Advice desired: Building an AMD PC with prerogative to quality over form&function

[Vayra86]

Plus ray traced titles and implementations are only getting more and more CPU intensive, so I wouldn't be surprised to see the advantages of stronger CPU platforms being even more apparent as time goes on.

Beware of wishful thinking. RT isn't going places with the current GPU situation, you can safely wait for PS6 for any semblance of anything worthwhile to start taking shape. Marketing stories don't generally make for great games to play.

 

[R0H1T]

This, exactly my earlier point about system balance and relating that balance to your preferred resolution, upgrade path and gaming favorites.

Its all about balance. Bench results only tell you the overall story. Its like statistics; good for average view on things, horrible for personal choices.

Meh, just sell your kidneys & be done with it

YODO

 

[Lei]

990 Pro could be considered without a heatsink, even though surely it'd be a nice one to have?
As for RAM - I'm a bit confused as to what to pick instead. Anything good you see on amazon.de on quick glance?

nvme doesn't need heatsink in Germany. South of Spain may be.
You can selerately buy heatsink anyway. One size fits all.

@Chry
going by the (first) list you posted, you "wasting" money.
things like Ti/Pt rated psu, 32gb ram (vs 16gb; enough if you not editing/making content as a job), and gen 5 drive(s),
yet are trying to save on things like the cpu/cooling, when a 7700/7800X will def have an impact...

and if your worried about "quality" on AIO, go with corsair.
(most of) their AIOs are covered by 5y warranty that will replace ANY component damaged, if it fails,
so far, not even the best air coolers offer that.

Yep, gen 5 is waste.
Yep, he's wrong about cpu.
Yep, AIO
Ram, nope. He needs 32. Unreal needs it. You rarely open one unreal project at once.

He's buying an excellent mobo and puts s**t of a cpu on it.

Thanks to all for your feedback. Does my latest build-to-buy look good?:

CPU: 7600X @ 230€
CPU Cooler: NH-U12S SE-AM4 83€
RAM: 2x16Gb | G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo | 5600MT/s | 30-36-36-89 | AMD EXPO 163€
Main: ASUS Proart B650 330€
PSU: Seasonic Prime Platinum 156€
SSD: Samsung 990 Pro Heatsink 160€
Case: Fractal Design Focus 2 70€

Total: 1190€. Around 1200€ with shipping.

Edit:
Possible easy savings that I consider:
Could take cheaper simpler RAM for 110€.
Simple 990 PRO for 140€
And Noctua U12S Redux cooler for 60€
For total savings of 96€

AIO will make inside your case cooler. Even more reason not to use a heatsink on m.2

 

[Chry]

but if he spends 300 or less now on the cpu and in 2-3 years upgrades to a similarly priced cpu he likely will be much better off vs spending almost 500 on a 7800X3D.

That is exactly the plan. The 7600X will be more than enough for me for now. I mean it's a beast for gaming.
I would definitely love to consider 7700/78003D, but even the 7700/X is 120€ more expensive. (that is 50% of the 7600X's price! And for what - 5-10% performance increase in best scenario (and I won't have best scenario with X600XT GPUs.)))

And anyway I'm sure I'll buy a Ryzen 9 89xxX or whatever's top-tier as soon as it is released.

This whole PC is a relatively big expense for me to buy all at once but I want it to be a good quality platform. I can upgrade CPU/GPU any time along the road.
Buying a Zen5 Ryzen 9 upgrade for my AM5 platform will be easy after ~2 years.

But my heart is with all of those who comment getting 7700/7800 - That would be my ideal choice if I could afford not to save €.

 

[Vayra86]

That is exactly the plan. The 7600X will be more than enough for me for now. I mean it's a beast for gaming.
I would definitely love to consider 7700/78003D, but even the 7700/X is 120€ more expensive. (that is 50% of the 7600X's price! And for what - 5-10% performance increase in best scenario (and I won't have best scenario with X600XT GPUs.)))

And anyway I'm sure I'll buy a Ryzen 9 89xxX or whatever's top-tier as soon as it is released.

This whole PC is a relatively big expense for me to buy all at once but I want it to be a good quality platform. I can upgrade CPU/GPU any time along the road.
Buying a Zen5 Ryzen 9 upgrade for my AM5 platform will be easy after ~2 years.

But my heart is with all of those who comment getting 7700/7800 - That would be my ideal choice if I could afford not to save €.

Perfectly valid approach imho. You can also make back part of the expense when you upgrade a part; a fact often overlooked with incremental upgrades vs a long term stable base.

 

[Waldorf]

@Lei
unless its someone building more than 1 rig/year, i still say get one if it comes with it.
once ppl have bad airflow (for whatever reasons), air cooled cpu/gpus pushing lots of heat inside the case,
even if not doing large transfers can warm em up pretty easy.

@Chry
get 7700/7800 + mb/ram and cooler, psu/gpu/drive later.

 

[Lei]

@Lei
unless its someone building more than 1 rig/year, i still say get one if it comes with it.
once ppl have bad airflow (for whatever reasons), air cooled cpu/gpus pushing lots of heat inside the case,
even if not doing large transfers can warm em up pretty easy.

@Chry
get 7700/7800 + mb/ram and cooler, psu/gpu/drive later.

I don't know what's he gonna do. I hope he can find a second hand 7600x

I understand his approach is: AMD is socket king, so let me get a legend mobo and add cores later.
@Chry In Unreal you never use all cores of cpu except when you're compiling shaders. So, I'd say in AMD world, 8800x is sufficient.

Case: Literally don't care. will buy something cheap&small for 20-50€. Not sure what's good/best for that price. Selection is huge.
Cooling: Will either buy the 7700X with Wraith Prism included or buy a NH-L9a-AM5 or something else of good quality and small size. Should be enough for me. 50€.

judging by this, please get an AIO for your cpu at least.
although your cpu of choice won't need liquid cooling, but you have a though upgrade path.
and AIO maintains inside your literally-don't-care case much cooler.

Also curious whether forum members think I should wait for Gen5 SSDs seeing I want latest tech?

wait for it to hammer the price of gen4, then get gen4. perf leap is joke.

Should I consider 7800X3D?

yep, it even looks XD which is a cool smiley. but I understand your approach. I heard you singing: near far, wherever you are , I believe my heart goes on with people who comment getting...

Should I go with Wraith Prism or Noctua NH-L9a-AM5?

AIO

But my heart is with all of those who comment getting 7700/7800 - That would be my ideal choice if I could afford not to save €.

reminded me of Celine Dion Titanic song.

 

[Chry]

AIO

Thank you for the suggestions!
Which AIO should I get if I don't want to spend too much?
And indeed I've decided to go with gen4 SSD (Samsung 990 Pro).

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Thank you for the suggestions!
Which AIO should I get if I don't want to spend too much?
And indeed I've decided to go with gen4 SSD (Samsung 990 Pro).

Ek, corsair, Nzxt, Arctic doesn't matter they all perform similarly enough as long as it comes with at least a 5 year warranty and has good local support get whatever is cheapest out of what's listed.

Nothing wrong with going air either and assuming you get a decent air cooler at best you're looking at a 5-8C difference. Ryzen 7000 X parts run around 90c regardless of the cooler you get and perfomance is similar regardless of if you get aio or decent air cooler.

 

[siluro818]

In yet another case of why you really don't want to buy an 8GB card now or later, RE4 runs out of VRAM on my 12 gig 6700XT if I go with max details + RT at 1440p.
Otherwise the game runs perfectly fine at a locked 60fps with RT on, but I need a 16GB memory buffer.
And this sort of stuff is only going to get worse over the next few years.

 

[Waldorf]

@Chry

if you want all parts covered by warranty (in case of (rare) failure), Corsair.

otherwise arctic is usually a good performing "budget" unit (get 280, not 240)
Arctic liquid freezer


or, if you want to have the option to replace/upgrade/change, then something like the alphacool Eisbär,
as they use G1/4 connections, so you can use common LC parts.
i used it for a couple of builds, so its possible to upgrade (like adding gpu), or replace parts if something breaks.
did my custom loop starting with the Eisbaer, as its coming with a full copper rad and decent (non Asetek) pump.
i swapped out the pump, added the gpu, and i still get temps as low as i had cooling just the cpu using a 60cm tall Resorator with almost 2gal of water..
Eisbaer 280

 

[AMF]

Hi guys, I want to build a general use PC for home.

Only considering AMD option.

What for: I will be gaming (and amateur messing around Unreal Engine 5), browsing, watching 100GB+ x265 movies as so on.

Budget: 1000-1500€. Less is more.

Priorities: 1st priority is build quality. Performance and everything else is secondary.

Must have: Must be Zen4 based.

I currently have this in mind:

CPU: 8 fast core processor seems to be enough for my needs. More cores would be a waste. Ryzen 7700X. 340-350€. For example: https://www.skytech.lt/100100000591...reads-socket-am5-dezuteje-amd-n-p-602209.html
Should I consider 7800X3D? Considering, I will NOT have a high-end GPU (Radeon 7700XT at most! More likely 7600XT)
Motherboard: I want latest technologies (PCIe5, USB4, DDR5) and overall good quality components used. I also prefer to have as many BIOS options available as possible. So I'm thinking of ASUS Proart B650. 330€. https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/proart/proart-b650-creator/
It also looks great! And the cost is not too high considering other AM5 boards.
GPU: I'll buy a used one (6600XT) FOR NOW and when they become available I play to buy a latest mid-range GPU (Radeon 7600 or something?)
RAM: 16Gb Kingston Fury 6000mhz cl36. 75€. Seems to be okay? Would later upgrade to 2x16Gb. https://www.skytech.lt/kf560c36bbe1...ddr5-cl36-dimm-fury-beast-black-p-608530.html
SSD: Would really prefer a Gen5 SSD but with the poor selection and heat issues I'm not sure if I shouldn't just take Samsung 990 Pro for ~130€.
Maybe I should just wait a month or two before building PC so more PCIe5 SSD options are available?
Case: Literally don't care. will buy something cheap&small for 20-50€. Not sure what's good/best for that price. Selection is huge.
PSU: Since I want the best (titanium), but don't really want to spend 300€, I'm willing to go for 2nd best (platinum) for 155€: https://www.1a.lt/p/maitinimo-blokas-seasonic-prime-platinum-650w-650-w-135-mm/atr
I know it's still expensive but I really want a good one, it will make me feel good.
Cooling: Will either buy the 7700X with Wraith Prism included or buy a NH-L9a-AM5 or something else of good quality and small size. Should be enough for me. 50€. https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Noctua-NH-L9a-AM5-Premium-Profile-Cooling/dp/B0BNL8ZM1T/

Total current price without GPU: ~1130€.

Perhaps forum members here could advice on where price could be cut without hurting quality, or perhaps where quality could be improved, even at more expense? Again, quality is #1 priority. I really like the motherboard and PSU I chose so I would need really good arguments to change those options. They just seem best quality for the money in my eyes.
Also curious whether forum members think I should wait for Gen5 SSDs seeing I want latest tech?
Should I consider 7800X3D?
Should I go with Wraith Prism or Noctua NH-L9a-AM5?