Advice on choosing PC parts for custom build - gaming and content creation

devanclare

Hello everyone, I am looking to have a custom PC built to accommodate both gaming and creation within the Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Premiere Pro, etc). I am currently a student studying Digital Design. I have no experience in picking parts, but I know the general specifications I need in my new PC: 

CPU: Intel i7/Xeon technology and newer or AMD Ryzen/Threadripper and newer

RAM: 16GB required for working with multi-million polygon meshes. 32GB+ preferred

Hard Drive: Minimum of 1 TB capacity

External Hard Drive or Secondary Internal Hard Drive: At least 2 TB, but 4 TB or more is recommended

Graphics Card: Nvidia RTX 2000 series or higher

The build I have created using the custom PC builder is below. My budget limit is about $1600.

CPU: Intel - Core i7-11700K Rocket Lake 3.6GHz Eight-Core LGA 1200 Boxed Processor - Heatsink Not Included

Motherboard: ASUS - H570-PRO TUF Gaming WiFi Intel LGA 1200 ATX Motherboard

RAM: TeamGroup - T-FORCE Delta RGB 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR4-3200 PC4-25600 CL16 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit TF3D432G3200HC1

Case: NZXT - H510 Elite Dual-Tempered Glass RGB ATX Mid-Tower Computer Case - White

Power Supply: EVGA - SuperNOVA 850 GT 850 Watt 80 Plus Gold ATX Fully Modular Power Supply

GPU: MSI - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Gaming X Dual Fan 8GB GDDR6 PCle 4.0 Graphics Card

M.2/NVMe SSD: Samsung - 970 EVO Plus SSD 1TB M.2 NVMe Interface PCle 3.0 x 4 Internal Solid State Drive with V-NAND 3 bit MLC Technology (MZ-V7S1T0B/AM)

Hard Drive: Seagate - BarraCuda 4TB 5400RPM SATA III 6Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Heatsink: Thermaltake - UX100 ARGB Universal CPU Cooler

Thermal Compound: Thermal Grizzly - Kryonaut Thermal Grease - 1g

Any advice is greatly appreciated; I have been reading lots of articles about PC builds and I would love to start learning, but I still feel very inexperienced and nervous about choosing my own parts. Thank you.

magarity

The 3060 (non- Ti) is what everyone wants for those graphic and video editing software because it has 12GB of memory as opposed to the 8GB that all the others come with. You might consider that upgrade well worth it. If necessary downgrade to an i5 from the i7 in order to upgrade the 3050 to a 3060.

The heatsink for CPU you have listed is very sad, Please upgrade that for certain, something like a Sythe Fuma2 or Noctua NHD15. Depending on what you pick many come with preapplied thermal paste so don't automatically assume you need the Kryonaut.

Neilyohh

1. get one of the z690 chipsets
2. get the samsung 980 PRO SSD
3. dont get the RGB ram its a waste of power.
4. goood idea for the 850 watt ps.
5. consider buying 2 2tb HDD and run RAID 0 or 1
6. hes right about the heatsink, buy a noctua
7. try to get greater than 32 gb ram if you can afford it
8. good luck on building it for 1600

Ian

To add on to the above suggestions, I would recommend a 7200RPM drive for your mass storage (4TB drive) instead of a 5400RPM.

TAPEthan

1. Switch out the Intel Core i7-11700K for the Core i5-12600K or 12600KF(if it is cheaper), as that will provide better performance for a similar price(around $250).

2.Get a GIGABYTE B660M motherboard for $120, or a similarly priced B660 motherboard, as it is not worth it to pay for the overclocking abilities. ALTHOUGH if you do want to overclock, you should get any reputable Z690 board around $180 or lower.

3.Any 32 GB with 3200 MHz+ kit could work, discounts if you go without RGB, but that's a personal choice(around $120).

4.A Powerspec or G.Skill 650W 80+ Bronze should be more than enough to power the system(around $55).

5.Consider getting a larger SSD storage and smaller hard drive storage.

6.Honestly, right now, the RTX 3050 costs so much(around $400+), you probably would be better off getting a RX 6600 or 6600 XT for around the same price, as both provide much better rasterization power.

7.Heatsink and thermal compound looks good(if not a little premium).

This build is around actually like $1200 if you do put together a build like this, so like great build overall and hope you find my suggestions useful!

Yingdong

I'd advice you to go with ryzen, 11th gen intel cpu had little improvement over the aging 10th gen intel. While the 12th gen intel cpu, ddr5 ram and their motherboards still has this high price tag.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900x (currently $400 at microcenter)

motherboard: B550 aorus elite(currently $150 at microcenter, bundle and get the $20 off)

ram: Crucial Ballistix 16gb x 2 @3200mhzCL16(Crucial c9 series E-die great for overclocking, ~$115 at amazon)

GPU: 3060ti(~$650 at newegg, or where ever you can grab one at near retail price)

PSU: Corsair rm750x(amazon on sale at $75, https://www.amazon.com/CORSAIR-RM750x-Certified-Modular-Supply/dp/B079HGN5QS)

m2: 980 pro 1tb(~$140 when discounted, had gone down to $120 once)

Cooler: if you don't care about liquid cooler, I'd suggest you go with Thermalright at ~$60, try this:https://www.amazon.com/Thermalright-140-V3-ARGB-Technology/dp/B09CGW8B22 I promise you would be impressed)

Case: NZXT H510 is good enough($85)

Thermal paste: any thing like, any brand you trust(~$10)

The whole thing comes up around $1665, if you feel it's too much, cut down a bit on gpu.