PC Build Advice/Review II: 3090 or Bust.

[Kalmado]

So it looks like the 3600X is on sale now at MC for $200 plus the $30 bundle discount. The "eligible Mobos" they show on their site are like $200 on their own. Kal, you said you have to fight them sometimes with the bundle. Is the fight getting the discount in general or about which mobos you can bundle? I'd prefer not to spend $200 on a motherboard.

EDIT: I know you said open box, I was wondering if you follow their eligible mobos or you've been okay selecting the ones you wanted.

As far as I know, the $30 off for the bundle is dependent on the processor. I have never not received the discount on the motherboard. Usually what happens is because the UPC is for open box it rings up the price of the motherboard and doesn't discount it. You have to say something to the cashier because in their defense they probably don't realize it's a bundle deal. A manager then looks at it and overrides giving the $30 off. I think it may have been here that someone was saying they had issues with their store giving the discount but that was some time ago. Usually just being nice is enough to do the trick.

[Tokitoki]

So it looks like the 3600X is on sale now at MC for $200 plus the $30 bundle discount. The "eligible Mobos" they show on their site are like $200 on their own. Kal, you said you have to fight them sometimes with the bundle. Is the fight getting the discount in general or about which mobos you can bundle? I'd prefer not to spend $200 on a motherboard.

EDIT: I know you said open box, I was wondering if you follow their eligible mobos or you've been okay selecting the ones you wanted.

This is what I've come up with based around a Ryzen 5 3600X from MC for $200 and using a compatible open box mobo for the $30 bundle discount with the assumption that I don't need to get one of the ones they deem eligible on their site.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor ($200.00 @ Micro Center)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For $0.00)
Motherboard: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX AM4 Motherboard ($78.96 @ Micro Center w/ $30 bundle discount)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Inland Premium 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6 GB Video Card ($100.00 @ EVGA B-Stock if lucky)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($55.88 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $495.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-22 11:12 EST-0500

I think I may actually have RAM too. I have to check, but that savings is fairly minimal and I can save on the case a bit more, I just threw the one that Gred had in there because I was looking at both your suggested builds and his happened to be in front of me at the time.

This also assumes a good deal on a B Stock 980TI. Otherwise I'm looking at another $140 for the video card Kal suggested.

EDIT #25: I found the old Newegg order from 2 years ago. I do have 16GB of DDR4-3000 RAM. Is it worth getting different RAM, or would what I have see a significant drop in performance?
EDIT #26: Found the correct cooler as well.

[Boyiee]

no clue what post I was even replying to lol.

[Gredival]

So it looks like the 3600X is on sale now at MC for $200 plus the $30 bundle discount. The "eligible Mobos" they show on their site are like $200 on their own. Kal, you said you have to fight them sometimes with the bundle. Is the fight getting the discount in general or about which mobos you can bundle? I'd prefer not to spend $200 on a motherboard.

EDIT: I know you said open box, I was wondering if you follow their eligible mobos or you've been okay selecting the ones you wanted.

The Microcenter near me has the Asrock 450 for $80 that pairs with the Ryzens. It might be an inventory issue.

However open box boards usually don't qualify for the bundle discount. One or the other.

If you order on their site, the price on the board gets discounted instantly when you add the processor first and add an eligible board to the order when you go to check out. This is how I did my last budget Ryzen build, then I went and picked up and paid with everything ringing up correctly.

[Gredival]

Absolutely everything I have is out of date and I regret most of my last small changes (~2 years ago) to downsize according to my needs because apparently that was stupid. I don't like working with only a SSD and externals, CPU not powerful enough, blah blah.

I have an RTX 2070 sitting around still in the box since last xmas because I'm not wasting it on my current setup. I think I'd like to build a new rig for around $700 or so which I think should be possible given that I already have the expensive card.

The PC right now is used like 80% as a plex streaming machine (won't stream 4k no matter what..I think plex pushes everything through the CPU despite that being stupid?) and like 20% macroing stupid games in emulator. The need for an upgrade is pretty much 100% driven by plex being poorly optimized.

I'm probably going to go back to at least 1TB internal HD and keep my OS on my SSD.

Needs:
1) enough CPU power to overcome plex being shitty
2) built in wifi / bluetooth (is this a thing now?)
3) good options for 1-2TB internal HD
4) new case since my current one is shitty and 11 years old
5) probably new PSU
6) probably new mobo

I think I have like 8gb of DDR4 in current build so I'd probably like to double that at least too I guess.

Any suggestions?

Edit: These were my most recent upgrades that I'm really not very happy with

Spoiler: show

1) Ryzen 3600 or better should be fine.
2) Certain mobos offer it. Offhand, I know that the Aorus x470/x570 have Wi-Fi versions.
3) I think off-brand SSDs are cheap enough now to get a 1TB as a storage/game drive and a high quality one as the boot drive. I use a Patriot Burst as a game drive and a shucked 8TB WD White as a media drive to go with Samsung Evo as my boot drive. There is drive tiering software included with Ryzen to automatically pair and SSD with an HDD that might appeal to you.
4) Lots of options here depending on your personal style preferences. Lian Li is great.
5) There's a PSU tier list for reliability to consult. Remember that going higher wattage gives you extra durability for when wear and tear reduce efficiency. EVGA and Corsair tend to be super solid brands.
6) I'm partial to ASUS for boards personally but if you really want to explore this the most important things to investigate are the quality of the BIOS, the quality of the VRMs, and how easy it is to plug and play RAM to XMP profiles (when using Ryzen)

[Kalmado]

+1 on shucking huge external drives for storage. Around 2 years ago I bought a 8TB Seagate for $140. Thing is humming along just fine. You can put games on it too and it will be fine. Tested it with Fallout: New Vegas with a ton of mods and the load times were fine and I saw no difference, unlike how if you had Fallout 4 on a mechanical drive vs a SSD where you'd see a HUGE difference in load times. Wonder if that ever got fixed.

[tyven]

This is what I've come up with based around a Ryzen 5 3600X from MC for $200 and using a compatible open box mobo for the $30 bundle discount with the assumption that I don't need to get one of the ones they deem eligible on their site.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor ($200.00 @ Micro Center)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid 240 66.7 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For $0.00)
Motherboard: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 ATX AM4 Motherboard ($78.96 @ Micro Center w/ $30 bundle discount)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Inland Premium 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($59.99 @ Micro Center)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6 GB Video Card ($100.00 @ EVGA B-Stock if lucky)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case ($55.88 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G3 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $495.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-22 11:12 EST-0500

I think I may actually have RAM too. I have to check, but that savings is fairly minimal and I can save on the case a bit more, I just threw the one that Gred had in there because I was looking at both your suggested builds and his happened to be in front of me at the time.

This also assumes a good deal on a B Stock 980TI. Otherwise I'm looking at another $140 for the video card Kal suggested.

EDIT #25: I found the old Newegg order from 2 years ago. I do have 16GB of DDR4-3000 RAM. Is it worth getting different RAM, or would what I have see a significant drop in performance?
EDIT #26: Found the correct cooler as well.

No reason for an X570, even tho that’s a great price. X470 or b450 are fine with third gen Ryzen.

Get this ram https://www.newegg.com/team-16gb-288...82E16820313712

B die w/ 14 Latency

[Tokitoki]

The MC near me has the mobo that Gred posted, the B450 Tomahawk, open box for $92.

[tyven]

The MC near me has the mobo that Gred posted, the B450 Tomahawk, open box for $92.

That’s what I wanted when I built my last PC but it was so new that MC excluded it from the bundle discount

[Tokitoki]

EVGA b stock was up just now after almost 3 hours of crashing. I was bad.

I snagged a 980 TI for $99 and a 1070 TI FTW Ultra Silent for $210 and figured I'd keep one and sell the other based on what people think of the two cards and the value I got.

Any input? I see userbenchmarks ranks the 1070 TI higher (22nd compared to 34th for the 980 TI). I'm going to keep looking after I get into work.

[Kalmado]

I just PM'd you. I cashed out at 3:40 AM with no luck. So glad you got something!!

[Tokitoki]

I wrote up a whole post and then I hit something and deleted it somehow.

Basically, they're fairly even with the 1070 TI coming out about 15 fps ahead on average at 1080p ultra settings.

My inclination is to keep the 1070 TI and sell the 980 TI to see if I can break even or make up for the cost difference for the 1070 TI. If I can sell the 980 TI for $200 I'd basically have paid $110 for the 1070 TI.

Does this effect my proposed build at all? Should I look at a different CPU/Mobo to ensure I get the best performance and the card fits the build? Some people have mentioned its a 2.5 slot card; not sure how that may effect something.

[Tokitoki]

I just PM'd you. I cashed out at 3:40 AM with no luck. So glad you got something!!

I wish I had your number or something and I could have texted you. I was getting ready for work and the page loaded, but none of the deals were showing. I hopped in the shower, made coffee, brushed my teeth, got dressed, and refreshed the page and suddenly the deals were there.

There was a Titan X for $200, the 980 TI for $99, and the 1070 TI FTW for $210. People say they saw the 1080 for $150, but I didn't see that one.

[Gredival]

I wrote up a whole post and then I hit something and deleted it somehow.

Basically, they're fairly even with the 1070 TI coming out about 15 fps ahead on average at 1080p ultra settings.

My inclination is to keep the 1070 TI and sell the 980 TI to see if I can break even or make up for the cost difference for the 1070 TI. If I can sell the 980 TI for $200 I'd basically have paid $110 for the 1070 TI.

Does this effect my proposed build at all? Should I look at a different CPU/Mobo to ensure I get the best performance and the card fits the build? Some people have mentioned its a 2.5 slot card; not sure how that may effect something.

Something to consider is that the 980 is locked to G-Sync but the 1070 supports both FreeSync and G-Sync. Whether or not this actually impacts you is dependent on the games you play and your monitor. Doesn't matter if you already have a G-Sync monitor, you don't have a 144Hz monitor or you don't intend to push above 60 FPS (i.e. 4k gaming)

You might have trouble flipping the 980 for $200

[Tokitoki]

I have a 1080p* free sync 144 hz monitor so that is good to know.

Yeah I was looking at pricing after I posted and it looks like $120-150 is about what it goes for.

Edit2: I may be wrong. It may be G sync. I'll have to look.

[Ayn]

Thanks for all the help a few weeks back friends.

This is what I'm likely settling on:

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/c4Ctn7

CPU: Ryzen 3700
MoBo: Asus ROG STRIX X470-F Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 2 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6 GB VENTUS XS OC Video Card
Case: NZXT H710i ATX Mid Tower Case
PSU: Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply

I may change my mind on the case if a better option comes up (looks like the i series is sold out; I'd be fine going with the regular), but after weighing the vid card options I just wasn't really feeling the 2070 super for the types of games I play. My GTX 760's held up nicely enough, and I seem to luck out (..well I do spend months overanalyzing things) at seeming to find those 'sweet spot' cards that last a while. The 2070 Kalmado posted in the other thread *is* tempting, but we'll see.

[Tokitoki]

Need help choosing a case. Thought I may spend a few extra bucks to get something a little nicer.

Rosewill Mid ATX RGB ring around 1x back and 3x bottom fans - $65 - Also a similar model with a pattern over the front.

Rosewill Cullinan V500 with RGB ring around 3x front and 1x back fans - $70

Edit: Didn't finish but I hit post...

NZXT H510 - Compact ATX Mid-Tower PC Gaming Case[ - Matte Black - $70

Lian Li 205 Tempered Glass ATX Computer Case - Black - $60

These should all fit my build with the cooler. Rosewills come with some more fans, and most reviews say they're fairly quiet. Plus a little flash. The others have no flash, less fans, but may better management and space? They have good reviews across the board.

[Gredival]

I prefer top exhaust fans to bottom ones because heat rises (eliminates the Rosewills). Between the remainign two I'd go with Lian Li because it's the premium brand AND it is cheaper but it seems like the NZXT has room for a front 3-fan radiator if you ever go liquid.

[Tokitoki]

I've got a two fan radiator that I'm going to be using. Is that the go to configuration? Radiator in the front and exhaust up top?

[Gredival]

I've got a two fan radiator that I'm going to be using. Is that the go to configuration? Radiator in the front and exhaust up top?

I don't run radiators so take this with a grain of salt, but I would imagine that the ideal configuration has cold air being pulled from the bottom and the front with exhausts in the back and top. The radiators would be best near exhaust fans (optimally in a push-pull configuration) so that their heat leaves the case immediately.