[SOLVED] New PC Build

[Whateverworks_19]

Hi there,

I've been out of the hardware gaming space since 2015 and thus have outdated knowledge. I've also have had no need for upgraded hardware, as I have not played any intensive games for years and mostly use my computer for work. Until now, that has provided satisfactory performance. Not anymore however.

Thus, I've assembled components for a new PC and I wanted some guidance as to the sanity of my build. My current PC is from Haswell/Maxwell architecture.

Budget:

I think no more than $2K.

Requirements:

Well, I want to get back into gaming. I want to have high-graphics settings on a 1440p resolution. The most intensive game is probably going to be Escape from Tarkov and then some less intensive (or older) games.

However, I want to be able to play newer games when they come, preferably on high settings. I also want good performance when I work (I'm a developer), which for my needs boils down to a fast processor. Right now, performance is so bad, I need to use the laptop provided by my employer, but I really want to use my desktop again.

I'm also playing around with Unreal in my spare-time and I'd like to achieve good performance there as well. Compiling projects, consuming assets and so on is a pain on my current machine.

Also, I'd like to stay away from Nvidia, albeit I've always bought Nvidia (one could even say I used to be a fanboy), I've had too many issues on Linux and do not intent to go back.

Proposed Build:

This is where I need your help. I've tried to get back into the loop, look at benchmarks and so on. I know we recently got treated to DDR5 but looking at the price/performance, I'm really not that bothered for now. Let me know if I'm wrong.

This is what I landed on:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 3.7 GHz 12-Core Processor ($343.90 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler ($109.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B550-PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard ($135.99 @ Adorama)
Memory: Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory ($131.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($218.49 @ GameStop)
Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($218.49 @ GameStop)
Video Card: Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB Video Card ($439.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Pop Silent ATX Mid Tower Case ($95.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $1694.78
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-11-11 12:28 EST-0500

Suggestions:

Any suggestions for improvements? Any bad decisions on my part? Any other insights you guys can share?

Thanks a lot.

 

[Lutfij]

If I may ask, why do you have 2x2TB SSD's? I would introduce a smaller lower spec'd SSD like a 250GB or 500GB for the OS/app's/launchers. The larger SSD's can be used as game library drives. I would also look into a higher wattage (like 850W)PSU for headroom and longevity's sake. Maybe even look into a higher pedigree motherboard. Since you went with a Fractal chassis, I'd have looked into a Fractal AIO to wrap that arena up

Outside of that, the build looks, alright.

 

[Whateverworks_19]

Thanks for taking the time to reply! I appreciate it.

why do you have 2x2TB SSD's?

I wanted to use both M2 interfaces and frankly didn't put more thought into it. If I understand you right, it would be more appropriate to have a boot drive of say 250GB and then a main drive with more space, such as 3TB instead of dividing the space equally between the two M2 slots, is that correct?

I would also look into a higher wattage (like 850W)PSU

Aye! The reason why this is included, is because I already own it. Looking at the expected wattage draw, it seems to be appropriate but I can definitely have this upgrade on my radar. However, if you believe it may be too small already, I can upgrade it immediately. Let me know what you think.

Maybe even look into a higher pedigree motherboard

Any suggestions? I just landed on the Asus board because it had the 550 chipset, two M2's slots and seemed reasonably priced. However, I'm more than ears if you think another board would be more appropriate.

Since you went with a Fractal chassis, I'd have looked into a Fractal AIO

I did think about it, but I'm so much more into air cooling, I like silence and performance and in my experience, Noctua is on another level. Again though, this may be my outdated knowledge that speaks. Please correct me if I'm not making sense.

Also @Lutfij, thanks for taking the time to reply. That's very nice of you.

 

[Lafong]

I tend to agree with Lutfji on the drives.

You've alloted $437 for them.

I'd think more along the lines of 250 or 500 GB for boot drive, probably NVMe; but not necessarily PCIe 4.0 variety. Samsung 970 EVO Plus is a good PCIe 3.0 choice. Spend maybe 75 on this piece.

Other drive: maybe even 4 TB capacity. Right now I see a bunch of 4 TBs at Newegg or Amazon from $314 on up. Some NVMe, some standard SATA 2.5 inch. You won't notice a lot of performance difference amongst them.

Crucial MX500 is good choice in the 2.5 inch category.

Noctua cooler a good choice.

 

[Whateverworks_19]

Great! Thanks for chiming in @Lafong, I appreciate it.

I'll take your suggestions to heart and redo my storage components to account for your excellent suggestions.

I've given both of you an upvote but I'll grant Lutfij the solution for this post, given he was first. However, if I could give both of you it, I would've.

I'd still highly appreciate if either of you could address my follow up questions but you have both made me confident it's a decent build and also provided suggestions and that I am very grateful for.

 

[Lutfij]

Thank you for your kind gesture though in all honesty, I'm not here for the Best Solution awards, just to help people out, I also don't think I deserve the award With that being said, I'll remove the Best Solution award off my post and you can continue receiving answers from the community!

Could you mention a threshold to your budget if we were to tinker with your build? How old is the PSU that you currently own and what did it power throughout it's service?

 

[Lafong]

Great! Thanks for chiming in @Lafong, I appreciate it.

I'll take your suggestions to heart and redo my storage components to account for your excellent suggestions.

I've given both of you an upvote but I'll grant Lutfij the solution for this post, given he was first. However, if I could give both of you it, I would've.

I'd still highly appreciate if either of you could address my follow up questions but you have both made me confident it's a decent build and also provided suggestions and that I am very grateful for.

I can't help much more as I'm not a gamer, don't use video cards, and generally use Intel.

Having said that......

16 ram versus 32: you may see little advantage to 32, but it's minimal difference in price, so maybe go with 32 unless budget barks.

I'd go with DDR 5 for any new build, but it's hardly mandatory....I just figure I have to get on the new tech train at some point and have bitten that bullet. I upgrade only every 4 or 5 years.

Seasonic : the Seasonic line has a lot of varieties and changes frequently. The Focus line is upper level, but there is more than 1 Focus line the last I looked. I would not pay extra for full modular; semi is OK; I would not pay extra for Titanium or Platinum. Gold is OK. I'd try to get something with 7 or more years warranty and cross-check for reviews on any candidate.

Corsair RMx series is another good PSU choice.

 

[Whateverworks_19]

Thank you for your kind gesture though in all honesty, I'm not here for the Best Solution awards, just to help people out, I also don't think I deserve the award With that being said, I'll remove the Best Solution award off my post and you can continue receiving answers from the community!

Sure thing! Also great stuff, been on this great forum for ages, and people like you are the backbone of it. When I had the appropriate knowledge, almost a decade ago, I tried to do the same.

You guys are absolutely awesome and makes this place a great forum. This also goes for you Lafong. You guys makes this place amazing.


Onto the questions!

Could you mention a threshold to your budget if we were to tinker with your build?

For sure! I did anticipate this, so it's in the - admittedly rather long - description. To save you a scroll, it's $2K.

How old is the PSU that you currently own and what did it power throughout it's service?

So, I actually bought it a year ago because I got a ridiculous deal and I'm a Seasonic fanboy. It has never been turned on. The first "power-on" will be with this build. I believe the model itself is from 2021. Also sorry for not making this clear, that I (1) already own it and it has (2) never been used. I should have had this information in the original post.

 

[Why_Me]

https://www.newegg.com/gigabyte-z690-aorus-ultra/p/N82E16813145344
GIGABYTE Z690 AORUS ULTRA $199.99

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z690-AORUS-ULTRA-rev-1x#kf

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09NPJDPVG
Intel Core i7-12700F $329.99

https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...-25m-cache-up-to-4-90-ghz/specifications.html

https://www.amazon.com/DeepCool-AK620-High-Performance-Dual-Tower-Dissipation/dp/B09CSXS3X4
DeepCool AK620 CPU Cooler $64.99

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/deepcool-ak620-review

O/S SSD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RPQQTHS
PNY CS2140 500GB M.2 NVMe Gen4 x4 Internal SSD $42.99

Storage SSD

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RPL3RL1
PNY CS2140 2TB M.2 NVMe Gen4 x4 Internal SSD $169.99

https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-288-pin-ddr5-sdram/p/N82E16820374331
G.SKILL Ripjaws S5 Series DDR5 5600 32GB (2x16GB) CL36 $157.99

i7 12700 / 12700F gaming benchmarks.

 

[Lutfij]

Thank you for the high praise but I'm what I am due to the community here. I'm sure the rest of community are reading what you've said.

That being said, your PSU is going to be good to go for your build. As for the storage, I tend to keep one SSD as it is, without any partitions to make sure that it's running as fast as possible. HDD's can be partitioned but not by too much, i.e, I tend to partition a 2TB into two if necessary but I leave them as one drive as well. With regards to your SSD question, you're more than welcome to populate the M.2 slots with any assortment of SSD's of any capacity, I just think that the faster drives need to be used for either a game library or if you were doing productivity work, like video editing then scrubbing space. For the OS, you actually won't be able to tell the difference with a PCIe 3.0x4 drive and a PCIe 4.0x4 drive. Benchmarks wills ay otherwise but they are synthetic tests, not real world tests...which is day to day computing/boot ups.

I noticed your 2000USD budget mentioned in your opening post, I meant would you be willing to go higher than that, if we tinkered with the build?

No, you're not thinking backwards, Noctua have always been the quiet one though Be Quiet! is up there as well.

 

[Whateverworks_19]

@Lutfij Ah! That makes sense to me. Thanks for elaborating on the storage setup.

I see. Yes I would, it's not a hard cap, if there's persuasive enough reasons to go over it, we can.

Great! Good to see Noctua still have their reputation intact after all these years. Wonderful company.

@Why_Me

Thank you for your suggestion. Looking at the price, looking at the bench and looking at the prospect of riding DDR5, your suggestion seems very compelling. You've given me something to think about, I'll have to see my local prices, some more benchmarks etc. to make a decision but I find your suggestion very interesting. May end up being what I go with!

Only thing that strikes me is that it seems Z690 chipset supports overclocking while the F-series doesn't. So if I go this route, it'll be with the K-equivalent or a board with another chipset. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[Why_Me]

@Lutfij Ah! That makes sense to me. Thanks for elaborating on the storage setup.

I see. Yes I would, it's not a hard cap, if there's persuasive enough reasons to go over it, we can.

Great! Good to see Noctua still have their reputation intact after all these years. Wonderful company.

@Why_Me

Thank you for your suggestion. Looking at the price, looking at the bench and looking at the prospect of riding DDR5, your suggestion seems very compelling. You've given me something to think about, I'll have to see my local prices, some more benchmarks etc. to make a decision but I find your suggestion very interesting. May end up being what I go with!

Only thing that strikes me is that it seems Z690 chipset supports overclocking while the F-series doesn't. So if I go this route, it'll be with the K-equivalent or a board with another chipset. Does that sound reasonable?

The unlocked cpu's use more juice and run hotter.

Intel Core i7-12700 + Intel B660 Review

Today we have a combo review of all-new Intel hardware, our first look at the affordable Intel B660 platform, the non-K Core i7-12700 and Intel's latest box...

www.techspot.com

 

[Whateverworks_19]

So as per your suggestions, I've investigated another build. It's more powerful and stays within budget relative to local pricing. Kudos to Why_Me for suggesting an Intel-based platform with DDR5. I really like the looks of it. I also like the suggestion from Lutfij and Lafong about more reasonable storage.

I've also decided to up the GPU a bit to future proof the build. The (local) price isn't too bad. However, given these additions, I think the PSU may not be enough, albeit it's high quality. So I'll buy a new Focus 1000W to leave some breathing room, as Lutfij suggested. Let me know if you think 1000W is too much / too little. I want to leave room for OC as well and still have some breathing room. Looking at the TDP for the different components, seems to leave around ~250W of room.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700KF 3.6 GHz 12-Core Processor ($358.97 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler ($109.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z690-P ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($190.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory ($162.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial P2 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($39.99 @ Amazon) Boot drive.
Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($179.10 @ Amazon) Core work and a game or two. Have some 2.5'' SSD's I'm going to use as well.
Video Card: Gigabyte GV-R68XTGAMING OC-16GD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16 GB Video Card ($732.00 @ Amazon) Albeit I start at 1440p, I may look into 4K in the future and this seems reasonable for the price.
Case: Fractal Design Pop Silent ATX Mid Tower Case ($95.98 @ Newegg) Everything seems to fit in here.
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($194.02 @ Amazon)
Total: $2063.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-11-12 13:24 EST-0500

If there aren't any glaring issues or any suggestions/improvements from you guys, I'll go with this. It looks exciting to be honest. I appreciate all your suggestions!

 

[Lafong]

The KF cpu does not have integrated video.

The K does.

Some like to pay the extra for the K to have fallback video capability in case your video card is acting up or dead in the water.

Personal choice for a few bucks more. Up to you.

 

[Whateverworks_19]

Hey buddy! Thanks for your reply. Yeah I did see that but I'm not going to use onboard graphics and I want to overclock, thus the KF version.

 

[Lutfij]

Agreed, @Lafong

OP, I would like to have the iGPU for that off chance that you need to troubleshoot with the system, whereby the discrete GPU might be out of action. If you dig through the forums, you'll come across people who struggle to find a basic level discrete GPU to troubleshoot their systems, hence why I opt for the iGPU(K suffix processor).

For just a little more, I'd ask you to drop this board into your list;
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/JJ...x-atx-lga1700-motherboard-z690-aorus-elite-ax
better at just about anything; has WiFi, better audio, design, more storage options, quality wise as well.

I'm an aficionado with SFF builds and as such would've suggested something in an matx flavor though you might be paying a little more than what you will be paying for the ATX build.

 

[Whateverworks_19]

Wonderful! I'll do both then, the suggested board and a non-F processor to have onboard graphics just in case and the price difference is almost trivial, so I do see the value in doing it.

Thanks a lot guys. I'm really happy with this build. Can't wait to get the parts and start the new year with a new PC.

Edit: Also I'll close the thread with a best answer designation, I could give it to any of you - and I've already given it to Lutfij previously - now I'll give Lafong the honor.

Thanks to all of you!

Final build:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-12700K 3.6 GHz 12-Core Processor ($367.99 @ Best Buy)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler ($109.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z690 AORUS ELITE AX ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($239.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36 Memory ($162.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Crucial P2 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($39.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($179.10 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte GV-R68XTGAMING OC-16GD Radeon RX 6800 XT 16 GB Video Card ($732.00 @ Amazon)
Case: Fractal Design Pop Silent ATX Mid Tower Case ($95.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($194.02 @ Amazon)
Total: $2122.01
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-11-12 14:54 EST-0500

 

[Lutfij]

I didn't accept your Best Solution, remember? - Jokes aside, it's all good, on my end! + you're very welcome!

How about this? I'll leave the thread open. When you get your parts in, please do a follow up in this thread with an album of sorts for your parts/build. If you need troubleshooting, you can start a new thread pertaining to the issue.