[SOLVED] Motherboard and GPU

[adir98]

Hello, I'm building a new PC and I'm stuck on the motherboard and GPU.

For the motherboard I'm undecided between the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro and the Asus Z390 E Gaming.
I know that the Gigabyte one has more VRM, which apparently is useful for overclocking, but how big is the difference?

For the GPU, I'm undecided between a Asus ROG RTX 2070 Super and a Asus ROG RTX 2080 Ti. Now obviously the 2080 Ti is better, but it's also twice the price, is it worth it?
Should I even choose between these two or wait for either the RTX 3070 or the RTX 3080?

The rest of my system would be:
Power Supply: Seasonic 750W 80+ Gold X-750 Modular & Active
CPU: Intel Core i9 9900K 3.6Ghz
CPU Air Cooler: Noctua NH-D15
Memory: HyperX FURY Black 2x8GB DDR4 3466MHz CL16 Kit
SSD Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus NVMe M.2 MZ-V7S1T0 1TB
HDD Storage: Seagate Barracuda HDD 2TB Sata III ST2000DM00

 

[ProgamerIV]

Hi!

Motherboard: The difference is not huge. If you plan to overclock the hell out of that i9, Asus will be just a tad better, but if that's not your thing, then make it a matter of which one you like more.

GPU: Depends on what you want to do. Do you have a 4K display, or a high refresh-rate 2K? Then it's worth it to go 2080Ti since the 2070 Super won't do any of those that well.
If you do 1080p high refresh-rate or 2k 60fps gaming, the 2070 Super will be enough for you. In that case, I wouldn't buy the 2080ti.

On a side note: are you sure you want to go Intel? And are you sure you want to go high-tier?

I know the internet is full of it right now, but that's for good reason: AMD Ryzen is more worth getting right now. Ryzen 9 3900X performs better in multi-threaded operations, delivers the same gaming performance, and can be had for a bit cheaper.

If you build this PC only for gaming / streaming, I would suggest you go down a tier on the CPU. It's not worth getting the i9 or Ryzen 9 for gaming machines, since games don't take advantage of the thread count increase compared to i7 and Ryzen 7. You could save money there and get more memory instead: 2x8GB is enough for now, but it will be your bottleneck before the other components get obsolete in this build. I would consider the Ryzen 7 3700X with a nice cooler, and a 2x16GB memory kit.

If you do heavy workloads on it, then of course go for the high-tier CPUs.

 

[adir98]

Hi!

Motherboard: The difference is not huge. If you plan to overclock the hell out of that i9, Asus will be just a tad better, but if that's not your thing, then make it a matter of which one you like more.

GPU: Depends on what you want to do. Do you have a 4K display, or a high refresh-rate 2K? Then it's worth it to go 2080Ti since the 2070 Super won't do any of those that well.
If you do 1080p high refresh-rate or 2k 60fps gaming, the 2070 Super will be enough for you. In that case, I wouldn't buy the 2080ti.

On a side note: are you sure you want to go Intel? And are you sure you want to go high-tier?

I know the internet is full of it right now, but that's for good reason: AMD Ryzen is more worth getting right now. Ryzen 9 3900X performs better in multi-threaded operations, delivers the same gaming performance, and can be had for a bit cheaper.

If you build this PC only for gaming / streaming, I would suggest you go down a tier on the CPU. It's not worth getting the i9 or Ryzen 9 for gaming machines, since games don't take advantage of the thread count increase compared to i7 and Ryzen 7. You could save money there and get more memory instead: 2x8GB is enough for now, but it will be your bottleneck before the other components get obsolete in this build. I would consider the Ryzen 7 3700X with a nice cooler, and a 2x16GB memory kit.

If you do heavy workloads on it, then of course go for the high-tier CPUs.

Thanks for your reply!

So you're saying the Asus motherboard is better. I also really like the bios of Asus better. If the Asus one is better then I'll go for it.
Does it support two m.2 NVMe drives?

I am aiming for at least 60 FPS with 1440p 144hz playing AAA games such as Star Citizen, Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto 5, etc.
Is it worth paying twice the price just for higher resolution and refresh rates? I mean it could be great to have those options, but is it worth the price?

As for the CPU, I do play quite a lot of demanding games, but I am developing on Unity engine and Blender so I do quite a bit of rendering and compiling, so I figured it would help me.

As for the RAM, I will get a second kit later down the line when 16 is just not enough anymore.

Thanks again!

 

[ProgamerIV]

Thanks for your reply!

So you're saying the Asus motherboard is better. I also really like the bios of Asus better. If the Asus one is better then I'll go for it.
Does it support two m.2 NVMe drives?

I am aiming for at least 60 FPS with 1440p 144hz playing AAA games such as Star Citizen, Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto 5, etc.
Is it worth paying twice the price just for higher resolution and refresh rates? I mean it could be great to have those options, but is it worth the price?

As for the CPU, I do play quite a lot of demanding games, but I am developing on Unity engine and Blender so I do quite a bit of rendering and compiling, so I figured it would help me.

As for the RAM, I will get a second kit later down the line when 16 is just not enough anymore.

Thanks again!

If you are a dev, then sure, get the high tier! I just commented that part since many users who plan to game only on their systems tend to go high-tier when it's not really necessary for them.

Yes, it does support 2 NVMe drives. One of the M.2 slots support SATA and PCIe (NVMe) M.2, the other does PCIe only, so they can both be used with NVMe drives (but only one can be used with a SATA M.2). Don't know which is which since it doesn't say on the spec sheet.

I do agree on the BIOS. As you can see in my signature, I have an Aorus motherboard in my main rig, and I absolutely hate the BIOS.

As for the GPU: it depends on you.
You said you're aiming for 2k 144Hz - the 2070 Super will not be enough for that. Even the 2080 is too weak - only the 2080Ti will be able to deliver that performance for you today.
However, I would never pay that much for it, but I'm personally not into high resolutions - I'm a 1080p 144Hz guy, I don't need 2k or 4k as I don't see them that much of a better experience considering how much more horsepower it takes to run them. I do know people who are really into 2k and 4k though, we're all different.

To try being somewhat objective on it: I would not recommend getting the 2080Ti (and therefore I would recommend postponing your 2k 144Hz aims for now) for the following reasons:

1. For higher resolutions it's not worth it since it can barely do 144Hz 2K even today, let alone 4k 60fps - it will not be able to do it in a short time.
2. The 2070 Super is fine for 2k 60fps / 1080p 144Hz today. It will be enough for another year or two, and it performs well even with ray tracing titles for now. When it gets too slow (which I think will be in 2 years), you'll probably be able to get RTX cards with a higher level of performance than the 2080Ti for much less when you'll need the upgrade.
3. Future-proofing is not really a great point here as the price difference is huge, and you'll be better off just upgrading the 2070 Super when the time comes to a future RTX GPU.

 

[adir98]

If you are a dev, then sure, get the high tier! I just commented that part since many users who plan to game only on their systems tend to go high-tier when it's not really necessary for them.

Yes, it does support 2 NVMe drives. One of the M.2 slots support SATA and PCIe (NVMe) M.2, the other does PCIe only, so they can both be used with NVMe drives (but only one can be used with a SATA M.2). Don't know which is which since it doesn't say on the spec sheet.

I do agree on the BIOS. As you can see in my signature, I have an Aorus motherboard in my main rig, and I absolutely hate the BIOS.

As for the GPU: it depends on you.
You said you're aiming for 2k 144Hz - the 2070 Super will not be enough for that. Even the 2080 is too weak - only the 2080Ti will be able to deliver that performance for you today.
However, I would never pay that much for it, but I'm personally not into high resolutions - I'm a 1080p 144Hz guy, I don't need 2k or 4k as I don't see them that much of a better experience considering how much more horsepower it takes to run them. I do know people who are really into 2k and 4k though, we're all different.

To try being somewhat objective on it: I would not recommend getting the 2080Ti (and therefore I would recommend postponing your 2k 144Hz aims for now) for the following reasons:

1. For higher resolutions it's not worth it since it can barely do 144Hz 2K even today, let alone 4k 60fps - it will not be able to do it in a short time.
2. The 2070 Super is fine for 2k 60fps / 1080p 144Hz today. It will be enough for another year or two, and it performs well even with ray tracing titles for now. When it gets too slow (which I think will be in 2 years), you'll probably be able to get RTX cards with a higher level of performance than the 2080Ti for much less when you'll need the upgrade.
3. Future-proofing is not really a great point here as the price difference is huge, and you'll be better off just upgrading the 2070 Super when the time comes to a future RTX GPU.

Yeah I will go for the Asus motherboard then.
I think I'll also go for the 2070 Super, since there's no point really in going further right now. Considering bang for buck.

Thanks again for your help!

 

[ProgamerIV]

Yeah I will go for the Asus motherboard then.
I think I'll also go for the 2070 Super, since there's no point really in going further right now. Considering bang for buck.

Thanks again for your help!

No problem! Good luck with the new build!