| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor | $155.50 |
| CPU Cooler | be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 50.5 CFM CPU Cooler | Purchased For $0.00 |
| Motherboard | MSI B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard | Purchased For $0.00 |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Fury 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 CL16 Memory | Purchased For $0.00 |
| Storage | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive | Purchased For $0.00 |
| Video Card | Sapphire NITRO+ Radeon RX 7900 XT 20 GB Video Card | $925.00 |
| Case | Fractal Design Meshify C ATX Mid Tower Case | Purchased For $0.00 |
| Power Supply | SeaSonic FOCUS PLUS 850 Gold 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | $129.00 |
| Monitor | Gigabyte G34WQC 34.0" 3440 x 1440 144 Hz Curved Monitor | $390.00 |
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts | ||
| Total | $1599.50 | |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-10-16 05:42 EDT-0400 |
Ignore prices: I’m going to buy from different stores and I couldn’t bother inputing prices manually actually went and edited prices, also removed unnecessary bits as they were causing some confusion haha
This part list fits my budget and it’s unlikely I will make changes to it, unless there are big issues with compatibility in which case the only change I can make is to go for a 7800XT instead to open up some of the budget to fix those issues.
Objective is playing AAA games at 3440*1440 100+ fps (ideally 120+), high-ultra with no RT and hopefully no FSR; what I’m keeping from current build are RAM and MoBo (plus case, CPU cooler, fans, and drives, but these shouldn’t cause any issues). I listed current drives, fans, etc. just to get a somewhat accurate total power draw to pick the right PSU.
I know about case GPU length restrictions, that’s why there’s a slim fan in the list that will be mounted front bottom, to accomodate the long GPU (Fractal’s website says maximum GPU length with front fan is 315mm, standard fan is 25mm deep, 7900XT is 320mm and the slim fan is 16mm deep, so I should have 4mm of wiggle room!).
My main doubt is about huge bottlenecks with either RAM or MoBo. I’m keeping those and I’d rather not change them, because that would mean having to get a 7800XT instead (I know, for example, that a faster and lower CL RAM will give me slightly better FPS, although my current sticks are running at 3466Mhz and CL18, so not too bad, but I’m not looking to min-max to the last minute detail), unless such dated parts would cause huge bottlenecks that would make that GPU a total waste.
PC will be used exclusively for gaming.
Thanks for any and all suggestions!
edit: after a bit more researching, I ditched the AOC U34G3XM and picked this Gigabyte after watching the video by Hardware Unboxed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5FunMmbztw
The only bottleneck I see is the PCIe on the motherboard, which is only 3.0 x16, while the 7900XT is 4.0 16x. Not the end of the world, though, so I will pull the trigger in the next few days. Thanks everyone for your help!
Please no with that storage configuration.
250GB is useless to man or beast. It’s not big enough for your C: drive once you get a handful of apps installed, and it’s not big enough for anything else. And you’ve made that the slow SATA drive, so it’s not even optimal for purpose.
Boot off NVME. Have SATA SSD for your other storage. Consign HDD to the fires of hell, and spin rust no more in the year of our lord two thousand and twenty three. Unless you need to store like 8+TB of videos, there is no good use case for HDD.
Look at getting 2x2TB SSD, or even consider 2TB + 4TB if you want to hoard shit.
That’s definitely more fans than you need; I bought two extra to go in that case, and it was plenty.
I don’t know exact details on either clearances or ram specs, so I won’t venture an opinion.
Honestly 250 gb is fine for an os (C:) drive. I also agree use an sad or over HDD for that purpose. But using HDDs for storage is totally fine. No need to have terabytes of SSD. HDDs for bulk storage is absolutely acceptable, especially if there is any budget concerns.
Thanks for the reply!
storage
Must have gotten lost in the wall of text, but the storage configuration is unusual because I already have all these drives and I added onto it as I needed more.
I do have a main 1TB NVME, SATA SSD as mass storage is a bit expensive in my country, so I still prefer HDDs, which I plan to bring to a higher total amount of storage as I move towards building my own NAS; at the moment I make do with what I have!
fans
I opted for more fans than usual because it’s a bit hot here! They definitely helped with keeping temps in check!
clearances
All good, already tested in current PC!
The storage here is also what jumped out at me. Aside from using traditional hard drives, 5400 rpm is sloooow. It’s not really good for anything other than backups.
The NVME chosen are pretty good, but he is better off going with larger storage capacity.
What’s the reasoning behind the the 3TB in hard drives?
Data hoarding haha I know it’s not ideal, and I will build a NAS at some point, but at the moment high-res, high-fps, high-details gaming is a priority!
Fwiw, I would absolutely not use a 1TB spinny drive. Just find a 4, 6, or 8TB drive. Prices tend to bounce around some, but It’ll be only slightly more expensive (I’m looking at a 6TB 7200rpm drive for $80 on Newegg right now) than that 1TB drive you found.
That’s what I bought at the very beginning when I first built my PC. Had to go for a 256GB SATA SSD because of prices (I think I bought it more than five years ago) and since that wasn’t realistically enough, I added a 1TB HDD to get by. When I fibally build my NAS I will get something like 4x4TB at least
Oh, if you’re just moving the drives into the new system, then sure, it doesn’t really matter. I’m just saying you should definitely not buy those things new. Any spinny drive under about 4tb is honestly more useful as a paperweight these days. As a matter of fact, I’ve disassembled several of my old, low capacity disks (after a DoD-level wipe) and use the platters as drink coasters around my house lol
use the platters as drink coasters around my house
Haha, that’s a great use of them; gotta remember that when my ancient e-waste drives finally fail.
Yep, just keeping them because they still work, and, even though they are small, I can still repurpose them for my future NAS when I’ll build it
Depending upon how old they are you should really consider just replacing them and moving the data to another drive. My limit is about 6 years, after that my next pc build I will normally buy a new drive with enough space to consolidate and move over the data to them so I can retire the old drives. The longer they are used the higher the risk of failure. You can forget this If you have proper backups, I guess it’s not that terrible if you do.
One is about to die, the older 1TB, which is about to be five years old, I got one bad sector on it a month or so ago. It’s all backed up, though, so I dare using it a bit longer
Also re storage: maybe replace one SSD (both?) for a large M2 unit - I see a M.2 slot. Would be good for OS and games, for max read/write performance. Edit: nvm, I saw it in your list already.
For me thats also what sticks out. You can get a 1 TB micro SD card these days - if you want hdd storage then why not aim for 8 or 10+ TB? Perhaps two drives in raid1 if you want some more safety.
If you’re going to build a PC on an end of life mobo platform, why not max out the CPU though? 3800x3d is right at $300 right now and that extra speed and more importantly the extra cache is going to give you some more overhead before your build starts feeling dated.
Simply because I have a budget that I really can’t stretch further than this! Getting a 7900XT is already going to punch a huge hole into my pockets, and since I’m going to play games at 3440*1440, according to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81kAorV30Vc) (skip to 10:05 to see the averages) the differences between 5600x and 5800X3D are definitely interesting, especially for some games, but overall, at my target resolution there is a difference between 10% (1440p) and 6% (4k).
If I were to want to close that gap and get a 5800X3D I’d have to go for a 7800XT instead (to not further raise the budget) and at that point I’d be losing much more performance than I’d be missing by getting a 5600x w/ a 7900XT, since, on average, a 7800XT gets 50-60fps at 4k, while a 7900XT gets 60-80fps at 4k. At 4k I’ll get 6% less FPS with the weaker CPU, but I’d get 25%+ less FPS with a weaker GPU!
Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong!
I really think you’re going to find some titles (especially those built with unity from what I’ve found) are so poorly optimized from a cpu side you’re going to see more of a gap than what is shown there in real life experience when you startt pushing your settings. If not now, then it’s absolutely going to show it’s age in the next couple of years. I’ve always been a fan of shaving money on the GPU because I can always just upgrade just the card given their pace of release, but especially going with an end of life platform you would be completely rebuying(and rebuilding) the whole machine. More just personal preference of pain now vs pain later, but if your budget can only handle so much or if you can see yourself building a new setup in the next couple of years then go ahead. The x3d is an absolute beast if you do decide to spring for it though. I love mine.
Makes sense, unfortunately it’s all a game of balance between CPU and GPU when you have a fixed budget, and a 5800X3D paired with a 7800XT won’t give me 120+ FPS at 3440*1440 (on average, max FPS at 4k is 60, so around 100 FPS at 3440*1440), a 5600X with a 7900XT probably yes (on average, max FPS at 4k is 80, so around 133 FPS at 3440*1440). At this resolution, I feel like investing in a better GPU is the better choice, also for longevity.
Plus, I think it will be easier to upgrade CPU than to upgrade GPU, were I to need it, for example in the next six or eight months: in that time frame I can easily save for a brand new 5800X3D (which is around $300, especially if I can sell the 5600X), while saving for a 7900XT ($900) is a whole different feat, even factoring in a potential sale of the used card.
If I were in the USA I would’ve gotten a 5600X3D because that’s basically a 5800X3D for much less, it’s a shame it’s a MicroCenter exclusive, guess they don’t have enough of them to sell worldwide.
if you can see yourself building a new setup in the next couple of years
I surely hope not haha, I can totally see a motherboard and RAM upgrade, and at that point a CPU upgrade as well, down the line, but I hope I can keep the 7900XT for a bit longer than that! To be quite honest, the amount of newly released AAA games that I’d like to play has been decreasing in the past few years, so I’ve been feeling less inclined to upgrade, and with this new PC I can play 100% of my backlog and also 100% of the yet-to-be-released games I’m looking forward to (though I’ll admit that’s a very short list), so hopefully it will last me a while.
Thanks for the suggestions though!
Why the extra case fans? Your case comes with two I think and that’s enough.
DR4 is kinda meh IIRC. There are options that are cheaper and better.
RAM and MoBo are fine.
I’d take a shorter GPU if it’s that close.
Have you looked up response time measurements for the monitor? (Not specs, those don’t mean anything.)
Why so much storage? I’d get a 1TB SSD and buy more on a as-needed basis unless you know your current requirements are higher.
Even then, please don’t buy such small HDDs; they’re really poor value and these ones are probably SMR trash. 8TB+ is where it’s at: For the price of the 1TB and 2TB one you could got a single 8TB HDD. 16TB+ have even better value.
Really look out for SMR though, you do not want it.Thanks for the reply! Might have gotten lost in the wall of text, but I already have most parts, I’m just upgrading my current PC.
DR4
Good enough for me, hasn’t let me down yet in these years!
GPU
As long as it fits, there shouldn’t be problems, though, right? I can double check the actual space inside the case and take accurate measurements, but even if it’s a very tight fit, I don’t see why I can’t stuff it in. Getting a shorter GPU means ditching Sapphire Nitro + (the 7800XT is just as long) and go for a dual fan model, which I’d rather avoid (noise+cooling concerns)
response time
1ms MPRT, should be enough for non-competitive gaming! If that’s not it, I don’t know what you’re referring to!
storage
Again, might have gotten lost in the wall of text, but I already have all those drives, including a 1TB NVME. The configuration is all over the place because I kept adding onto it as my needs grew. At some point I’ll clean it up haha
I know you have a bunch of Samsung drives, and that’s fine, but also keep your eyes on the Crucial P5+ (DRAM) and P3+ (DRAM-less). They often go on sale at holidays, and I can attest first hand that they’re solid drives, and the management software is great. Also, Crucial is getting out of the RAM game and focusing solely on hard drives, so they’ll only get better.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll keep it in mind in case I need to add/change drives!
Good enough for me, hasn’t let me down yet in these years!
Ah so you’ve already got it. In that case it’s fine and you shouldn’t get another one. My entire comment assumes these components are to be bought new.
As long as it fits, there shouldn’t be problems, though, right?
I wouldn’t risk it not fitting. Even if it could technically fit, I’d want a couple cm wiggle room because you must keep in mind that you need to get the GPU in and out and you just never know whether you might need to run a cable somewhere.
1ms MPRT
These are the BS “specifications” I was talking about.
Read/watch actual reviews where they measure response times. A “1 ms” specification has been found on anything between 0.something ms OLEDs and ancient terrible VA panels with 30+ ms response times for most transitions. It does not mean anything at all.
should be enough for non-competitive gaming
Response times matter a bit more for competitive gaming but not as much as you might think.
Response times are mainly a component of moving image quality, not input lag; don’t confuse the two. Input lag is fine on most panels marketed for gaming though even there YMMV. Again, look up reviews which measure things these.
fitting the gpu
Eh, worst case scenario I can remove the front fan: case specs say 315mm + fan, which is 26mm, so without fan 341mm and it bumps to the chassis.
bogus specs
Yeah, I looked into it a bit more and a I’m now considering a different monitor… so thanks!
these ones are probably SMR trash.
OP responded why he’s using them but I wanna clarify here that at this capacity and form factor (3.5") I don’t believe any manufacturer makes SMR drives. Seagate makes some super thin 2.5" 1tb SMR drives, but at 3.5" they’re gonna be pretty high capacity if they’re SMR.
at this capacity and form factor (3.5") I don’t believe any manufacturer makes SMR drives
My last update on this was the complete inverse of that statement.
To my surprise however, the linked 1TB Blue is CMR. (Not sure if it’s the actual 1TB blue OP has but given they stated it’s >5 years old, it’s probably not but also still not SMR.)
The 2TB Red is SMR trash though: https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-red-sata-hdd
