Waffler said: Half-Life 3 (kidding, but it'd be nice).
TSTonyV said: Hello @Waffler! Welcome to the Community. First off, I'd like to say you hit me with a nice dose of nostalgia because I used to rock an old i5-2500k and a GTX 970 a few years ago. Got a lot of good years out of that 2500k. It's still kicking pretty good for me. It helps that I cool it down with a massive Cooler Master heatsink (looks like a V8, actually) in a giant Antec 1200 case with all the fans. Yeah, I have it considerably overclocked to a good 4.2 stable. Could probably do 4.5, but didn't want to push my luck with frying the thing with a little too much voltage. It's running cool even now at 30c (helps that I just cleaned out the case filters). I used to run two 8800 in SLI back in the day. The case is still awesome, but hate the work to clean the filters and it's just a monstrosity on my desk now and I want something smaller.I noticed you didn't include the cost of Windows in your build, if that's a consideration for you. Keep that in mind since it's another $140 if you planned to buy a copy. Plan to use my existing copy of Windows 10 Home 64-bit right now on a fresh SSD. Use existing 1tb SSD and 1tb HDD as drives for music, pictures, back-ups, etc.Personally, if you plan on keeping on iteration of your build for a long time, I would go with a higher end setup now if you have the budget for it as it can save cost in the future. While the 1660 Super is a good entry level 1080p gaming card, it's still entry level, and I would bet that a brand new Elder Scrolls game will have decent graphics requirements if you want good settings. Plus, you never know if there will be other new games you get interested in. Good point. I really have no plans to upgrade once I build it, not for a long time or if I'm forced to by some unforeseen problem (like a crispy and fried component). I may yet spring for a 2060, but the extra $100 or so keeps making me question it. Mind you, I'm still on a GTX 970, so the 1660 is still a quantum leap forward for me. Plus, 1920x1200 is not the highest res monitor around, but I like it (seriously, the Dell U2415 is vastly underrated, you can't beat the value of it).In terms of performance, the CPU probably won't be any better or worse on the X570 than that B450 board you chose (there's a small chance it could perform differently, but I don't know enough about the quality of that particular B450 to say). I personally like having more features on my motherboard, but realistically performance differences would be minor at best. This kind of settled the argument for me. I believe I'll stick with the B450, but a higher end version of it that has dual band Wi-Fi built into it.The SSD, in reality, won't make any noticeable difference. Unless you plan on doing a LOT of high volume data transfer (think moving large 4K video files) across another high-speed connection, you won't get any benefit from an NVMe SSD. Your boot times and load times will be practically the same.Thanks, this settles that for me. SATA SSD then.If you do decide to go with a budget build, I would actually recommend you stick with the higher quality power supply as a good PSU purchase now can last you a very long time. Cases will last forever as well, I'd get one that suits your preferences appropriately. That's why I'm opting for the gold certified PSU from PowerSpec. Semi-modular is very appealing to me as I doubt I'd need all the connections (although I'll end up using all 4 SATA ports, it looks like).You might wonder why I'm including an optical drive. I RIP music CDs I buy into flac format. MP3s just don't do it as well, especially for live/classical music. Cheaper to buy the CD and RIP it rather than buy the flacs. Plus, I have some old games on CD/DVDs I might want to play now and then!The updated build is practically identical to the Lava Monster one except for the motherboard, GPU, and case fans. Having all those fans might seem like overkill, but I get pretty paranoid about heat inside the rig, so I want to be sure it stays nice and cool. Think the CPU heatsink I selected will be ok if I decide to overclock the CPU to 4.0?Updated build: https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder.aspx?load=623f1b85-a44a-4c56-8906-6949c4a33237
Waffler said: It's not so much the heat that concerns me as the durability, but heat plays a role in that. I guess the bottom line I want to know is which lasts longer, SATA SSDs or the NVMEs?
TSIanL said: Waffler said: It's not so much the heat that concerns me as the durability, but heat plays a role in that. I guess the bottom line I want to know is which lasts longer, SATA SSDs or the NVMEs? It is hard to say because we would hope both type of drives would last as long as possible, but based on temperatures, a 2.5" drive would not be running as hot.
TSTonyV said: For the NVMe corruption issues, are you referring to some of the reports of PCIe devices having issues with X570 boards several months ago? If so, those issues should pretty much be fixed by now with BIOS revisions and Windows/driver updates that have been put out.
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