Question Is This Build My Ultimate Productivity Machine?

[Regev]

Hi

I'm making my entire salary through my computer. I'm an author and copywriter/advertiser, and as part of my work i have to analyze a gazillion sources simultaneously. Often a large amount of tabs, documents with 350k words, spreadsheets, etc are all open simultaneously.

Currently I feel like my laptop (MacBook 12", with its core m3) is holding me back because 1. the screen real estate is too small, I scroll too much and have to quint my eyes. also I have to slouch forward to see the text. 2. It hangs up and stutters when there are too many things open, especially the massive text documents (I think the live spell checking is causing that), or when I develop websites with lots of tabs open. In short: I could use a new computer.

My goal is to maximize my productivity and output. I figured the machine shouldn't hinder me at all, it should let my work flow, with minimum hang-ups, scrolling, or any other de-motivations from actually getting things done. The MacBook 12" no longer fits the bill. Any little 1% increase in productivity will easily be worth the extra $ when I look at it over the long run.

So the point is to get the build where no extra improvement in dry specs will yield any extra improvement in actual productivity.

Here's what I built, I would much appreciate your thoughts:

CPU: Intel i9-9900 - I can get this one for 50% off through a family member who's an Intel engineer.

Motherboard: Gigabyte B-365M H / ASUS PRIME B365M-A / MSI B365M-PRO-VH / ASRock B365M-HDV. Similar price all of them. not sure which one is best? are they even good for the CPU or do they have inferior voltage circuitry? Edit: will the 365m chipset allow for the i9 to reach 5GHZ turboboost? one of Amazon's reviewers on one of the boards said: "This board uses B365 chipset for 8th and 9th gen I series processors including I5. However, overclocking is not supported so the CPU won't have enough power to run turbo boost and the ram will be capped at 2666mhz." I have a feeling he's wrong?

Memory: DDR 4 8G/2666 Samsung 3rd Party CL19 1.2V. Can change to HP DDR 4 8GB 3200 CL16 V6 if the difference between CL16 to CL19 is worth the $15 price difference. CPU supports 2666 anyway tho (I'm not gonna do any XMP trickery).

SSD: A-DATA SSD 512GB XPG SX8200 Pro M.2 2280 or Addlink S70 512GB or Intel 760P 512gb (I can get it for 50% off, which ends up costing same as the other two)

PSU: I hate cables: ANTEC PSU 550W Neo Eco Modular 80+

Mouse: no idea. need something as ergonomic as possible.

Speakers: Microlab SOLO6C? EDIFIER 2.0 R980T? Just stay with the built-in monitor speakers? It's mostly just for podcasts and YouTube videos (not music-centered).

Monitor: My main conflict. I estimate this is the part that influences my productivity the most. Small resolution slows me down (too much scrolling, re-arrangements, etc). Small screen slows me down, since the combination with a large resolution produces small fonts. There's also the famous screen size: productivity study from Apple. My main contenders so far:

• AOC / ViewSonic 31.5" 2K (2560x1440) IPS. Benefit: I can run 2K res natively and the fonts will be perfectly big enough for reading without scaling. In my opinion the sweet-spot (At least for my eyes). However at 93PPI I'm suspecting text won't look crispy and sharp enough?
• Philips 27" 4K IPS. Will have to use 200% scaling to make the text readable. Text will be razor-sharp I suppose, but I will effectively have to work on a 1920x1080 real estate (because of the enlarged UI). Not sure if that res is big enough for all my tasks. 70% extra real estate (on the 2K monitor above) does sound nice, but which is more important for productivity over many hours at a time: the real estate or the text sharpness?
• 40-43" 4K monitor (or TV?). Unmatched real estate. Perhaps too big? Also can run natively at 4K, no need to scale anything since the text will be large enough at 43". Tho will the neck hurt from moving? will I have to move my head? is it too large? and will the text not look sharp enough because it's 4k spread across 40-43 inches? The massive size does tempt tho.

What do you guys think?
Would love to hear your ideas and thoughts.
Thanks.

edit: forgot to mention - running on Linux, if it changes component selection in any way.

 

[Regev]

Another possibility: buying 2 24" 4K monitors for the text clarity, and scaling them 200% (for a workspace of FHD each). Or 2 27" 4Ks (which are oddly cheaper), tho I'd have to sit a bit far away after scaling cause I think FHD-size text on 27 will be too large.

The questios, can the onboard graphics on the i9 9900 support 2 (or three, maybe down the line ) 4K monitors at 60hz each? Of course that also means finding a motherboard with 2 HDMI2.0 and 1 DisplayPort, or vise versa, if it even exists.

 

[Regev]

Guys can the MSI B365M-PRO-VH (or any other B365) support the i9-9900 turbo-boosting without the VRM going crazy and throttling back? I see lots of people recommending not to put the i9-9900K with anything but a "high quality" Z390 board (which all look ridiculous to me with their gaming designs), but that's a K processor (95W) as opposed to the non-K we're talking about (65W). Question is, on stock don't they both draw the same power when turbo boosted to the max?