New Build Advice

I'm looking to build my first PC in about 10 years.  The last one I built is still up and running and is fairly powerful for its age.
My budget is around $1300-$1400 with a bit of little wiggle room.
Primarily it will be used as an always-on Media Server (running Plex), but it will also act as a central hub for my network (file storage, printer, hard-lined to the router, etc).  I am not averse to upgrading it later for gaming, but that's a secondary concern.

I already have monitors and I'm planning on running Ubuntu (though I may change my mind on this because I do have a couple of Windows-only Applications).


My primary concerns are the motherboard and the case. I want to make sure the case has enough drive bays and the appropriate connections for the motherboard.
I have a BluRay drive and a 3TB HD I plan to transfer over and 3 other hard drives that I wouldn't mind putting to good use.


Comments

  • For what your doing looks like you built a great machine.  Your mobo is an excelent pick with built in 2.5gbps lan and 8 sata slots and multiple m.2 slots that you could take advantage of down the road if you want.  Only suggestion I have is make sure you don't limit your raid set up for your plex server and that the 6tb you have in the build is your parity drive.  Otherwise you will just be throwing away some of that storage space.  Also to keep the read/write speeds at a nice level you may want to look into 7200 rpm drives as you lose quite a bit of performance dropping to a 5400 rpm drive.  But as long as it is your parity drive I don't think it would make much of a difference other than longer backup times, but I am not super experienced with plex servers as of yet.
  • TSTonyV
    TSTonyV ✭✭✭✭✭
    First Anniversary 5 Likes First Comment First Answer
    edited April 2020
    Hello @Sarpiedon! Welcome to the community. Some important things to note on your build:

    1) The Ryzen 7 3700x does NOT have integrated graphics, you will have to supply some kind of video card with it. We have some super basic low-profile ones like the GT710 if the only thing you need it for is "I need something on my screen."

    2) Third gen Ryzen CPUs scale very well with memory speed. I would swap that 3200 kit for a DDR4-3600 kit, which is the sweet spot. 

    3) Based on the way you worded it, it sounds like including the drive on the build you linked, you have four more hard drives on top of that, so five hard drives in total. The View 71 on your build only has three 3.5" bays, so I would recommend this case instead: https://www.microcenter.com/product/441509/corsair-graphite-760t-atx-full-tower-computer-case---black

    That case has six 3.5" bays total. The board you chose has 8 SATA ports, two USB 2.0 headers, one USB 3.1  and one USB 3.2 so it should have all the connections you need for that case as well. 

    Build otherwise is solid. the 3700x is a great CPU and I think you'll get a lot of good use out of it. 

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