Thoughts On $2,000-$3,000 VR Ready Tower Parts?

Ajaness

Before anything else please note the Graphics Card in the build is a placeholder to buy for a bit to see if anything comes out on the RTX 3000 series, otherwise swapping in something like a 2080ti or equivalent in the 3000 series which would eat ~$13000 from the listed budget. Budget also doesn't consider mouse/keyboard/headset/monitor/windows-key or a 1tb non NVMe ssd I already own from the previous tower.

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=61f3afb3-5cca-42e4-a45f-38e74d5f26c1
Including these parts I didn't find available from Microcenter:
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory
Noctua NH-D15 82.5 CFM CPU Cooler

Fractal Design Meshify S2 ATX Mid Tower Case

Also not sure to stick with that motherboard in the builder or this one also available from Microcenter:

ASUS X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (WI-FI) AMD AM4 ATX Motherboard

I'm not an expert and all this has been pulled together after days of research and input from another forum but would really like any input before pulling the trigger, especially on mobo. I'm really not sure what the difference ends up being for a $150 price gap. The goal is to "future proof" a VR capable tower able to last ~6+ years like the current tower I'm replacing did. I know future proof isn't actually possible but to be able to VR to varying quality over the next 6ish years would be phenomenal.

If it helps to judge the build's quality assume the graphics card will upgrade into:

MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio Triple-Fan 11GB GDDR6 PCIe 3.0 Video Card

TSTonyV

With that sort of budget, I'd personally look at switching up the motherboard a bit. I've read in a few places that the X570 Taichi has a weird issue where, depending on which graphics card and slot you put it in, your GPU can end up feeding hot air into the chipset heatsink and cause it get hotter than it should and potentially cause performance issues. The X570 Crosshair VIII Hero is definitely a good option, another option I'd look at would the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master. You can also play around with your RAM a bit and find a kit that would perform as well for a little less, like the the G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600 kits we carry. 

This is what it'd look like with the parts I mentioned switched out: 

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=d8481cc7-d1b5-4848-91b4-ba49fde7840d

As a note, I put in the Lian-Li case as a placeholder for price since we don't have the Meshify S2, just the Meshify C which is smaller than the S2. I also put in the Noctua DH-15S as a placeholder for price. It is very similar to the DH-15 but has one less fan. 

With those two things in as place holders total price comes out to just under $2800 before tax assuming the MSI 2080ti you were looking at is the final decistion. 

TheITDad

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=b7bdf3dd-cc3c-4cdc-a0fb-00e80c6f4ed3

So this is the completed build and it comes in at about 2850 with 3 fans to replace the ones in the case I picked and put similar ram.  I would say the "actual" cost of these parts as long as you somewhat deal shop is more in the 2750 range plus or minus a few bucks.  So that leaves you about 200-250 in head room to play around with.  Now since you have basically the best GPU without going to a titan and your AMD 3900x is no slouch of a CPU either that leaves you the rest of the PC for upgrades.  And to me the best place for you to upgrade would be to go with an AIO cooler for your CPU.  While AMD generally has cooler CPU's than Intel.  Any CPU with that much horsepower is just gonna get hot, with it's TDP of 105 w.  I would go with something along the lines of a https://www.microcenter.com/product/618680/nzxt-kraken-x73-360mm-rgb-cpu-water-cooling-kit, or https://www.microcenter.com/product/610102/evga-clc-360-360mm-rgb-water-cooling-kit.  This will allow you to maintain better CPU temps and these should still let you fall well under the 3k limit.  Now personally I like the performance of Noctua fans, but by god the standard ones are ugly.  Try to find the all black unless you like the color scheme then do you.  Otherwise with these parts your about as "future proof" as you can get.  Sticking with the 2080TI even after the 3000 series comes out will probably save you a bit of cash because while not a huge price drop the 2080TI will drop possibly under the 1100 mark once the 3000 series drops and honestly that GPU should handle just about anything you throw at it for at least another 2-3 years and by then the 3000 series will have dropped slightly and you can upgrade that then.

Ajaness

G.Skill Trident Z Neo is what I was considering but by recommendation swapped to Corsair's LPX due to its reputation as low profile to make sure it would fit on the mobo with the Noctura fan. I'm very wary of liquid cooling and would rather not deal with it if I can get away with air cooling with the Noctua, I don't mind the ugly brown and white color scheme but will look into the black. It seems though that the build should preform great once I settle on a mobo, just down to waiting on the 3000 series. Will probably look harder at mobo's until I come in to my local-ish microcenter but it's probably down to either the Crosshair VIII Hero or the recommended Gigabyte x570 Aorus Master. The Aorus Elite and Pro have been recommended separately as well, and the 1 year warranty on the Crosshair VIII Hero is a bit of a turn-off for a $400 board so might end up with one of the Aorus iterations. Good call on the Taichi issue, I've spent most of my time trying to learn about cpu/gpu and have nothing in the mobo area so possibly saved me there. Thanks for the input! Any final thoughts would be appreciated but I'll probably be ordering the RAM, Noctua, and Case tomorrow to hope it arrives by the weekend when I should be in to microcenter to snag the rest.

TSTonyV

Ajaness said:

 the 1 year warranty on the Crosshair VIII Hero is a bit of a turn-off for a $400 board so might end up with one of the Aorus iterations. 

The 1-year warranty listed on our website is incorrect actually, this motherboard should have a three-year warranty through ASUS. I'll make sure we get that over to our web team to be corrected.