Parts review for desktop - lab PC

djk

Custom AMD PC by Micro Center.pdf

I am looking to upgrade my aging desktop and augment my lab server. The desktop is used for day-to-day tasks of personal finance, browsing/download streaming, email, along with upload streaming and remote access to software-defined radio (SDR). Then there are the projects that involve photo, audio, and video editing as well as website and coding. The augmenting is to run additional VM hosts for testing and production use. I have gone with AMD for cost and Linux-friendly. The host OS will probably be Windows 10 Pro though that could change. Some of this overkill intended with the thought to a longer useful life. Any thoughts or suggestions on the attached build are appreciated.

Parts list

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder-amd.aspx?load=e5a499b8-bb41-40e1-ae98-70377e63714d

TS_JosephF

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/8807/parts-review-for-desktop-lab-pc

The part list looks good! I would agree that you should get a longer life from this. Of course you could consider using a 5th gen Ryzen but for the price of the 3900X, it's hard to pass up. The 5900X is probably not worth the extra 150.

But overall this PC should run as well as your server for all of the roles you intend to setup.

djk

@TS_JosephF Originally I had the 5950x for the additional cores but the 3900x is the only one in stock currently. I would have considered repeating my Threadripper lab but the cost went up almost a grand from last year. Realistically the savings probably makes sense to stay with the 3900X. The GPU is an area I not sure about but those are very difficult to lock onto currently. The budget doesn't allow for it currently but it would be nice to do a RAID with 3 4Tb drives. That might end up being the Lab addition at some point. Thank you for the feedback.

TS_JosephF

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/34001#Comment_34001

Yeah at least SSDs can easily be added over time. And I agree, the 3900X is just a good deal in terms of performance to dollar spent.

For the GPU, if you are thinking of going NVIDIA, I would go with at least a 3070. Of course the 6700XT would be just fine. However some are very particular about brand loyalty so it would be your preference.