So I want a VR PC, and an education.

[richardjb]

Ok, so I want a VR/Gaming PC (with RIFT s) and I want to build it myself (....with some assistance from you guys)
As a little background, I used to build PCs and even sell them to friends and family, but that was almost 30 yrs ago now and KA9Q is no longer required to connect to the internet!!
Clearly a lot has moved on, and I've done a fair bit of research, but im sure that wont preclude me from the odd terminology gaff, so go gentle.

Project Decisions so far: (feel free to comment, but probably won't budge)
1. Expecting project cost upwards of £4000
2. I would like to OVERCLOCK (primarily for curiosity than extreme performance)
3. I Will use Intel CPUs (memory of too much pain in the late 1990's, early 2000's - I appreciate the Ryzen Threadripper are very very different these days. Perhaps in another build)
4. It must fit inside Corsair Crystal 680x (ATX mobo) as I liked it and already bought it
5. Low Noise is important, but doesn't need to be silent. (again, not looking for extremes)
6. RGB isn't required

Assumption (...Please correct if they're dumb)
1. I will simplify my life (and Cost) if I DON'T SLI - feels like the benefit isn't massive and the effort to tune will plus reduced gaming support outweighs the benefit (to me). My assumption at this time is to buy a single RTX 2080 TI 11GB (Probably Gigabyte)

Questions
1. Can I achieve 5GHz overclocked CPU with air cooling alone. -- Not certain so at this time I am thinking water cooled CPU with Corsair Hydro (or similar) and standard air cooled RTX 2080 Ti.

2. Should I go X299 or X390 - is there any real benefit for my VR/gaming PC given I don't want/need SLI.

3. I have a preference for mirrored OS disks and plan to do so with 2x M.2 NVME devices RAID1'd - Will this reduce performance, enhance performance or be exactly the same as 1x M.2 NVME (I dont want cost / MTBF taken into the consideration, just performance and impact on overall system

4. If I go one or two NVME (say 500GBs) is it normal to then have two tiers of storage using more traditional SSD (~2TB) as a second tier, and then third tier of storage (>4TB) for large volumes using spinning disks.

5. What have I not asked?

Thanks in advance and looking forward to you input.

Rich

 

[richardjb]

Apologies for the long waffling first post, too excited.
How about 1 question:

1. Can I achieve 5GHz overclocked CPU with air cooling alone. -- Not certain so at this time I am thinking water cooled CPU with Corsair Hydro (or similar) and standard air cooled RTX 2080 Ti.

TIA Rich

 

[subbytna]

Yes you can get 5GHz on air cooling, but it'll melt the air cooler Joking, temps will be too much for air, for 5GHz.

Best off getting, at the least, a 280 AIO cooler, if not a 360. Not sure what your case can hold.

 

[subbytna]

Mouse, Keyboard, monitor, Windows 10 etc needed too?

4k is probably overkill budget wise. £3k will do it.

No need for Threadripper, you should also consider Ryzen 12 core, or 16 core is a good shout too. INTEL may have the overclocking thing but overall Ryzen now is superior to INTEL in the majority of day to day use. If you're gaming, outside VR, on a high res monitor the GPU will be doing most of the work anyway. But Ryzen doesn't have the OCing headroom the INTEL stuff has.

 

[richardjb]

Yes you can get 5GHz on air cooling, but it'll melt the air cooler Joking, temps will be too much for air, for 5GHz.
Best off getting, at the least, a 280 AIO cooler, if not a 360. Not sure what your case can hold.

Thanks subbytna, not at all obvious to me so your help is invaluable - my case supports 120mm, 140mm, 240mm, 280mm, 360mm so by the sounds of it, ill go for 360mm, and since the case is corsair, ill go HYDRO Series H150I

Mouse, Keyboard, monitor, Windows 10 etc needed too?
4k is probably overkill budget wise. £3k will do it.
No need for Threadripper, you should also consider Ryzen 12 core, or 16 core is a good shout too. INTEL may have the overclocking thing but overall Ryzen now is superior to INTEL in the majority of day to day use. If you're gaming, outside VR, on a high res monitor the GPU will be doing most of the work anyway. But Ryzen doesn't have the OCing headroom the INTEL stuff has.

I already have Screens, Mouse, Keyboard - although I do need Windows 10 as Windows 7 was the trigger for this project as the Oculus Rift S didn't support it.
So, i am looking to buy Motherboard (probably Gigabyte Ultra), GPU (RTX2080 ti 11GB probably Gigabyte also) RAM (TBD) NVME/SSD/DISK (all TBD) and most likely corsair PSU, 1200w

For CPU, If i looked to buy an Intel i9 9900KS, what would be the best AMD CPU for the same price, and would it be faster than the 9900ks @ 5GHz? (by faster, I mean for gaming/vr use)

Rich

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

My opinion
With that budget
Ryzen 3950x or even a thread ripper

5ghz looks good and yes few extra frames a second on the Intel in games
But the amd cpus frames per second is still no slouch

Edit
Plus amd motherboard has further potential for future
As they tend to support new cpus and not change socket every time

 

[richardjb]

My opinion
With that budget Ryzen 3950x or even a thread ripper

Ok will do some research.

As they tend to support new cpus and not change socket every time

I didn't know that - you guys rock, thank you so much

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Ok will do some research.



I didn't know that - you guys rock, thank you so much

you are very welcome
and am typing this on a 3900x machine
the first time i have went amd since the good old days
maybe 15 years ago or something
feels great not to say to people dont even bother looking at amd any more
competition is great for us consumers so its great amd are currently giving intel a much needed kick in the pants lol

 

[richardjb]

Sadly i was burned several times with AMD 20yrs ago, so find it hard not to go with the “defacto” intel despite evidence i see all around me when i look and ask for comparisons

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Sadly i was burned several times with AMD 20yrs ago, so find it hard not to go with the “defacto” intel despite evidence i see all around me when i look and ask for comparisons

That's understandable
Though was a long time ago
And the very very best evidence of the
Current situation
Is from Intel themselves
Intel have never slashed cpu prices
And now have cut some top end cpus
By 50% due to amds recent cpu line up
That speaks volumes

 

[subbytna]

AMD 3950 Ryzen CPU
Gigabyte X570 AORUS ULTRA (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard
32 gig of RAM (you can get by on 16 but with your budget, 32 is good) 3600 speed
Gen 4 NVME drive
2080Ti

 

[Vince]

You don't need a great deal for VR tbh even my first gen TR and 7 rip through all of my titles at more than 90fps without any issues.



Ive been playing some boneworks, onward, moss and a few others and have had a perfectly good experience I would go with something like what @subbytna recommended above. That will rip through all the VR Half Life Alyx you could want. Also I have the Rift S and I dont think you will be disappointed with it for a first foray into VR!

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Oh and Intel cpus don't support pci~e 4.0
Not a biggie for graphics cards
But given such a healthy budget
2 x pci~e 4.0 nvme drives would be really nice
Reason for 2 of them is with 1 it doesn't feel much faster than a good 2.5 sata ssd anyway
As read/write isn't main factor it's access and latency
But with 2 copying data to/from each other
They slaughter sata ssds then

 

[Vince]

Oh and Intel cpus don't support pci~e 4.0
Not a biggie for graphics cards
But given such a healthy budget
2 x pci~e 4.0 nvme drives would be really nice
Reason for 2 of them is with 1 it doesn't feel much faster than a good 2.5 sata ssd anyway
As read/write isn't main factor it's access and latency
But with 2 copying data to/from each other
They slaughter sata ssds then

Nothing better than a couple or more of fast nvme in raid. Will say though that x399 raid on uefi, so assume trx40 is the same, was a bit more convoluted to set up than on something like the AMD 900 series chipset but does work a treat and is massively fast even with gen 3 nvme.

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

Nothing better than a couple or more of fast nvme in raid. Will say though that x399 raid on uefi, so assume trx40 is the same, was a bit more convoluted to set up than on something like the AMD 900 series chipset but does work a treat and is massively fast even with gen 3 nvme.

Got 3 x nvme M2 drives
Mp510 960gbs we're a real bargain during sales
I love them
Except for that incredibly stupid tiny screw used to hold them down
I demand board manufacturers make a simple plastic clip instead lol

 

[richardjb]

Oh and Intel cpus don't support pci~e 4.0

...Something else I didn't know.
Does this mean the entire PCIe sub-system on the motherboard is v4, and therefore there is potential for future graphics cards to be PCIe v4 compliant with almost double the bandwidth. ie I could potentially replace my proposed PCIe v3 2080ti with a future PCIe v4 version

AMD 3950 Ryzen CPU
Gigabyte X570 AORUS ULTRA (AMD AM4) DDR4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard
32 gig of RAM (you can get by on 16 but with your budget, 32 is good) 3600 speed
Gen 4 NVME drive
2080Ti

^^^^^^^
Ok, so I spent the morning doing more research on the above, and I think I'm beginning to see the light -- so please correct me if i am wrong, but for games, an Intel i9 9900KS might edge the AMD 3950x as it has a higher single core clock speed, but both are overclockable, again with the Intel chip having a slight edge on overclocking (barring silicon lottery!), but the AMD has the advantage of double the cores for anything that can make use of them.

Plus the 5GB/s read of the 2TB AORUS NVMe PCIe v4 would be nice.

One question - if I go AMD 3950x, does it make sense to select AMD 5700 graphics card over Nvidia 2080, or is there really zero issue mixing manufacturers (again a legacy scar from 1990s)

Rich

 

[CuriousTomCat]

for games, an Intel i9 9900KS might edge the AMD 3950x

That's 100% correct and makes perfect sense if you're playing older games. So in 4 years time when games are using more than 8 cores, it wont matter because you'll still be playing retro games from 2020

However, if you'd like a little futureproofing, then the AMD platform would make more sense. You could even get an 8 core AMD processor and then upgrade it to 16 cores in the future. The Intel platform has no opportunity for future CPU upgrades like that if you have a 9900KS (you'd have to replace the motherboard as well)

One question - if I go AMD 3950x, does it make sense to select AMD 5700 graphics card over Nvidia 2080, or is there really zero issue mixing manufacturers (again a legacy scar from 1990s)

Rich

It doesn't matter which graphics platform you choose. You may as well get the cheaper AMD 5700 graphics card and then but the spare cash towards your next graphics card upgrade in 2 or 3 years time. The CPU will last for years and years if you choose wisely. Then upgrade the graphics card every few years.

 

[Mcnumpty2323]

...Something else I didn't know.
Does this mean the entire PCIe sub-system on the motherboard is v4, and therefore there is potential for future graphics cards to be PCIe v4 compliant with almost double the bandwidth. ie I could potentially replace my proposed PCIe v3 2080ti with a future PCIe v4 version



^^^^^^^
Ok, so I spent the morning doing more research on the above, and I think I'm beginning to see the light -- so please correct me if i am wrong, but for games, an Intel i9 9900KS might edge the AMD 3950x as it has a higher single core clock speed, but both are overclockable, again with the Intel chip having a slight edge on overclocking (barring silicon lottery!), but the AMD has the advantage of double the cores for anything that can make use of them.

Plus the 5GB/s read of the 2TB AORUS NVMe PCIe v4 would be nice.

One question - if I go AMD 3950x, does it make sense to select AMD 5700 graphics card over Nvidia 2080, or is there really zero issue mixing manufacturers (again a legacy scar from 1990s)

Rich

Good research
Yes you are pretty much on the mark
And the 5Gbs drives are already being superseded by 7 or 8 GBs drives
Though those may not be mainstream yet
And whichever graphics card you prefer
Doesn't have to be amd
Like I said before motherboard and cpus
AMD is just in a great place at the moment
And its great for consumers

 

[subbytna]

...Something else I didn't know.
Does this mean the entire PCIe sub-system on the motherboard is v4, and therefore there is potential for future graphics cards to be PCIe v4 compliant with almost double the bandwidth. ie I could potentially replace my proposed PCIe v3 2080ti with a future PCIe v4 version



^^^^^^^
Ok, so I spent the morning doing more research on the above, and I think I'm beginning to see the light -- so please correct me if i am wrong, but for games, an Intel i9 9900KS might edge the AMD 3950x as it has a higher single core clock speed, but both are overclockable, again with the Intel chip having a slight edge on overclocking (barring silicon lottery!), but the AMD has the advantage of double the cores for anything that can make use of them.

Plus the 5GB/s read of the 2TB AORUS NVMe PCIe v4 would be nice.

One question - if I go AMD 3950x, does it make sense to select AMD 5700 graphics card over Nvidia 2080, or is there really zero issue mixing manufacturers (again a legacy scar from 1990s)

Rich

3950x to give you 3+ years, easily
x570 to give you PCI-e Gen 4 speed now
2080Ti is massively powerful, your call if you need that power or drop down to a 2080 Super and save a whack of cash. 2080Ti will last you ages too.

With your budget, the 5700XT is not really an option for future proofing your setup. It's a great card but not even close to a 2080Ti.

 

[richardjb]

Thank you all, I think I've finally decided upon the main bits of the build being....

Corsair Crystal 680x ATX (£200.00)
Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master AMD AM4 X570 Chipset ATX Motherboard (£311.99)
AMD Ryzen 9 3950X 3.5 GHz 16-Core Processor (£699.99)
HYDRO Series H150I Pro RGB Performance Liquid Cooler - 360MM (CW-9060031-WW) (£149.98)
CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB PRO 64GB (2x32GB) DDR4 3600 (PC4-28800) C18 (£339.83)
Gigabyte AORUS NVMe Gen4 2TB Solid State Drive/SSD (£743.98)
Gigabyte Geforce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming OC 11GB GDDR6 Graphics (£1,059.98)
Corsair HXi Series HX1200i ATX Power Supply (£249.98)
Total £3,755.73 (although ill now start to hunt the lowest prices of these components

The main points in my logic being...

Case -- No more logic than I liked it, nice shape nice size
Motherboard -- PCIe4, PCIe4, PCIe4 - still doing a bit of research on which board
CPU -- Quick, More cores than the intel and I will run a lab with multiple VMs which could use them.
AIO Water Cooler - I hope this is sufficient for some basic overclocking, no experience doing it, so guesswork really.
RAM -- Speedwise It didnt look like 4400Mhz would make a masive diference to me, 1 to 2 FPS at most. As for 64GB, I also do a lot of photoshop'ing which will definitely benefit from 64GB - From what I can find, I don't think the multi cores of the CPU will help Photoshop much, if at all.
SSD -- 5GB read, 4.4GB write, RAID 1 so if there is failure I have time to buy another (Don't yet know whether RAID 1 will improve or slow the read/write, will do some bench-marking)
Graphic Card -- My main focus of the machine, so happy to spend a little more, almost the king at the moment, I appreciate I could save £300 going Super for only ~8% performance reduction
PSU - Like the AIO cooler, is this big enough? how do you size these things.

By all means comment, correct, even mild insult
Rich