Looking for help on a new pc, budget 3k

Tunapiano

It's been 6 years since I built a PC. I haven't paid much attention to tech since then, I've had to do a lot of reading up on Intel new cpu lineup, Nvidia rtx cards and a few other things but where I run into trouble is choosing the right motherboard and cooling setup with cpu. 

ASUS is what I always went with in the past but their customer support is absolutely terrible these days, I also only ever went with corsair ram and this time I've actually considered a Gigabyte mobo and g.Skill trident ram with a amd processor, not something I ever would've considered before. 

So my budget is 3k or below, I built a computer for around 2500 on microcenters site but the motherboard, cooling and processor kept changing, I've been out of the loop too long to decide. I want to go with an Nvidia RTX 2080, a ti version would be a dream come true. I do a lot of gaming from Call of duty to red dead redemption 2 to star citizen and more. 
I hope I've given enough info, I look forward to answering any questions to help me do this because I've been racking my brain on this for a couple of weeks now. 

TSTonyV

Hello @Tunapiano ! Welcome to the Community! Before we provide a full recommendation, I have some questions:

• Is your primary use for this  system going to be gaming, are you also doing things like video editing, design/CAD work, etc...? What kind of games would you be playing and what is your target resolution/framerate? and if doing other work, what type of software are you using?
  

• Are you doing a complete build from scratch, or did you have any parts from your old system such as case/PSU you planned to reuse. If so, what are those parts?

• How about peripherals, were you planning on a new monitor, keyboard, or mouse?
  

Gigabyte's AORUS lineup of motherboards are generally received well in the mid and high range categories for both AMD and Intel chipsets. A lot of them are known for having really good VRMs, if you're into overclocking. ASUS Boards are still a good option as well, the Crosshair and Strix series are still quite popular. I can't really speak about either companies customer support as I haven't really dealt with them directly. G.Skill is a solid choice for RAM and their high end stuff is some of the best on the market.

As for your CPU choice, in gaming specifically, Intel still does have an edge over AMD in most games due to better single-threaded performance. That said, the new Ryzen 3rd gen CPUs are still very capable CPUs in gaming and are a very strong value proposition considering the price differences and inclusion of pretty decent stock coolers with their chips. And if you plan to game at 1440p or 4k, that CPU difference is minimized because your GPU becomes more important as resolution goes up. They also pretty much kick the pants off Intel in multi-threaded workloads such as 3D rendering, CAD design, video editing, etc... so if those types of things are a consideration for you, AMD is a no brainer in my opinion. They're pretty killer for live-streaming as well.

Tunapiano

TSTonyV said:

Hello @Tunapiano ! Welcome to the Community! Before we provide a full recommendation, I have some questions:

• Is your primary use for this  system going to be gaming, are you also doing things like video editing, design/CAD work, etc...? What kind of games would you be playing and what is your target resolution/framerate? and if doing other work, what type of software are you using?
  

• Are you doing a complete build from scratch, or did you have any parts from your old system such as case/PSU you planned to reuse. If so, what are those parts?

• How about peripherals, were you planning on a new monitor, keyboard, or mouse?
  

Gigabyte's AORUS lineup of motherboards are generally received well in the mid and high range categories for both AMD and Intel chipsets. A lot of them are known for having really good VRMs, if you're into overclocking. ASUS Boards are still a good option as well, the Crosshair and Strix series are still quite popular. I can't really speak about either companies customer support as I haven't really dealt with them directly. G.Skill is a solid choice for RAM and their high end stuff is some of the best on the market.

As for your CPU choice, in gaming specifically, Intel still does have an edge over AMD in most games due to better single-threaded performance. That said, the new Ryzen 3rd gen CPUs are still very capable CPUs in gaming and are a very strong value proposition considering the price differences and inclusion of pretty decent stock coolers with their chips. And if you plan to game at 1440p or 4k, that CPU difference is minimized because your GPU becomes more important as resolution goes up. They also pretty much kick the pants off Intel in multi-threaded workloads such as 3D rendering, CAD design, video editing, etc... so if those types of things are a consideration for you, AMD is a no brainer in my opinion. They're pretty killer for live-streaming as well.

I've had 2 liquid cooled systems before and I'm not sure I want that this time, it's certainly cheaper to go with air cooling and it's come a long ways since I got my first liquid cooled system 10 years ago. 

I hope I answered all of your questions. 

Hey thanks for the quick response. There will be mostly gaming. My wife will be doing video editing from time to time but not often, say maybe once a week or every other week at most and not many videos when she does. Mostly for her home business. 

I play a wide variety of games, anything from civilization games to red dead redemption 2 and the Witcher 3 to call of duty and rpg's like Amazon's upcoming one that's been delayed till August.

I don't stream me gaming but I do stream alot of movies and shows on several apps. I would like a minimum of 80fps in any of those games. I was able to manage that with dual 980's in the system before. 

I'll have my old blue-ray drive from the previous machine I'll use, not that I ever used it much these days but still. I'll have my previous keyboard and mouse, I'll be using my previous monitor for now, soon I'll upgrade it but for now just sticking to the desktop unless you guys come in under budget then I will upgrade it now. 

TheITDad

So I believe I got you a pretty awesome system here.  Now I went AMD on the cpu because of a few reasons.  First at 400$ the 3900x really can't be beat by anything intel has at the price point.  Second even if it is only once a week or less, from what I understand some video editing software can take advantage of more cores and threads to boost performance and can't do much better than 12 cores and 24 threads especially for 400$.  And lastly by being able to get a really good mobo to go with it and the cpu for under 650 when you could spend 650 on just an intel cpu allowed for more room other places.  Like getting a 2080 TI in the build, and getting 2 really nice 16gb kits of ram to give you quad channel 32gb of ram, and a really absurd 5 tb of storage with 1tb being nvme for the OS and such.  Now I also included 2 really nice 24 inch 144hz 1ms response time monitors for that nice dual monitor set up.  But feel free to readjust if your more the 1 big monitor type of guy either way I spent about 400 bucks on the two so you should be able to find a really nice monitor/monitors for that price.  Also got you some extra fans for the build and a solid airflow case in the meshify C.  Lastly I put an AIO water cooler in there but don't be intimidated by "water cooling" AIO's are easy to install and with the mag fans I put in the build to attach to it should keep your cpu really cool no matter what your doing.  And with this build you should be able to maintain 100 fps minimum on most games on max settings at 1440p, and stay well over 60 with even 4k gaming if you go that route.  Have fun building.

Configure Your PC: https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=c4dc7b55-e166-45cb-b093-31989469bd8d

CPU: (1) AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse 3.8GHz 12-Core AM4 Boxed Processor with Wraith Prism Cooler ($399.99 EACH)

Motherboard: (1) Gigabyte Aorus Elite WiFi X570 AMD AM4 ATX Motherboard ($209.99 EACH)

RAM: (2) G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3600 PC4-28800 CL16 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit F4-3600C16D-16GVKC - Black ($83.99 EACH)

Case: (1) Fractal Design Meshify C Tinted Tempered Glass Midtower ATX Case - Black ($99.99 EACH)

Power Supply: (1) PowerSpec 750 Watt 80 Plus Gold ATX Fully Modular Power Supply ($109.99 EACH)

Video Card: (1) EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Black Dual-Fan 11GB GDDR6 PCIe 3.0 Video Card ($1,099.99 EACH)

M.2 SSD: (1) Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD 3-bit MLC NAND M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive ($179.99 EACH)

Hard Drive: (2) Seagate BarraCuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA III 6Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive ($50.99 EACH)

Water Cooling Kits: (1) NZXT Kraken X73 360mm RGB CPU Water Cooling Kit ($184.99 EACH)

Monitors: (2) Acer Nitro VG240Y Pbiip 23.8" Full HD 144Hz HDMI DP FreeSync IPS LED Monitor ($179.99 EACH)

Case Fans: (2) Corsair ML120 Magnetic Levitation 120mm Case Fan - Twin Pack ($39.99 EACH)

Total: $2,994.85

Tunapiano

TheITDad said:

So I believe I got you a pretty awesome system here.  Now I went AMD on the cpu because of a few reasons.  First at 400$ the 3900x really can't be beat by anything intel has at the price point.  Second even if it is only once a week or less, from what I understand some video editing software can take advantage of more cores and threads to boost performance and can't do much better than 12 cores and 24 threads especially for 400$.  And lastly by being able to get a really good mobo to go with it and the cpu for under 650 when you could spend 650 on just an intel cpu allowed for more room other places.  Like getting a 2080 TI in the build, and getting 2 really nice 16gb kits of ram to give you quad channel 32gb of ram, and a really absurd 5 tb of storage with 1tb being nvme for the OS and such.  Now I also included 2 really nice 24 inch 144hz 1ms response time monitors for that nice dual monitor set up.  But feel free to readjust if your more the 1 big monitor type of guy either way I spent about 400 bucks on the two so you should be able to find a really nice monitor/monitors for that price.  Also got you some extra fans for the build and a solid airflow case in the meshify C.  Lastly I put an AIO water cooler in there but don't be intimidated by "water cooling" AIO's are easy to install and with the mag fans I put in the build to attach to it should keep your cpu really cool no matter what your doing.  And with this build you should be able to maintain 100 fps minimum on most games on max settings at 1440p, and stay well over 60 with even 4k gaming if you go that route.  Have fun building.

Configure Your PC: https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=c4dc7b55-e166-45cb-b093-31989469bd8d

CPU: (1) AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse 3.8GHz 12-Core AM4 Boxed Processor with Wraith Prism Cooler ($399.99 EACH)

Motherboard: (1) Gigabyte Aorus Elite WiFi X570 AMD AM4 ATX Motherboard ($209.99 EACH)

RAM: (2) G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3600 PC4-28800 CL16 Dual Channel Desktop Memory Kit F4-3600C16D-16GVKC - Black ($83.99 EACH)

Case: (1) Fractal Design Meshify C Tinted Tempered Glass Midtower ATX Case - Black ($99.99 EACH)

Power Supply: (1) PowerSpec 750 Watt 80 Plus Gold ATX Fully Modular Power Supply ($109.99 EACH)

Video Card: (1) EVGA GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Black Dual-Fan 11GB GDDR6 PCIe 3.0 Video Card ($1,099.99 EACH)

M.2 SSD: (1) Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD 3-bit MLC NAND M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive ($179.99 EACH)

Hard Drive: (2) Seagate BarraCuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA III 6Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive ($50.99 EACH)

Water Cooling Kits: (1) NZXT Kraken X73 360mm RGB CPU Water Cooling Kit ($184.99 EACH)

Monitors: (2) Acer Nitro VG240Y Pbiip 23.8" Full HD 144Hz HDMI DP FreeSync IPS LED Monitor ($179.99 EACH)

Case Fans: (2) Corsair ML120 Magnetic Levitation 120mm Case Fan - Twin Pack ($39.99 EACH)

Total: $2,994.85

Hey thanks for the build, I do have some questions. First why 32gb of ram? In my previous machine I had the same amount but rarely was anything over 8gb ever used at one time so I was actually wondering if 16gb wasn't enough.

2nd is a 750w psu enough for this system?

I was actually looking at getting this though I may shop around just to make sure I get the best price.  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079H5WNXN/ref=cm_sw_r_apa_i_a7lMEbDKGZVRG

AlexS

Tunapiano said:

First why 32gb of ram? In my previous machine I had the same amount but rarely was anything over 8gb ever used at one time so I was actually wondering if 16gb wasn't enough.

8GB is what I would consider the norm for most computers nowadays.  16GB is recommended for most gaming rigs.  If my knowledge serves me correctly, the last time I looked it up, the more memory you have, the shorter render times you experience with video editing. 
So for example: (these numbers are just theoreticals)
16GB RAM for rendering a 10 min video (1080p)  at ~30 minutes
32GB RAM for rendering a 10 min video (1080p)  at ~18 minutes
so on and so forth.  More RAM has it's benefits as well for other purposes of course.  

Tunapiano

So I've been working on the build you made with some minor tweaks but one question I've got that I can't seem to find an answer for on Google, can a 570x motherboard be used in an older case? I have a corsair obsidian 500d that's 5 years old. If I can recycle it for this that's money saved but I can't find any answer on if it can be done. If the screw holes will match. Does anyone here know if it will work? 

TheITDad

@Tunapiano As far as I am aware you are just looking to make sure that the case supports ATX motherboards.  What you could do is look up the mobo's measurements and then look up your cases manual and see if the sizes match up.  But generally you are looking to see if the case supports atx/matx/eatx/itx/mitx.  But sometimes those standards aren't perfect.  And as for your question  you had about the 32gb of ram, I put it in there because your budget allowed it and you said you did some video editing and the extra ram will help speed that process up as TS_AlexS pointed out.

TSTonyV

Tunapiano said:

So I've been working on the build you made with some minor tweaks but one question I've got that I can't seem to find an answer for on Google, can a 570x motherboard be used in an older case? I have a corsair obsidian 500d that's 5 years old. If I can recycle it for this that's money saved but I can't find any answer on if it can be done. If the screw holes will match. Does anyone here know if it will work? 

To confirm what ITDad said, motherboard/case for factors are standardized. if the case is ATX and the board is ATX, it will fit. Of course, you'll still want to consider how your other components will fit. If you get a massive 3-fan video card and the smallest mid-tower ATX case you can find, you might run out of room. 

The Obsidian 500d you have is an ATX Mid-tower and from the pictures it looks pretty roomy. The board will definitely fit and you shouldn't have any issues with the other parts fitting either.