PC Build Thread - 2020... and beyond!!!

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Independent George
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PC Build Thread - 2020... and beyond!!!

Post by Independent George »

I am in the process of building a new desktop PC for the first time since the 1990s, and I'm excited! I thought I'd make this a general thread on PC building, with a chance for people to chime in on deals they see, and their opinions on various components. Everyone's excited about yesterday's product announcements from Nvidia, but that's largely wasted on me since I don't generally play AAA games. Dwarf Fortress, on the other hand, is slow as molasses on my old CPU (see below).

My current desktop is a Dell I purchased with my corprorate discount in 2008, upgrade piecemeal over the last five years (Core i7-920, 8 GB DDR3 memory, 1 TB Samsung EVO 860 2.5" SSD, Radeon RX-580 GPU). My plan is to transplant the SSD and the GPU into a new Ryzen CPU/motherboard. Zen3 is due out later this year (probably just before the holiday season); I'll make my CPU decision then based on pricing and availability. Right now, my build looks like this:

1. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (or equivalent Zen 3 CPU)
2. MSI B550 A-Pro
3. 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO 2.5" SSD*
4. Sapphire Pulse RX-580 8GB GPU*
5. 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200** - $112
6. Noctua NH-U12A CPU cooler** - $99
7. CoolerMaster NR600 ATX Case** - $63
8. BeQuiet Straight Power 11 650W PSU** - $112

* currently in use with my existing PC, and to be recycled into the next one
** already purchased and waiting to be assembled

I had been planning to wait for NVME prices to decline before investing in a 2TB drive, but it appears that's beginning to happen now. I think the best value right now might be the ADATA XPG 8200 2TB ($236 with coupon on Amazon, with an additional 5% off with my Prime card). I think I'll give it another month or so and wait to see how prices look in mid-October.

Funny enough, the thing I'm most excited about is getting to take advantage of a modular PSU in the NR600. CPUs and memory have been steadily improving since before I was born, but the improvements to case design & cable management is a different kind of change I never expected.
Last edited by Independent George on Thu Jan 07, 2021 2:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Dude2
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Dude2 »

On the off-chance that it might interest you, I get much enjoyment out of putting several SSDs together in a raid 0 configuration. That requires either built-in raid on the motherboard or a PCIe card. Usually I prefer the raid on the motherboard as it simplifies things. This drives my motherboard decision. Back in the day I had a Win7 system that booted in like 3 seconds.
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Independent George
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Independent George »

Dude2 wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:18 pm On the off-chance that it might interest you, I get much enjoyment out of putting several SSDs together in a raid 0 configuration. That requires either built-in raid on the motherboard or a PCIe card. Usually I prefer the raid on the motherboard as it simplifies things. This drives my motherboard decision. Back in the day I had a Win7 system that booted in like 3 seconds.
I forgot to include my 2TB HDD in my components (probably because I expect to retire it soon in favor of more SSDs); that's currently my document storage.

If I were to set up a RAID (something I've never done before), I think I'd do RAID 1 rather than RAID 0; all SSDs are already so much faster than HDDs that the additional speed is a bit superfluous to my needs. Data backups, however, are always useful, though hardly critical with cloud backups. The A-Pro supports both (plus RAID 10 for the sata drives, though that seems a bit excessive for one dude).

Is it possible to have a 2.5" SSD mirror an NVME drive in RAID 1, or do they have to be the same type of drive? I prefer keeping my documents separate from the OS & programs, so ideally I'd have two NVME drives mirrored by two 2.5" SSDs.
arf30
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by arf30 »

I recently did a very similar build, but with a 1TB Evo 970 M.2 NVMe and an Nvidia 2080S card for the superior drivers. You can probably save money on ram and do 2x8 for 16GB - 4 sticks have a performance penalty on AMD.
Last edited by arf30 on Wed Sep 02, 2020 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
brad.clarkston
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by brad.clarkston »

A good site to put your parts into is https://pcpartpicker.com/. You can set what online companies you want to buy from (Amazon/Newegg/Best Buy/Walmart/etc) and it will give you the lowest price from your choices or all choices by default.

https://www.userbenchmark.com/ is a good site to look at cpu/gpu apples to apples comparisons on.
https://pc-builds.com/calculator/ is an OK (just OK) site to plug your components into to see what the bottleneck looks like (anything less than 5% is just performance chasing).
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Dude2
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Dude2 »

Independent George wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:37 pm I forgot to include my 2TB HDD in my components (probably because I expect to retire it soon in favor of more SSDs); that's currently my document storage.

If I were to set up a RAID (something I've never done before), I think I'd do RAID 1 rather than RAID 0; all SSDs are already so much faster than HDDs that the additional speed is a bit superfluous to my needs. Data backups, however, are always useful, though hardly critical with cloud backups. The A-Pro supports both (plus RAID 10 for the sata drives, though that seems a bit excessive for one dude).

Is it possible to have a 2.5" SSD mirror an NVME drive in RAID 1, or do they have to be the same type of drive? I prefer keeping my documents separate from the OS & programs, so ideally I'd have two NVME drives mirrored by two 2.5" SSDs.
Don't mean to de-rail your thread with all this Raid talk. I got into a Raid period for a while but have since backed off of it. I think I ended up agreeing with what I had read online. It might be needed as a solution for fault-tolerant systems, but a home user can ignore it. It isn't a backup solution, and yes it bogs you down with the need to have multiple identical drives. I use raid 0 strictly for performance. The beauty here is that sometimes you might have several identical SSDs laying around that are small, for example, three 120 GB SSDs from old computers. Harvest them into a raid0 of 360 GB and reap faster read/write speeds than the original drives.

I've had raid10 on some HDD drives, but the clickity-clacking makes me nuts now. Also, the heat that it puts out is tremendous compared to SSDs. Don't want to ever go back there (although I have a ton of HDDs laying around.)

I once tried a raid5 using two identical SSDs and an identical NVMe drive (same size, same manufacturer). It worked fine, but never got the performance I wanted there. Probably best not to mix regular SSDs and NVMe drives in a raid. The general rule is that you will always suffer with the slowest or smallest component of the set. If NVMe provides improvement because it is closer electrically to the CPU or exploits better parallelism (or whatever it does), mixing them just means you won't get those advantages.
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rich126
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by rich126 »

This guy makes his living working from home so this isn't a fair comparison but you can check it out.
https://www.troyhunt.com/building-the-u ... ice-again/
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bugleheadd
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by bugleheadd »

if you really want nvme gen 4, also look into the inland premium nvme gen4 (if you have a microcenter) or sabrent rocket gen4 . they are highly rated drives as well.

nvme gen 3 aint nothing to sneeze at either. although if you are coming from SATA III, that is plenty fast too. the difference is most noticable if you are upgrading from mechanical drive
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whodidntante
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by whodidntante »

Independent George wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:37 pm
Dude2 wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:18 pm On the off-chance that it might interest you, I get much enjoyment out of putting several SSDs together in a raid 0 configuration. That requires either built-in raid on the motherboard or a PCIe card. Usually I prefer the raid on the motherboard as it simplifies things. This drives my motherboard decision. Back in the day I had a Win7 system that booted in like 3 seconds.
I forgot to include my 2TB HDD in my components (probably because I expect to retire it soon in favor of more SSDs); that's currently my document storage.

If I were to set up a RAID (something I've never done before), I think I'd do RAID 1 rather than RAID 0; all SSDs are already so much faster than HDDs that the additional speed is a bit superfluous to my needs. Data backups, however, are always useful, though hardly critical with cloud backups. The A-Pro supports both (plus RAID 10 for the sata drives, though that seems a bit excessive for one dude).

Is it possible to have a 2.5" SSD mirror an NVME drive in RAID 1, or do they have to be the same type of drive? I prefer keeping my documents separate from the OS & programs, so ideally I'd have two NVME drives mirrored by two 2.5" SSDs.
RAID 1 will be just as fast as RAID 0 for reading with SSDs and a reasonable RAID controller. But you probably will do even better with an M.2 interface and a drive capable of firehosing it. It's not difficult to saturate a SATA bus.
dwc13
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

I'm also building a desktop computer to replace my aging DIY i5-4670K + GTX750 system. I'll probably re-purpose the DIY i5 and swap out the spinning rust drive for a SATA SSD and then do a long-overdue clean OS install. There is no PCI-E x4 slot on the mini ITX MB for a M.2 NVMe adapter.

For this build, I definitely won't be doing things on the cheap, but I'm also not venturing into serious FPS gamer territory...yet. Still time, lol. Aside from the case (which I bought years ago), I wanted good flexibility w/r/t possible future upgrades. Thus far I already have (or have ordered) the following:

1. MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk Wifi motherboard -- Solid VRMs, support for Zen 3 (when released), PCIe 4, and Wi-Fi 6 + 2.5G LAN.
2. Corsair RM750x 80+ Gold - Full modular 750W power supply with 2 EPS connectors. Perhaps a Ryzen 49xx & RTX 3090 TiSuperFE upgrade next year. Just kidding (in case my wife reads this).
3. Corsair ML 120 Pro 120mm White LED PWM case fan -- 2 for front grill mounting to balance the air flow/pressure from 2 exhaust fans. I'm not into LEDs, but the plain black version with no LEDs was $12 more per fan.
4. 500 GB Crucial M.2 NVMe drive -- Windows 10 Pro + a few games
5. 1 TB WD 7200 SATA III spinning rust drive -- From the "repurpose bin" in the basement. For data files, most applications including MS Office. I might finally be able to use Excel to solve that linear regression problem with 1M+ rows of parameters...
6. Antec Three Hundred Mid Tower Case -- Bringing out this @10+ year old relic from basement storage. Will be interesting to see how much room I have left for an after market CPU cooler once I'm finished with the initial build.
7. Dell 27" Gaming Monitor S2721DGF -- QHD (2K) 165MHz IPS panel with support for AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-SYNC.

I'm undecided about the CPU: Either a Ryzen 5 3600 (and perhaps upgrade in 2021-22 when Zen 3 has been out a while) or Ryzen 7 3700X. Unfortunately, I missed the 3600 on sale for $155 a few weeks ago and now it's up to $199. It's still @$90+ less than the 3700X, but the latter comes bundled with a few free games. For now, I'll use the stock heat sink (Wraith Spire or Wraith Prism) and monitor the thermals and fan noise for a while before overclocking.

While I await delivery of various items, I'm also monitoring pricing of current generation GPUs, including Radeon RX 5600XT,& 5700XT, GeForce RTX 2070, and a few others. Hopefully prices will come down as a result of the Nvidia Ampere product reveal yesterday. I'll hold off on RTX 30 series (new architecture + new process node = possible teething problems; video cards will likely sell above RRP).

For memory, I'll probably go with Crucial Ballistix 2 x 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM. Likely won't be E-die but still should reliable and have solid performance.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by brad.clarkston »

dwc13 wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 8:14 pm I'm also building a desktop computer to replace my aging DIY i5-4670K + GTX750 system. I'll probably re-purpose the DIY i5 and swap out the spinning rust drive for a SATA SSD and then do a long-overdue clean OS install. There is no PCI-E x4 slot on the mini ITX MB for a M.2 NVMe adapter.

For this build, I definitely won't be doing things on the cheap, but I'm also not venturing into serious FPS gamer territory...yet. Still time, lol. Aside from the case (which I bought years ago), I wanted good flexibility w/r/t possible future upgrades. Thus far I already have (or have ordered) the following:

1. MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk Wifi motherboard -- Solid VRMs, support for Zen 3 (when released), PCIe 4, and Wi-Fi 6 + 2.5G LAN.
2. Corsair RM750x 80+ Gold - Full modular 750W power supply with 2 EPS connectors. Perhaps a Ryzen 49xx & RTX 3090 TiSuperFE upgrade next year. Just kidding (in case my wife reads this).
3. Corsair ML 120 Pro 120mm White LED PWM case fan -- 2 for front grill mounting to balance the air flow/pressure from 2 exhaust fans. I'm not into LEDs, but the plain black version with no LEDs was $12 more per fan.
4. 500 GB Crucial M.2 NVMe drive -- Windows 10 Pro + a few games
5. 1 TB WD 7200 SATA III spinning rust drive -- From the "repurpose bin" in the basement. For data files, most applications including MS Office. I might finally be able to use Excel to solve that linear regression problem with 1M+ rows of parameters...
6. Antec Three Hundred Mid Tower Case -- Bringing out this @10+ year old relic from basement storage. Will be interesting to see how much room I have left for an after market CPU cooler once I'm finished with the initial build.
7. Dell 27" Gaming Monitor S2721DGF -- QHD (2K) 165MHz IPS panel with support for AMD FreeSync and Nvidia G-SYNC.

I'm undecided about the CPU: Either a Ryzen 5 3600 (and perhaps upgrade in 2021-22 when Zen 3 has been out a while) or Ryzen 7 3700X. Unfortunately, I missed the 3600 on sale for $155 a few weeks ago and now it's up to $199. It's still @$90+ less than the 3700X, but the latter comes bundled with a few free games. For now, I'll use the stock heat sink (Wraith Spire or Wraith Prism) and monitor the thermals and fan noise for a while before overclocking.

While I await delivery of various items, I'm also monitoring pricing of current generation GPUs, including Radeon RX 5600XT,& 5700XT, GeForce RTX 2070, and a few others. Hopefully prices will come down as a result of the Nvidia Ampere product reveal yesterday. I'll hold off on RTX 30 series (new architecture + new process node = possible teething problems; video cards will likely sell above RRP).

For memory, I'll probably go with Crucial Ballistix 2 x 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM. Likely won't be E-die but still should reliable and have solid performance.
The difference between your i5-4670K vs a Ryzen 5 3600 is about 7% your not going to see any difference between just the cpu's. The 3700X is about 10% you might notice a difference probably not. What you want to focus on is the motherboard upgrade to get a solid memory/GPU boost.

While the Tomahawk is a great board MSI doesn't publish memory support sheets telling you what memory has been tested with the board. Allot of people that complain about slow or under-clocking motherboards never bothered to check out the preferred memory for there specific mobo.
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random_walker_77
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by random_walker_77 »

One thing to consider is to add on a NAS and make sure you have a gigabit wired connection between your NAS and computer. You're going to want the SSD for your OS and for certain games. For media and general files, it's nice to put it on a NAS, so that you have the RAID1 redundancy, you have access from all computers in your household, and at ~115MB/s, it's good enough for most things that use lots of space.

Of course, you could also just add a 6 or 8 TB hard drive to your build (in addition to the SSD). (or add both the hard drive and a NAS)

Note that the case you've chosen lacks a usb-c port, which is probably fine, but for a new build, that might be a consideration.
dwc13
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

brad.clarkston wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 8:50 pm
The difference between your i5-4670K vs a Ryzen 5 3600 is about 7% your not going to see any difference between just the cpu's. The 3700X is about 10% you might notice a difference probably not. What you want to focus on is the motherboard upgrade to get a solid memory/GPU boost.

While the Tomahawk is a great board MSI doesn't publish memory support sheets telling you what memory has been tested with the board. Allot of people that complain about slow or under-clocking motherboards never bothered to check out the preferred memory for there specific mobo.

I'm doing a complete new build, not just replacing a few parts. Going from an mechanical HD to a NVMe drive alone will considerably speed things up. Given the components I have lined up for this build, I fully expect to realize a significant increase in overall system speed, especially if I opt for a Ryzen 7 3700X. I'm not just looking for higher FPS while gaming; far from it, actually. Even without benchmarking, I can tell my i5-4670K is noticeably slower than it was before Meltdown and Spectre patches were applied. Thanks, Intel. Besides, my current build was maxed out at 16GB RAM when it was built years ago. I'm going with 32GB this time; for now, 2x32GB is still too expensive and overkill.

BTW, I don't put much stock in synthetic benchmarks such as UserBenchmark, PassMark, SysMark, 3DMark, etc. In the end, those websites are going for hits to generate ad revenue while (hopefully) providing entertainment for visitors. The algorithm and evaluation criteria change periodically and then overall historical rankings of processors get re-evaluated? Really? Software is heading towards greater/improved use of simultaneous multi-threading, not single thread. So why does UB (BTW, I deny coining the term "Useless Bullsh*t) re-weight its algorithm from 30% single core to 40% single core; quad core from 60% to 58%, while multi-core was decreased from 10% to 2%. Hmmm...let's see -- Intel was stuck on quad core and fewer CPUs in the consumer market for the better part of a decade. Shortly after high core count Zen 2 CPUs were released, the UB algorithm is suddenly changed from 90% to 98% weighting based upon 4 or fewer cores. Perhaps Intel Marketing Funds at work again? PassMark and other HW benchmarking programs are not without their share of issues, too, but I digress.

Before I ordered the MSI MAG X570 Tomahawk Wifi MB, I researched the purported memory issue that has been reported by some users. I'm not too concerned, although it was one of the reasons I decided to go with Crucial Ballistix DDR4 3200 memory for now. Every Tier 1 MB vendor tests against RAM from Crucial, Samsung and a few others. Did you happen to notice the users having "problems" often seemed to be attempting to utilize DDR4 3600 MHz UDIMMs? If memory serves, AMD's official support for Zen 2 CPUs is *up to* DDR4 3200 MHz UDIMMs. I understand why some want to push the envelope in their builds. Nothing at all wrong with that. I've done it in the past. Sometimes there is a significant improvement in speed, functionality (OpenWRT!!!), other times one ends up with a coaster, brick, or ugly paperweight. But in my book, no whining online allowed if one unsuccessfully attempts to use parts/methods that are not officially documented & supported by all relevant vendors. Just because reviewers from enthusiast HW websites have successfully managed to utilize out-of-spec DDR4 3600 MHz UDIMMs in their Zen 2 builds doesn't necessarily mean it will work for all possible combinations of CPUs, MBs and RAM modules.
Panky
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Panky »

Independent George wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:08 pm Dwarf Fortress, on the other hand, is slow as molasses on my old CPU (see below).
Huge DF (Dwaf Fortress) fan here! (Though I haven't played for several rounds of updates, waiting for the steam graphical release they have started teasing).

Dwarf Fortress is largely single threaded (only uses one CPU core) so a Ryzen is arguably a bad choice.

If DF is what you are trying to optimize, you don't really care about cores, but instead care about the fastest single core performance (highest Ghz) which is generally with Intel right now.

Likely the Ryzen processor you mention may already have better single core performance than your existing machine, so this may still be an upgrade, but if DF is your only consideration keep that in mind.


Also I suggest NOT doing Raid-0, its not failure tolerant (stripe vs mirror). If you only upgrade once every many years, you are better off getting a fault tolerant system since you will likely see a drive failure if you hold onto hardware for along time.

Modular PSUs - yes they are great, I have a cosair one I love, but any modular is generally much nicer to route cables with than non modular.

SSDs - if it has been years since your last upgrade, going to a solid state disk from a spinning disk is a night and day difference, this is the biggest gain you will see. Sata III SSDs are more than adequate for most use cases, though many like M.2/NVMe as the next step up (although there is a degree of diminishing returns there).
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Independent George
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Independent George »

Panky wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 12:18 pmDwarf Fortress is largely single threaded (only uses one CPU core) so a Ryzen is arguably a bad choice.

If DF is what you are trying to optimize, you don't really care about cores, but instead care about the fastest single core performance (highest Ghz) which is generally with Intel right now.

Likely the Ryzen processor you mention may already have better single core performance than your existing machine, so this may still be an upgrade, but if DF is your only consideration keep that in mind.
DF is what I play most, but it's not the only thing, and I fully expect multithreading to become much more prevalent in games going forward (especially since PS5 and XBox X are both using 8 core/16 thread processors from AMD). I'd rather not overspecialize on Intel even if most of my time is spent on DF. Really, my existing PC is so ancient at this point that nearly anything would be an upgrade.
Modular PSUs - yes they are great, I have a cosair one I love, but any modular is generally much nicer to route cables with than non modular.

SSDs - if it has been years since your last upgrade, going to a solid state disk from a spinning disk is a night and day difference, this is the biggest gain you will see. Sata III SSDs are more than adequate for most use cases, though many like M.2/NVMe as the next step up (although there is a degree of diminishing returns there).
On reflection, I really don't think I would benefit from any sort of RAID setup; between automatic cloud backups and regular manual backups to an extra drive, RAID 1 really doesn't provide enough benefit to be worth the hassle of setting it up. The big thing for me is keeping my documents separate from the boot disk; in my experience, the biggest threat to my data isn't drive failure, but Windows Update.

Besides speed, the other benefit to NVME which I look forward to is the lack of cables. I really hate cable management.
rgs92
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by rgs92 »

Yep, when I worked with databases (Oracle and such), RAID was mainly the place where the database lived for real-time fault-tolerant transaction processing systems, heavy-duty stuff for big online systems with lots of users.

If you have something like sync.com or even Google Drive, that's good enough to avoid data loss from hardware malfunctions.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by LadyGeek »

Here's a reason to buy the fastest, highest resolution system you can afford:

Microsoft Flight Simulator Performance and Benchmarks: Your PC May Need an Upgrade
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dwc13
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

Independent George wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 5:08 pm I am in the process of building a new desktop PC for the first time since the 1990s, and I'm excited! I thought I'd make this a general thread on PC building, with a chance for people to chime in on deals they see, and their opinions on various components. Everyone's excited about yesterday's product announcements from Nvidia, but that's largely wasted on me since I don't generally play AAA games. Dwarf Fortress, on the other hand, is slow as molasses on my old CPU (see below).

My current desktop is a Dell I purchased with my corprorate discount in 2008, upgrade piecemeal over the last five years (Core i7-920, 8 GB DDR3 memory, 1 TB Samsung EVO 860 2.5" SSD, Radeon RX-580 GPU). My plan is to transplant the SSD and the GPU into a new Ryzen CPU/motherboard. Zen3 is due out later this year (probably just before the holiday season); I'll make my CPU decision then based on pricing and availability. Right now, my build looks like this:

1. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (or equivalent Zen 3 CPU)
2. MSI B550 A-Pro
3. 1 TB Samsung 860 EVO 2.5" SSD*
4. Sapphire Pulse RX-580 8GB GPU*
5. 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3200** - $112
6. Noctua NH-U12A CPU cooler** - $99
7. CoolerMaster NR600 ATX Case** - $63
8. BeQuiet Straight Power 11 650W PSU** - $112

* currently in use with my existing PC, and to be recycled into the next one
** already purchased and waiting to be assembled

I had been planning to wait for NVME prices to decline before investing in a 2TB drive, but it appears that's beginning to happen now. I think the best value right now might be the ADATA XPG 8200 2TB ($236 with coupon on Amazon, with an additional 5% off with my Prime card). I think I'll give it another month or so and wait to see how prices look in mid-October.

Funny enough, the thing I'm most excited about is getting to take advantage of a modular PSU in the NR600. CPUs and memory have been steadily improving since before I was born, but the improvements to case design & cable management is a different kind of change I never expected.
Pricing on 2TB M.2 NVMe SSDs -- at least for Gen3 drives -- are getting closer to the $200 level.

Newegg has a 2TB ADATA Swordfish PCIe Gen 3 NVMe drive for $210
https://www.newegg.com/adata-2tb-swordf ... klink=true

Newegg has a 2TB Team Group MP33 PRO PCIe Gen 3 NVMe drive for $220.
https://www.newegg.com/team-group-2tb-m ... klink=true

Even a Crucial P1 2TB Gen 3 NVMe drive is $236. I might have to reconsider and buy a larger NVMe drive for my build.

NVMe Specifications 1.4 vs. 1.3.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14543/nv ... -published
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neurosphere
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by neurosphere »

LadyGeek wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 5:54 pm Here's a reason to buy the fastest, highest resolution system you can afford:

Microsoft Flight Simulator Performance and Benchmarks: Your PC May Need an Upgrade
Agreed! For what it's worth, I've installed this. It seems to work "great" on my build, which means at 30fps I don't notice problems. At 60fps I don't THINK I notice problems but I'm looking for them more acutely and maybe I can convince myself it doesn't "look" as nice.

The only thing "modern" on my rig is the graphics card: RTX 2070 super

The rest of the system is about 7 years old. Intel i7-377k @ 3.5GHz. ASUS P8Z77-M Pro mother board.

Forgot to mention that I'm running this on an ultrawide screen, 2569x1080
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ScaledWheel
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by ScaledWheel »

I have a relatively beefy workstation that is a swiss army knife for my work and play. I do some consulting work that requires the use of the GPU on high-resolution imagery so having access to more memory on the GPU could be useful. The newly-announced RTX 3090 would be pretty great to have, or even an OEM version of the RTX 2070/2080 with more memory. Only question is whether it's going to work in my current workstation. Think it may be too large.

If that's the case, then it's a good excuse to build a modern rig :twisted: Would be using the current hard drives but replace everything else.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JCG9f9
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

LadyGeek wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 5:54 pm Here's a reason to buy the fastest, highest resolution system you can afford:

Microsoft Flight Simulator Performance and Benchmarks: Your PC May Need an Upgrade
This one is definitely going to drive computer hardware sales. I'm putting together the BOM for a new build right now. Good to finally know the official system requirements. And thank you, Nvidia, for your timely Ampere announcement.

Depending upon how things fall the next few weeks, I might have to be content with playing at a mix of Medium & High settings, at least early on. If so, it's not really a big deal. Based upon my previous experience with FS (FSX all the way back to FS 5.25" Floppy Disks), I'm a pretty lousy pilot. Ted Stryker comes to mind. Even so, I'll enjoy virtually flying around the world. From some of the videos I've seen posted on YouTube, the graphics are pretty decent even at Medium settings. Also, Nvidia and AMD will come out with improved drivers specifically addressing issues with this program.

Okay, Maxis, you're up. When are we (finally) going to get a worthy successor to SimCity 4?
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by LadyGeek »

I wish I hadn't seen this thread... :)

I've been building my own PCs since forever. My one and only exception is my current PC - a Lenovo desktop with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz and 16 GB RAM. What do I need a graphics card for? I'm using the mobo built-in video. **sigh**

Actually, I have 2 PCs (same configuration - 1 on Win 10, the other on Linux) and a Lenovo T470 laptop.

I also have a Raspberry Pi running my weather station. All are networked - I get weather status from my web browser.

I miss Flight Simulator, not to mention SimCity... Time for an upgrade.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Independent George »

dwc13 wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 6:34 pm
Pricing on 2TB M.2 NVMe SSDs -- at least for Gen3 drives -- are getting closer to the $200 level.

Newegg has a 2TB ADATA Swordfish PCIe Gen 3 NVMe drive for $210
https://www.newegg.com/adata-2tb-swordf ... klink=true

Newegg has a 2TB Team Group MP33 PRO PCIe Gen 3 NVMe drive for $220.
https://www.newegg.com/team-group-2tb-m ... klink=true

Even a Crucial P1 2TB Gen 3 NVMe drive is $236. I might have to reconsider and buy a larger NVMe drive for my build.
Right now, I still lean towards the AData 8200 at $236

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07 ... Y3LN&psc=1

5-year warranty and TLC for the same price as the Crucial P1, and only slightly more than those other two. I'm trying to decide between just buying it now, or waiting to see if prices come down any more. I suppose if they do drop further, I can always buy another to use up both NVME slots on the A-Pro.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by brad.clarkston »

Independent George wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 8:58 pm
dwc13 wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 6:34 pm
Pricing on 2TB M.2 NVMe SSDs -- at least for Gen3 drives -- are getting closer to the $200 level.

Newegg has a 2TB ADATA Swordfish PCIe Gen 3 NVMe drive for $210
https://www.newegg.com/adata-2tb-swordf ... klink=true

Newegg has a 2TB Team Group MP33 PRO PCIe Gen 3 NVMe drive for $220.
https://www.newegg.com/team-group-2tb-m ... klink=true

Even a Crucial P1 2TB Gen 3 NVMe drive is $236. I might have to reconsider and buy a larger NVMe drive for my build.
Right now, I still lean towards the AData 8200 at $236

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07 ... Y3LN&psc=1

5-year warranty and TLC for the same price as the Crucial P1, and only slightly more than those other two. I'm trying to decide between just buying it now, or waiting to see if prices come down any more. I suppose if they do drop further, I can always buy another to use up both NVME slots on the A-Pro.
Nothing wrong with AData same fab as Samsung just not as high quality part but more than good enough for a pc.

I doubt prices will go down allot we are into the Apple/Samsung phone refresh months so nearly all of the chip fab's are pumping out phone chips/memory like mad. There will be a small bump for Black Friday/Cyber Monday for any company that has a surplus of parts that's always a good time to look.

I rarely put just one big M.2/SSD into a machine. I like to go with one high quality M.2 for the OS/O365/browers and then a good SSD for steam/wow/games.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Dyloot »

I love building with Noctua cooling.

What case fans are you going with? It looks like your case supports two 140mm fans in the front (check out the Noctua NF-A14 PWNs) and one 120MM in the back (NF-S12A PWM). The PWM fans are awesome!
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Independent George »

brad.clarkston wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 9:09 pm
I doubt prices will go down allot we are into the Apple/Samsung phone refresh months so nearly all of the chip fab's are pumping out phone chips/memory like mad. There will be a small bump for Black Friday/Cyber Monday for any company that has a surplus of parts that's always a good time to look.
There is apparently a massive oversupply of nand chips right now that is expected to push prices down beginning in Q4 and into 2021:

https://www.dramexchange.com/WeeklyRese ... 10682.html
TrendForce believes that, despite the traditional peak season for electronics sales and the release of Apple’s new iPhones in 3Q20, the quarterly decline in NAND Flash ASP will likely reach 10%, due to the client end’s excess inventory under the impact of the pandemic. Furthermore, as suppliers continue making improvements in the yield rate of 128L NAND Flash, the oversupply in the NAND Flash market will intensify in 4Q20, further exacerbating the decline in NAND Flash ASP.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by pondering »

I would plan on a service to store my data offsite. I go with Dropbox for $120 a year, but there are alternatives. Dropbox had the least load on my CPU when I tested it years ago.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Ged »

bugleheadd wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 7:45 pm if you really want nvme gen 4, also look into the inland premium nvme gen4 (if you have a microcenter) or sabrent rocket gen4 . they are highly rated drives as well.

nvme gen 3 aint nothing to sneeze at either. although if you are coming from SATA III, that is plenty fast too. the difference is most noticable if you are upgrading from mechanical drive
If you plan on an NVME gen 4 drive, you will need an X570 motherboard to support PCIE 4 to utilize the capabilities of that drive. That will be a bit more expensive than the B550 specified in the original post.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by kevinf »

For a home users, skip the RAID and get a proper backup solution. Daily Macrium Reflect drive images saved to an external drive / network drive for local backup, and a remote solution such as Google Sync for online + off-site backup. In a home setting, RAID of any variety will only cause you headaches. It can take hours to resync a large RAID array after an improper shutdown.

RAID 1 will not save you from ransomware, a lightning strike, or just simply hitting delete at the wrong time.

RAID 0 will have marginal improvements (can even cause added latency, reducing performance!) if you are using the latest solid state drives for typical home workloads. Many of them can saturate the bus all by their lonesome and I really doubt you're worried about Dwarf Fortress saturating your disk queue with a continuous torrent of tiny random I/O.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Mudpuppy »

I went all out on my Christmas / New Year's virtual machine / server build. Well, not all out by gaming standards, but pretty decked out by "system used to run a half dozen VMs, including desktop browsing VMs". I wanted a microATX build as that fits best into my desk space, but that also constrained my motherboard choices considerably since I wanted one of the chipsets released with Ryzen 3. This was before the B550 chipset hit the market.

CPU: Ryzen 3 3700X with Noctua NH-D15S heatsink
Motherboard: Asrock AM4/X570M
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666 C16 64 GB (4x16GB) [Stability more important than speed]
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Super [Better support than AMD for my particular use cases]
NVMe: Samsung 970 Evo 1TB
HDD: 2xWD Gold 2TB (considering swapping this out for two 4TB drives)
PSU: Seasonic Prime PX-750
Case: Thermaltake Core V21 microATX cube [Pretty good design for a small case]
Case Fans: 3xNoctua NF-A14 and 1xNoctua NF-A20

Now if I could only find a good three-button mouse. My old Logitech PS/2 three-button mouse is starting to show its age and the Contour Mouse was just a little too big to be comfortable for how I hold a mouse. Maybe I need to learn a new way, but decades of habits are hard to break.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

Mudpuppy wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 1:12 am I went all out on my Christmas / New Year's virtual machine / server build. Well, not all out by gaming standards, but pretty decked out by "system used to run a half dozen VMs, including desktop browsing VMs". I wanted a microATX build as that fits best into my desk space, but that also constrained my motherboard choices considerably since I wanted one of the chipsets released with Ryzen 3. This was before the B550 chipset hit the market.

CPU: Ryzen 3 3700X with Noctua NH-D15S heatsink
Motherboard: Asrock AM4/X570M
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666 C16 64 GB (4x16GB) [Stability more important than speed]
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Super [Better support than AMD for my particular use cases]
NVMe: Samsung 970 Evo 1TB
HDD: 2xWD Gold 2TB (considering swapping this out for two 4TB drives)
PSU: Seasonic Prime PX-750
Case: Thermaltake Core V21 microATX cube [Pretty good design for a small case]
Case Fans: 3xNoctua NF-A14 and 1xNoctua NF-A20

Now if I could only find a good three-button mouse. My old Logitech PS/2 three-button mouse is starting to show its age and the Contour Mouse was just a little too big to be comfortable for how I hold a mouse. Maybe I need to learn a new way, but decades of habits are hard to break.
Had to check out the case you used. Nice.

Looks like the Contour 3 button mouse is available in...3 sizes (S, M, L). If you have a M or L, perhaps try out the next smaller size?
https://www.contourdesign.com/product/contour-mouse/

HP made the DY651A years ago. Probably have to look in the bargain bin at a local computer store.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-USB-Optical ... SwzHRbF9ck
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by lazydavid »

Humorously enough, two weeks ago I just built a new PC for the first time in almost 11 years. I've been using laptops and surface pros for a while, but with WFH continuing to extend, my Surface Pro 4 was starting to show its age driving a 4k monitor.

New parts:
Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus (non-wifi)
Ryzen 5 3600X
G.Skill Ripjaws V 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600 CAS 16
Asus ROG Strix Radeon RX 5700XT OC 8GB
Addlink S70 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm in RAID 0
3x Noctua NF-P12 redux-1300 PWM fans
TP-Link USB Bluetooth adapter

Re-used parts:
Antec P180 case from 2005
Corsair AX750 modular power supply from 2010
Corsair 180mm quiet fan from 2010
(possibly) Corsair H50 AiO Water cooler from 2010
(likely removing) OCZ 120GB SATA III SSD from 2010
LG 10x Blu-Ray burner from 2010
Sony X720E 49" TV/Monitor from 2018
IBM Model M keyboard from 1970 :beer
Logitech MX Master mouse from 2017

I don't game anymore, so I was originally just going to get a low-end Ryzen with an APU (perhaps the 3200G), but my son has been complaining about his gaming laptop overheating at times, and if he's up late playing games with his friends, he tends to keep us awake, as his room is next door to ours. So I made him an offer to pay for half of a graphics card of his choice (I gave a few options), and he could use my office when I'm not working. He jumped at the chance, and the situation has worked out well. He can run all of his games smoothly in 4k with everything cranked up. :)

I was originally going to put my H50 in this build, and actually ordered the retaining bracket for it, but the cheap air cooler that came with the processor actually works very well. In my use, CPU temp ranges from the mid-40s to low 50 degrees C, and when I pushed all 12 threads at 100% for several hours straight, it never topped 83C. So now I'm not so sure. Had to replace two of my old fans because one was seized and another was very noisy, plus a third because the H50's radiator was no longer mounted to the rear of the case. Very happy with the PWM Noctuas.

Even though my board would support a Gen 4 NVMe drive, I didn't want to spend for one, so I got a Gen 3, and its performance is great. Windows 10 installed in about 10 seconds. :mrgreen: Striped a pair of 2TB drives for capacity for my son's games. The performance is more than acceptable, and if the volume fails, his games can always be re-downloaded. Was going to use the old SSD as a cache on that volume with AMD's StoreMI technology, but this is not supported when RAID is enabled, so I'll probably take it out entirely.

The front-panel USB ports on my case are broken, and are 2.0 anyway even if they worked, so I ordered a 3.5" front-panel from China for $17 shipped that will add 2 USB 3.1 ports and 2 USB-C ports. I think that will come next week.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by sycamore »

Ged wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 10:02 pm
bugleheadd wrote: Wed Sep 02, 2020 7:45 pm if you really want nvme gen 4, also look into the inland premium nvme gen4 (if you have a microcenter) or sabrent rocket gen4 . they are highly rated drives as well.

nvme gen 3 aint nothing to sneeze at either. although if you are coming from SATA III, that is plenty fast too. the difference is most noticable if you are upgrading from mechanical drive
If you plan on an NVME gen 4 drive, you will need an X570 motherboard to support PCIE 4 to utilize the capabilities of that drive. That will be a bit more expensive than the B550 specified in the original post.
B550 does support PCIe 4.0 from the processor to NVMe, but only PCIe 3.0 from the chipset.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Mudpuppy »

dwc13 wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:05 am Had to check out the case you used. Nice.

Looks like the Contour 3 button mouse is available in...3 sizes (S, M, L). If you have a M or L, perhaps try out the next smaller size?
https://www.contourdesign.com/product/contour-mouse/
It was a very nice case to work with, particularly since you can rearrange which two sides are the mesh sides and which side is the windowed side. I put the window on the top, then built a custom stand for it to tuck it just under the keyboard tray and keep it away from the cats. The fan rails are really nice too for putting the fans on the mesh sides.

And I bought the small Contour mouse. It still feels too large for me, or maybe it's the way I hold a mouse. I hold with the tips of my index, middle, and ring fingers on the middle of the left, middle, and right buttons. Then I rest my pinky and thumb on the mouse pad on either side of the mouse. The small Contour mouse is just wide enough that my pinky can't rest comfortably on the mouse pad, but it also has no shelf to rest on the mouse, so it slides around and that stresses out the muscles.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Independent George »

These are just rumors/speculation, but Zen3 sounds promising. I'm really glad I decided to wait on CPU/Motherboard instead of buying it earlier in the year; regardless of its actual specs, either Zen3 is going to be amazing, or Zen2 will be dirt cheap come November.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKeE9mII8rc
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Independent George »

I feel silly posting an announcement of an announcement, but I'm typing this on an i7-920. I'm allowed to be excited.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16077/am ... ney-begins

Here's my question for those of you who have been building more recently than me: can I expect to find CPUs in stock early on, or do they sell out fast? Should I hold out for Black Friday deals, or can I expect to pay MSRP regardless?
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by sycamore »

Independent George wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 9:42 am I feel silly posting an announcement of an announcement, but I'm typing this on an i7-920. I'm allowed to be excited.
And I'm using i5-750 from the same era :) and very looking forward to the announcement. AMD has made great improvements to their products these last few years.
Independent George wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 9:42 am https://www.anandtech.com/show/16077/am ... ney-begins

Here's my question for those of you who have been building more recently than me: can I expect to find CPUs in stock early on, or do they sell out fast? Should I hold out for Black Friday deals, or can I expect to pay MSRP regardless?
I'm interested in this as well.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

Independent George wrote: Thu Sep 10, 2020 9:42 am I feel silly posting an announcement of an announcement, but I'm typing this on an i7-920. I'm allowed to be excited.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16077/am ... ney-begins

Here's my question for those of you who have been building more recently than me: can I expect to find CPUs in stock early on, or do they sell out fast? Should I hold out for Black Friday deals, or can I expect to pay MSRP regardless?
If you're talking about the forthcoming Zen 3 CPUs, we'll get a better idea after AMD's announcement on October 8th as to what new product will initially be released and when first wave of Zen 3 CPUs will be available for retail purchase. I will be somewhat surprised if more than 3 CPUs (based upon Zen 3) are released in 2020. Fab capacity/yields and OEM pre-orders play a role in determining availability. In addition, many people have already purchased new (or upgraded older) computers this year in anticipation of the upcoming school year and ongoing work from home. Quite a few will not be in the market for another computer (or upgrade components) so quickly. That should help with availability of Zen 3 CPUs, all other things being equal. FWIW, the first wave of Zen 2 CPUs was announced by AMD in late May 2019 and available for retail purchase on July 7, 2019.

Personally, I don't expect Zen 3 CPUs to be discounted much, if at all, for the 2020 holiday season, especially if the rumored increase in IPC is realized. Intel hasn't indicated it has much in the pipeline near term for desktop CPUs. I think you'll see some pretty aggressive deals on Zen 2 chips, several of which are (and will continue to be) impressive performers. When Zen 2 was released, there were some really good deals on Zen (1st generation) and Zen+ (2nd generation) CPUs. And remember, Ryzen 9 3950X was released in November 2019 and the Ryzen "XT" chips were just released this July. CPUs based upon Zen 2 technology have lots of life left.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

LadyGeek wrote: Thu Sep 03, 2020 8:50 pm I wish I hadn't seen this thread... :)

I've been building my own PCs since forever. My one and only exception is my current PC - a Lenovo desktop with an Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700 CPU @ 3.60GHz and 16 GB RAM. What do I need a graphics card for? I'm using the mobo built-in video. **sigh**

Actually, I have 2 PCs (same configuration - 1 on Win 10, the other on Linux) and a Lenovo T470 laptop.

I also have a Raspberry Pi running my weather station. All are networked - I get weather status from my web browser.

I miss Flight Simulator, not to mention SimCity... Time for an upgrade.
Wait...you have one of the all-time great gaming CPUs (i7-7700) and you don't have a dedicated GPU installed??? :shock:

Is that even legal?
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by LadyGeek »

Sorry, it was a moment of weakness. I was busy with other things and thought that I wouldn't be gaming on it. A dedicated GPU is something that could easily be corrected.

I'll have to check the form factor, as commercial boxes are not very flexible for customization. It's a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910 SFF (Small Form Factor).

However, I did swap out the hard drives with SSDs - a no-brainer that I couldn't pass on when SSDs finally became cheap and reliable.

My SSDs are Samsung 850 EVO and I use Samsung Magician for cloning and status monitoring (Windows only).
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by ScaledWheel »

dwc13 wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 12:44 am Personally, I don't expect Zen 3 CPUs to be discounted much, if at all, for the 2020 holiday season, especially if the rumored increase in IPC is realized. Intel hasn't indicated it has much in the pipeline near term for desktop CPUs. I think you'll see some pretty aggressive deals on Zen 2 chips, several of which are (and will continue to be) impressive performers. When Zen 2 was released, there were some really good deals on Zen (1st generation) and Zen+ (2nd generation) CPUs. And remember, Ryzen 9 3950X was released in November 2019 and the Ryzen "XT" chips were just released this July. CPUs based upon Zen 2 technology have lots of life left.
I'm hoping the higher end chips (Zen2 Threadrippers) are available. Would really like to grab one of the 24- or 32-core versions at a discounted price. I have my doubts that the high end of the market will see that, or that the high-end Zen3 chips are even released this year.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by 762NateOh »

Yea, what a time to be a PC geek.

I upgraded to a X570 ASUS TUF MB and a Ryzen 3900X in the spring and just got a Sabrent Rocket 1TB NVME 4.0 and man is that thing fast.

I had a regular SATA SSD, which obviously are great as well but it was ~ 500MB/s v.s. 4800MB/s when I benchmarked!

I have a 650W PSU, but with anticipation of the new cards coming out (Looking @ 3080), I just bought an 850W. PSU prices unfortunately are a little high right now.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Mudpuppy »

LadyGeek wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 7:28 am Sorry, it was a moment of weakness. I was busy with other things and thought that I wouldn't be gaming on it. A dedicated GPU is something that could easily be corrected.

I'll have to check the form factor, as commercial boxes are not very flexible for customization. It's a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910 SFF (Small Form Factor).
According to the specs, you have some tight tolerances for a video card. From https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PD ... F_Spec.pdf:
Slot 1: low-profile (length < 150mm, height < 68mm), PCIe 3.0 x16*
With those sorts of clearances, you'd be looking at much older GPU chipsets. Newegg shows several NVIDIA GeForce GT 710, GT 730, and GT 1030 low profile cards at or below 150mm in length. There's also a smattering of Radeon R7 240 cards. Of those, the GT 1030 cards would give the best performance, but nothing close to a modern card.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by LadyGeek »

Yes, those specs gave me pause when I was looking to replace my earlier homebrew PCs. It was a conscious decision to trade expandability for convenience.

My homebrew PCs had every component but the case upgraded. The cases were easily reconfigured for new components.

I mainly stuck with Asus mobos and flip-flopped between Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon video cards. Silverstone for the PSU.

My monitor is the LG 27EA83 (27" 2560 x 1440) and use the display port. One monitor for the Win 10 PC, one for the Linux PC.

I'll have to think about what I want to do. Going back to homebrew would be a ton of fun, as I sometimes overclocked the BIOS (but before I bricked it due to overheating). I wasn't into water cooling, so I stopped before it got to that point.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

ScaledWheel wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 7:37 am
dwc13 wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 12:44 am Personally, I don't expect Zen 3 CPUs to be discounted much, if at all, for the 2020 holiday season, especially if the rumored increase in IPC is realized. Intel hasn't indicated it has much in the pipeline near term for desktop CPUs. I think you'll see some pretty aggressive deals on Zen 2 chips, several of which are (and will continue to be) impressive performers. When Zen 2 was released, there were some really good deals on Zen (1st generation) and Zen+ (2nd generation) CPUs. And remember, Ryzen 9 3950X was released in November 2019 and the Ryzen "XT" chips were just released this July. CPUs based upon Zen 2 technology have lots of life left.
I'm hoping the higher end chips (Zen2 Threadrippers) are available. Would really like to grab one of the 24- or 32-core versions at a discounted price. I have my doubts that the high end of the market will see that, or that the high-end Zen3 chips are even released this year.
I don't think availability of Zen 2 Threadrippers will be an issue, barring a fire sale. There will probably some discounting on Zen 2 Threadripper chips around Black Friday. Currently at newegg.com, the 3960x is $1,349, @$50 lower than the price at release, while the 3990x is at $3,599, a 10% discount off day 1 pricing ($3,990). In the other direction, the 3970x (currently $2,137) is almost $140 higher. Not really surprising, though, as many think if you're in the market, that's the CPU to get.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by Panky »

LadyGeek wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 11:57 am I'll have to think about what I want to do. Going back to homebrew would be a ton of fun, as I sometimes overclocked the BIOS (but before I bricked it due to overheating). I wasn't into water cooling, so I stopped before it got to that point.
I have been really happy with the all in one (AIO) water cooling set ups they have for processors now. I have a Corsair one that has been bulletproof 3+ years running, great temps.

I would probably keep going that way.


Looking to upgrade to Ryzen system near the end of the year.
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by LadyGeek »

In addition to gaming, I've had a long-standing interest in fractal generation. That's at an entirely different level and needs a high performance GPU.

Does anyone do fractal generation (beside me)? That's one thing I've missed with my store-bought desktop. It's just not possible with the built-in mobo video.
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dreamingbutterfly
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dreamingbutterfly »

Just wanted to chime in about coolers. Noctua of course are regarded as the best, especially the NH-D15. However they are a bit spendy at $89.99 for the unsightly standard version and $99.99 for the much more visually appealing Chromax Black. For a more economical solution, look into the Scythe Fuma 2. In the reviews I found it performs nearly as well as the top-end Noctua but costs only $59.99 and isn't unsightly. I recently replaced the stock cooler (Wraith Stealth) on my Ryzen 3600 with the Fuma 2 and my max temperatures have fallen over 20 degrees celsius. Plus it's whisper quiet.
dwc13
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by dwc13 »

LadyGeek wrote: Fri Sep 11, 2020 3:53 pm In addition to gaming, I've had a long-standing interest in fractal generation. That's at an entirely different level and needs a high performance GPU.

Does anyone do fractal generation (beside me)? That's one thing I've missed with my store-bought desktop. It's just not possible with the built-in mobo video.
I've checked out a few fractal programs in the past. Thankfully, I never had to learn the math behind fractals, lol. There are some amazing fractals that can be generated...but thus far nothing as mesmerizing (IMHO) to some of the drawings MC Escher conjured up.

Perhaps these sites will still work with your MB integrated graphics:
https://www.math.uni-sb.de/ag/eschmeier ... tifyme.php
https://math.hws.edu/eck/js/mandelbrot/MB-info.html
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LadyGeek
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Re: PC Build Thread 2020

Post by LadyGeek »

I would agree with you on MC Escher. The programs work, thanks. I'll spend some time to see what I can do with them.

Another area that has a need for speed are the open-source distributing computing projects. I've participated in projects like Folding@home and BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing). Use your CPU and GPU cycles to help others. The clients will make heavy utilization of your GPU if it's supported. I'll restart this effort when I get a chance.

My future GPU card should be able to support these projects.

A good benchmark is to measure how long it takes you to complete an assigned unit. If you like to overclock and eke out every CPU cycle possible, this is for you. You can help others while justifying why you "need" to have a fast PC.
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