...yeah, it's time. I've finally found games I actually want to play that require a half-decent machine, I make all my money on the computer, and I regularly do video editing as well. I always keep my machines for a long time, so they need to be as future-proof as possible and I can't justify saving up for a PC unless it's going to be good enough for the foreseeable future. So here's where my head is at, I'd be grateful for any advice.
tl;dr https://pcpartpicker.com/list/xjP3yF for the general idea, but I'm open to other ideas. It's going to be a linux machine, and all AMD since I hear the drivers work better/are less fiddly. Aesthetically, I like an all-white motif but looks are secondary to pure power and long life. I would like to be able to emulate PS4, Xbox 360, run S&box so my kid can make games, and render my clip shows at high speed. The budget I'm targeting is about £2k. Will mean saving up for a couple months. Parts I'm considering:
CPU
- Ryzen 9 9950X3D (I'm most excited about having a strong CPU, this one appeals to me even though it's a bit of a splurge)
- Ryzen 9 7950X3D
- Ryzen 9 7900X3D
GPU
Anything AMD, 16gb preferred but at least 12gb. AMD RX 6800XT or higher perhaps. RX 7800 XT or similar would be great.
Memory
16gb preferred, DDR5, not too fussy about brand. Maybe someday another 16gb if it becomes worthwhile.
Storage
1 or 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD, any really who cares. I don't need a lot of storage, most of my games are lightweight indies or backed up on my server.
Power Supply
Anything 850-1000w, preferably modular? I dunno.
Cooling
Possibly an AIO liquid cooler. I'm iffy on that, would be happy with a fan if it's more recommended.
Case
Fractal does a nice white wood effect one (North XL), as does Antec (Flux Pro). Happy with anything that matches, but don't really love showy RGB, prefer understated and clean looks.
I'm reading that driver updates might have effectively solved the stuttering issues, you think it's still something to contend with? I do a lot of video rendering and stuff like that, so it's not purely about gaming. I also think it would be nice to be able to stream while gaming, even though it's not something I do at the moment.
Also, I do plan to use this machine as my daily driver for at least the next decade, and I want to be able to add more RAM later and keep running whatever terribly un-optimized software gets written in the 2030s. It's a question of whether the 9800 will be a "do everything" CPU for the next decade or not, what do you reckon?
Windows' fix is to entirely shut off the second CCD when gaming. So you will never see a performance gain from the dual CCD chips as long as it does that. Linux largely does the same thing, but I don't think they turn it entirely off. And those dual CCD CPUs need so much memory bandwith that even dual channel DDR5 chokes them out, it's almost offensive to the CPU to do that to it. And with that low end of a GPU I doubt a 9800 would be slowing you down. I have a 4090 and my 9800x3d almost never goes above 50% utilization. Streaming has a minimal impact on the CPU thanks to the GPU en/decoders. And if you use GPU encoding when rendering video then the CPU isn't that busy.
If you're gonna upgrade parts in the future why not get the MUCH better performance now of a 9800 with dual channel, then in the future upgrade the CPU? I doubt next gen will be a new CPU socket, and AMD has been great with that compatibility. Plus the rumors are next gen AMD CPUs will have 12 cores per CCD so you get the best of both worlds. Buying a 9950x3d and then pairing it with an RX 9060 is like buying a ferrari, and putting donuts on all 4 wheels. Yes hypothetically in 10 years of driving 1000 hp might come in handy. But 9.999 of those 10 years you're missing out on so much. If the 9800 can't run the game in 10 years then the 9950 won't either.
Okay, fair enough. Thanks for being patient, this is a lot to take in. I'm trying to incorporate everyone's advice and rework my parts list, what do you think about this one (https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Wmyk9K )? Is the 9800 going to be happy with a 9070 XT, or am I barking up the wrong tree there?
Looks balanced to me.
You might be unhappy with the noise and temps with that cooler, though. I used to run one like that on a 105 TDP processor (your pick is 120 TDP), and it would get toasty in some games. Loud as well.
Consider getting a 360mm AIO from the same manufacturer. They last about 5 years, so you'll probably have to replace it later on, but it'll be much, much quieter and will let you not throttle under extensive heavy load. They cost about the same. Just make sure to never tighten the screws (if it holds on, it's good enough), as well as ONLY ever screw them in through the fans. The metal used in AIOs is very very soft. Also, make sure the AIO actually fits in the case.
Another thing I know people do for rendering is getting 1 fast SSD, 1 regular SSD, and 1 HDD.
Fast SSD is for what you're working with, it should be kept fairly empty. Regular is for your apps, OS, and other work, that is not currently needed. HDD is for cold storage.
Currently, you only have a very fast SSD chosen. Maybe even excessively fast, but you of all people might actually appreciate the speeds.
I am a little concerned about the CPU because you may want more than 8 cores. I want you to go look at the benchmarks for apps you use professionally and see what kind of performance can be expected with what CPU or GPU. Only then pick one you'll be happy with.
I also noticed you mentioned using a 1080p monitor. 9070xt is 100% a 1440p GPU. You won't be able to squeeze all of its juices on a 1080p for a long while, which isn't good.
This build is already about £500 more than I had planned to spend! Now they're saying buy monitors? Aaiiieee, my wallet. Maybe down the road if I deserve a treat I'll spring for a higher refresh 1440p monitor. It's likely enough, I am kinda spoiled.
The motivation for picking one small NVME SSD is that after the upgrade I'll have two >10Tb file servers on my network, one for serving media to the projector and one for backups. I would feel just silly buying more storage at that point... At least for now.
I'm seriously considering the Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 or a Peerless Assassin 120; both are highly reputed, I've seen them used on this CPU with good results in completed builds on pcpartpicker, and the case I'm going with can fit a heatsink 185mm tall so either will fit, incredibly enough. Also, most of my favourite games are indies so I don't plan on overclocking or anything crazy.
I've just been talked down from getting the 9950X3D for the 9800X3D instead. Benchmarks all said both will be roughly an order of magnitude as much computing power as I'm used to, and the higher wattage and heat of the 9950 would probably push me into genuinely needing a watercooler. I'm hoping I can get away with a fan cooled CPU under the hood and not have to worry about AIOs dying every 5 years. Is that reasonable?
A much more sane setup. You'll still be very GPU bottlenecked, but much closer in terms of pairing. I prefer a CPU over a GPU bottleneck anyways since multi tasking will bring that down. But I doubt you'll ever see much of a CPU bottleneck with the 9070. And since you have 32 gigs of ram you're not going to be horribly RAM starved. Full fat linux distros aint the light thing they once were. Catchy OS on startup uses like 3.5 gigs of ram, and running FH6 I was using just under 16 gigs of ram not including what the iGPU was reserving. And that was on my old laptop. Nowhere near as powerful as that.
You could save a few bucks by getting a pcie gen 4 SSD, and maybe spring for a lower end 2TB drive with the money saved. The speed difference isn't that insane like sata to NVMe, or even gen 3 to 4. But that's personal preference, and x870 has plenty of spare PCIe lanes for getting a second drive later on.
Also since your case has a PSU dungeon you don't need to pay the white tax for a white PSU. With a modular PSU you can replace the cables with custom aftermarket ones, but you might be paying more than the white PSU for those. I'm not fully up to stuff on PSU quality tiers, but as long as that's a highly rated one 850 watts should be plenty. That one seems OK, but gigabyte has had really bad responses to exploding PSUs so I'd maybe stay away. If you go by this list then shoot for B tier at minimum. A good white PSU will cost money, but you do have the dungeon.
That's a really key point about the PSU dungeon, I keep forgetting about practicalities like that! Good to know about Gigabyte being shady, I thought I'd heard that name somewhere before.
One thing I forgot to mention is that my storage needs on my daily driver PC are very minimal, because I have a 6-bay media server in the house. On top of that, one of my old PCs will become an additional server with my 14tb external HDD attached, so I'm really not sweating storage too much. If it gets cramped I'll drop an SSD into it down the road?