Hardware & Technical Need recommendations/ideas on PC build.

[Caramel Clown]

Right. So I'm planning on finally getting a new PC. It's been a good 5 years, so I've figured why not.
I've put together this configuration, as a general outline.
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/RbGTw6

Few things I'd like to know. Would it be better to wait with building something like this, at least before GPU prices normalize again(thanks crypto miners...). Or, should I just wait for new gen of GPUs from Nvidia and just get this setup with new top of the line card...Choices choices. I'm torn right now. Maybe somebody here will push me into some reasonable direction.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Build around an AMD platform, intel have proven that they're incompetent in technology (Management Engine, Meltdown and assorted attempts at "fixes") and not to be trusted (anything their marketing faucets spilled on those topics). Don't pay 260 USD for a mainboard, an 80–100 USD part will work just as well.

And yes, don't buy a GPU now while idiots are still driving prices.

 

[Patrick_68000]

It seems to me that the quad-core are not too much in the norms now, and especially for the years to come

Choose instead, a hexa-core

Choose instead, for a 750 watt power supply

I think that the price of your configuration is too high, wait for the prices to go down or go to a powerful AMD system

 

[Patrick_68000]

And yes, don't buy a GPU now while idiots are still driving prices.

Yes to wait for the end of speculation on the GPUs and also on the RAM

I think this is not the perfect time to build a new PC

 

[Caramel Clown]

Build around an AMD platform, intel have proven that they're incompetent in technology (Management Engine, Meltdown and assorted attempts at "fixes") and not to be trusted (anything their marketing faucets spilled on those topics). Don't pay 260 USD for a mainboard, an 80–100 USD part will work just as well.

And yes, don't buy a GPU now while idiots are still driving prices.

I'm not dealing with AMD based on personal experience. Both AMD CPUs I've owned died in very short time. Mind you, it was about 10 years ago but it was enough for me. Nothing I've ever had from Nvidia/Intel have failed me. I don't care about marketing, stuff just works.
I've picked this board for SLI potential, I could go with the same board without it for 100 bucks less. So that's a choice.

Edit. Just to add about why I pick 7700K. Because for gaming single core performance > amount of cores. So quad core with hyperthreading is plenty.

 

[CMDR MAIN SEQUENCE]

There are rumours that Nvidia might announce a new GPU in March. I suspect it will be aimed at cryptocurrency miners. Even if they do announce a new gaming GPU I can't see cards on shelves until June at the earliest. If you can afford it now, a 1080ti is going to last you quite a while.

I've picked this board for SLI potential, I could go with the same board without it for 100 bucks less. So that's a choice.

If I was going to SLI two 1080tis I think I would want more headroom than a 650W PSU would offer.

 

[NascentChemist]

I've got a Ryzen 5 1600 system, and I've had 0 problems with it. I was very leery of AMD before this build, but I've loved my new CPU/MOBO. Granted, I'm still suspicious of AMD GPUs so we've all got our irrationalities.

In general, I'd recommend waiting to buy a new GPU and ignoring SLI. Prices are way too volatile right now, and a single GTX 1080 TI is pretty dang powerful.

 

[Patrick_68000]

In general, I'd recommend waiting to buy a new GPU and ignoring SLI. Prices are way too volatile right now, and a single GTX 1080 TI is pretty dang powerful.

Yes more than 1000 dollars for a consumer graphics card, is clearly theft

 

[Jon flint]

Build around an AMD platform, intel have proven that they're incompetent in technology (Management Engine, Meltdown and assorted attempts at "fixes") and not to be trusted (anything their marketing faucets spilled on those topics). Don't pay 260 USD for a mainboard, an 80–100 USD part will work just as well.

And yes, don't buy a GPU now while idiots are still driving prices.

Lol, it's funny how different people have different perspectives, my advice would be almost the exact opposite

I've spoiler tagged it since I don't want this to turn into a fanboy fight, but below is my honest opinion after building my own pc recently and having heavily researched builds on both sides.

Spoiler

-i cant recommend AMD, Ryzen fails to compete (in games) with intel, despite being roughly the same price (thinking 1800x Vs 8700k), at the low end more of an argument could be made in favour of AMD though.
-AMD have already admitted their upcoming Ryzen 2 will STILL be vulnerable to spectre despite having time to fix.
-In general x370 motherboards are not as well featured as Intel's z370 and have tighter requirements on what ram can be used. Meaning your build would be driven by component compatibility rather than what you want. For instance, try finding a Ryzen board with 3xM.2 slots..
-Never pay less than $200/£200 for a motherboard, it's the heart of your system definitely not the place to cheap out. Cheap boards have cheap VRMs and lower quality capacitors, will generally have less OC potential and a shorter lifespan.
-id agree about waiting, depending on the GPU you want. The mid range is nuts right now with 1070s/vega56s costing as much as 1080ti's! The price hikes on the top end aren't that shocking though, so if you were planning on a 1080ti, just suck it up and pay the extra £100 or so, it's a drop in the ocean of the total build cost.

And yes, don't buy a GPU now while idiots are still driving prices.

Speaking as someone that recently brought a GPU.. thanks man

 

[MickyG1982]

Indeed, while the 7700K is a fine chip the 8700k surpasses it in every way, and (at least on Amazon.co.uk) is only £40-£60 (only £20 if you chose the none "k" version) more than it's older sibling. Z370 boards are around the same price as their Z270 equivelents. It outclasses the 7700k in every way...

There is of course only one reason why this processor exists at the moment - Ryzen...

 

[Caramel Clown]

Some valid points here. I'm considering 8700k, and another motherboard. I'm a bit behind on storage in terms of understanding how different standards work. Is M.2 really better than SATA? If it's really that much faster, maybe I should get board with at least two m.2 slots.
As I've said - I'm not considering AMD CPU in any capacity. I've been bitten twice, they've had their chance with me

 

[Jon flint]

Some valid points here. I'm considering 8700k, and another motherboard. I'm a bit behind on storage in terms of understanding how different standards work. Is M.2 really better than SATA? If it's really that much faster, maybe I should get board with at least two m.2 slots.
As I've said - I'm not considering AMD CPU in any capacity. I've been bitten twice, they've had their chance with me

I can't say I've noticed any appreciable performance difference either in OS or games between a standard SATA SSD and an NVME M.2.

You can see the difference in benchmarks like Crystal disc mark, a quick test just now, shows the following results:

NVME M.2 (Samsung 960evo 256Gb)
-Sequential read 2793.3 MB/s
-Sequential write 1580.8MB/s
-Random read 450.1MB/s
-Random write 323.9MB/s

SATA SSD (Samsung 850pro 1tb)
-Sequential read 552.6MB/s
-Sequential write 534.7MB/s
-Random read 327.6MB/s
-Random write 265.4MB/s

And just for fun, a standard 7200rpm HDD (some Seagate junk)
-Sequential read 218.7MB/s
-Sequential write 213.2MB/s
-Random read 1.547MB/s
-Random write 1.426MB/s

*Your numbers may vary, all were taken from my own system after it'd been up and running for some hours, I suspect in a nice cool freshly restarted system some of the numbers may have been a bit higher.

It's all entirely academic though, even in games where there is a noticeable pause as data is loaded from the drive, an m.2 will show little to no improvement over a standard SSD, you buy them for one of two reasons. 1.The feel good factor of having the fastest available drive. 2.Space/build constraints, m.2s are just neater, no sata cables to route or bulky drives to find a place for, just plug and go.

My recommendation would be to get a board with 2 or 3 M.2 slots (pretty common with z370 boards), go for a single large(ish) nvme m.2 (512gb-1tb) for OS and games, and buy a 2Tb lump of spinning rust (standard HDD) as a bulk storage drive. If you want more game storage later on you can simply populate the additional 1 or 2 m.2 slots.

 

[Morbad]

I'm not dealing with AMD based on personal experience. Both AMD CPUs I've owned died in very short time. Mind you, it was about 10 years ago but it was enough for me. Nothing I've ever had from Nvidia/Intel have failed me. I don't care about marketing, stuff just works.

A uselessly small sample size. Own enough hardware and a fair portion of it is going to break and neither Intel or NVIDIA are immune to this reality.

Ryzen fails to compete (in games) with intel, despite being roughly the same price (thinking 1800x Vs 8700k)

Not many games are CPU limited enough for the differences to matter unless you are targeting fairly extreme frame rates at lower resolution and/or IQ settings.

Never pay less than $200/£200 for a motherboard, it's the heart of your system definitely not the place to cheap out. Cheap boards have cheap VRMs and lower quality capacitors, will generally have less OC potential and a shorter lifespan.

Shorter lifespan in this case might mean eight years instead of twenty. Even lower-mid range boards for mainstream platforms have VRMs that are total overkill for anything short of pushing extreme OCs with sub-ambient cooling.

You get almost no practical advantage for spending more than 200 dollars on an LGA-1151 or AM4 motherboard. No CPU you can slot and no overclock you will reach on any standard cooling method will significantly stress the power delivery. Both firmware (more brand than model dependent) and individual variance between CPU samples will have far more of an impact on any overclocking done than the board's hardware.

LGA-2066 and TR4, at least at the higher end of what you can put in them, are another story. Boards for these platforms tend to have less space to devote to power delivery while supporting CPUs that can pull more than double the current. With the extra memory channels and I/O trace routing and the like are also that much harder to get right. Higher-end boards can often be meaningful here, but then again, there don't tend to be many low-end ones in the first place.

I can't say I've noticed any appreciable performance difference either in OS or games between a standard SATA SSD and an NVME M.2.

I have trouble telling the difference between five year old SATA SSDs and RAM drives in quad-channel Intel setups that are five times as fast as any M.2 NVMe drive, when it comes to gaming performance.

 

[IPFreely]

I avoid InTel and Nvidia products for mostly infrastructure and stability issues, and if I could find an OS with the features in Win10 I would avoid Win10 as well --- that being said, I prefer and build AMD based machines, and have before AMD was AMD, using ATI, Cyrix, or other comparable parts instead. I have a custom PC and Server business and rarely have to service or replace any parts I use on those machines except to upgrade or modernize installed equipment sold.
Actually there are 3 types of computer equipment used most, Intel, Apple, and AMD in mainstream machines, I would check all 3 for the best aspects wanted before making any decision.
Remembering that internals (apart from the motherboard itself) are neutral before addition of the operating system,
Once the added operating system is installed the parts added are configured for that operating system and cannot be changed especially in the case of Apple to Intel or AMD.

 

[MickyG1982]

I avoid InTel and Nvidia products for mostly infrastructure and stability issues, and if I could find an OS with the features in Win10 I would avoid Win10 as well --- that being said, I prefer and build AMD based machines, and have before AMD was AMD, using ATI, Cyrix, or other comparable parts instead. I have a custom PC and Server business and rarely have to service or replace any parts I use on those machines except to upgrade or modernize installed equipment sold.
Actually there are 3 types of computer equipment used most, Intel, Apple, and AMD in mainstream machines, I would check all 3 for the best aspects wanted before making any decision.
Remembering that internals (apart from the motherboard itself) are neutral before addition of the operating system,
Once the added operating system is installed the parts added are configured for that operating system and cannot be changed especially in the case of Apple to Intel or AMD.

Repped simply because of your forum name, your post has little to do with the OP's question (par for the course around here) but the name...

Brilliant.

 

[Caramel Clown]

I've finalized my build today. If nothing changes in the process this is what I end up with.
https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/pCvWZR
Now I just need to wait...

Thanks for comments, and suggestions.

 

[Zenith]

I was going to suggest that you go with Coffee Lake CPU and Z370 motherboard instead of Kaby Lake and Z270, and then see you've gone and updated your list.
I did wonder why you changed the RAM down to Kingston DDR4-2400 from the Corsair DDR4-3000 you had before?
16GB (2x8GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 is going at $234.99

 

[Caramel Clown]

I was going to suggest that you go with Coffee Lake CPU and Z370 motherboard instead of Kaby Lake and Z270, and then see you've gone and updated your list.
I did wonder why you changed the RAM down to Kingston DDR4-2400 from the Corsair DDR4-3000 you had before?
16GB (2x8GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 is going at $234.99

I've figured benefit from 3000 over 2400 is minute, if any in most applications. Plus - it's all about that beast of a cooler I'm 100% sure this memory fits under it, and was available at the local place. LPX on paper has exactly 0-1mm of clearance, and I'm not too keen on making ram and hot radiator touching.
Yes, I went with 8700k after all. For just 50 or so bucks extra it's just a better CPU, and will remain relevant longer.

 

[[VR] optimal_909]

I've just noted on the German NVidia homepage, that the Star Wars Titan XP is available at virtually the same price as 1080Ti-s elsewhere. I was (am?) seriously considering buying one...

 

[Caramel Clown]

I've just noted on the German NVidia homepage, that the Star Wars Titan XP is available at virtually the same price as 1080Ti-s elsewhere. I was (am?) seriously considering buying one...

They are as near as makes no difference - the same card. For gaming purposes in fact - 1080Ti is even ever so slightly better. It might sound like a good idea, but is it though?
However, it's weird to even see people say Titan might be a decent value for it's price. Just a year ago it would make me laugh, not it makes me think...

Also, thing about titans - they only come as reference cards from Nvidia themselves. No custom cooling, which I would prefer.