Post by WhiteWulfe on Feb 20, 2021 20:02:49 GMT -5
So, obvious PCPartPicker Link, note it's the Canadian one as I'm in Canada: ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/f4H9p2
Stuff I'll be using from my current build:
- Asus RTX 2080 Strix
- Samsung 860 Evo 1TB (Games drive)
- Seagate Barracuda st2000dm006-2dm164 2TB (currently used for mass storage, will be replaced by 2x 8TB Seagate Iron Wolf drives in RAID 1 later on)
Goal is for around $2,100 CAD with 5% GST included for the budget, although I am trying to see if I can stretch it a touch further. Most parts will be acquired using price matching at MemoryExpress, since they beat 5% of the difference ~and~ are local to me. Only things that won't be getting such a treatment are the case and cooler, as they don't carry BeQuiet for some strange reason. Also of note is my refusal to use Corsair products - they refused to honour the warranty on my AX1200i that was brand new but started showing issues just 31 days after we acquired it despite it literally arcing inside has sworn me off all of their product forever, doubly so their incredibly buggy software that hubby's been having to contend with on his rig.
Don't get me wrong, I am seriously contemplating the idea of the 3900X and 64GB of DDR4-3600, but in all honesty I'm not really all that certain as to how often I'd actually make use of 12C/24T and that much RAM. Yes, I do a semi-decent amount of photo editing, and am getting into astrophotography, and I'm sure DeepSkyStacker and Luminar would be more than willing to chew up all of that, but given that I don't do much of that now (and it would take up maybe 20% of the regular usage of the rig) I honestly can't say whether the extra power consumption would truly be worth it.
- I wound up adding in a new case because my current one has had a lot of hardware failures: USB ports don't really work, most of the fans have died out, the lights died ages ago, and I'd rather like to have USB-C and USB 3.1 capability on the front panel.
- New power supply is because the current one was fired up March 4th, 2014, and so I'd rather err on the side of caution. Arguably, this would also give me a 1000w power supply that doesn't suck for benching, if I happen to want to get back into that on a regular basis too ~_^
- New cooler is mainly because I like the look of it, alongside the fact I don't want to wait 1-3 months to get AM4 brackets for my R1 Ultimate, assuming Cryorig is still giving them away to those who own older R1's.
- I wound up picking this particular motherboard because of two reasons: I like Asus stuff (and have for two decades), and I rather like the fact that it has 11 USB ports and 1 USB-C port on the back, with most of those 11 being USB 3. Such is incredibly handy when you happen to have a good amount of USB devices plugged in (keyboard and mouse are 3, then there's a card reader, two audio interfaces, my djing mixer, HOTAS, and at least one for whatever synth I'm plugging in for extra functionality... We're already at ten - well, nine, as one of those audio interfaces uses USB-C)
- Eventual plan is to add in a second m.2 NVME SSD, mostly as a project drive. I'd seriously consider trying to squeeze the budget in order to get two of the Western Digital SN850 drives (one 500GB, the other 1TB) so I could have OS and project/scratch drives, but since I don't do insane processor intensive stuff all that often right now the single 1TB drive feels more appropriate.
Main uses for the rig will naturally be gaming, but also photo and video editing and audio work. I use Luminar 3 as my main photo editing software, but when processing astrophotography stuff I tend to use DeepSkyStacker first, then process in Luminar. Eventually I wouldn't mind changing to PixInsight, but thta's a hefty pill to swallow before getting more accurate gear for such things.
Anything stand out as glaring, or could be tweaked better?
Stuff I'll be using from my current build:
- Asus RTX 2080 Strix
- Samsung 860 Evo 1TB (Games drive)
- Seagate Barracuda st2000dm006-2dm164 2TB (currently used for mass storage, will be replaced by 2x 8TB Seagate Iron Wolf drives in RAID 1 later on)
Goal is for around $2,100 CAD with 5% GST included for the budget, although I am trying to see if I can stretch it a touch further. Most parts will be acquired using price matching at MemoryExpress, since they beat 5% of the difference ~and~ are local to me. Only things that won't be getting such a treatment are the case and cooler, as they don't carry BeQuiet for some strange reason. Also of note is my refusal to use Corsair products - they refused to honour the warranty on my AX1200i that was brand new but started showing issues just 31 days after we acquired it despite it literally arcing inside has sworn me off all of their product forever, doubly so their incredibly buggy software that hubby's been having to contend with on his rig.
Don't get me wrong, I am seriously contemplating the idea of the 3900X and 64GB of DDR4-3600, but in all honesty I'm not really all that certain as to how often I'd actually make use of 12C/24T and that much RAM. Yes, I do a semi-decent amount of photo editing, and am getting into astrophotography, and I'm sure DeepSkyStacker and Luminar would be more than willing to chew up all of that, but given that I don't do much of that now (and it would take up maybe 20% of the regular usage of the rig) I honestly can't say whether the extra power consumption would truly be worth it.
- I wound up adding in a new case because my current one has had a lot of hardware failures: USB ports don't really work, most of the fans have died out, the lights died ages ago, and I'd rather like to have USB-C and USB 3.1 capability on the front panel.
- New power supply is because the current one was fired up March 4th, 2014, and so I'd rather err on the side of caution. Arguably, this would also give me a 1000w power supply that doesn't suck for benching, if I happen to want to get back into that on a regular basis too ~_^
- New cooler is mainly because I like the look of it, alongside the fact I don't want to wait 1-3 months to get AM4 brackets for my R1 Ultimate, assuming Cryorig is still giving them away to those who own older R1's.
- I wound up picking this particular motherboard because of two reasons: I like Asus stuff (and have for two decades), and I rather like the fact that it has 11 USB ports and 1 USB-C port on the back, with most of those 11 being USB 3. Such is incredibly handy when you happen to have a good amount of USB devices plugged in (keyboard and mouse are 3, then there's a card reader, two audio interfaces, my djing mixer, HOTAS, and at least one for whatever synth I'm plugging in for extra functionality... We're already at ten - well, nine, as one of those audio interfaces uses USB-C)
- Eventual plan is to add in a second m.2 NVME SSD, mostly as a project drive. I'd seriously consider trying to squeeze the budget in order to get two of the Western Digital SN850 drives (one 500GB, the other 1TB) so I could have OS and project/scratch drives, but since I don't do insane processor intensive stuff all that often right now the single 1TB drive feels more appropriate.
Main uses for the rig will naturally be gaming, but also photo and video editing and audio work. I use Luminar 3 as my main photo editing software, but when processing astrophotography stuff I tend to use DeepSkyStacker first, then process in Luminar. Eventually I wouldn't mind changing to PixInsight, but thta's a hefty pill to swallow before getting more accurate gear for such things.
Anything stand out as glaring, or could be tweaked better?
), and most importantly, a second 512GB SSD as a dedicated scratch drive. I prefer the look of the C8H, but the sheer practicality of the Aorus Ultra having three x4 Gen 4 m.2 SSD slots means no having to screw around with add-on cards, and no having to worry about potential future GPU bottlenecking issues due to running the PCIe x16 Gen4 slots as x8/x8. One nice touch with the Gigabyte boards is that if I were to put something into the x4 slot at the bottom, say an Elgato 4k60 Pro in there it won't affect a thing - top x16 slot continues to run as an x16 slot.
