Need help with an AMD build.

[Radegast74]

If your budget is $1800, why not get this?
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=83-102-525&Tpk=83-102-525

Then sell your 1070 and use the proceeds to get an M2 PCIe SSD...

 

[Nijal_Lun]

Like some of the others stated, if you can wait until after Jan for the AMD 3k series chips and GPU's are shown then I would suggest going for that. However if timing is an issue, even the non X model 2600 or 2700 will run anything on today's market, with a good GPU on ultra without any issues. I upgraded not to long ago from a FX-8350 to a Ryzen 2600 / GTX 1070 combo and couldn't be happier. I have a 1080p gaming monitor at 75Mhz so as of today, nearly all modern games are hitting my monitors cap at 75 fps including Star Citizen (although due to game still being developed, those FPS range from 30 to 75).

I use a SSD for star citizen (western digital blue SSD 500gb) and the load times and play stay of SC was a drastic difference compared to running it on a HDD 7200rpm drive. I have a thread I created in Spectrum showing the load times with the HDD compared to the SSD. From 4 minutes to 30 seconds :)
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/50174/thread/ssd-load-times-compared-to-hdd

16gb of ram will do for now. However I would suggest since you have a high budget, to go for 32gb. And Ryzen likes higher speed on RAM, so don't go any lower than DDR4-3000 for ram speed.

As for the hard drives and SSD's, I've always been partial to Western Digital as I've never had any to fail or cause me issues in the past. I've got 22 years in the IT industry and never had an issue with WD. Toshiba and Seagate drives have failed me in the past.

Motherboards, there is not a lot of usable difference between the B450 and X470 boards. To save on money and since you are using this mainly for gaming, I'd suggest the MSI B450 Pro Carbon Gaming motherboard or MSI B450 Tomahawk. I'm using the Tomahawk board and no issues here with the Ryzen 2600. This has been a good budget minded gaming rig for me. And still able to handle some development work that I do. And my only reason for going 2600 instead of the 2600x or 2700x was the power usage. I run my system 16+ hours a day. And honestly there is no games out there today that would require you to overclock the 2600 or 2700 non-x models paired with a GTX 1070 for good gaming on ultra settings for 1080p or 1440p gaming. Although I do believe the 1070 is reaching a struggling point on some modern titles at 2k gaming at least from some reviews I've read. Haven't tested myself however due to well...my current monitor lol.

Good luck to your build, all in all, can't go wrong with either 2600 or 2700 processor route and you shouldn't really spend more than half of what your budget is. So you will be able to save some $$ in the bank, use for other needs. :)

 

[Talonsbane]

I have to politely disagree with your permission dear sir. The _main_ difference between SSD and HDD is in IOPS ... sequential read/write speeds that have a chance to saturate the interface are secondary (and in case you have crazy high numbers of random writes - optane 905p is much better choice than anything else so far :slight_smile: )

I'm loving my Optane 900D that I now have only storing Star Citizen regular. (as well as the PTU when available) In addition to having great load speeds (about 45 sec), it came with a sweet & pretty digital space ship.

 

[SullyQuindarius]

Just gaming. I have a face for radio, and a voice for silent films.

Wait for Ryzen 3000 and Radeon 3000 since they'll likely be announced early 2019.

Leaks and rumors are...quite promising.

Also, with the build you're looking at, keep in mind you really don't need an AIO.

 

[SullyQuindarius]

That looks like a SATA SSD, SATA SSDs performance is only marginally different from high performance SATA HDDs due to both hitting the max throughput SATA supports.
In order to see the SSD crazy performance you see people talking about you have to use either PCI (AIC) SSD or M.2 (over PCI) SSD.

False. SATA SSDs are still gonna kick any HDDs ass. And M.2 is not an SSD. It's a form factor. There are M.2 SATA SSDs.

What you're thinking of is NVMe. And NVMe has no real world performance improvement over SATA drives in most situations, including gaming - though Star Citizen may be the exception to this. Where you really see a big improvement is in uses where you're transferring HUGE files around the disk.

 

[Bruce]

Where you really see a big improvement is in uses where you're transferring HUGE files around the disk.

it is a place where you are supposed to see performance gain, but it is also the place where nvme-s start throttling due to temperature increase, and due to lack of computing power etc. etc. :) ... I still love my nvme but I don't see big _real life_ gain vs sata ssds for sure

 

[Talonsbane]

I might be over simplifying this, but from my point of view, it seems to me that it can boil down to the following equation.

NMVE = data transmission speed Vs HDD = storage capacity / price per volume

 

[SullyQuindarius]

I might be over simplifying this, but from my point of view, it seems to me that it can boil down to the following equation.

NMVE = data transmission speed Vs HDD = storage capacity / price per volume

And SATA right in the middle.

 

[glockjs]

i would hold off til the new amd stuff drops which should be in a few months. like sully said the leaks look good. ram and nvme prices should be dropping from now til then too. i would pick stuff up that you know the price doesn't change much like psu or case on sale. check slickdeals every so often. for example a bitfenix gold 850w psu was on sale for $20 yesterday. the more you save on your build the more you can put toward other stuff like monitor, sound and kb/mouse etc.

 

[at-2500]

And SATA right in the middle.

Also don't forget that a half-empty SSD much faster than an almost-full SSD because the reads/writes are spread out between different cells!
I always say buy a bigger cheaper SSD instead of a smaller, nominally faster one.

Regarding PSUs, I like Corsair and cannot recommend beQuiet, just FYI.

 

[Michael]

Also don't forget that a half-empty SSD much faster than an almost-full SSD because the reads/writes are spread out between different cells!
I always say buy a bigger cheaper SSD instead of a smaller, nominally faster one.

Regarding PSUs, I like Corsair and cannot recommend beQuiet, just FYI.

But what about StoreMi technology? Are two smaller SSD faster than one larger?

Also shouldn't this be only a concern if you're reading and writing?

 

[mromutt]

I have the R7 1700 and love it in all games and programs (video editing and design work) and my understanding is the 2700 is even smoother, but from the leaks (which look right) the 3700 stuff will be worth waiting a few months for. They will be higher core/thread count and much higher base speeds. Your 1070 should be good for some time (i have the 1060 6gb) but I would reccomend just replacing the old ssd outright just incase.

 

[Vavrik]

But what about StoreMi technology? Are two smaller SSD faster than one larger?

Also shouldn't this be only a concern if you're reading and writing?

StoreMi is technology that paires an SSD and HD's in a single container. The HD is monitored for high traffic files, which are moved to the SSD automatically. It's a good technology, with a low end use requirement fulfillment. You get some of the benefit of having an SSD, while still using a HD. The benefit for gaming is questionable, and probably situational.

Are two smaller SSD's faster than 1 large one? Well it's a loaded question. It depends. You can likely go to a store and find two 256Mb SSD's that both outperform a single 512Mb device and make this true, but it's actually a compromise based on price. Just to put this in perspective... storage technologies use a serial technology, and they (the devices) are accessed sequentially, one after another. What you see is simultaneous access is actually very clever time sharing happening according to an equally clever algorithm based on priority and use. You don't normally see this happen, because your computer is pretty dang fast - but it is happening.

The third point - Storage technologies of any kind, including RAM, SSD's, HD's, floppy disks, and even paper tape that we used to use... seriously that was a thing... exist to allow only reading and writing of data. That's it. Storage duration is a property of the technology used. SSD's do not provide anything approaching the storage duration of mechanical HD's but they are incredibly fast, and so they have a viable use case. In practice though, an SSD usually has enough life to last for the expected lifetime of the computer, so it's not normally a big concern.

 

[Vavrik]

I have not been technically competent enough to know what is good or bad when choosing new parts for a PC build for several years now.

[SNIP]

Budget $1800 max

Thank you.

Is this for experience building your own PC or to make your PC purchase cheaper?
Reason: At your price point, it's difficult to find the components at a lower price than a pre-assembled PC. This is because the manufacturers of pre-assembled PC's buy at wholesale, and can negotiate better pricing based on volume. You on the other hand, do not have the buying power of that group but can construct a pc for a more targeted requirement. One is not necessarily better than the other, it depends on what your goals are.

 

[Radegast74]

Is this for experience building your own PC or to make your PC purchase cheaper?
Reason: At your price point, it's difficult to find the components at a lower price than a pre-assembled PC. This is because the manufacturers of pre-assembled PC's buy at wholesale, and can negotiate better pricing based on volume. You on the other hand, do not have the buying power of that group but can construct a pc for a more targeted requirement. One is not necessarily better than the other, it depends on what your goals are.

Yeah, that's why I posted that sale link before (still good, btw--> i7-8700k, 16GB RAM, vanilla 2080 GPU, 1 TB HDD and 240 SSD for $1799.99).
I bought the last years model of that rig, and I could not have built it cheaper than what I paid for it. That was when the 1080Ti cards were still through the roof. Bigger companies can buy in volume and negotiate a much better price than an individual system builder.

If you want build, go ahead, it can be fun ... if you want something cheap you can play now, go with a pre-built rig on sale.

 

[glockjs]

Is this for experience building your own PC or to make your PC purchase cheaper?
Reason: At your price point, it's difficult to find the components at a lower price than a pre-assembled PC. This is because the manufacturers of pre-assembled PC's buy at wholesale, and can negotiate better pricing based on volume. You on the other hand, do not have the buying power of that group but can construct a pc for a more targeted requirement. One is not necessarily better than the other, it depends on what your goals are.

i don't find that to be the case at all because they still want their profit margin. it can be the case but that's the reason you shop. also i find they sacrifice quality somewhere in the pre build pc which in my experience is always the psu and sub par storage options for what you pay. the psu irks me the most because that's a pretty damn important part in a pc.

 

[CloudyDaze]

I didn't read every post in this thread but have you considered waiting for when AMD starts releasing CPU's with the 7nm chip and a more fleshed out GPU? I am no tech guru but it looks like from what I have been reading that this could possibly be a game changer for AMD.

 

[at-2500]

But what about StoreMi technology? Are two smaller SSD faster than one larger?

Also shouldn't this be only a concern if you're reading and writing?

Well storemi already got a great explanation... And flash storage is weird... For example you cannot simply write, you usually have to read a block and then re write the whole block. Just like shingled hard disk. So it is really hard to use any of those thumb roles to calculate anything.

 

[aivartron]

the Ryzen 7 1700 is really cheap now .. and performing reasonably well for SC

 

[Lonewollf]

the Ryzen 7 1700 is really cheap now .. and performing reasonably well for SC

It's what I run in my rig currently. I have absolutely no issues thus far with mine