[SOLVED] First PC Build - Am I Doing Anything Dumb Here?

[bbabraham]

I haven't even owned a PC in 10 years (only work laptops) so I'm a serious noob here but I've spent the last week reading up as much as I can on how to build a PC and the individual components. I decided to go the "build myself" route so I could get better bang for my buck. The byproduct is that I've actually really enjoyed researching everything and understanding all these components that make up a computer.

Purpose: Primarily for video editing for my YouTube channel (currently @ 1080p 60fps but looking to upgrade to 4k in the next 6 months). Since I'll have a capable PC, I'll end up using it for gaming too.

Location: London, UK

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/7qkr8M

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor
£436.15 @ Amazon (up from £418.32 a week ago)

I chose AMD as my research indicated it was better for video editing with its extra cores and threads. Initially I planned to get the Ryzen 7 3700X @£281 but I've managed to talk myself into spending more.

Cooling: Wraith Prism Cooler
[included with CPU]

I assume this is sufficient but I could upgrade down the line if needed?

Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS MASTER ATX AM4 Motherboard
£374.98 @ Amazon (out of stock @ £357.13)

I decided to go with the expensive X570 to get PCIe 4.0 and also future proof myself. I watched and read a lot of hardware reviews and this MoBo was very highly spoken of.

RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory
£179.99 @ Newegg

This said it's optimised for AMD Ryzen 3000 series (whatever that means?) and is a really good price compared to 3200 or CL18. I can buy this again in the future if I want to double my RAM. MoBo supports 3600 (and up to 4400 actually) and up to 128GB. So there's room for expansion in the future.

SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
£169.99 @ Amazon

I wanted to get NVME to utilise the PCIe 4.0 but I thought I'd have to get a small one plus HDD. 1 TB was surprisingly affordable. I've got three M.2 ports on the MoBo so I can add more bulk storage down the line when I need to - whether that be NVME or SATA.

Case: Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic ATX Full Tower Case
£181.88 @ Amazon (out of stock @ £115.00) - worth waiting for the lower priced seller to get stock.

I went into this not giving a damn about RGB. I didn't even know what RGB was a week ago. Then I saw this case and I fell in love lol. The reviews I saw were really good (with 3 fans placed on the side) plus it's big and said to be easy to build in and hide cables. Great for a noob like me who is scared of stuff not fitting.

GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB AORUS Video Card
£576.01 @ Amazon (out of stock @ £357.13)

Originally I planned to go the value for money route with an AMD RX 5700 XT @ around £380 but a friend who has this video card and is to this day still having major problems with it (even post software updates), convinced me to rather upgrade to an RTX 2070 Super.

I then had the Gigabyte GAMING OC version (boost to 1815MHz) @ £492.97 and ASUS DUAL EVO OC version (boost to 1845MHz) @ £519.98 as considerations but when I saw the AORUS (boost to 1905MHz) I just loved the aesthetics so much more (especially vertically mounted) and since the case displays everything so beautifully, I talked myself into paying more for the extra boost and aesthetics.

Fans: Corsair LL120RGB LED (Three Fans With Lighting Node PRO) 43.25 CFM 120 mm Fans
£75.99 @ Currys PC World

The case doesn't come with fans and I suppose I'm committed to RGB now. I saw pcpartpicker builds with my selected case and GPU mounted vertically and loved how they looked with 9 of these 120mm fans. Not sure how good their performance is?

I can start with 3 fans for now.

Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
£107.99 @ Corsair

I haven't really researched this enough yet. I was mostly copying other builds and since the price of 750W and 850W wasn't much different, I was conservative. I'm not sure if my amps and rails etc are correct.

Vertical Mount: I need to research this further to find a good one and see what effect it has on cooling. Would appreciate suggestions.

Keyboard: Busy researching. Would appreciate suggestions.

Monitor: I've got something that will do for now. I look to upgrade to 4k down the road.

Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64 bit

Having had so much fun planning all of this, I think I'll actually play around with some basic overclocking. Partly to try maximise performance but also just because it sounds interesting.

My total cost is probably double what I planned for but I kept rationalizing my way into something more expensive at every step 🙁

Have I made any mistakes in my build? If I've left out any detail that you need, please let me know

 

[bbabraham]

Oh and also - what's likely to be my bottleneck here? What will age first?

 

[Phaaze88]

1)Cpu cooler
It isn't really sufficient with a 3900X. Even less so starting off with only 3 chassis fans...
Alternative: you're really looking at just liquid coolers here. The O11's available height for air coolers rules out many options there. Therefore, 240 or 360mm AIOs.

2)The PCIe 4.0 thing
Unless you do the following:
-run databases
-run VMs(virtual machines)
-edit 4K or larger photos
-SLI 2080Ti or other equally high bandwidth gpu. A 2080Ti over-saturates PCIe 3.0 only at x8 mode or lower.
-transfer files on the regular between other SSDs - an HDD will cripple that.
You won't benefit from PCIe 4.0. So do not put so much focus on it.

3)Fans
Those are expensive chassis fans, so I hope you are committed to the RGB fad.
Do not try to use them as a replacement for radiator fans. That is not the purpose of these, nor do they have the muscle necessary for doing so.

4)Psu
A 650w RMX would've been enough here, but whatever. I'd rather see people with overkill psus than ones who cheap out.

5)Vertical gpu mounting
It affects:
-gpu thermals. The closer you can get it to the mobo, the better. Avoid kits that position the axial fan cooled gpus flush/close to the glass.
-sound profile tends to be louder with V-gpu. The fans are aimed at the side panel - and probably you - after all.
-fan setup. Axial fan cooled gpus will exhaust their heat in all x-axis directions, after which the exhaust fans will pull it out. With V-gpu, that same gpu will dump it's waste heat both vertically and horizontally.
This renders bottom intake fans useless, because the intake air runs into the gpu exhaust air, where it will then stagnate and create a hotspot. You'd be better off having bottom exhaust, or not placing fans down there at all.

6)Do not overclock on Ryzen 3000
Just don't. What works on Intel's cpus doesn't work well with these. Any OC you could achieve with Ryzen 3000 is easily outdone by having a great cpu cooler and high ram frequency with low timings.
If you really want to overclock, go Intel, though that's just bad advice to suggest basing a purchase on a hobby...

7)Price
If that's still a concern, then knock it down a notch - IF you're willing. If not, then disregard the following:
Cpu: 3700X/3800X. Can game and video edit just fine on these. Plus, a top tier cpu isn't needed for 4K gaming; that's all gpu bound anyway.
Motherboard: Check out Msi's X570 Tomahawk or Unify, or Asus X570 TUF Gaming Plus.
SSD: Goes without saying that there are more affordable options here. No PCIe 4.0 capability, but as I said before, I don't believe you'd benefit from it. Sabrent Rocket Q, Kingston A2000, WD Blue SN550 are a few cheaper options.
Chassis: Because it comes with NO FANS, that makes it more expensive than it appears. You can still get a nice box with SOME fans and replace them later. Alts: NZXT H700, Phanteks P600S, Cooler Master H500, or Corsair 570X.

8)Age
The gpu will show it's age first, even more so at 4K.

 

[bbabraham]

1)Cpu cooler
It isn't really sufficient with a 3900X. Even less so starting off with only 3 chassis fans...
Alternative: you're really looking at just liquid coolers here. The O11's available height for air coolers rules out many options there. Therefore, 240 or 360mm AIOs.

2)The PCIe 4.0 thing
Unless you do the following:
-run databases
-run VMs(virtual machines)
-edit 4K or larger photos
-SLI 2080Ti or other equally high bandwidth gpu. A 2080Ti over-saturates PCIe 3.0 only at x8 mode or lower.
-transfer files on the regular between other SSDs - an HDD will cripple that.
You won't benefit from PCIe 4.0. So do not put so much focus on it.

3)Fans
Those are expensive chassis fans, so I hope you are committed to the RGB fad.
Do not try to use them as a replacement for radiator fans. That is not the purpose of these, nor do they have the muscle necessary for doing so.

4)Psu
A 650w RMX would've been enough here, but whatever. I'd rather see people with overkill psus than ones who cheap out.

5)Vertical gpu mounting
It affects:
-gpu thermals. The closer you can get it to the mobo, the better. Avoid kits that position the axial fan cooled gpus flush/close to the glass.
-sound profile tends to be louder with V-gpu. The fans are aimed at the side panel - and probably you - after all.
-fan setup. Axial fan cooled gpus will exhaust their heat in all x-axis directions, after which the exhaust fans will pull it out. With V-gpu, that same gpu will dump it's waste heat both vertically and horizontally.
This renders bottom intake fans useless, because the intake air runs into the gpu exhaust air, where it will then stagnate and create a hotspot. You'd be better off having bottom exhaust, or not placing fans down there at all.

6)Do not overclock on Ryzen 3000
Just don't. What works on Intel's cpus doesn't work well with these. Any OC you could achieve with Ryzen 3000 is easily outdone by having a great cpu cooler and high ram frequency with low timings.
If you really want to overclock, go Intel, though that's just bad advice to suggest basing a purchase on a hobby...

7)Price
If that's still a concern, then knock it down a notch - IF you're willing. If not, then disregard the following:
Cpu: 3700X/3800X. Can game and video edit just fine on these. Plus, a top tier cpu isn't needed for 4K gaming; that's all gpu bound anyway.
Motherboard: Check out Msi's X570 Tomahawk or Unify, or Asus X570 TUF Gaming Plus.
SSD: Goes without saying that there are more affordable options here. No PCIe 4.0 capability, but as I said before, I don't believe you'd benefit from it. Sabrent Rocket Q, Kingston A2000, WD Blue SN550 are a few cheaper options.
Chassis: Because it comes with NO FANS, that makes it more expensive than it appears. You can still get a nice box with SOME fans and replace them later. Alts: NZXT H700, Phanteks P600S, Cooler Master H500, or Corsair 570X.

8)Age
The gpu will show it's age first, even more so at 4K.

Really, really appreciate the comprehensive reply! I'm going to take my time working through all your points and researching different options.

Just a question though - I read your signature on future proofing being a lie. Do you think it's worthwhile going the X570 mobo route or not significant enough of a performance upgrade from something older like an X470 or B450 to justify the cost?

 

[Phaaze88]

The X570 motherboards are fine - picking up an X570 motherboard just for the PCIe 4.0 capability, is not.
Motherboards should be about the feature sets. Aim for the ones with the features you need, avoid paying extra for fluff you won't actually use; that is added to the board's cost after all.
-how many usb ports
-does it have usb-C
-does it have wifi or not
-gigabit ethernet
-sata ports
-number of M.2 devices supported
-extra pcie slots for sound cards, capture cards, or other add-in cards if you need them
-headers for RGB/ARGB devices: 12v for RGB, and 5v for ARGB - you can't criss-cross them
-bios flashback/dual bios
Things like that, and so on... yeah, it's probably a lot to think about, but it can be simplified: the 160-240Pound range will cover most user's needs. Higher than that, and the manufacturers really start loading up on the fluff...

Now, if you can find what you need with X470 or B450, that's great, but X570 - and the upcoming B550 models - do have one other advantage:
They can avoid potential bios updating woes from upgrading to Ryzen 4000, which launches later this year.

 

[Flayed]

I haven't even owned a PC in 10 years (only work laptops) so I'm a serious noob here but I've spent the last week reading up as much as I can on how to build a PC and the individual components. I decided to go the "build myself" route so I could get better bang for my buck. The byproduct is that I've actually really enjoyed researching everything and understanding all these components that make up a computer.

Purpose: Primarily for video editing for my YouTube channel (currently @ 1080p 60fps but looking to upgrade to 4k in the next 6 months). Since I'll have a capable PC, I'll end up using it for gaming too.

Location: London, UK

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/7qkr8M

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 3.8 GHz 12-Core Processor
£436.15 @ Amazon (up from £418.32 a week ago)

I chose AMD as my research indicated it was better for video editing with its extra cores and threads. Initially I planned to get the Ryzen 7 3700X @£281 but I've managed to talk myself into spending more.

Cooling: Wraith Prism Cooler
[included with CPU]

I assume this is sufficient but I could upgrade down the line if needed?

Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 AORUS MASTER ATX AM4 Motherboard
£374.98 @ Amazon (out of stock @ £357.13)

I decided to go with the expensive X570 to get PCIe 4.0 and also future proof myself. I watched and read a lot of hardware reviews and this MoBo was very highly spoken of.

RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory
£179.99 @ Newegg

This said it's optimised for AMD Ryzen 3000 series (whatever that means?) and is a really good price compared to 3200 or CL18. I can buy this again in the future if I want to double my RAM. MoBo supports 3600 (and up to 4400 actually) and up to 128GB. So there's room for expansion in the future.

SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
£169.99 @ Amazon

I wanted to get NVME to utilise the PCIe 4.0 but I thought I'd have to get a small one plus HDD. 1 TB was surprisingly affordable. I've got three M.2 ports on the MoBo so I can add more bulk storage down the line when I need to - whether that be NVME or SATA.

Case: Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic ATX Full Tower Case
£181.88 @ Amazon (out of stock @ £115.00) - worth waiting for the lower priced seller to get stock.

I went into this not giving a damn about RGB. I didn't even know what RGB was a week ago. Then I saw this case and I fell in love lol. The reviews I saw were really good (with 3 fans placed on the side) plus it's big and said to be easy to build in and hide cables. Great for a noob like me who is scared of stuff not fitting.

GPU: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB AORUS Video Card
£576.01 @ Amazon (out of stock @ £357.13)

Originally I planned to go the value for money route with an AMD RX 5700 XT @ around £380 but a friend who has this video card and is to this day still having major problems with it (even post software updates), convinced me to rather upgrade to an RTX 2070 Super.

I then had the Gigabyte GAMING OC version (boost to 1815MHz) @ £492.97 and ASUS DUAL EVO OC version (boost to 1845MHz) @ £519.98 as considerations but when I saw the AORUS (boost to 1905MHz) I just loved the aesthetics so much more (especially vertically mounted) and since the case displays everything so beautifully, I talked myself into paying more for the extra boost and aesthetics.

Fans: Corsair LL120RGB LED (Three Fans With Lighting Node PRO) 43.25 CFM 120 mm Fans
£75.99 @ Currys PC World

The case doesn't come with fans and I suppose I'm committed to RGB now. I saw pcpartpicker builds with my selected case and GPU mounted vertically and loved how they looked with 9 of these 120mm fans. Not sure how good their performance is?

I can start with 3 fans for now.

Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
£107.99 @ Corsair

I haven't really researched this enough yet. I was mostly copying other builds and since the price of 750W and 850W wasn't much different, I was conservative. I'm not sure if my amps and rails etc are correct.

Vertical Mount: I need to research this further to find a good one and see what effect it has on cooling. Would appreciate suggestions.

Keyboard: Busy researching. Would appreciate suggestions.

Monitor: I've got something that will do for now. I look to upgrade to 4k down the road.

Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64 bit

Having had so much fun planning all of this, I think I'll actually play around with some basic overclocking. Partly to try maximise performance but also just because it sounds interesting.

My total cost is probably double what I planned for but I kept rationalizing my way into something more expensive at every step 🙁

Have I made any mistakes in my build? If I've left out any detail that you need, please let me know

If you are quick Scan has the 3900X for £410
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/amd...8ghz-46ghz-turbo-64mb-l3-pcie-40-105w-cpu-oem
I don't think its worth paying so much for a 2070 Super you can get a perfectly good one for 480 to 500

A friend built a PC recently went all out on RGB stuff. Two weeks later he is like why did I spend so much on flashing lights they give me a headache lol

 

[Phaaze88]

A friend built a PC recently went all out on RGB stuff. Two weeks later he is like why did I spend so much on flashing lights they give me a headache lol

That cracked me up more than it should have...

 

[bbabraham]

I decided to drop the CPU down a level to a 3700X and the GPU down to a 5700 XT. There's stock issues on the the Lian Li cases so (having watched the Gamers Nexus reviews of cases), I got the Cooler Master TD 500 Mesh. No need for extra fans.

So that dropped my price quite a bit.

There were also PSU issues so I got the RM750x instead of the RM850.

Appreciate the help