Hardware Building a new gaming PC, asking for suggestions

Houjin · Aug 26, 2019

Hi guys,

currently I am building a new gaming PC for a friend, but unfortunately I am not up to date anymore with the latest Hardware, so I wanted to ask you for some suggestions you could give me to complete it

First of all: my budget is at about 1900 Euro (so about 2100$), maybe a bit less but lets just say this is what I can spend.

These are the parts I was thinking of:

Graphic Card: Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio (about 800 Euro)
CPU: Intel Coree I7-9700k (About 390 Euro)
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200MHz (about 85 Euro)
Power Supply: EVGA 650 GQ, 80+ GOLD 650W (about 90 Euro)
M.2 SSD: 1000GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 2280 (about 210 Euro)

So right now I am at around 1575 Euros, but I am still missing...

- a cooler for the CPU
- case where everything will fit in without any bigger issues
and the most important part: a Mainboard

The Cooler and the case aren´t that much of a problem, but I´m having problems with finding the best Mainboard for that kind of setup.

Any suggestions to improve the current setup would be much appreciated

Thanks in advance!

Tom Bombadildo · Aug 26, 2019

Do you plan on OCing? If so, then pretty much any Z370 or Z390 motherboard will be fine for your use, and just stick with decent brands like MSI, Asus, Gigabyte, etc etc, whatever fits in your budget. MSI's Z390-A Pro is generally considered decent, should be just fine for your use.

If you're not OCing, you can get away with a B360 or H370 mobo, either of which will be cheaper in the long run.

For CPU cooling, really just depends on if you want something that looks fancy or something that works well. For fancy stuff, go for an AIO cooler for water cooling. For stuff that works well, Noctua's NH-U12S should be more than adequate and is my recommendation over AIO coolers.

For a case, it's pretty much whatever you want that can fit stuff. Mid ATX will fit most components unless you're getting some super long or huge GPU for whatever reason. Full ATX will give you plenty of room for your parts if you're worried about fitting them all in, but mid towers will be just fine.

raystriker · Aug 26, 2019

I'd recommend you go the AMD route. Why? Well, Intel is going to be switching to a newer socket soon, so buying a 9700K with the Z370/390 platform will not be future proof. Spending 2100 usd and not future proofing would be foolishness.

Here's a possible pc spec for him/her:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/sDVmdX

Edit: alternative spec for a better psu that could survive a Ryzen 9 3950X with a RTX2080Ti with OC.
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/kgjBfH

Tom Bombadildo · Aug 26, 2019

I'd agree with raystriker, AMD's Ryzen 3 is the better choice this time around. With the 3800x you get 8 more threads than that i7, plus you know AMD won't change their socket every 5 minutes so they'll have future upgrade paths if they'll need cheapish upgrades in the next few years.

Jiehfeng · Aug 26, 2019

I would avoid MSI motherboards though. I've had about three and they all died on me after a year or so. As for the cooler, if not OC'ing, the Cooler Master 212 Evo is a great pick and does the job well.

Houjin · Aug 27, 2019

Thanks alot for your help!

I'm at wort right now, I will do some research afterwards if I can get these parts here in germany for about the same price, will keep you updated!

Gamesncomps · Aug 27, 2019

Denni93 said:
Hi guys,

currently I am building a new gaming PC for a friend, but unfortunately I am not up to date anymore with the latest Hardware, so I wanted to ask you for some suggestions you could give me to complete it

First of all: my budget is at about 1900 Euro (so about 2100$), maybe a bit less but lets just say this is what I can spend.

These are the parts I was thinking of:

Graphic Card: Nvidia Geforce RTX 2080 Super Gaming X Trio (about 800 Euro)
CPU: Intel Coree I7-9700k (About 390 Euro)
RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200MHz (about 85 Euro)
Power Supply: EVGA 650 GQ, 80+ GOLD 650W (about 90 Euro)
M.2 SSD: 1000GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 2280 (about 210 Euro)

So right now I am at around 1575 Euros, but I am still missing...

- a cooler for the CPU
- case where everything will fit in without any bigger issues
and the most important part: a Mainboard

The Cooler and the case aren´t that much of a problem, but I´m having problems with finding the best Mainboard for that kind of setup.

Any suggestions to improve the current setup would be much appreciated

Thanks in advance!

Hello sir ,i suggest you that firstly all prts of your hardware is on working condition and then buy a best gaming motherboard that supports your all devices ....and ROG MAXIMUS XI CODE is best motherboard ...buy this one.

Jiehfeng · Aug 27, 2019

Gamesncomps said:
Hello sir ,i suggest you that firstly all prts of your hardware is on working condition and then buy a best gaming motherboard that supports your all devices ....and ROG MAXIMUS XI CODE is best motherboard ...buy this one.

https://www.amazon.com/ROG-Maximus-XI-Code-Motherboard/dp/B07HM4LX15
It looks like a very good motherboard indeed, and judging from the other parts in the build I assume it's definitely affordable in this case. The shielding looks very good too. I can vouch for Asus motherboards.

ThoD · Aug 27, 2019

First of all, don't even bother considering Intel anymore for a good 3 years if you want futureproofing honestly, they are SO behind AMD and current technology out on the general market that it's not even funny at this point. On the other hand, AMD now has the X570 series and that is easily the best out there as it's pretty much the ONLY series with PCIe 4.0 support, meaning your GPU will run at actual full capacity than half-capacity (Intel has no plans for PCIe 4.0 support at this time so you have to use 3.0 if you go Intel). That means, if you are throwing two grands on a system, you absolutely should go for the X570! So, I suggest you go with the first of the builds suggested by @raystriker but with two changes:
- Change the SSD to the same model but with 500GBs instead of 1TB, that's more than enough and much more affordable allowing you to spend more money elsewhere. No need to go for such a large SSD, most things will load in less than a second on a normal 7200RPM drive anyways, so kinda overkill

- Change PSU to a bit more powerful one (750-850W in case you ever want to add stuff later like LCD screens for temps/status and whatnot or OC)

Tom Bombadildo · Aug 27, 2019

ThoD said:
First of all, don't even bother considering Intel anymore for a good 3 years if you want futureproofing honestly, they are SO behind AMD and current technology out on the general market that it's not even funny at this point. On the other hand, AMD now has the X570 series and that is easily the best out there as it's pretty much the ONLY series with PCIe 4.0 support, meaning your GPU will run at actual full capacity than half-capacity (Intel has no plans for PCIe 4.0 support at this time so you have to use 3.0 if you go Intel).

The fuck are you smoking? There isn't a single GPU that exists that comes even remotely close to maxing out PCIe 3.0 x16, even the 2080 ti just barely maxes out PCIe 3.0 x8 with a whopping 3 fucking percent performance drop vs x16.

PCIe 4.0 is literally only useful for NVMes right now and that's it.

Jiehfeng · Aug 27, 2019

Tom Bombadildo said:
The fuck are you smoking? There isn't a single GPU that exists that comes even remotely close to maxing out PCIe 3.0 x16, even the 2080 ti just barely maxes out PCIe 3.0 x8 with a whopping 3 fucking percent performance drop vs x16.

PCIe 4.0 is literally only useful for NVMes right now and that's it.

While GPU's won't get there any time soon, like you said, those SSD's do. But the AMD CPU which you can get to support it now is around the price range of OP's CPU, so why not just go for it? There's plenty of mobo's now that have it as well like this one: https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ROG-Mot...keywords=x570&qid=1566910334&s=gateway&sr=8-2

If there's a potential upgrade/future proofing even though it's not as useful currently, and around the same price range, I don't see why not.

Tom Bombadildo · Aug 27, 2019

Jiehfeng said:
While GPU's won't get there any time soon, like you said, those SSD's do. But the AMD CPU which you can get to support it now is around the price range of OP's CPU, so why not just go for it? There's plenty of mobo's now that have it as well like this one: https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-ROG-Mot...keywords=x570&qid=1566910334&s=gateway&sr=8-2

If there's a potential upgrade/future proofing even though it's not as useful currently, and around the same price range, I don't see why not.

I never said don't go for AMD, in fact I explicitly stated the opposite in another post, if you'd scroll up just a tad

I simply corrected Thod's wildly inaccurate information.

Houjin · Aug 27, 2019

I am still at work right now, so going with raystrikers setup with the Ryzen CPU sounds like the perfect solution.

But according to some sites the I7-9700k is the better choice if I am just interested in gaming, since the Ryzen CPU is sligtly worse for gaming, but the better choice for everything else.

With the current setup from raystriker with the Ryzen 7 3800X, would 4k gming still be possible with it (for games like Witcher 3 or AC Odyssey)?

The system is supposed to be for gaming only, and having a futureproff system would definitely be the better choice I agree with you. But if I can´t get the same performance with the Ryzen CPU I´m not sure if its the best solution for my friend?

Jiehfeng · Aug 27, 2019

Denni93 said:
I am still at work right now, so going with raystrikers setup with the Ryzen CPU sounds like the perfect solution.

But according to some sites the I7-9700k is the better choice if I am just interested in gaming, since the Ryzen CPU is sligtly worse for gaming, but the better choice for everything else.

With the current setup from raystriker with the Ryzen 7 3800X, would 4k gming still be possible with it (for games like Witcher 3 or AC Odyssey)?

The system is supposed to be for gaming only, and having a futureproff system would definitely be the better choice I agree with you. But if I can´t get the same performance with the Ryzen CPU I´m not sure if its the best solution for my friend?

The performance difference is so minor, it's what Intel fans are clinging to, to say that their CPU's are still better than AMD's. It will run those games without any bottlenecking at all.
Just to provide further context, I have an old i7-4790K, and it doesn't bottleneck my GTX 1070 in the latest games yet. For that tiny teeny bit of performance to sacrifice the other things is not worth it.

Tom Bombadildo · Aug 27, 2019

Denni93 said:
I am still at work right now, so going with raystrikers setup with the Ryzen CPU sounds like the perfect solution.

But according to some sites the I7-9700k is the better choice if I am just interested in gaming, since the Ryzen CPU is sligtly worse for gaming, but the better choice for everything else.

With the current setup from raystriker with the Ryzen 7 3800X, would 4k gming still be possible with it (for games like Witcher 3 or AC Odyssey)?

The system is supposed to be for gaming only, and having a futureproff system would definitely be the better choice I agree with you. But if I can´t get the same performance with the Ryzen CPU I´m not sure if its the best solution for my friend?

The difference is negligible at best. While Intel does still have better per core performance vs Ryzen 3, you will see very little to no performance difference in any game, even those that heavily rely on single core performance vs multi.

Jiehfeng · Aug 27, 2019

What's also interesting is that in some aspects, the 3800X outperforms it.

Tom Bombadildo · Aug 27, 2019

Jiehfeng said:
What's also interesting is that in some aspects, the 3800X outperforms it.

Of course it does, the 3800x has twice as many threads as the 9700k and Time Spy takes advantage of all those threads. Any multi-threaded application will benefit immensely more with the 3800x, but for the most part games aren't going to use all 16 threads the 3800x has to offer, they'll use maybe 3-4 at best, hence why most actual game benchmarks will show the 3800x being slightly slower or on par with the 9700k, as Intel's per core performance is still better than Zen 3's.

You'll find the same on any multi-threaded benchmark like that, even from their older 2xxx CPUs, but it's obviously not as clear cut as that otherwise AMD would've been winning for the last couple years.

Jiehfeng · Aug 27, 2019

Tom Bombadildo said:
Of course it does, the 3800x has twice as many threads as the 9700k and Time Spy takes advantage of all those threads. Any multi-threaded application will benefit immensely more with the 3800x, but for the most part games aren't going to use all 16 threads the 3800x has to offer, they'll use maybe 3-4 at best, hence why most actual game benchmarks will show the 3800x being slightly slower or on par with the 9700k, as Intel's per core performance is still better than Zen 3's.

You'll find the same on any multi-threaded benchmark like that, even from their older 2xxx CPUs, but it's obviously not as clear cut as that otherwise AMD would've been winning for the last couple years.

I can think of one use case scenario that OP's friend could benefit from the hyperthreading. A lot of gamers like to record their gameplay and post it to YouTube, at least a great moment, this CPU will make editing a breeze I assume.

raystriker · Aug 27, 2019

Ryzen's single core performance has caught up too, atleast in cinebench. Different benchmarks will have different scores, benchmarks are just indicative of what you can expect. Sometimes you might win the silicon lottery and get a better cpu wafer than can boost higher and get better single/multi core performance.

Also I'd like to dispel any notions that MSI is worse than ASUS, or A is better than B. In batches of hundreds of thousands of electrical stuff, the probability of getting (two) bad units is pretty decent. Thoroughly research the model you are going to buy. There are some reviewers who won't let you down- Anandtech, Gamers Nexus, Hardware Unboxed etc.

For OP's rig, I chose the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero because it has the best VRM performance in the sub 400 usd category.
Source:

Also, the Ryzen 7 3700X is better deal than the 3800x. They're basically the same chip, but the 3800X is binned better so it has a better chance of reaching higher OCs. But 100-150Mhz don't transform into drastically better performance. So by opting for a 3700X, the money saved could be utilized in improving the selection of the other components.
Source:

Jiehfeng · Aug 27, 2019

raystriker said:
Ryzen's single core performance has caught up too, atleast in cinebench. Different benchmarks will have different scores, benchmarks are just indicative of what you can expect. Sometimes you might win the silicon lottery and get a better cpu wafer than can boost higher and get better single/multi core performance.

Also I'd like to dispel any notions that MSI is worse than ASUS, or A is better than B. In batches of hundreds of thousands of electrical stuff, the probability of getting (two) bad units is pretty decent. Thoroughly research the model you are going to buy. There are some reviewers who won't let you down- Anandtech, Gamers Nexus, Hardware Unboxed etc.

For OP's rig, I chose the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero because it has the best VRM performance in the sub 400 usd category.
Source:

Sure there are plenty of MSI boards that work fine as well. But in my experience all the MSI mobo's I got died. Not saying it'll happen to OP, but y'know, better safe than sorry. I feel like Asus boards are better built tbh, but I don't have anything to back it up.

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