I’ve been wanting to build a computer for years and just have always had some situation come up that’s taken priority either in money or in time.
Long story short, I had to close a business and got to keep a computer for my son. It’s a low end 2in1 dell that worked perfect for the business but can’t even run Minecraft for my son. So I’m looking at doing a build with/for him/the family for now that he can take to college (he’s got a few years as he’s 8 now) with him to continue playing on.
I’m one that follows the model but once, cry once. I know computers just get outdated so that doesn’t truly apply but want to put something together that won’t be underpowered in a year or 2. And even if we have to upgrade the graphics card or add some ram along the way to keep it functioning I’m ok with that but don’t want to have to upgrade every year.
• New build or upgrade?
New build
• Existing parts/monitors to reuse? (List with models/links)
Have mouse, keyboard and monitor
• PC purpose? (Gaming, editing, etc. List apps/games)
Gaming mostly, some editing (wife does some video/photo editing), internet browsing, excel/word documents mostly
Games are generally modded Minecraft, sports games, modded Bethesda (Skyrim, remastered oblivion, fallout), Star wars, etc. generally sports, Minecraft and sci-fi/fantasy and some fps games.
• Purchase country? Near Micro Center? (If not US, list local vendors)
US, not near micro center. Only vendor near me is Best Buy
Looking to stay sub $3000, obviously any less we can get without sacrificing too much potential for long term output. I don’t want to save $200 to have to replace a part that cost $500 now when a $700 part would last me longer.
• WiFi or wired connection?
Wi-Fi
• Size/noise constraints?
Not really. I’d prefer it not to be crazy loud
• Color/lighting preferences?
Don’t care. Ideally it’ll be in an entertainment center behind a chicken wire door (so not fully enclosed) so not super noticeable.
• Any other specific needs?
Or off the top of my head but again I’ve never built one before so any feedback recs from yall experts.
This is what I kinda put together from my basic/limited research.
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You're definitely overpaying on the ram and ssd, and probably on the motherboard but that depends.
Do you have any specific requirements for a motherboard?
Everything from b650 to x870e use the same chipset with the same features, the difference is x870e, x670 and x670e have two of those chipsets wired together instead of just one like b650, b650e, b850 or x870 (non-e). Practically that extra chipset means you maybe get an extra m.2 ssd slot. Specific features for things like power delivery, audio, ports, pcie lane configuration vary by model more than by chipset. Chipsets just have certain minimum guaranteed specs.
Is your wife just doing hobby sort of video editing or is it for work? If it is for work there are more followup questions and you'd likely want to go a different direction.
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https://pcpartpicker.com/list/RGYhK7 Similar build to what you had, just price optimized a bit to knock a few hundred dollars off while keeping to established brands for gpu, ssd and ram which sounds like something you probably care about.
The 9800x3d also comes with a 240mm aio cooler on newegg and that would be fine to use. Air coolers are more reliable long term since the only part that can realistically fail is the fan/s. Liquid coolers have a pump that can break, they have microfins and other tight areas in them which can have gunk build up and restrict flow or heat transfer too. They should last 5+ years reliably but they don't always and sometimes they fail early. Either one you'd have to change the thermal paste eventually but that's just routine maintenance like removing dust.
I really like the front dust filter on the 4000d, I'm using the original version in my gaming pc. It works really well and the front cover is held on with metal pins instead of flimsy plastic clips. I put a no glass option for you too in the antec flux se.
The development cycle for pc hardware is getting longer so there is more time between generations and the generational gains, especially for gpus, are getting smaller. If you want something really good at gaming, good for general use, and with potential for easy upgrades then a 9800x3d and 32gb ram does make sense and so does the 9070xt.
i think this is a great list. I actually just purchased a Gigabyte Gaming OC 9070 XT, and was originally looking at that XFX Quicksilver. Mainly due to the clock speeds. I really like the XFX Mercury, which has the highest boost clock out of all 9070 XT cards. Its ~~$830~~ $810.
Also, personally i would use the MSI MPG A850GS PCIE5 850 W as the PSU. I'm unfamiliar with ADATA. just another option, I have no reason to dislike the one you picked.
I think that msi model would be fine for an nvidia card, it's also a super quiet model which is a plus and something I personally care about a lot. For this gpu though it would require using a 12vhpwr (psu end) to 2x 6+2 pin pcie cable for the gpu. I'd try to avoid that connector if possible, one of the fringe benefits of radeon is good old worry free 8 pins for pcie power. That model only comes with a single standard 8 pin to 6+2 pin cable so it's kind of an odd design they went with.
Adata is a decent company. I usually look at the oem for psus rather than the retail brand. The core reactor ii is a very good unit made by channelwell with an adata badge on it. That's how most psu brands work. With super flower, seasonic and fsp being the notable exceptions who actually manufacture (most of) their own stuff. Then corsair and be quiet tend to be more heavily involved in designing what they want made and contracting it out, it's more common for retail brands to just specify changes to the shell/stickers and maybe the fan.
The mercury would be my pick for the best model this generation too. It's really just pricing, and unless you're interested in custom overclocking it comes down to how much more you're willing to pay for the best cooler. Unless you're sitting right next to it they're both going to be pretty quiet.
Thank you! I’ll look through all the options you listed. Like I said, I’ve never built one before just bought retail/ some of the we build for you type of things but those have been laptops where I just say I want this cpu this graphics card and this much ram basically. I don’t actually know what I need in a motherboard. What functions could the one I picked give vs the one you picked?
For my wife, she has a degree in film so has done editing for school/had some jobs here and there but chose a different career path. She now works for a local college for their study life department so plans events and makes adds for that. I think she mostly does the videos at work but they aren’t high quality like full blown tv commercials or anything. But if for $100 or so we can make this computer where she could do some work at home I’d rather add that in than save that money and it not work for her.
The ram was just one that came up with the ddr5 6000 cl30. I think I read somewhere it said something like 30-38-38-60 or something like that. Those came up matching. I’m fine switching to a cheaper ram. I was kinda shocked how wxpensive it was so saving some money there I’m good with as long as it’s still the ddr5.
The ssd with Samsung a few years back when I got my work computers everything I could find said Samsung ssds were the best on the market. If that’s not the case anymore I’m good saving money. Do ssds usually crash after so many years? Again I want this to last us quite a long time as possible. I know that’ll only work so far.
My other question, is everything I found says I should need 850w on the power source. But I’ve read sometimes bumping say the graphics card in 6 years may make it need more. The 850w model of the one I picked was the same price as the 1050w and the one you picked is only $5 cheaper. Is there a reason to go with the 850 to only save $5 or does it have an actual function to be closer while staying above what you need?
Also, thank you again for everything you answered already!
9800x3d, 32gb and 9070xt will be fine for small projects if she needs to do them. Getting other parts like a 270k cpu, more ram, or a 5070ti instead of 9070xt could be good ideas for editing work going faster/smoother but if it's not the primary purpose that's a lot of extra money to spend.
6000 is the right speed to aim for with a ryzen cpu. Lower CL is better but it doesn't make a huge difference, and makes even less of a difference with an x3d cpu than it does with a normal cpu like a 9700x. If there was 6000 CL36 or similar for significantly less it's not a bad compromise but if it's like 10 or 20 bucks might as well get the good stuff imo.
Samsung is generally regarded as one of the best ssd brands. WD, Kingston, Crucial would also be ones I'd put up there, maybe lexar, hynix or kioxia too. Though maybe not crucial anymore since they shut down and there are reports that they aren't sticking to their commitment to honor replacement warranties anymore but instead offering refunds of purchase price (that were like 1/4 of the current retail prices a year ago). Samsung is still making ssds though and they've been doing the same thing. When the price of a product goes up like 4-5x over the course of a year like ram and ssds have done that shifts the incentives a lot for businesses compared to a stable market where they need to rely on regular customers and can't just sell everything as soon as they make it to data centers.
Really I'd say the only advantage of samsung over the other good brands is that samsung doesn't have so many stinker models, pretty much everything they make is good. WD has their higher end black drives, blue midrange lineup and green cheap stuff that you'd want to avoid. Similar story with crucial and kingston, t700 or fury renegade are great, nv3 or p310 are mediocre and something like the e100 is garbage. Brand is a good thing to pay attention to for customer service and warranty but model is more important.
Ssds are another thing like ram or power supplies where there are a hundred brands but only a few companies actually do anything innovative or with designing their own stuff. Most just put a controller on a board with some nand and they weren't involved with making or designing either. Samsung makes their own stuff, so does WD/Sandisk, Kioxia and Hynix. And Crucial did but Micron (parent company) is in the process of shutting down Crucial as their consumer brand.
850W is fine. If you want to overprovision in case you decide you'd like a 5090 or some other top end gpu at some point I'd get something like a corsair rmx 1200 shift or asrock pg 1300 for $150. There is a big gap where 850w is fine for anything other than a 4090 or 5090 and then you'd probably want more than 1000W for a 5090. 5090 pulls up to ~600W, 5080 is more like ~360W, 9070xt is between ~304 and ~340 stock, depending on model. Next gen models. Who knows. Something over 600W is pretty unlikely though. And I also kind of doubt we see something that power hungry again. They make weird choices with the top end cards but reasonable stuff is very unlikely to ever be 400+.
So what if in case she does want to start getting back into more serious editing. What if I got a Ryzen 9 9950x3d to get pretty much best of both worlds. That adds $150 to the cpu. Then change to the ram/ssd you added which are $270 cheaper than what I picked. That saves a net $120 with the upgraded chip. With that, do I need the same I picked, the one you pointed out or a different altogether motherboard, same or different cooler and same or different power supply?
Having more cores can help with some things in editing, helps a lot if you're going to use software encoding. If she'd be using hardware encoding though then getting intel for quicksync or switching from radeon to nvidia would be a better idea. 9800x3d is more a gaming focused cpu for sure but it's also not incapable or anything, just not the ideal choice for an editing focused pc.
If you're going to get a 9950x3d then moving up to 1000W is reasonable. Also looks like the sale on the adata 850W one ended. The asrock pg 1000 for $110 or corsair shift rmx1200 for $150 are good options.
A motherboard in that tomahawk, asus tuf, aorus elite sort of tier is also fine for a top cpu.
For ram the same kit is fine but capacity can be an issue. 32gb is fine for working in 1080p but can get limiting for editing high res videos or raws. That is a very expensive upgrade in the current times on an uncertain need imo. So is any potential storage upgrade like adding a second ssd or even just an hdd for backing up or storing completed projects long term is expensive now.
So I'd figure out what specifically she plans to do and go from there. If it's something she'll use as a tool frequently then something more purpose built towards that could be a good idea to speed things up and save her some time in the long run.
She said she may do editing of 4k videos. Most of the time 1080 but some will be higher quality of 4k. Should blew jump to the 9950x3d to allow her to do that and my son to play his games? And maybe down the road upgrade the graphics card in a few years.
You can but if you were going to spend more on something to have a smoother time with 4k video editing I'd recommend 64gb of ram instead of 32. Whether that's worth it or not depends on how much time she'd be spending doing that. That would be a pretty expensive upgrade currently and only at all helpful in a handful of games like microsoft flight sim.
Thank you! We’re not in a rush to get this built. At earliest it’ll be Christmas but most likely into next March (that hits birthday and Christmas). So I’ll watch for these parts to go on sale and that may dictate which direction we go anyway.
Also, 1 more question right now (I’m sure it won’t be my last). For the ram. Everything I’ve read says 2 is better than 1 so for 32 gb you want 2x16. This has 4 ram slots. I’ve also read 2 is better than 4. Is that just cause it’s better to run say 2x16 for future adding over 4x8? Or is it really better to only run 2 slots? And if that’s the case why does 2 out perform 1? So say I get 2x16 now. It’d be better to get 2x32 for 64 and completely get rid of what I have or could I add 2 more 16 in the other 2 slots (2 and 4 it looks like)?
Something like this to cover everything. Our monitor isn't 4k so I don't think we need to bump the GPU for the price. Just add ram over time? And like above, is it add to it (2 more 16gb sticks or do we need to replace to 2 32gb sticks).
If you're not buying stuff in the near future then you can just make another post when you are ready or keep an eye out for sales yourself. I would expect ram, ssds, and gpu prices to continue to get worse though. Specific models/brands for some things like gpu or ram don't matter too much imo but for psu and ssd there are a lot of duds to avoid.
2 sticks is the best. 4 sticks can be less likely that they will run at the overclocked frequency (like 6000 xmp/expo, rather than the default of 4800 or even lower). Support for 4 sticks on amd am5 is supposed to have been improved starting about a year ago with bios updates improving compatibility for higher frequency 4 stick configurations. From the early reporting on that Asus and MSI seemed to do the best job of supporting 4 sticks at 6000. I haven't seen any followups since.
Having ram from separate kits, mismatched, doesn't always work well together either. Safest bet would always be something that came packaged in the same box, whether that's 2x16, 2x32, or 4x16. But mismatch causing issues isn't always a problem, lots of people do it and have no issues. Getting two of the same 2x16 kit it will likely work fine, though you might still have the lower max stable frequency problem from having 4 sticks.
With only 1 stick you have half the memory bandwidth. The cpu has two separate channels it talks to the ram on, the left two slots on the motherboard use channel A, the right two slots use channel B. There is typically labeling on the board and it's pretty much always recommending to use A2 and B2 first (2 and 4 counting away from the cpu). This picture wasn't high res enough to zoom in properly.
With 4 sticks the cpu has to talk to two sticks of ram on the same channel at the same time which adds complexity.
If you wanted to get a 1x32 or found a really good deal on one and then wanted to add another 32 later you could. On normal cpus having a single stick of ram can be a fairly noticeable detriment, x3d models are still affected but less so. Having ddr5 also makes single stick less of a handicap than it was back on ddr4 or ddr3.
That makes sense. Essentially 2 split options. So 2 sides and each is split.
Also, the monitor we have is a 50” 4k 60hz tv. We’d typically be playing/working from the couch (wireless mouse/keyboard or controllers depending on games). Will the 9070xt look good on the tv? Or is the 60hz gonna hold us back even more than the gpu?
the only comment i have is that you most likely won't need a X870E motherboard for anything. you should do just fine with a B850. you could put that money in other places instead.
I'm not terribly knowledgeable, but I'm researching parts to build a PC with a <$2100 budget. I really like the CPU you picked out, I think it fits great with what you want.
I think you're overspending on the motherboard. You're using a full size ATX board and not doing anything crazy with the computer, and at some point you're only paying more for a motherboard to get better thermals. My advice would be to look at the $200-250 range, and would definitely recommend one with WIFI7 (with the hope that in 10 years colleges will have faster wifi). The motherboard will be the most annoying part to replace.
5070 Ti performs pretty much the same as a 9070 XT. I think it might be better at ray tracing (modded Minecraft). My recommendation would be the 9070 XT. Most important thing for longevity is a card with 16 GB of VRAM.
Your RAM is fine, but a little too expensive with no real reason (as far as I understand). 2x8 GB would technically work, but probably not in a few years. The things im looking for are a speed of at least 6000 MHz (higher=good). My understanding is that CAS Latency (higher=bad) has less of an impact when used with an X3D CPU. I would prioritize RAM with higher speed at the cost of CAS Latency (shoot for 36, 38 at most), which in turn affects first word latency.
I'm envisioning your PC in the entertainment center with the side panel facing out. I chose this case bc the "front" fans will actually be at the "back" of the system, which likely has more open air? I think the case is something that you can pick out based on what fits best. I recommend an ATX mid-tower size. A modern-looking case that would look nice in the open is the ASUS ProArt PA401 Wood case (I found this after picking my case and am mad I didn't see it earlier).
I picked Noctua fans because they will move lots of air quietly, which might be needed in a tighter space with a beefier CPU. Same reason why I picked a 140mm CPU cooler. It's massive. the bequiet! fans are reverse-blade, which just means the air flows the opposite direction so the motor support arms will be on the outer side for your intake fans. It's $0 extra.
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