 and the stock Ryzen cooler and honestly it's so quiet you can't tell it's on... until the GPU has to do anything.

Good luck with your build!

Thanks a lot! I appreciate the concern with it being my first build and your post was pretty insightful.

About the 970 Evo, I'm still actually really considering it (or the Evo Plus) given that I most likely won't need the added write performance of the Pro (unless I take up a YouTube hobby or something). The one thing that I really consider to be in the Pro's favor is that it's MLC whereas the Evo is TLC. Still, it's less of a concern than the 660P's QLC. Where I live, the difference between the Pro and Evo isn't quite 2x, more like 1.5x for the same capacity. I'll have to think about it.

The reason I went with the expensive Aorus Master is that I really don't want to upgrade it at all. I'm trying to build this system for about 10 years' worth of usage with the current parts (except for the graphics card) and replacing the motherboard seems like a huge hassle. The main thing I like is that it supports PCIe 4 (yeah, I know it's not worth it at the moment) and more importantly it has a lot of expansion options.

But I completely hear you on the graphics card. I prefer quiet and price at this point over graphical prowess, so I'll have to look up the individual model reviews.

About the be quiet! cooler, from what I've read it's actually very comparable to the Noctua NH-D15 except it's not an ugly brown. Quiet, performs well, looks good, so I opt for that over the Noctua. I actually originally wanted to get the Hyper 212 but they stopped selling the mounting kits for AM4 motherboards? That's... odd.

 

[scalx]

Thanks a lot! I appreciate the concern with it being my first build and your post was pretty insightful.

About the 970 Evo, I'm still actually really considering it (or the Evo Plus) given that I most likely won't need the added write performance of the Pro (unless I take up a YouTube hobby or something). The one thing that I really consider to be in the Pro's favor is that it's MLC whereas the Evo is TLC. Still, it's less of a concern than the 660P's QLC. Where I live, the difference between the Pro and Evo isn't quite 2x, more like 1.5x for the same capacity. I'll have to think about it.

The reason I went with the expensive Aorus Master is that I really don't want to upgrade it at all. I'm trying to build this system for about 10 years' worth of usage with the current parts (except for the graphics card) and replacing the motherboard seems like a huge hassle. The main thing I like is that it supports PCIe 4 (yeah, I know it's not worth it at the moment) and more importantly it has a lot of expansion options.

But I completely hear you on the graphics card. I prefer quiet and price at this point over graphical prowess, so I'll have to look up the individual model reviews.

About the be quiet! cooler, from what I've read it's actually very comparable to the Noctua NH-D15 except it's not an ugly brown. Quiet, performs well, looks good, so I opt for that over the Noctua. I actually originally wanted to get the Hyper 212 but they stopped selling the mounting kits for AM4 motherboards? That's... odd.

Happy to help! I'm very value/reliability oriented when it comes to builds (not necessarily cheap) because you can generally get 85%-90% of the performance on a $700 build as you can on a 2k build. But in 3 years if you built a new $700 PC, it'd run circles around the original 2k build because of technological advances (ie PCIe 4 won't sound as nice in a few years when PCIe 6 rolls around). That's just me though. I definitely think the PCIe 4 is worth it just for upgradability.

Regarding mothernoards, I'm not seeing much of a difference between the Master and these two:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-X570-P/specifications/ $170

https://asset.msi.com/pdf/main/us/presale_v2/MPG-X570-GAMING-EDGE-WIFI? $210

In my experience a mobo will die within the first week or so or last forever. Asus in particular seems to be bullet proof (my other PC is 10 years old on a Phenom II with an Asus mobo). The Samsung SSDs are also virtually indestructible. The 840 Evo 2.5 I have on that thing has 16k hours uptime and still has no performance loss.

If you're not overclocking, you might just try the stock cooler. In about 20 years or so of building, I've never had a CPU fail on stock coolers, which are also much easier to install. You could always just buy one after to see if the stock one meets your needs or spend the extra $90 on a better CPU, etc. Most of the people buying the aftermarket coolers are gamers, which makes no sense but my lord are they vocal about it.

Oh and if you are planning on using Windows, you can get a key for about $15 so don't buy it retail and I'd also recommend using tronscript once you're up and running to get all the bloat and tracking crap off of it.

Let me know how it goes! Once you get the hang of building it just takes about 30 minutes start to finish.

 

[QuasarFaze]

Happy to help! I'm very value/reliability oriented when it comes to builds (not necessarily cheap) because you can generally get 85%-90% of the performance on a $700 build as you can on a 2k build. But in 3 years if you built a new $700 PC, it'd run circles around the original 2k build because of technological advances (ie PCIe 4 won't sound as nice in a few years when PCIe 6 rolls around). That's just me though. I definitely think the PCIe 4 is worth it just for upgradability.

Regarding mothernoards, I'm not seeing much of a difference between the Master and these two:

https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-X570-P/specifications/ $170

https://asset.msi.com/pdf/main/us/presale_v2/MPG-X570-GAMING-EDGE-WIFI? $210

In my experience a mobo will die within the first week or so or last forever. Asus in particular seems to be bullet proof (my other PC is 10 years old on a Phenom II with an Asus mobo). The Samsung SSDs are also virtually indestructible. The 840 Evo 2.5 I have on that thing has 16k hours uptime and still has no performance loss.

If you're not overclocking, you might just try the stock cooler. In about 20 years or so of building, I've never had a CPU fail on stock coolers, which are also much easier to install. You could always just buy one after to see if the stock one meets your needs or spend the extra $90 on a better CPU, etc. Most of the people buying the aftermarket coolers are gamers, which makes no sense but my lord are they vocal about it.

Oh and if you are planning on using Windows, you can get a key for about $15 so don't buy it retail and I'd also recommend using tronscript once you're up and running to get all the bloat and tracking crap off of it.

Let me know how it goes! Once you get the hang of building it just takes about 30 minutes start to finish.

I hear you, that definitely makes a lot of sense regarding technological advances and value now vs. later. About the motherboard, I do see some good things out of the MSI board you listed, but the Pro Carbon one (at $260 has WiFi 6 support). At that point it's down to the Master having an additional PCIe 16 slot and 2.5G ethernet support. I'll have to think about this, but I do really appreciate the suggestions.

I did actually want to go with the stock cooler that comes with the 3700X, I've heard good things about it, but my friends insist I go with an aftermarket one. I do plan to overclock if my data processing becomes really demanding (no joke, some of my scripts take literally hours to run on my cheapo laptop), so I may as well be safe. If push comes to shove I may just avoid overclocking at first and buy the cooler later.

I actually plan on using Linux. I do use a few of Microsoft's tools like PowerBI but I can just use my laptop for that (they're not heavy on the hardware). I'm thinking Ubuntu but I've heard good things about Mint.

Thanks again for all the tips, and I'll let you know how it goes. Just expect it to take a while since I'm still saving up for it, haha. Maybe around the holiday season. If nothing else I appreciate having this talk, it's been fun.