New PC help, 2k budget

Swi1ch

Swi1ch

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Given the current global situation i'm looking to panic-buy a new PC. I could wait but I've already had to replace a bunch of parts in my existing one (Don't vape around your PC) and not sure how long it will last and don't want to find myself unable to buy a new one.

I need a complete PC (I don't trust any parts from my existing one) and will look to get a high-refresh 1440p monitor. My total budget is £2k for the PC itself, and any remaining money left from that pot +£500 for the monitor. If the PC is £2k and I can't get a nice monitor for the £500, i'll just roll with my 1080p monitor initially.

For the case I am 99% set on getting the Corsair Crystal 680X - I have the baby-brother Air 540 and love it.

Similarly i'm pretty set on getting the Corsair H100i Platinum - My current cooler is the older-gen version of this, and it matches the case. I'm totally open to bending on this however.

I've put a preliminary basket together, although I still want an M.2 drive (I know nothing about them) and I picked the graphics card mostly at random. I'd like to stick with Nvidia if possible as I have had bad experiences with AMD drivers.

This is what I put together initially: (Note - I know the RGB version of the RAM is completely frivolous vs the LPX version but I'm a simple man and the shiny appeals to me)

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,644.63 (includes shipping: £14.70)​
​

Main questions:

  • General comments on the build? Optimisations etc?
  • Suggestions for M.2?
  • Probably need a regular SSD too - Crucial MX500 still good?
  • Thoughts on graphics card? I kinda wanted a 2080 super seeing as I was dropping the cash anyway. They're quite variable in price - I'm guessing not worth it over the 2070 unless you buy the top-end 2080 supers?
  • Any monitor suggestions?
  • There are some nice looking bundles for Ryzen 9 such as below that uses the components I had already picked - worth looking at?
My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £781.08 (includes shipping: £11.10)​
​
 

Grimley

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No point in going X570 if you are sticking with 3700x. MSI B450 boards with MAX in the name are quite capable. Consider X570 if you want 3900X/3950X or Zen 3 when it is released.

M.2 = search for 'Sabrent Rocket' on the web. SATA SSD's are maxed out for speed, Crucial does have a 5 year warranty though but other vendors may have the same length of Warranty (Samsungs is 3 years for example)

The Bundles are worth looking at if you are doing work such as Rendering/Encoding/Video editing.

GFX up to you, but New GFX cards are being released later in the year (subject to the 'bug') I'd put a cheap card in there for now & sit tight.

Cant help you with monitors.
 

Poneros

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My thoughts are:
- Case. You're set on it so what can I say? Imo it's really expensive and it's not gonna have good airflow but otherwise nothing bad to say. In the end cases last forever anyway so it's not the worst thing to spend money on but it is a case of prioritising aesthetics over everything else.
- AIO is meh. It's not the best performing and it's very expensive. If you just like the looks, fine, but it's not great value. Especially when you consider that there'll be no overclocking with the 3700x, so what you see is what you get and the difference vs the stock cooler will be really only noise-related. If you really want an AIO, I'd say look at ARCTIC LIQUID FREEZER II else look for air coolers. ARCTIC FREEZER 34 ESPORTS DUO are great performance & low noise for very little money.
- RAM, same. Could save a bit there too. Personally I'd think about 32gb. Some games started brushing up against 16 GBs already and that's before new consoles blow up requirements. What I will say here is that you'll want to do some research on the kits properly. For high FPS gaming it WILL make a difference so you want to be sure of what you're buying.
- Motherboard - that Gigabyte is a great choice. I'll go against @Grimley and say that I'd recommend X570 over B450 for one important reason, but which is speculative: PCI-e 4.0. In particular because we know SSDs are a big focus for next gen consoles and having the ability to upgrade to one without changing your whole platform is a good thing to have. As I've said though, this is speculative since those aren't out yet and we don't know how games will behave. It might also turn out to be a boon for GPUs, who knows, that's also suffering from the same fate. Right now, sure, nothing's saturating even PCI-e 3.0 16x outside of some very niche scenarios but it can be done even for games and it will depend on what developers choose to do.
- PSU & GPU, good choices both. Maybe you can save on PSU £20-30 going with a different one, and for GPU, idk that I'd really pay £50 extra for that Gigabyte over the 3-fan KFA2 one.

As for SSD, here's my thoughts. Right now we're at a junction between old SSDs and new hyper-fast SSDs that will define the next generation. What exactly it means we can't know because we can't test out the next-gen games but I would do the following: buy a standard SSD with cache and use that for general purpose and games mass storage especially for everything up to next-gen (and probably some cross-gen titles too), eg a Crucial MX500 is usually the best choice for the money. Then as newer PCI-e 4.0 SSDs start to roll out towards the end of the year (eg all the 7 Gbps ones announced that will match the PS5 like XPG Sage) you can buy one of those, as you can also have an idea of if it's worth spending that extra for one.

GPU-wise, a 2070 Super is the best choice right now for smart money. 2080 Super's advantage is really more at 4K and even then it's not a big one, and a 2080 ti is gonna cost as much as the whole system almost. Ideally you'd wait for the next GPU releases later this year, but if you can't wait then you can't wait, and also they'd probably start at £600+.

Monitor-wise, it's hard to recommend anything as they're all so stupid expensive for what you're getting especially if you want HDR (which imo is a game changer). Check out this video for an overview of the market: https://youtu.be/rVd3LX2DCCQ Alternatively, I don't know how you feel about TVs but it's something to think about, especially for black friday. The best of the best will be cheap compared to near-equivalent but still weaker monitors and you'd get some proper HDR: https://youtu.be/zRhd2Wsy6L0

Lastly, ignore Ryzen 9. Too expensive for what it offers and it's not gonna make a meaningful difference for gaming. That 3700x is pretty much the sweetspot, and if you wouldn't be interested in 144hz gaming I'd even consider the 3600. There's no point in spending big money on a CPU like 3900x/3950x now when you get new releases (that are >=15% faster), again, in a few months.

All in all, you can easily shave £200-300 from your current build plan if you want, and either keep the same performance, or better, in exchange for looks.
 

Swi1ch

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Yeah the case and cooler are mostly completely frivolous purchases and I will be thinking about them right up until the time I buy anything - it definitely adds a chunk of change onto the cost but I factored the bling-drain into my budget. I'm buying a bunch of shiny things and want a nice shiny box for them to go in. Ultimately it's a wash as a case is a case and if I think I need to cut costs I can wack it in anything.

GPU I think I've settled on the 2070 Super. I'd spring for a 2080ti if the new cards weren't coming out for another year or so, but it looks like they're on track and I think the 2070 super will get me through until then to make a decision.

I chose the Gigabyte version over the KFA2 because I've never even heard of KFA2. I've used and liked Gigabyte and thought it was worth the extra cash for the proven brand (And longer warranty).

I'm looking more at the motherboard but I'm leaning towards the Gigabtye X570 for future proofing - plus it looks WAY better than the B450 boards that are still available.

RAM there's definitely a bling tax on those RGB sticks, something I'm happy to pay. Is there really that much difference different kits can provide? I don't think I've ever looked further at RAM than making sure it was compatible with my build, and that it matched the colour scheme.
 

EsaT

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Indeed quite a few "lots of show, little bang" parts there.

For tis very expensive price that Corsair AIO is rather bad.
Only best ones can beat best heatpipe coolers in continuous cooling per noise and doesn't need the most expensive heatpipe cooler to match that.
And slim 240mm radiator simply doesn't have that much of surface area.


And at that price level you should definitely be looking at guaranteedly future proof 2x16GB kit instead of heavily overpriced mediocre RGB bling bling. (that's no fast latency kit)
With dual rank's command interleaving ability 2x16GB 3200MHz would likely perform equally to single rank 2x8GB 3600MHz.
And when ever RAM runs out, its speed becomes anyway meaningless.

And for heavier next-gen games you're likely going to need it.
Consoles seem to be aiming to mask small generational memory increase by streaming data from SSD when needed, which needs special techniques to work without game performance penalties.
Something not that well working in PC lacking super tight hardware integration and optimizing.


In NVMe drives availability and pricing are often bad now.
WD Blue SN550 is best priced at the moment.
Sabrent Rocket Q is QLC and should be clearly cheaper.

10 year warranty Phanteks is cheaper than 7 year warranty SuperFlower.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phanteks-amp-750w-80-plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-09r-pt.html
 

Swi1ch

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EsaT said:
And at that price level you should definitely be looking at guaranteedly future proof 2x16GB kit instead of heavily overpriced mediocre RGB bling bling. (that's no fast latency kit)
With dual rank's command interleaving ability 2x16GB 3200MHz would likely perform equally to single rank 2x8GB 3600MHz.
And when ever RAM runs out, its speed becomes anyway meaningless.

And for heavier next-gen games you're likely going to need it.
Consoles seem to be aiming to mask small generational memory increase by streaming data from SSD when needed, which needs special techniques to work without game performance penalties.
Something not that well working in PC lacking super tight hardware integration and optimizing.
Click to expand...

Do you have any suggestions for better RAM for this system? As far as I can tell, the board I picked will support up to 3600mhz, which is the speed of the RAM kit I picked. I found a calculator that showed the difference between 3200mhz CAS 16 and 3600mhz CAS 18 to be negligible, so I don't really have anything to go off of.

As for the bling stuff, money isn't a problem and i'll happily pay the premium - if two products are otherwise identical, but one looks better to me, I will buy that one even if it is more expensive.
 

EsaT

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Precisely same £150 gets this 2x16GB kit.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/patr...dual-channel-kit-pvs432g320c6k-my-106-pa.html
And that's 16-18-18-36 kit vs Corsair's 18-22-22-42 of Corsair going long way to compensate 3200MHz vs 3600MHz difference.
Add dual rank's command interleaving and performance in games is likely better.
Not to forget 32GB being future proof amount.

£20 more expensive Crucial Ballistix is again known from routinely clocking to better latencies at 3600MHz than that 2x8GB Corsair.
That £150 for 2x8GB would need highly binned Samsung B-dies to make any sense. (as in CAS 16-16-16-36@3600Mhz)

There are separate RGB lights you could add into any case as decorative touch.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phan...-led-strip-combo-set-400mm-x-2-ca-09s-pt.html
 
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