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.

 

[Flayed]

Yes it is a waste. You know at some point you will have to actually build this thing.

Happy New Year

 

[jeza_006]

Haha yes of course mate..just want to get it all perfect the first time 😀

How would you setup the drives? Happy to change the size of the samsung drive!

 

[Flayed]

Well I'd have the 1TB SSD as a boot drive with programs and games
I'd have the 2 WD drives as a raid 1 volume for data
I'd have the crucial drive as an extra backup for documents and a few games

you know if you are dead set on the idea of having separate drives for different things you can partition drives so they appear as separate drives. I don't really see the point but the option is there if you want it

So you can partition the 1TB into 2 partitions one say 250GB for windows and 750GB for games.
There isn't really an advantage to doing this that I can think of other than if windows gets corrupted somehow(dodgy update?) and all else fails you can wipe just the boot partition and keep the rest. This was popular back when windows was less stable (Vista I'm looking at you lol) but these days windows 10 is pretty solid (touch wood)

 

[jeza_006]

Raid 1...I honestly didn't know people still did that. Currently I just use a program called syncback, which backs up everything every 24 hours. I'll look into Raid 1 though, thanks for the tip.

Not bothered about partitioning really.

The way you suggested with the 250gb as an overflow sounds good. Cheers

 

[jeza_006]

Final question for now...

Just had a look and my 2 x 1tb WD hard drives are 5 years old. Same model number and specs as this drive - https://shop.bt.com/products/wd-bla...ache-3-5-inch-wd1003fzex-wd1003fzex-90VP.html

Strange if WD haven't upgraded the drives at all since then. I also paid £56 each and now they're more expensive! Ha.

Should I just re-use them and replace when they fail? Maybe I should run some diagnostics on them first..do you know what the best software would be to do that?

 

[Flayed]

Final question for now...

Just had a look and my 2 x 1tb WD hard drives are 5 years old. Same model number and specs as this drive - https://shop.bt.com/products/wd-bla...ache-3-5-inch-wd1003fzex-wd1003fzex-90VP.html

Strange if WD haven't upgraded the drives at all since then. I also paid £56 each and now they're more expensive! Ha.

Should I just re-use them and replace when they fail? Maybe I should run some diagnostics on them first..do you know what the best software would be to do that?

No clue mate. Maybe they will last another 5 years maybe they will fail tommorrow

 

[jeza_006]

Ha fair enough. I'll see if I can run some diagnostics and if all good just re-use for now.

 

[Shmee]

WD blacks are usually pretty reliable. I would just check their SMART, make sure there are no pending or relocated sectors, or any other SMART errors.

 

[jeza_006]

WD blacks are usually pretty reliable. I would just check their SMART, make sure there are no pending or relocated sectors, or any other SMART errors.

Thanks mate, done that and all good

 

[jeza_006]

@Flayed thanks for the info on the Noctua fans and PWM fans in general - it pointed me in the right direction. I chose Be Quiet fans in the end as I hate the Noctua colours and I think it's very cheeky that they want to charge more for black fans...Their website also annoys me as it's so slow

Be Quiet fans are a little bit quieter and move slightly less air, but should do the job fine.

Final list...ordering everything today.

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 (£115.85 @ More Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£64.24 @ CCL Computers)
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)
Case Fan: be quiet! SilentWings 3 pwm 59.5 CFM 140 mm Fan (£18.47 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: be quiet! SilentWings 3 pwm 59.5 CFM 140 mm Fan (£18.47 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: be quiet! SilentWings 3 PWM 50.5 CFM 120 mm Fan (£17.98 @ Amazon UK)
Custom: StarTech.com PCI Express to PCI Adapter Card - PCIe to PCI Converter Adapter with Low Profile / Half-Height Bracket (£34.79 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1044.72
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-01-02 14:53 GMT+0000

I also looked at Scythe CPU coolers but they're tricky to get in the UK or bigger/more expensive than the Dark Rock 4. Noise levels were very similar.

 

[jeza_006]

Also - thanks very much for all your help. Will post some photos when I can.

 

[Flayed]

Your welcome. The Be Quiet fans are also very good. It looks like a very nice build.

 

[jeza_006]

Cheers. All ordered now. Only issue was the Samsung 970 Evo was out of stock or stupidly expensive everywhere so I went with a Adata XPG SX8200 Pro.

 

[Arkaign]

Cheers. All ordered now. Only issue was the Samsung 970 Evo was out of stock or stupidly expensive everywhere so I went with a Adata XPG SX8200 Pro.

I have that exact drive in 1TB with a new build and it's absolutely fantastic. No worries about skipping the Samsung, they seem wildly overpriced for what you get these days.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I’m late to the party but I recently replaced a failing card with a 1660ti
I’m pretty happy with it even though now isn’t the best time to buy a card. The ti is quiet and it is nice to have a card that is smaller than most of my previous cards.
only downside is no VR with a card like the 1660ti.

 

[Arkaign]

I’m late to the party but I recently replaced a failing card with a 1660ti
I’m pretty happy with it even though now isn’t the best time to buy a card. The ti is quiet and it is nice to have a card that is smaller than most of my previous cards.
only downside is no VR with a card like the 1660ti.

Ah I've got some decent news for you then The 1660ti is slightly better than the 980ti, which I've used for VR before very nicely. Most VR games don't use extremely high details anyway. Now it's true that some headsets have a USB C connection, but that's solvable with PCIe cards. Or better yet, something like the Odyssey+ can do most any SteamVR and WMR for $200-$250, and the 1660ti is killer for that.

A Blast from the Past: GeForce GTX 980 Ti vs. GTX 1660 Ti vs. RTX 2060

Today we're revisiting the GeForce GTX 980 Ti to see how it stacks up to the newly released RTX 2060 and GTX 1660 Ti, particularly in more...

www.techspot.com

 

[jeza_006]

I have that exact drive in 1TB with a new build and it's absolutely fantastic. No worries about skipping the Samsung, they seem wildly overpriced for what you get these days.

Great. Yes I read lots of good reviews about the Adata drive. Looked at a few others but they were all similar in price and the Adata came out on top for speed and all the reviews.

 

[jeza_006]

I’m late to the party but I recently replaced a failing card with a 1660ti
I’m pretty happy with it even though now isn’t the best time to buy a card. The ti is quiet and it is nice to have a card that is smaller than most of my previous cards.
only downside is no VR with a card like the 1660ti.

Yep I mostly wanted a card which lasts a few years, good fps and nice and quiet. When's the best time to buy a card then?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Yep I mostly wanted a card which lasts a few years, good fps and nice and quiet. When's the best time to buy a card then?

tough to say right now, NVidia will have cards with a completely new architecture within a few months, smaller chips so cooler/less power. AMD has some new cards out now same as NVidia upcoming cards, new architecture and smaller manufacturing. Really depends how long you want to wait.
I am pretty happy with my 1660ti if I could have waited I would have.
1660ti is competent should last years provided you are at 1080 resolution. I’ve read it isn’t the best choice for VR but previous posted proved I’m wrong. My card is about a 1/2 size card, fans are pretty quiet on all but high speed. This card won’t last forever but 3 years is a good guess.
keep in mind my expectations for frames per second isn’t too great and I have difficulty telling the difference between medium settings and ultra settings in most games.

 

[jeza_006]

I actually went for a 1660 super, but the gaming x version as it supposedly has some more noise attenuation features.

As long as this lasts a few years on high settings then a couple years on medium settings I'll be happy!

Good luck with the VR if you do go for it.

Few parts arrived today but no gpu yet!

 

[Fanatical Meat]

I actually went for a 1660 super, but the gaming x version as it supposedly has some more noise attenuation features.

As long as this lasts a few years on high settings then a couple years on medium settings I'll be happy!

Good luck with the VR if you do go for it.

Few parts arrived today but no gpu yet!

I have zero interest in VR, the super appears to be a good choice too. Enjoy it.

 

[jeza_006]

Here we go...

 

[Muadib]

Here we go...

Looking good!! Enjoy it!!!

 

[jeza_006]

Hi everyone

The build went pretty well. Although it all slots together it's still tricky and very fiddly at times..lots of different instruction manuals to read at the same time! I hadn't done this in so long, I also forgot that it's actually quite a delicate process which takes quite a long time!

I managed to update the bios to the latest version using the click bios button Windows is also installed now on my M2 1TB.

Here are a few photos, and a few questions:

(BTW I'm still missing 2 case fans and I know the GPU isn't screwed in one of the photos)

1. Initially, I was getting no video out of the GPU. A CMOS reset by removing the battery for a few mins seemed to do the trick...I guess that's necessary sometimes?

2. From pressing the on button, to the windows splash screen is about 21 seconds. I think this is just about ok? I've read about changing the boot settings from legacy to UEFI, so will give that a go.

3. First main issue - there seems to be no video output/minimal output until the windows splash screen comes up. On a few occasions, it shows the colourful MSI logo, but most of the time, the screen is just black. No white font, post messages etc. I'm not used to this...is this normal? (Just to confirm, if I do keep hitting delete then I get into the bios fine)

4. I changed a setting in the bios - "Post bios beep enabled" - but I'm hearing no beep. Thoughts on this?

5. How's my cable management looking? The main mobo cable is a reasonably tight twist but I think it's ok.

6. I don't think the additional Adata heat shield is needed (I used the one built into the mobo), but I'm not sure about that screw (see photo)...I think it's for the M2 drive but I followed MSI's youtube vid and think it's fitted correctly (see photo). The extra screw hole at the end of the heat shielf/cover makes you think you should have a standoff and screw in that position, but I don't think that's the case?

7. Not sure if I used enough thermal compound/spreaded it well enough. Also managed to touch it with my finger (idiot..!) I guess I'll just monitor CPU temps and see how it is?

8. What's with the dual PCIe power cables? Are they all like this? It means I can't have one neat cable running to my GPU - it means I have one power plug floating in the case (see photo).

Thanks in advance!

 

[Flayed]

Hi everyone

The build went pretty well. Although it all slots together it's still tricky and very fiddly at times..lots of different instruction manuals to read at the same time! I hadn't done this in so long, I also forgot that it's actually quite a delicate process which takes quite a long time!

I managed to update the bios to the latest version using the click bios button Windows is also installed now on my M2 1TB.

Here are a few photos, and a few questions:

(BTW I'm still missing 2 case fans and I know the GPU isn't screwed in one of the photos)

1. Initially, I was getting no video out of the GPU. A CMOS reset by removing the battery for a few mins seemed to do the trick...I guess that's necessary sometimes?

2. From pressing the on button, to the windows splash screen is about 21 seconds. I think this is just about ok? I've read about changing the boot settings from legacy to UEFI, so will give that a go.

3. First main issue - there seems to be no video output/minimal output until the windows splash screen comes up. On a few occasions, it shows the colourful MSI logo, but most of the time, the screen is just black. No white font, post messages etc. I'm not used to this...is this normal? (Just to confirm, if I do keep hitting delete then I get into the bios fine)

4. I changed a setting in the bios - "Post bios beep enabled" - but I'm hearing no beep. Thoughts on this?

5. How's my cable management looking? The main mobo cable is a reasonably tight twist but I think it's ok.

6. I don't think the additional Adata heat shield is needed (I used the one built into the mobo), but I'm not sure about that screw (see photo)...I think it's for the M2 drive but I followed MSI's youtube vid and think it's fitted correctly (see photo). The extra screw hole at the end of the heat shielf/cover makes you think you should have a standoff and screw in that position, but I don't think that's the case?

7. Not sure if I used enough thermal compound/spreaded it well enough. Also managed to touch it with my finger (idiot..!) I guess I'll just monitor CPU temps and see how it is?

8. What's with the dual PCIe power cables? Are they all like this? It means I can't have one neat cable running to my GPU - it means I have one power plug floating in the case (see photo).

Thanks in advance!

1. I guess so
2. I heard the MSI tomahawk non MAX does take a long time to boot up, so perhaps the same is true for the gaming pro carbon. I have a utility running called MSI fast boot I dont know if its still around for modern motherboards though.
3. if it boots ok I wouldnt worry about it
4. you probably dont have a physical speaker attached to the motherboard
5. looks good I see what you mean about the PCI-E cable though
6. No clue I'm still using 2.5" SATA SSD's
7. Check the temperatures and redo it if you think it will help
8. must be a feature of your PSU