[SOLVED] Seeking advice on all my component choices for new build gaming PC

[ubilux]

Hi all, newbie here planning to buy components for new gaming PC for Christmas for my son (so planning to purchase very soon). This machine will actually be used for 3d rendering and video editing. Apologies if this is wrong forum or not appropriate. Otherwise any feedback greatly appreciated! I'm planning to order in the next couple days to have the best chance of getting parts and getting the thing built for Christmas.

I'm not worrying about display or keyboard as yet though any thoughts on these would also be welcome!

All the links I'm posting are to Amazon (UK - I am in Ireland) as my experience is that they are usually quite quick to deliver. Prices are in pounds sterling.

I don't have a real specific budget but what I've chosen brings me close to the ceiling probably. I'm not looking so much for opportunities to improve the spec as just if anything is not going to be compatible or any better options (bearing in mind that I've never done this before).

CPU:
Intel Core i7 9700K

Intel Core i7 9700K 3.6GHz Octa Core LGA1151 CPU - Amazon.co.uk

Buy Intel Core i7 9700K 3.6GHz Octa Core LGA1151 CPU

www.amazon.co.uk

£368

GPU:
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti WINDFORCE OC 6G
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B07NWD9VGH/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all
£230

Case:
Corsair SPEC-DELTA Carbide Series
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07KGSJRC3
£53

Motherboard:
Gigabyte MB INT 1151 Z390 Designare D4 ATX

Gigabyte MB INT 1151 Z390 Designare D4 ATX: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Buy Gigabyte MB INT 1151 Z390 Designare D4 ATX at Amazon UK. Free delivery and return on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

£258

Power Supply:
Fractal Design Ion SFX Gold 650W

FRACTAL DESIGN ALIMENTATION FRACTAL ION 650G NOIR,FD-PSU-ION-SFX-650G-BK-EU - Amazon.co.uk

Buy FRACTAL DESIGN ALIMENTATION FRACTAL ION 650G NOIR,FD-PSU-ION-SFX-650G-BK-EU

www.amazon.co.uk

£121

Primary Drive (SSD):
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB

Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB NVMe M.2 Internal SSD: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Buy Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB NVMe M.2 Internal SSD at Amazon UK. Free delivery and return on eligible orders.

www.amazon.co.uk

£180

Secondary Drive (HDD):
Seagate 2 TB BarraCuda

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-BarraCuda-Internal-Drive-Cache/dp/B07H2RR55Q/

£55

RAM 2x 8GB:
Corsair CMK16GX4M2A2133C13 Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CMK16GX4M2A2133C13-Vengeance-Performance-Desktop/dp/B0123ZCD36/

£60

Total about £1325 before monitor + keyboard

Thanks a million for any thoughts on this!

 

[LordVile]

What software for video editing?

look at the Ryzen 3700/3700X for £300 or I’d even say the 2700X for 160. Games are going more multithreaded and rendering on the CPU will love the extra cores. Pair it with an X570 board for £150-200 and you can put more into the GPU. 2 mins I’ll knock up a rough parts list for you.

 

[Hellfire13]

This will give you better performance all around...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor | £291.18 @ Aria PC
CPU Cooler | Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler | £58.59 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX AM4 Motherboard | £142.85 @ CCL Computers
Memory | Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory | £74.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk
Storage | ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £99.99 @ Box Limited
Storage | Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £49.50 @ Aria PC
Video Card | Asus Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB TUF Gaming X3 OC Video Card | £330.60 @ Amazon UK
Case | Thermaltake View 22 ATX Mid Tower Case | £45.46 @ Scan.co.uk
Power Supply | Corsair TXM Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | £80.36 @ CCL Computers
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £1173.52
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 13:00 GMT+0000 |

 

[PC Tailor]

Looks good my friend! I[m sure your son will love it.
Just some notes:

• You need a CPU cooler as the K does not have one stock
• Have you considered Ryzen? Which for value will probably be better for the usage you describe?
• PSU is good but is SFX, so not really needed in that form factor.
• Very expensive motherboard that isn't really needed IMO.
• I would stick to Turin architecture NVIDIA GPUs for your usage.

You can then use the money to bump up the GPU:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£319.99 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler (£67.18 @ CCL Computers)
Motherboard: MSI MPG Z390 GAMING EDGE AC ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£130.94 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£100.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£89.98 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Toshiba P300 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£52.43 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB WINDFORCE 2X Video Card (£369.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair SPEC-06 ATX Mid Tower Case (£65.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£72.97 @ Laptops Direct)
Total: £1270.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 13:03 GMT+0000

Alternative Ryzen build (which I'd say is better):
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£291.18 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard (£154.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory (£100.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Storage: Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£89.98 @ CCL Computers)
Storage: Toshiba P300 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£52.43 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB WINDFORCE 2X Video Card (£369.98 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Corsair SPEC-06 ATX Mid Tower Case (£65.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£72.97 @ Laptops Direct)
Total: £1198.50
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 13:09 GMT+0000

 

[4745454b]

There are a couple choices I would change. First, a gaming PC usually spends more on the GPU than the CPU. You don't need that CPU. Something severally layers lower will still work fine. And it will allow you to spend the saved money on a bigger GPU. Second, why such an expensive motherboard? What features does it have that other cheaper boards don't? Very rarely do you need a board more than $150 or $175. I'm sure you can drop down a board or three and still be fine.

I personally would also bump the second drive up to a 4Tb or more. You also probably don't want an SFX PSU. ATX would be the preferred form factor. A lot of SFX PSU can be mounted in an ATX case so this might not be a deal breaker.

 

[LordVile]

Mine:
PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor | £160.00 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | MSI MPG X570 GAMING PRO CARBON WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard | £239.95 @ Amazon UK
Memory | Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory | £123.58 @ Amazon UK
Storage | Samsung 860 Evo 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive | £256.95 @ Amazon UK
Video Card | XFX Radeon RX 5700 8 GB DD Ultra Video Card | £299.00 @ Amazon UK
Case | NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case | £74.95 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply | Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | £99.95 @ Amazon UK
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £1254.38
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 13:09 GMT+0000 |

 

[LordVile]

This will give you better performance all around...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor | £291.18 @ Aria PC
CPU Cooler | Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler | £58.59 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX AM4 Motherboard | £142.85 @ CCL Computers
Memory | Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory | £74.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk
Storage | ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £99.99 @ Box Limited
Storage | Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £49.50 @ Aria PC
Video Card | Asus Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB TUF Gaming X3 OC Video Card | £330.60 @ Amazon UK
Case | Thermaltake View 22 ATX Mid Tower Case | £45.46 @ Scan.co.uk
Power Supply | Corsair TXM Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | £80.36 @ CCL Computers
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £1173.52
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 13:00 GMT+0000 |

Is that RAM compatible with that board? Also that case is horrendous to build in.

 

[metallfan]

If you are willing to spend an extra 20 pounds on your GPU you can get GTX1070 which is slightly faster and has 2GB more ram than what you have chosen.

 

[Hellfire13]

Is that RAM compatible with that board? Also that case is horrendous to build in.

RAM is perfectly compatible and the case is fine. I have personally built a machine in that case. Pretty good for its price.

Mine:
PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor | £160.00 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | MSI MPG X570 GAMING PRO CARBON WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard | £239.95 @ Amazon UK
Memory | Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory | £123.58 @ Amazon UK
Storage | Samsung 860 Evo 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive | £256.95 @ Amazon UK
Video Card | XFX Radeon RX 5700 8 GB DD Ultra Video Card | £299.00 @ Amazon UK
Case | NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case | £74.95 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply | Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | £99.95 @ Amazon UK
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £1254.38
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 13:09 GMT+0000 |

The MSI X570 iterations are pretty touch and go in terms of VRM and that SSD is plain bad value. Missed the bigger drive as well.






OP...
My above 5700xt build will give you good performance, same as the below 2070 build, if you want NVidia specifically...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor | £291.18 @ Aria PC
CPU Cooler | Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler | £58.59 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX AM4 Motherboard | £142.85 @ CCL Computers
Memory | Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory | £74.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk
Storage | Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £89.98 @ CCL Computers
Storage | Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £49.50 @ Aria PC
Video Card | Zotac GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Video Card | £363.47 @ Ebuyer
Case | Thermaltake View 22 ATX Mid Tower Case | £45.46 @ Scan.co.uk
Power Supply | Corsair TXM Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | £80.36 @ CCL Computers
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £1196.38
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 15:38 GMT+0000 |

Note that you will want a good CPU cooler if you want to keep the temps down. That stock cooler also runs loud as hell, specially on load.

 

[LordVile]

RAM is perfectly compatible and the case is fine. I have personally built a machine in that case. Pretty good for its price.



The MSI X570 iterations are pretty touch and go in terms of VRM and that SSD is plain bad value. Missed the bigger drive as well.






OP...
My above 5700xt build will give you good performance, same as the below 2070 build, if you want NVidia specifically...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor | £291.18 @ Aria PC
CPU Cooler | Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler | £58.59 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX AM4 Motherboard | £142.85 @ CCL Computers
Memory | Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory | £74.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk
Storage | Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £89.98 @ CCL Computers
Storage | Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £49.50 @ Aria PC
Video Card | Zotac GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Video Card | £363.47 @ Ebuyer
Case | Thermaltake View 22 ATX Mid Tower Case | £45.46 @ Scan.co.uk
Power Supply | Corsair TXM Gold 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | £80.36 @ CCL Computers
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £1196.38
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-05 15:38 GMT+0000 |

Note that you will want a good CPU cooler if you want to keep the temps down. That stock cooler also runs loud as hell, specially on load.

Have you checked on the motherboard list?

VRM is fine and it’s actually not. Yours is however as it is a poor quality Adata model.

 

[Hellfire13]

Have you checked on the motherboard list?

VRM is fine and it’s actually not. Yours is however as it is a poor quality Adata model.

You have got to be kidding me. You are comparing a 150%+ blazing fast high quality NVME drive with a screeching slower outdated, obsolete and super expensive SATA SSD...
https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compa...PG-SX8200-NVMe-PCIe-M2-960GB/m423831vsm504709
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955.html

Looks like you are not informed about the MSI board thermal issues either. I believe Hardware Unboxed's unbiased review about Thermal Throttling.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=kxJ8rB5DiUE&feature=emb_logo
(jump to 5:55)

And now that I look at your build again, I guess you are not aware of the much better 3700x been launched in the market.

 

[4745454b]

Whoa. Hang on here guys. Giving builds to be considered is good. Personally attacking each other isn't. Let's help the OP and not swing insults at each other.

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor | £299.99 @ Amazon UK
CPU Cooler | be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler | £58.08 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard | £149.99 @ Amazon UK
Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory | £62.99 @ Amazon UK
Storage | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £179.73 @ Amazon UK
Storage | Seagate Barracuda 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | £79.34 @ Amazon UK
Video Card | Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card | £344.99 @ Amazon UK
Case | Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case | £113.97 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply | Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | £99.95 @ Amazon UK
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £1389.03
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-06 05:16 GMT+0000 |

Here is a build that replaces the CPU with something that should deliver identical performance in games while being significantly better in 3D rendering and video editing. I have also bumped up the GPU one tier for better gaming performance if needed. The case is a more expensive one and I chose a 3TB hard drive since I could not find the 2TB version on PCpartpicker. The PSU is slightly higher wattage as well. The overall build is slightly more expensive, but should offer noticeably better performance in games and productivity. If you wanted to, you can decrease the cost of this system by getting a cheaper case, lower wattage PSU, and a cheaper hard drive if you wanted to lower the cost without lower the performance by any noticeable margin. Everything is bought through Amazon UK to simplify things but I'm sure you could find (slightly) better deals from other stores if you wanted to. Many of the other builds that people above me have posted are very good as well and should be slightly cheaper since they used multiple stores in their lists.

 

[LordVile]

You have got to be kidding me. You are comparing a 150%+ blazing fast high quality NVME drive with a screeching slower outdated, obsolete and super expensive SATA SSD...
https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compa...PG-SX8200-NVMe-PCIe-M2-960GB/m423831vsm504709
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/adata-xpg-sx8200-pro-ssd,5955.html

Looks like you are not informed about the MSI board thermal issues either. I believe Hardware Unboxed's unbiased review about Thermal Throttling.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=13&v=kxJ8rB5DiUE&feature=emb_logo
(jump to 5:55)

And now that I look at your build again, I guess you are not aware of the much better 3700x been launched in the market.

You’ve got too caught up in userbench... for a start the drive I listed is a 2TB model that offers much higher durability (more writes) and yes a NVME is faster but not to any real world benefit outside transferring large files constantly to RAM or an equally fast SSD. I’d rather have 2TB of SSD than 1TB of SSD and 2 of HDD as games are getting increasing long load times. Literally went on someone’s with a HDD the other day and it took so long to load, games like doom and the new Star Wars benefit greatly from an SSD.

They are overclocking the 3900X which is something you really shouldn’t do unless you’re using it as a workstation in which case you should be forking out for the more professional boards with the 5Gbit LAN etc. Or just buying 1/2nd gen TR chips that you can get 12 and 16 cores for cheap now. Saying a board is bad because a company has products that don’t do something that the person you’re trying to help won’t be doing is kinda dumb.

Obviously I know about the 3700X but it provides little value especially at a 1440p gaming budget and entry level video editing/rendering work compared to the 2700X which is literally half the price. I have a 2600 and I’m GPU bottlenecked at 1440.

 

[Hellfire13]

You’ve got too caught up in userbench... for a start the drive I listed is a 2TB model that offers much higher durability (more writes) and yes a NVME is faster but not to any real world benefit outside transferring large files constantly to RAM or an equally fast SSD. I’d rather have 2TB of SSD than 1TB of SSD and 2 of HDD as games are getting increasing long load times. Literally went on someone’s with a HDD the other day and it took so long to load, games like doom and the new Star Wars benefit greatly from an SSD.

They are overclocking the 3900X which is something you really shouldn’t do unless you’re using it as a workstation in which case you should be forking out for the more professional boards with the 5Gbit LAN etc. Or just buying 1/2nd gen TR chips that you can get 12 and 16 cores for cheap now. Saying a board is bad because a company has products that don’t do something that the person you’re trying to help won’t be doing is kinda dumb.

Obviously I know about the 3700X but it provides little value especially at a 1440p gaming budget and entry level video editing/rendering work compared to the 2700X which is literally half the price. I have a 2600 and I’m GPU bottlenecked at 1440.

Still thats bad value...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
Storage | ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £193.87 @ Ebuyer
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £193.87
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-06 11:13 GMT+0000 |

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
Storage | Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £202.95 @ CCL Computers
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £202.95
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-06 11:15 GMT+0000 |

 

[LordVile]

Still thats bad value...

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
Storage | ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £193.87 @ Ebuyer
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £193.87
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-06 11:13 GMT+0000 |

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
Storage | Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | £202.95 @ CCL Computers
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £202.95
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-06 11:15 GMT+0000 |

The 660p is actually slower than a HDD once you download say 20GB of a 60GB file to it due the caching and both lack Samsung’s software which is very useful also what’s the warranty and expect writes on those drives?

 

[Hellfire13]

The 660p is actually slower than a HDD once you download say 20GB of a 60GB file to it due the caching and both lack Samsung’s software which is very useful also what’s the warranty and expect writes on those drives?

They have same lifespan and durability as any sata SSD but with lot less speed. Any SSD, NVME or SATA pretty much outlasts its warranty, which is a moot point. You are trying to make a case for SATA against NVME forcibly here. Its hard to believe.
Anyways, OP has enough data to make an informed decision. This discussion is useless any further.
I am done with this.

 

[ubilux]

Guys let me just say thank you so much for all your well-considered replies. I really appreciate it, as I know very little about this world but from what I've heard for a really top-class graphics machine it's better to build than to buy off the shelf. Excited about going ahead. So THANK YOU!!

 

[ubilux]

What software for video editing?

look at the Ryzen 3700/3700X for £300 or I’d even say the 2700X for 160. Games are going more multithreaded and rendering on the CPU will love the extra cores. Pair it with an X570 board for £150-200 and you can put more into the GPU. 2 mins I’ll knock up a rough parts list for you.

Right now he's using HitFilm Express for editing and Blender for 3D rendering, but the plan is to build a machine for him that will be usable for the next few years for whatever he gets into w/r/t/ graphics/3D/animation etc. So just looking for the best I can "within reason" for costs, which is unfortunately a flexible bar

 

[Hellfire13]

Right now he's using HitFilm Express for editing and Blender for 3D rendering, but the plan is to build a machine for him that will be usable for the next few years for whatever he gets into w/r/t/ graphics/3D/animation etc. So just looking for the best I can "within reason" for costs, which is unfortunately a flexible bar

You can go ahead with any of the 3700x builds above. Should last him quite long with fine performance.

 

[LordVile]

You can go ahead with any of the 3700x builds above. Should last him quite long with fine performance.

Or you could go 2700X for 160 and just wait for the 4000 chips to come out, knock the 3900 down and get that when you need the extra oomf.

 

[Hellfire13]

Or you could go 2700X for 160 and just wait for the 4000 chips to come out, knock the 3900 down and get that when you need the extra oomf.

And spend twice for the performance you can get right away. You wait for the something better, you keep waiting forever. 4000 is still miles away anyways.

 

[DSzymborski]

I think some of the Adata confusion is that the SX8000 was lousy but the SX8200 was not. Looking at sites that reviewed both, you can see the difference. For example, here are Tweaktown's quotes on the two:

Even if we take a step back from our enthusiast oriented views and just look at the value proposition the XPG SX8000 offers, we still have no choice but to give this one the thumbs down. As bad as the 600p is, it does have one thing going for it; a super-low price point. As it's currently priced, the XPG SX8000 doesn't even have that going for it. We are typically well pleased with ADATA's SSD line-up but not this time. As it stands, we recommend you look at other options. ADATA's XPG SX8000 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD is not TweakTown recommended.

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8220/adata-xpg-sx8000-512gb-2-nvme-pcie-ssd-review/index11.html

vs.

It will be interesting to see what other companies bring to market at CES. We don't know when Micron's 96L TLC will come to market, but we suspect others will release products with the new SM2262EN controller and existing 64L flash like ADATA to get a new product to market in 2019. ADATA was the first to strike, and as of now, this is the best new SSD of 2019.

Read more: https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8...-ssd-review-affordable-high-perfo/index4.html

 

[LordVile]

And spend twice for the performance you can get right away. You wait for the something better, you keep waiting forever. 4000 is still miles away anyways.

But the performance isn’t good enough to justify the jump. It’s twice the price for a 10% bump over the 2700X in performance. Especially when it’s not professional use and in gaming you’re looking at a 1440p budget where the GPU will be the limit.
Also the 3900 has a significant performance bump in rendering and video creation over the 3700X. Something the 3700X doesn’t have over the 2700X which is much more iterative.

 

[4745454b]

I'm low on the 3xxx series of chips at the moment. They aren't bad chips. But compared to what you can get by buying the 2xxx they aren't very good. I was in a thread a couple days ago where people were talking about getting the 3600. You can buy the 2700x for less right now. More cores and speed. All you give up is PCIe 4.0 which isn't really usable yet. The 3xxx chips will be great chips at some point. But right now they are just too costly for me to recommend and I don't. Until PCIe 4.0 is something that's needed there is no shame in getting a 2xxx.