Question New build after 10 years :)

[jeza_006]

Hi all

My current computer has an Intel E8400...time for a major upgrade! Questions from sticky thread below:

1. PC use - Database work, multitasking, movies, streaming, music to high quality amp and speakers, occasional gaming
2. Budget - Around £800-£900 but can go higher
3. Country - UK
4. Merchants - Mostly buying from amazon and ebuyer
5. No brand preference although I used to think Intel was more stable/reliable. I hear that's not the case anymore.
6. Will re-use a 1tb WD HDD as a backup drive. Will also try to re-use a PCI soundcard with an adapter. If it doesn't fit then I'll sell it and replace it with a PCIe soundcard.
7. Might overclock slightly just because I can..
8. Current monitor resolution is 1080p. Computer also outputs to 55 inch 1080p TV
9. Ordering parts imminently
10. May need to purchase windows...I do have a product key for my current PC that I used about a year ago. Hoping it will work again on my new PC.
11. Other info:

(a) AIming to build a virtually silent PC - this is why I've currently selected the below case, CPU cooler and GPU
(b) PSU is slightly over the top but apparently it stays passively cooled until it's over 40% load - this should mean the fan is off 90% of the time
(c) I don't really want to have to mess with bios updates - one of the reasons for the board choice below
(d) RAM is on the mobo QVL

Here's my list so far...

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£169.98 @ Aria PC)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler (£54.28 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£89.99 @ Box Limited)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£65.20 @ CCL Computers)
Windows and storage drive: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£124.98 @ Ebuyer)
Backup drive: WD 1 TB HDD (already owned)
Video Card: Palit GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4 GB KalmX Video Card (£155.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Define C ATX Mid Tower Case (£74.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2018) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£100.98 @ AWD-IT)
Wireless Network Adapter: Gigabyte GC-WB1733D-I PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter (£21.59 @ Amazon UK)
Sound card: RME 9632 PCI card (already owned)
Sound card Adapter: Startech PCI to PCIe adapter (£34.80 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £892.77

Thoughts please?

One of the items I'm not sure about is the motherboard. I don't think I need to spend more for an X570, in fact I think it would be wasted on me (since I rarely game). But I do feel like I'm buying a slightly older motherboard than the other components I've selected (although it looks to be a good board?). Hopefully people will tell me that that board will be more than enough for my needs and I won't see any noticeable differences between that and an X570.

 

[ArisVer]

I already have a GTX 1060 which I will be using in this build. I was also hoping to use a second graphics card for my second monitor but it seems the work must be done with one card (read below).

Gaming Carbon and Tomahawk are similar apart from the differences mentioned; WiFi, a second M.2 slot and as you mentioned, i think better audio. The VRMs if i remember correctly are the same.

On the Gaming Carbon, using the first M.2 disables SATA ports 5 and 6 (I expect this to be the same on Tomahawk).
Also, using the second M.2 disables ALL PCIe slots but the first one.

The B550 as mentioned might have more lanes.

I am hoping for my build to last me for a minimum of 5 years, maybe even close to ten, with upgrading a GPU or two during this time, and maybe a 3000 or 4000 series CPU.

You might need to flash your BIOS for compatibility with the Ryzen 3600; ask the shop if they can do it for you.

 

[jeza_006]

Wow...GPUs are a tough area to research. It's crazy how many variants there are, I'm struggling to keep track of it all. MSI have 29 variants of the 1660 card...seriously!?

So far it looks like MSIs twin frozr cards might run cooler/quieter than other cards.

This card looks like a reasonable option for £190: https://www.msi.com/Graphics-card/GeForce-GTX-1660-ARMOR-6G

Here's the same card, produced by Gigabyte, and overclocked slightly. This one would be £214: https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Graphics-Card/GV-N1660OC-6GD#kf

Assuming the noise/cooling performance is the same, the only difference seems to be a 1785Mhz clock vs 1830Mhz. Worth it or not...who knows.

My question is...can't you just overclock the first card to 1830Mhz?

 

[jeza_006]

@ArisVer Just saw your response, thanks for this. Yes it's the same with the tomahawk in terms of the Sata ports being disabled.

I'm planning for this build to last me another decade as you said...with a GPU upgrade half way through.

Everything will be ordered online so I'll just get what I get! I'm going for the Carbon AC now

I do wonder whether a separate Wifi adapter would be good as it could be upgraded in a few years but tbh I can't imagine wifi speeds will really change much. I'd rather just have better reliability and hopefully an integrated wifi adapter would achieve that..

 

[jeza_006]

Ok so here's what I've learned...

The 1650 Super or 1660 Super are probably the cards to go for, in terms of performance and value. There are cheaper AMD cards, like the 570/580 and 590 but they consume much more power so will run hotter which wouldn't be great in my quiet system. There's also the 5500 and 5500 XT, but at the moment I think they're a bit of an unknown quantity?

So I guess I just need to decide how much I need to spend now..

From what I've read, the extra 2GB of GDDR6 with the 1660s may well be worth the difference for future games...so the 1660s will be more future proof.

There are still a lot of the variants of the 1660s, with the only difference I can see being the core clock speed. Can't I just buy the cheaper one and then overclock it? Or is it the complexities and hassle involved that stops people doing that?

 

[Flayed]

I'm kind of pissed off with AMD graphics cards now. I wanted to play Mechwarrior 5 mercenaries but just found out that the game runs really badly on AMD cards such as my Vega 56

 

[Flayed]

Ok so here's what I've learned...

The 1650 Super or 1660 Super are probably the cards to go for, in terms of performance and value. There are cheaper AMD cards, like the 570/580 and 590 but they consume much more power so will run hotter which wouldn't be great in my quiet system. There's also the 5500 and 5500 XT, but at the moment I think they're a bit of an unknown quantity?

So I guess I just need to decide how much I need to spend now..

From what I've read, the extra 2GB of GDDR6 with the 1660s may well be worth the difference for future games...so the 1660s will be more future proof.

There are still a lot of the variants of the 1660s, with the only difference I can see being the core clock speed. Can't I just buy the cheaper one and then overclock it? Or is it the complexities and hassle involved that stops people doing that?

Yes you can overclock cheaper cards. The main difference I think is the quality of the heatsink and fans, the cheaper cards tend to be worse and dont have the 0db at desktop thingy

 

[jeza_006]

Ok thanks. So for example a more expensive MSI 1660S may have difference fans/heatsinks than the cheaper version. So it's overclocked from the factory and the cooling systems are already in place for it?

 

[Flayed]

Ok thanks. So for example a more expensive MSI 1660S may have difference fans/heatsinks than the cheaper version. So it's overclocked from the factory and the cooling systems are already in place for it?

yes. I wouldn't get hung up on the factory overclocks, 50 to 75Mhz makes very little difference maybe 1 or 2 fps

 

[jeza_006]

Ok so here are two potentially good options...

Graphics card - The world leader in display performance | MSI Global

www.msi.com

£190 vs £247

Both have a "fan off" function at low load, but the more expensive one is apparently one of the quietest cards as well..

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X Review

The MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X comes with a large dual-fan cooler that makes it the quietest GTX 1660 Super we've reviewed today. It also comes with the highly popular idle-fan stop feature. Temperatures are good, too, and a backplate is included as well.

www.techpowerup.com

Do you think the performance benefits would be noticeable? I have no idea what difference an extra 6 Gbps memory speed means..!

 

[Flayed]

Ok so here are two potentially good options...

Graphics card - The world leader in display performance | MSI Global

www.msi.com

£190 vs £247

Both have a "fan off" function at low load, but the more expensive one is apparently one of the quietest cards as well..

MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X Review

The MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X comes with a large dual-fan cooler that makes it the quietest GTX 1660 Super we've reviewed today. It also comes with the highly popular idle-fan stop feature. Temperatures are good, too, and a backplate is included as well.

www.techpowerup.com

Do you think the performance benefits would be noticeable? I have no idea what difference an extra 6 Gbps memory speed means..!

The 1660 super will provide 15% more performance on average compared to the 1660. Is this noticable? I would say it would be. Does this justify the extra £57? That is up to you to decide.

 

[ArisVer]

There's also the 5500 and 5500 XT, but at the moment I think they're a bit of an unknown quantity?

Be careful about these cards, do some reading. From what I've read they only use 8 of the 16 lanes of the PCIe slot which is okay if you have a fourth generation PCIe slot like the X570 chipset. They are slightly(?) handicapped on the B450.

 

[jeza_006]

Everything I've read points me towards the 1660 super. The 1660 super gaming x also has a different fan and heatsink design to the others, which help keep it quiet and cooler. Factory settings are fans off when less than 60c. The Asus version spins the fans at 55 degrees and the EVGA doesn't say.

This shows the EVGA as pretty loud.. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15010/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-super-review-feat-evga/15

And this shows the MSI card as very quiet! https://www.techpowerup.com/review/msi-geforce-gtx-1660-super-gaming-x/34.html

I also looked at the 3 fan version from Gigabyte...the alternate spinning fan idea sounds interesting, but it's slightly noisier than the MSI card at load.

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming OC Review

Gigabyte designed an upscale-looking GeForce GTX 1660 Super using a heavy heatsink and triple fans with idle fan-stop to boot. It also comes with the largest factory overclock and largest power limit increase of all the GTX 1660 Super cards we've tested today.

www.techpowerup.com

The 1660 Gaming X (not super) has the same fan etc, but 6Gbps less memory speed and GDDR5 instead of GDDR6. Difference in price is about £27 so the Super looks worth the difference.

I think that's a decision then....I didn't want to spend this much but I'm sure I won't regret it. It should be nice and quiet at low load, and then take on any games when I need it

Build now looks like this...

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£172.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler (£54.28 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON AC ATX AM4 Motherboard (£119.99 @ Box Limited)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£71.98 @ SmartTeck.co.uk)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£124.98 @ Ebuyer)
Video Card: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6 GB GAMING X Video Card (£245.71 @ More Computers)
Case: Fractal Design Define C ATX Mid Tower Case (£74.98 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2018) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£102.97 @ Laptops Direct)
Total: £966.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-30 20:29 GMT+0000

Things I still need to look into:

-Case fans
-Hard drive space - I know game files are large. Will it make much/any difference to gameplay/loading times to save games on a spare WD 1tb 7200rpm drive?

My hard drive layout would then be:

970 evo 1tb - boot drive + personal files, photos, movies, etc
WD 1TB - backup of personal files, photos, movies, etc
Additional WD 1TB - Games drive

Would that configuration work well?

 

[jeza_006]

PCPartPicker Part List

Case Fan: Noctua NF-F12 PWM 54.97 CFM 120 mm Fan (£16.93 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A14 PWM 82.5 CFM 140 mm Fan (£21.48 @ CCL Computers)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A14 PWM 82.5 CFM 140 mm Fan (£21.48 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £59.89
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-29 18:29 GMT+0000

The Noctua ones look good. How will they be controlled? Will I set fan profiles based on the internal temps? Or will it be done manually via MSI software in windows?

What are your thoughts on that hard drive configuration?

Thanks for all your help!

 

[Flayed]

You can either do it in the motherboards bios or use a windows program to set the fan speeds. I'm not too familiar with this as I opted for Noctua's ULN fans which are 800 rpm (+/-10%) all the time.

Storage well 1TB is quite big for just a boot drive unless you are doing something like I don't know software development. I would put 3 or 4 games on the SSD will load much faster. Waiting for things to load is dull.

See what works best for you and the programs and data you use.

 

[Flayed]

The Noctua ones look good. How will they be controlled? Will I set fan profiles based on the internal temps? Or will it be done manually via MSI software in windows?

What are your thoughts on that hard drive configuration?

Thanks for all your help!

Just saw I picked the wrong 120mm fan there I meant the A fan

PCPartPicker Part List

Case Fan: Noctua NF-A14 PWM 82.5 CFM 140 mm Fan (£21.48 @ CCL Computers)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A14 PWM 82.5 CFM 140 mm Fan (£21.48 @ CCL Computers)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM 60.1 CFM 120 mm Fan (£25.44 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £68.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-31 01:32 GMT+0000

 

[jeza_006]

Ahh ok. Maybe this would work better :

970 evo - boot drive and games
Wd 1 tb - storage
Wd 1tb - storage backup

That's my current setup but with a crucial mx500. I just thought it would be nice to try to keep personal and work files etc on the 970 evo but maybe that's not the best way to do it.

The ULN Noctua fans are probably the ones I'll go for as well. Is there a reason you suggested the other ones?

 

[Flayed]

Ahh ok. Maybe this would work better :

970 evo - boot drive and games
Wd 1 tb - storage
Wd 1tb - storage backup

That's my current setup but with a crucial mx500. I just thought it would be nice to try to keep personal and work files etc on the 970 evo but maybe that's not the best way to do it.

The ULN Noctua fans are probably the ones I'll go for as well. Is there a reason you suggested the other ones?

When I bought the ULN fans I was only using a 1050ti which doesn't generate much heat <100W probably more like 75W, but I since upgraded to a Vega 56 which is around 200W I think, so it would be better to have case fans that spin faster during gaming with the Vega 56. Also I use a very old motherboard which doesn't control the fan speed in the bios.
Anyway it is probably better to have more felxability in the rpm speed. The ULN are not bad, they generate a surprising amount of air circulation given the slow speed,(and are virtually silent) but if I were to buy case fans now for a modern motherboard I'd go with the PWM ones.

 

[jeza_006]

Ok great, so if I go for PWM case fans instead of ULN, then I can set the fan profiles in the motherboard software? Is that based on temps around different places on the mobo, or component temps?

What are your thoughts on that hard drive config? As I mentioned, I'll also have a spare 256GB Crucial MX500 (1 year old). Do you think there's any use for that?

 

[jeza_006]

I'm just re-visiting the CPU cooler as well. The Dark Rock 4 is most likely overkill for me, even with mild overclocking.

Are there any CPU coolers as quiet or quieter that aren't so big and/or expensive?

I'm just thinking about the build and it would be easier to work with a smaller cooler, if possible, but not if I have to sacrifice noise levels.

It seems like all the quietest coolers are the largest...I know that's to be expected but I'm hoping there are others that are smaller but maybe not as high performing temperature wise.

All the quietest coolers in these reviews are huge!

https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/9223/scythe-fuma-2-cpu-cooler-review/index6.html

 

[Flayed]

I like the scythe fuma 2 because its not quite as tall as the other coolers. I might buy one when I upgrade so I can fit a side case fan.

Other coolers I would consider would be Scythe Mugen rev B, Be Quiet Dark rock slim(this the quietest I think), Noctua U12S.
Nothing wrong with a huge cooler, as long as it fits the case and has clearance for the ram sticks. The bigger the better(so she said lol)

Want me to reply on Tom's too? lol

 

[jeza_006]

Fuma 2 is nice but more than the dark rock4...but it is quieter!

Scythe Mugen rev B looks really good but I think is similar size...I'll look into it more. Around the same price.

The Be Quiet Rock Slim could be a nice option...the Be Quiet website says it's a little louder than the Dark Rock 4..can't find many reviews on it, I think it's quite new.

Noctua U12s...tbh I hate the colours. I don't know if I can face them around the case either!

 

[Flayed]

There is a chromax line of Noctua case fans and coolers that are black

 

[jeza_006]

Haha I know and they're even more expensive!

Let me know about the fans and hard drive config mate (previous post!)

 

[Flayed]

Ok great, so if I go for PWM case fans instead of ULN, then I can set the fan profiles in the motherboard software? Is that based on temps around different places on the mobo, or component temps?

What are your thoughts on that hard drive config? As I mentioned, I'll also have a spare 256GB Crucial MX500 (1 year old). Do you think there's any use for that?

Yes the PWN fans you can set a speed/temperature curve either in software or in the bios. Extra storage is always useful no reason not to use it.

 

[jeza_006]

Thanks for the fan info

I'm just wondering how to use the spare 256gb drive best..

Maybe I should do:

256GB MX500 - Boot drive
970 Evo 1tb - Game drive
Wd 1 tb - storage
Wd 1tb - storage backup

Not sure if that's a waste to not have the Evo as a boot drive.

Happy new year mate