Question Please Critique New PC Build for Wifey

[Lyfer]

Hi Super Awesome People,

It's that time again, 4 years have passed and wife needs a new PC. Grandma is inheriting her current i5-6600/GTX970 machine. I recently got her two LG 32" 144HZ gaming monitors during Black Friday and it really crawls in WoW and Witcher 3. These are really the only titles that she plays other than maybe Diablo and Overwatch (from time to time). All parts will be from Newegg/Amazon/BBY as I have about $400 of Xmas GC's to use.

PC Part Picker List - https://pcpartpicker.com/list/g6M7CL

CPU - AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor
CPU HSF - Stock - I assume this isn't trash compared to what Intel provides for Stock?
Mobo - MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard
RAM - Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory - Ryzen likes fast RAM right?
Storage - Western Digital SN750 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
2nd Storage - Existing WD 2TB Drive
Video Card - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB Video Card - I really don't want to spend more than $530, any reason to get another card?
Case - Lian Li LANCOOL II-W ATX Mid Tower Case
PSU - SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply - I really only buy Seasonic made, have had too many issues with other OEM's.

Keyboard and Mice - Already these.

TOTAL - $1297.95

Thanks,
Lyfer

 

[Markfw]

Looks good to me . I do like EVGA's 10 warranty on PSU's. Its becoming new favorite. But Seasonic is good.

As for the Heatsink, no they are not garbage, but personally, for the price, and quiet and better temps, something like this is what I would spend for $35 more

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

Edit: I have seen better posted by others for the same price, but I can't find them right now.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That looks pretty decent, and the B450 Tomahawk MAX is a decent board. Friend has the non-MAX version.

Other than the instabilities, and fried network card, I do rather like my Asus ROG STRIX B450-F Gaming ATX mobo, at least, capabilities-wise.

It's one of the few B450 boards, that has TWO M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 slots, meaning, you can run full-speed PCI-E 3.0 RAID-0 of NVMe SSDs. (Currently running a pair of Intel 660p 1TB drives. No, I didn't do it for the performance, otherwise, I would have picked faster drives.)

Also, you can use BOTH GPU slots, AND the third PCI-E 2.0 x4 slot, AND both M.2 NVMe slots, at least 4 out of 6 SATA ports, and I have all four DRAM sockets with DDR4-3600 GSkill RAM, even though, technically, the board only specs out to 3466 RAM speed, apparently. With a Ryzen R5 3600 CPU. (Very early batch, may replace it eventually.)

The Tomahawk MAX board, other than the 32MB BIOS chip capacity, doesn't stand out to me personally. I don't think that I could live with only a single NVMe slot, and only two GPU slots.

I'm sure that it's reliable though. It's a popular board. It's priced well too, and not a lot of RGB "gamer bling" to bring up the price.

Edit: Also, as I commented in a thread in the Memory and Storage sub-forum, the WD_Black SN750 drives, at least at Newegg, for a while they were charging 2x the price on the 500GB size, just for the one with the included heatsink.

I understand the brand appeal behind the WD Black drives, and they are pretty sexy. But they're not the best value-for-money drives out there, that would probably fall to the Sabrent E12-controller TLC drives, the "Sabrent Rocket".

OTOH, WD has a quality warranty, and they really stand behind their products, so if that matters to you, then sure, stick with the WD drive, it's hard to go wrong with one.

Edit: Given today's SSD prices, I don't actually recommend going below 1TB for a primary NVMe SSD drive. If the WD Black 1TB blows the budget, consider an HP EX920, EX950, or a Sabrent Rocket. (The Sabrent Rocket Q, their QLC variety, was recently selling for $220 minus $20 promo code @ Newegg, for the 2TB variety. And seq. Read/write specs were good too, in spite of QLC memory. 3500/2900.)

Edit: Remember, larger SSDs last longer too, as far as NAND wearout issues are concerned.

 

[ao_ika_red]

The Tomahawk MAX board, other than the 32MB BIOS chip capacity, doesn't stand out to me personally. I don't think that I could live with only a single NVMe slot, and only two GPU slots.

You forgot to mention it can run Ryzen 3000 out of the box.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You forgot to mention it can run Ryzen 3000 out of the box.

So can the Asus B450-F ROG STRIX, it's "Ryzen 3000 Ready", according to the product page.

 

[ao_ika_red]

So can the Asus B450-F ROG STRIX, it's "Ryzen 3000 Ready", according to the product page.

But with MAX moniker, there's assurance you will 100% get 3000 support. With others, it's a bit of gamble, especially if you buy it online.

 

[Steltek]

But with MAX moniker, there's assurance you will 100% get 3000 support. With others, it's a bit of gamble, especially if you buy it online.

If you mean due to BIOS support, the regular B450 Tomahawk can be flashed to a new BIOS without a CPU, memory, or graphics card installed - it just has to be hooked up to a power supply plugged into the wall.

The ability to do this is something ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte are all in the process of rolling out under different names in their newer boards. Most definitely a welcome feature, too.

 

[Lyfer]

Thank you all for the awesome feedback!

Some changes I am thinking about making.

- Bump the SSD to 1TB with the Sabrent Rocket 1TB due to potential rising SSD costs and only having 1 m.2 slot on the mobo.
- Wife had wanted white sleeved PSU cables, I found it was cheaper to get the white Corsair RMX 750 instead since they are included.

 

[DrMrLordX]

That RAM may not be exactly what you'd want. DDR4-3600 CAS 18? Hmm. Might be Hynix CJR in there?

Get this instead:

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

Cheaper, and it has Micron e-die. You can probably get DDR4-3600 CAS 16 out of it with Ryzen Memory Calculator.

 

[Campy]

- Wife had wanted white sleeved PSU cables, I found it was cheaper to get the white Corsair RMX 750 instead since they are included.

Get this instead, it has paracord cables instead of the plastic ones from your link.