Pimp my PC: The PC circlejerk thread

[cave hermit]

So for the last three years or so, I've been using a prebuilt Acer Predator from Costco with a GTX 1070 and i7-6700. This was my first gaming desktop (prior I had been using a laptop with a GT 650M for 5 years), and I feel it has served me quite well.

However it is starting to show its age, and the proprietary motherboard doesn't seem to take too well to part upgrades; the 6700 in it is apparently the newest that the socket will support, and attempting to upgrade the graphics card caused stuttering.

With the announcement and imminent release of the RTX 3000 line of GPUs from Nvidia, it is time. Time to ascend even further. Time to build my first gaming PC! And on a budget of $2000!

While I'm a little intimidated by the prospect of building a PC for the first time, especially using such expensive parts, I think I've got what it takes. I plan to use:
-A X570 chipset motherboard
-A minimum of 32 GB 3600 MHz DDR4 RAM (possibly 64 GB if I can),
-AMD Ryzen 4700X (Releasing possibly next month or the month after) (Air cooled with stock cooler or better)
-Nvidia RTX 3080 (Releasing this month!)
-2 sticks of M.2 NVME SSDs, each 1 TB (I may set them up in a RAID 0 configuration if I can figure that out)
-An extra 3.5" 2 TB 7200 RPM HDD (or alternatively a 1 TB 2.5" SSD)
-750-850 watt power supply

I'm all set to order a RTX 3080 direct from Nvidia as soon as they become available, then I just need to wait for the announcement and release of the Zen 3 architecture Ryzen CPUs, which is happening apparently in about a month. I could just go ahead and use a current gen Ryzen 3900X, but given the next generation is only a month or so away and will be the last to use the current AM4 socket type, it is probably in my best interest to wait since I'm trying to build a PC that won't have to be upgraded for several years.

So anyone else a PC nerd? Anyone have plans for RTX 3000?

[Mischief Maker]

Double-check that your motherboard supports 4th-gen PCI-express if you're getting a 3000 card.

I just upgraded my PC myself and I can heartily recommend a noctua air-cooler for your CPU. In fact I got full Noctua fans for the case (went with a Seasonic fanless PSU so I'm a little paranoid) and I am shocked both by how cool and quiet the PC remains. The two downsides of these fans are price and their signature wine-red/beige color scheme. They're not for a PC case you want to look like a thumping rave.

Also, if you're going full 3080, make sure you've got a monitor with the resolution and refresh rate to match or it's just wasted horsepower. At the moment I'm still rocking a 1660 super with my 60 Hz 1080p monitor and everything modern runs at the best this monitor is capable of displaying right now. (We'll see how well the 1660 handles Serious Sam 4's promised thousands of enemies at once.)

[Austin]

Great stuff, though with the parts mentioned you might be exceeding your $2,000 budget. I know that 3080 isn't going to be cheap, likewise with a 4700X. And you don't want to skimp on the motherboard either with those parts. Definitely want a better one with good VRMs. And you'll want a good case too, unless you want the whole thing sounding like an airplane in your room.

I will say, you do *not* need 64GB of RAM. If you're doing major production work of some kind, maybe. I'd go 32GB tops just to be "future proof", but even there you only really need it if you plan on doing a lot of stuff at once, like.. streaming, while playing a game, while rendering a video. 32GB at this moment is still considered overkill if you're just gaming.

My main workstation is running a first-gen Ryzen 1700X and it's treated me quite well over the years. Upgraded to a 5700XT GPU back in December, popped 32GB of RAM in it years back (I do lots of streaming and rendering, so it's put to good use). When the 4000 series chips drop, I'll be looking to upgrade from the first-gen to a 3000 series as the previous gen typically drops in price significantly after the new stuff arrives. I'm crossing my fingers those 3950X parts drop, they absolutely steamroll my current processor and will work on my motherboard. Worst case, maybe I'll upgrade to a 3900X.

[cave hermit]

So I'm actually currently deciding whether to wait another month or so for the 4700x to come out, or whether to just go with a 3900x so I can build as soon as the new RTX card drops. I've heard some conflicting things with some people saying that a 3900x would bottleneck a RTX 3080 while others say that the 3900x is overkill for a 3080, I guess the question is, can I wait another month or two, and is Zen 3 going to be a substantial improvement over Zen 2 in a way that I will actually notice.

Like, common sense would suggest that I just wait another month or so for Zen 3, my PC works fine for the games I play at the moment, so why not wait a bit longer for a better CPU, but my id demands a new PC NOW NOW NOW, saying that I wouldn't notice the difference between 3900x and 4700x, and that my current PC has some annoying quirks, like FPS games sometimes booting up without wasd movement working despite the keys themselves working, and semi-random stutter.

[Mischief Maker]

Well as I alluded to before, I'm pretty annoyed that I just built a new PC last May with the intention of eventually upgrading to a 3000 gpu, but now find out the 3000 series GPUs use PCI 4.0 and my shiny new mobo is just 3.0, so that's a point in the category of "wait."

Then again the fact that I upgraded in May did make quarantine significantly easier to withstand.

[SuperDeadite]

Im still rocking i7-4790k and gtx980ti and couldn't be happier lol.

[scrilla4rella]

I believe Nvidia said in a reddit AMA that PCI 3.0 would have a negligible impact on performance over PCI 4.0, like only a few percentages points, so you guys might be fine with an older MoBo

https://www.pcmag.com/news/you-asked-nv ... rtx-reddit

[cave hermit]

I do plan to get a x570 motherboard, which seems to be pci 4.0.

I think I'll just wait it out for the 4700X or 4900X. I mean, at maximum they're 2 months away, I can wait 2 more months if it means avoiding 3+ years of regretting the choice to stick with Zen 2.

[ZellSF]

Double-check that your motherboard supports 4th-gen PCI-express if you're getting a 3000 card.

Why? I haven't read any indication that it will matter. I think all X570 boards support PCI-e 4.0 anyway though.

> 64GB RAM
Not a good use of money unless you're running, say, 16 VMs on the side while playing games

Agree with this. I'm upgrading soon and I'm seriously considering 16GB*. You shouldn't go 64GB unless you have a specific use case you know requires it.

* And just buying a second identical 16GB set later if it's not enough.

> 2 sticks of M.2 NVME SSDs, each 1 TB (I may set them up in a RAID 0 configuration if I can figure that out)
This is not a great idea. Please check a few up-to-date be

Assuming both drives get full bandwidth and they're maxing out the bandwith of the M.2 slots then it should result in a read/write speed benefit... that you'll never ever notice unless you have a really specific use case.

You'll need to buy two high performance M.2 SSDs for that. Even if you need 2TB SSD space I would personally save some money by making 1TB of it QLC. Personally I'm going all QLC.

With the money saved on not wasting money on unnecessary RAM and SSDs, you can move up a CPU tier which would give you more real improvements or you would be halfway towards moving up a GPU tier.

[Mischief Maker]

Double-check that your motherboard supports 4th-gen PCI-express if you're getting a 3000 card.

Why? I haven't read any indication that it will matter. I think all X570 boards support PCI-e 4.0 anyway though.

Yes, 4.0 cards will work in a 3.0 slot, but there will be a bottleneck to performance compared to a 4.0 slot, and if you're splashing out for a 3080 I assume you want absolute bleeding-edge performance.

[ZellSF]

Double-check that your motherboard supports 4th-gen PCI-express if you're getting a 3000 card.

Why? I haven't read any indication that it will matter. I think all X570 boards support PCI-e 4.0 anyway though.

Yes, 4.0 cards will work in a 3.0 slot, but there will be a bottleneck to performance compared to a 4.0 slot, and if you're splashing out for a 3080 I assume you want absolute bleeding-edge performance.

Where do you have this from though? Nvidia seems to disagree:
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comment ... _answered/

System performance is impacted by many factors and the impact varies between applications. The impact is typically less than a few percent going from a x16 PCIE 4.0 to x16 PCIE 3.0. CPU selection often has a larger impact on performance.We look forward to new platforms that can fully take advantage of Gen4 capabilities for potential performance increases.

If not going PCIE 4.0 gets you the money to get a better CPU, might be worth it.

[orange808]

I've been burned with RAID in the past. It's not worth it.

[ZellSF]

AMD events:

Zen 3 (CPU): October 8th
RDNA2 (GPU): October 20th

Guess I'll have to wait that long to decide on a CPU purchase.

[cave hermit]

Oh boy, there's an exact date for the Zen 3 announcement! Looks like there won't be much longer to wait!

Also Chinese Ethereum miners appear to be eyeing the RTX 3080, which will probably compound the already rumored low launch stock issues. For my part I'm checking for preorders daily, and in the absence of preorders, plan to camp out on Nvidia's store page come launch day.

[Vanguard]

64 GB RAM is insane overkill. An SSD is easily worth it. Haven't bought new computer parts in some time, but I always found that buying a bit below the top tier stuff could save a ton of money for a marginal performance loss.

[Ixmucane2]

Haven't bought new computer parts in some time, but I always found that buying a bit below the top tier stuff could save a ton of money for a marginal performance loss.

Probably the case for RTX 3080 instead of RTX 3090.

[ZellSF]

Probably the case for the "4700x" over a "4900x" too, but assuming the 4700x/4900x difference is the same as the 3700x/3900x I would definitely rather have 4 more CPU cores than 32 GB of unnecessary RAM.

[Leader Bee]

I don't know much about RAID but is there even a point to it now SSD's are easily available? I could understand back when platter hard disks were more common and you wanted a faster read/write speed.

Perhaps theres something i'm not udnerstanding.

[ZellSF]

I don't know much about RAID but is there even a point to it now SSD's are easily available? I could understand back when platter hard disks were more common and you wanted a faster read/write speed.

Perhaps theres something i'm not udnerstanding.

You still get better read/write rates and two lower capacity SSDs might be cheaper than one higher capacity one.

However those better read/write rates are unnoticeable in real world scenarios and you lose flexibility to expand later.

So, no real point outside of very specific use cases. If you don't know exactly what you need it for, it will never benefit you (same as 64GB RAM).

[Ixmucane2]

I don't know much about RAID but is there even a point to it now SSD's are easily available? I could understand back when platter hard disks were more common and you wanted a faster read/write speed.

You still get better read/write rates and two lower capacity SSDs might be cheaper than one higher capacity one.

A PCIe SSD should be able to move 4 GB per second, probably more: you need to pump an awful lot of data to notice the difference between one and two units, and if you do it's probably better to arrange application specific ad-hoc methods (e.g. if you are recording from several cameras, configure your software to write some of the video streams to C: and some to D:) than to accept the extra cost, fragility and complication of RAID.

Cost is a good reason to buy two large SSD units instead of one very large one, but one large SSD unit now and a faster/larger one at the same price next year might be an even better strategy in some cases.

[ZellSF]

than to accept the extra cost, fragility and complication of RAID.

Fragility is only an issue if you don't have backups. Which you should have, so it's not an issue.

[cave hermit]

So it seems I may have to just go with a current gen 3900X anyway; I had assumed that the X570 chipset would support Zen 3 CPUs out of the box for some reason, but apparently that isn't true, I still need a BIOs update on X570 boards. Problem is, you can't get to BIOs without a processing CPU. Since I'm building a brand new computer, and I'm currently using an obsolete intel processor, I wouldn't actually have a way to apply the BIOs update since my new Zen 3 processor wouldn't be recognized without the BIOs update.

edit: never mind, apparently some boards do support uploading a new BIOs from a flash drive without a CPU!

[orange808]

than to accept the extra cost, fragility and complication of RAID.

Fragility is only an issue if you don't have backups. Which you should have, so it's not an issue.

Very few people follow best practices with their machines at home. In fact, most people have no idea what the best practices are--or how to properly implement them. That ignorance ranges from network configuration all the way down to data redundancy.

Beyond knowledge, people also need the necessary commitment, time, and energy. It's another thing to do.

Of course, if it's just a gaming machine, it makes little difference. Games will be installed and reinstalled regularly. It doesn't make a bit of difference if you lose a game save. Everything else can be reinstalled.

On the other hand, for busy people with multiple work and hobby projects occupying multiple partitions and virtual machine disk files, RAID poses a risk that requires a commitment to data redundancy planning. Losing even one day of work can be devastating.

Only OP can determine if it's worth it.

[cave hermit]

Honestly RAID seems like much more of a hassle than necessary, like I'm already planning to use a heatsink cooled PCIE 4.0 M.2 NVME SSD for my boot drive, I'm not sure how much faster you can get than that. Combined with an additional PCIE 3 NVME and a 2.5" SSD for games storage, I don't think disk access speed would be much of an issue without RAID.

Also I decided I'll stick with 32 GB memory clocked at 3600 MHz, I heard something about that being optimal for the Ryzen Zen 3 CPUs.

[scrilla4rella]

I love a good circle jerk!

So would it be sub-optimal to run a 3080 with Ryzen 5 3600? Thinking about getting a 4th gen Zen but assuming supply shortages will be in full effect

[ZellSF]

So would it be sub-optimal to run a 3080 with Ryzen 5 3600? Thinking about getting a 4th gen Zen but assuming supply shortages will be in full effect

Well, if you're worried about supply shortages on Zen3, you should be aware that it's also going to be an issue for the 3080. There's quite a few rumors that it's close to a paper launch (and Nvidia actively avoiding preorders might suggest some truth to that), ethereum miners apparently also really want the cards.

How much CPU limited you will be depends heavily on framerate, resolution, settings and games you want to play. It's really hard to give any definitive answers on that.

On the other hand, for busy people with multiple work and hobby projects occupying multiple partitions and virtual machine disk files, RAID poses a risk that requires a commitment to data redundancy planning. Losing even one day of work can be devastating.

Which is why you need backups. Just avoiding RAID0 is not going to protect against that. RAID0 only increases the risk of losing your data slightly*, the risk is already very high. Saying RAID0 is the point where you need to mitigate that risk is bizarre to me.

* Some people say it doubles the risk. This is a dumb simplification spread everywhere you shouldn't believe. It's only true if all your important data was on one of the theoretically not raided disks and doesn't account for all the data loss possibilities that aren't drive failure related.

So it seems I may have to just go with a current gen 3900X anyway; I had assumed that the X570 chipset would support Zen 3 CPUs out of the box for some reason, but apparently that isn't true, I still need a BIOs update on X570 boards. Problem is, you can't get to BIOs without a processing CPU. Since I'm building a brand new computer, and I'm currently using an obsolete intel processor, I wouldn't actually have a way to apply the BIOs update since my new Zen 3 processor wouldn't be recognized without the BIOs update.

edit: never mind, apparently some boards do support uploading a new BIOs from a flash drive without a CPU!

You're not making a lot of sense? If you already have a X570 board you surely have the CPU to update it?

And if not by the time Zen3 CPUs arrive, I'm sure X570 boards that support them will be out?

Even if it weren't for the USB update possibility, I'm not seeing the problem here.

[cave hermit]

No see, I didn't already have a x570 board, I was PLANNING to buy one for my new PC build, I currently use a prebuilt intel machine. And I figured that it would be a 50/50 when I buy zen 3 if motherboards available at that point would ship with the newest BIOs support already enabled.

Also after talking to some of the people over at Linus Tech Tips discord, I've actually decided to go with a B550 chipset board instead, I had been under the impression they didn't have PCIE 4.0, but that's only the case for the chipset lanes, the CPU lanes generally provide 4.0 support. Plus the B550 chipset is newer, apparently better designed, and doesn't have a bulky motherboard fan.

Based on my candidates for a motherboard now, it looks like I may have to also buy a PCIE Wi Fi card. Technically I could use ethernet, since the router is in the same room as me, but I would have to daisy chain ethernet cables together across the room, and they only seem to go up to 100 Mbps whereas I can get Wi fi speeds up to 300.

[Ixmucane2]

Based on my candidates for a motherboard now, it looks like I may have to also buy a PCIE Wi Fi card. Technically I could use ethernet, since the router is in the same room as me, but I would have to daisy chain ethernet cables together across the room, and they only seem to go up to 100 Mbps whereas I can get Wi fi speeds up to 300.

100 Mbps Ethernet "across the room" is unlikely: do you have a cheap 100Mbps router and/or really bad cheap cables? The motherboard should support Gigabit Ethernet, unless it's even faster.
And you shouldn't need to daisychain cables, you can just buy (or make) long ones.

[Austin]

Ethernet is the way to go. You can get really long cables and you won't have an issue with speeds as long as your router and cable support it. My router is situated in my living room, while my main workstation is in my game room. I run a single cable (probably 100 feet) and have no issues with speed (300+ down).

[cave hermit]

I'm using what I think is a standard Verizon router with a fiber optic connection, I would guess the limited speed over wired has to do with the fact I'm using a random ethernet cable I found in the closet behind the cat's litter box daisy chained to the ethernet cable that came with the Xbox 360.

I guess I could just get longer, better quality cables...