PC Build Advice/Review II: 3090 or Bust.

[Tokitoki]

You said you don't want to build your PC unless it's gonna save you a ton of money. Is saving at least $500 enough to justify building it yourself?

Yeah, a few to several hundred would be enough. Part of the reason I didn't want to build it myself was because I looking at doing a slight overclock and better cooling. I've never done any setup for liquid cooling or anything other than the standard fan and heat sink that comes with the CPU. I'm scared I'd fuck something up and destroy the entire PC either from overheating or a leak or some shit.

EDIT: Just to see, I made something very similar to the 7700k build using PCPartPicker and ended up at about the same price. Obviously the overclocking, wiring, and some of that stuff would have to be done by me. Also doesn't include some of the freebies maybe? Have to check individual parts/deals.
i7 7700k build - Similar to Cyberpower 7700k build

EDIT2: Here's a Ryzen 1700X one. This would save around $200, but it uses the 1700X rather than the 1800X.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VXnFyf

[Salodin]

That liquid cooler you picked is worry-free. It's all closed loop, all you have to do is make sure not to stab the hose or something to make it leak lol. I almost went with that cooler, but it needed a special rack for AMD boards and I didn't want to wait the week for it to deliver (the v2 doesnt work on AMD boards, but v1 will). If you don't want to go through that, or if they haven't included the proper rack yet, the H60 is also good, but the radiator is half the size (and the pros and cons that go with it).

I'll try and format this response as best I can lol:

-The SSD you picked is SATA based, not PCIe. It's not a deal breaker, but its not as fast as the newer SSDs on the market, if that matters to you. For an extra $40 you can get a proper SSD thats at least 2x as fast as that one. Personally, the price jump is worth it imo
-I got my 1070 for $350. Shop around, or at the very least see if you can combo it with another item to save a few bucks.
-That PSU is ridiculously expensive holy cow. Quality matters in PSU, but damn $150 for 760w? Idk, I feel like you can save a few bucks there too.
-This might not float your boat, but I got Windows 10 for $15 by purchasing a cd-key on one of those websites. I wasn't a believer until I tried it, but it worked, and I've already done the same for a large number of games. In the past month alone I've saved over a hundred doing it.

Other than that, the easiest way to save is to move things from your current system over, but because of your streaming worries you might want to keep both computers. That's up to you, but being able to reuse a PSU and snail drive would save you around $200 easy.

As for what CPU you need for your needs, /shrug. I have a 1700x, and it doesn't overclock as good as I want to but admittedly I haven't put much effort into trying. Also, lots of updates to come down the road. Intel will give you less of a headache atm, I concede, but if you're a streamer the extra cores might be invaluable. Do you game at 1080p? If so, upgrade or just stick to Intel; Ryzen is average at that resolution for gaming, but at higher resolutions you just can't beat the performance/dollar.

I mentioned it above, but see if you can buy anything in combo deals. I saved almost $50 using combo deals, which I immediately put towards other parts lol.

[Salodin]

The SSD thing I had to learn about when building my rig, as I had no idea wtf NVMe or M.2 was. Your mobo supports M.2, which is what a proper pcie ssd would use. the read/write on that SSD is 540/520, but for an extra $40 you can get the EVO 960 that is 3200/1500MBps. That's quite the jump for reading, and still almost 3x as fast for writing.

[Tokitoki]

Thanks. I saw the M.2 thing for SSDs but had no idea wtf it was and didn't look into it. I'll check it out now. I do have my own SSD and HDD from my current PC. I could probably move over the SSD, but if I were to use the second PC for streaming/encoding I'd probably keep the HDD in it for recording purposes.

PSU and GPU; I'll look into. I just grabbed a similar item from the list on Part Picker and tried to make links within a couple minutes to add to the post. I agree I could absolutely look into combos for them; though I didn't see anything at the time. I'll do a little digging.

I'd be gaming at 1080p probably. I doubt I'll make the move to 1440. Streaming would be done at 720p 60fps. That's my real dilemma; will the extra cores be that much of a difference or should I just try to use my current PC as my streaming PC? I'm kind of leaning towards the 7700k and use my current PC as my streaming PC.

I haven't used those websites before and didn't even think about them to be perfectly honest. I may even be able to take a Windows key from work and use that to upgrade to 10.

[Zetanio]

Thanks. I saw the M.2 thing for SSDs but had no idea wtf it was and didn't look into it. I'll check it out now. I do have my own SSD and HDD from my current PC. I could probably move over the SSD, but if I were to use the second PC for streaming/encoding I'd probably keep the HDD in it for recording purposes.

PSU and GPU; I'll look into. I just grabbed a similar item from the list on Part Picker and tried to make links within a couple minutes to add to the post. I agree I could absolutely look into combos for them; though I didn't see anything at the time. I'll do a little digging.

I'd be gaming at 1080p probably. I doubt I'll make the move to 1440. Streaming would be done at 720p 60fps. That's my real dilemma; will the extra cores be that much of a difference or should I just try to use my current PC as my streaming PC? I'm kind of leaning towards the 7700k and use my current PC as my streaming PC.

I haven't used those websites before and didn't even think about them to be perfectly honest. I may even be able to take a Windows key from work and use that to upgrade to 10.

Streaming is pretty fucking heavy on CPU/GPU. I was going for 720p 30fps and my performance suffered on a ton of games.

That was on my old build though so YMMV. I'm not an expert on streaming requirements at all these days.

[Deejay]

Sooo I'm using my 970 and I'm actually pretty happy with it. However, with the 1080ti release (and 1080 price drop), I'm thinking of jumping to the 10 series. My main monitor is a 32" 4k, so it would be a decent jump for me to game in 4k vs 1080p.

Everyone was talking big about the 1080 but every site now just gushes over the 1080ti killing it. Is the price difference on the 1080ti worth the extra money? I only care about 60 FPS. If I have to turn down some sliders to achieve that on a vanilla 1080 at 4k, I'll be fine. If not, should I spend the extra cash?

[Tokitoki]

Streaming is pretty fucking heavy on CPU/GPU. I was going for 720p 30fps and my performance suffered on a ton of games.

That was on my old build though so YMMV. I'm not an expert on streaming requirements at all these days.

I was looking into what some larger streamers use for single PC builds. For example, timthetatman uses a single PC with a i7-6800k, 16GB RAM, and I think a GTX 1080. I haven't seen any issues with his streams, which was why I was thinking of maybe going single PC route. The difference in price, though, was what was preventing me initially.

Twitch itself has this as a recommended setup for a strictly streaming PC:
GPU: GeForce GTX 580
CPU: Intel i7-4790K @ 4.0 GHz
RAM: 16 GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Capture Card: AVerMedia C985

I'm not sure how the CPU stacks up compared to my current PC, but the rest should be fine.

Were you losing quality on the new PC on the last page, the old PC, or were you using a dual PC setup?

[Salodin]

With a price drop the 1080 is very attractive, even if not as strong as the 1080ti. Unless you need to be at bleeding edge, the 1080 will be enough for most things, even if you have to turn a setting down once in awhile.

[Deejay]

With a price drop the 1080 is very attractive, even if not as strong as the 1080ti. Unless you need to be at bleeding edge, the 1080 will be enough for most things, even if you have to turn a setting down once in awhile.

Yeah, thats what I'm thinking. My only worry is having to settle for 40 fps on certain games with settings at medium @ 4k. If that's the case then I'd pay the extra for the 1080ti if it can achieve 60 FPS with decent settings.

Edit: I watch frame rate comparisons for games like The Witcher and honestly, it scares me. 1080's are still only pumping out like 30 fps with max settings, so I'm wondering if it even worth the jump right now. Might as well wait a year for the next batch which will probably handle 4k just fine.

[DrClout]

Yeah, thats what I'm thinking. My only worry is having to settle for 40 fps on certain games with settings at medium @ 4k. If that's the case then I'd pay the extra for the 1080ti if it can achieve 60 FPS with decent settings.

I don't see that happening unless you have other limiters going on. I'm doing high/ultra with 1070FTW @ 4K. YMMV but I sincerely doubt by that much.

[Salodin]

Maybe not this year, but in the next year or two you'll be at medium@4k@60fps depending on the game I'd say. Right now, with a 1080, you can maintain 60fps with most games, but definitely if you turn down some AA settings.

[octopus]

Installing a non-stock CPU cooler is pretty easy, just look up a youtube video and see if you're up for it.

I have a 6700k + 1070 and I feel like streaming is not a problem, the twitch upload bitrate limit is more of a factor to the quality of the stream.

[Zetanio]

I was looking into what some larger streamers use for single PC builds. For example, timthetatman uses a single PC with a i7-6800k, 16GB RAM, and I think a GTX 1080. I haven't seen any issues with his streams, which was why I was thinking of maybe going single PC route. The difference in price, though, was what was preventing me initially.

Twitch itself has this as a recommended setup for a strictly streaming PC:
GPU: GeForce GTX 580
CPU: Intel i7-4790K @ 4.0 GHz
RAM: 16 GB DDR3-1600 RAM
Capture Card: AVerMedia C985

I'm not sure how the CPU stacks up compared to my current PC, but the rest should be fine.

Were you losing quality on the new PC on the last page, the old PC, or were you using a dual PC setup?

Old PC. I'm putting it back together for the GF to use but I may just keep it and set it up as a server.

[Deejay]

I don't see that happening unless you have other limiters going on. I'm doing high/ultra with 1070FTW @ 4K. YMMV but I sincerely doubt by that much.

Maybe not this year, but in the next year or two you'll be at medium@4k@60fps depending on the game I'd say. Right now, with a 1080, you can maintain 60fps with most games, but definitely if you turn down some AA settings.

Ok, that makes me feel better about just grabbing the 1080.

[Tokitoki]

Old PC. I'm putting it back together for the GF to use but I may just keep it and set it up as a server.

Yeah I'm leaning heavily towards keeping my second PC as the streaming PC. Another build guide I was looking at last night for streaming has their streaming PC as an i5 without a GPU and 4GB of RAM. I'm sure my current one should be able to handle that. I'll probably look at the 7700k a little more and see if I can get the pricing down.

[Tokitoki]

Installing a non-stock CPU cooler is pretty easy, just look up a youtube video and see if you're up for it.

I have a 6700k + 1070 and I feel like streaming is not a problem, the twitch upload bitrate limit is more of a factor to the quality of the stream.

I'll take a look. If you guys say it's easy I'm sure I can do it. It's just the hesitation from not doing it before. It's not like I'm inept when it comes to assembling this kind of stuff.

[Salodin]

If it was an open loop like i think Krandor has, I'd agree with you. But the closed loop ones are as easy as any other pc part.

[Boyiee]

I'll probably upgrade my 1080 to a ti.

[Tokitoki]

Thoughts on latest changes to 7700k setup? Saves me around $300-400 compared to Cyberpower despite me saying I didn't want to build it myself. I went through each part and tried to find any combo deals, but couldn't find anything for any part.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/FTT3M8 - $1402

[Arkanna]

My only thought is, where's your bulk storage? 250GB goes fast.