As the good ol' Jack would had said: let's go by for parts.
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08I guess I should try to better clarify my goal, or what my thinking is for this build.
The main question is if you need to use it professionally or not. I had that doubt before, I had it less now because it seems that you mean the media works you do with it (video editing and all that stuff) is for personal use. And I think you give too many importance to the upgradability vs some things you sacrifice. At the end any computer could be upgraded except if too many time has passed (like yours of 12 years)
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08I'm not comfortable enough to buy used hardware lol. I'd rather spend a little more for the peace of mind and warranty, not that new hardware is always a guarantee. And my current monitor has a max resolution of 1600x900, which is pointless for a 1080p rig lol.
You have to sacrifice something. If you wanna change it everything now, you don't have enough budget, you will not be satisfied at any part of your current computer and you would not want to upgrade it in 5 years but to change it entirely. So, you have to decide now what gets out of the budget now to buy it later (when you had saved some extra money and the prices would be better). And your 3 best options are those:
- You endure with your actual monitor. It doesn't matter you are aiming at Full HD with the build, you can live a few months more with that monitor and that will free one 20% of your budget now for your immediate needs (of a working computer)
- You purchase a cheap second hand motherboard of previous generations (like a GTX9xx or similar); save around 10% of your budget on that part now and change it in a year unless you are unlucky and it breaks before. Yes, it's a risk but you are going to spend like 50 bucks on that. Not such high cost for the risk if you chose well.
- You reduce the tier on the motherboard selection. It can be done safely but the savings are also minor (between 5 and 10% of your budget)
Now, let's see what we have clear now:
- The DRAM SSD will be something for the future. It's a shame but as I said, the difference between what you have now and any SSD even the worse ones would be so high that you wouldn't immediately miss it.
- The processor it's something settled too, you have already chosen the best in value for your budget limit. Less and you want to change it to soon; more and you are out of budget.
- The wi-fi is out because it was a "just in case" that isn't really necessary and you need to optimize your budget.
- You can't save the money of the secondary HDD because you can't re-use the actual ones (they are already full and you expect to fill more data in the new one).
- 16GB sticks of RAM to be able to upgrade up to 64GB without having to discard any purchased DIMM
- Case and power sources choices are good enough for the price and your needs.
So, the points where you should to decide:
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08I looked more into it and the X570's are the only ones that offer the PCIe 4.0. Something I don't need now, and might never need, but just in case. The MB is the one part I don't want to have to replace in 5 years, so the one I get now has to work well with the future rig I plan to have. On the other hand the B450's support the Ryzen 9's so I'll dig a little deeper.
You have not payed enough attention to the chipset part on my second message. Forget the B450, aim for the B550. It's the same tier chip but the native one for Ryzen Gen3 for Desktop. They are so new than I forget to mention them on my first message. B550 will have the PCIe4Gen and full support to any current Ryzen and most probably next gen ones (the Zen 3 to be released at the end of the year). What you lose choosing a B550 motherboard instead of an X570 one: Over the paper, only a few USB and PCIe lanes (look at the specification tab here: https://www.amd.com/en/products/chipsets-am4). Out of the paper, you will lose also A BIT of quality components of the motherboard, because the X570 ones are the motherboards thought to overclock the bigger Ryzens. Even if you change later to a R9-3900XT later in the future, unless you overclock it, you should have no problem at all on a B550 motherboard. What you gain? The Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite cost 200€ and the B550 Aorus Elite cost 150€ (approx prices). Not bad if you don't want to push hard your hardware.
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08I'll give it a look, but AMD will have to blow NVidia out of the water to make me consider changing.
Again, you DON'T have to see who's owning who in graphic terms (is NVidia at this moment). Because that's a high tier competition (on cards over 500€). You are out of that league, forget it, stick to your budget. You can search the best card inside your budget or the cheapest card that will offer you a similar performance than the original you aimed for (and save money for anything else). Those are the two options you have (if you ditch the second-hand third option). In the future, when you had saved money enough and if you want to aim for a high tier card; then aim for that whatever it would be the good one on that moment and you could pay. But that will be the future. And nothing prevents you to keep changing from team green to team red back and forth as many times as it would be necessary. Worst thing it can be done is to stick to a brand without objective reasons. If NVidia ends being the best option for you now, go for it without any doubt. But if it's not; don't stick to it just because it's NVidia or just because NVidia has the better high tier cards. Those things won't give you extra value to your spent money.
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08I'm guessing I'm not going to find a 1TB stick of M.2 SSD using SLC? Maybe a SATA SSD will have it? I'd still rather have an M.2.
Forget those things, as we have agreed, you have to stay on a DRAM-less SSD. That's the low tier products and they will be almost all QLC or at best TLC (that's why they are cheap on the price per GB). And forget about the durability problem, really. That will be your concern in YEARS, not now. SLC are sold only on professional grade disks that will cost one of them as much as your whole budget. And forget 2,5" SSD; you don't want to waste the performance of an SSD, even DRAM-less ones, on the SATA bottleneck. It has to be an M.2 NVMe (Both things! Remember that there are M.2 SATA that you must avoid!).
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08I'm trying to minimize waste, which is why I thought a single stick of 16GB over 2x8GB, even if it means sacrificing the dual channel performance. From what I read, dual channel only gives you a few percentage points in performance over single so it didn't seem as important.
Dual channel impact will vary depending on the workload. For office work, gaming or boot time and general OS responsiveness is a minor improvement (that's why most laptops have a single DIMM; they save space and money and people barely notice it). For media editing, rendering, engineering or 3D design and similar data-intensive workloads dual channel IS important.
Point here is that it's a bad idea to put a single DIMM now, purchase one later and expect both of them work nice on dual channel. Even if they seems to you the same model (even if they are indeed the same part number) they will be different and that could cause problems. What problems? From just a bit of latency penalty to big instability issues; all depending on how hard you push the RAM clock, timings and workload. So, if you stick with cheap low performance RAM modules, that's not even a problem. You purchase 16GB now, 16GB more in 6 months and upgrade to 64 total in 2 years. But I suggested you to aim for 3600MHz RAM sticks. Those require asignificant overclock (it's XMP automatic, but it's overclock anyway) and that's NOT a good idea when dealing with unpaired sticks.
"I will stay with cheaper sticks" you could say.... then I tell you to forget to "reduce waste", because if you ever upgrade to a Ryzen 9 in the future, cheap 3200 or worse sticks of unpaired RAM would be a joke; you would had to change them all because they will anchor your new CPU and it will not provide the expected performance, making you waste money on it. Also, you should consider that info too: First gen Ryzen stock memory speed (AKA, reachable without memory controller overclock) was 2.666 MHz. Second gen one was 2.933MHz. This actual third generation is 3200MHz. What about if 4th Gen default speed is 3.600? You could upgrade your motherboard with one of those CPUs but you will have to deal with poor-perfomance memory. So, either you will have to deal with sub-optimal memory on the future, or you will have to "waste" it and pay more on the CPU upgrade or you will have to pay more now for those 2x16GB at 3.600 DIMMs.
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08And now that you mention 3600 being the sweet spot for Ryzen, that will only cost about $10 more than the 3200 for 32GB (2x16). I'm always seeing 3200 RAM paired with the Ryzen 5 though, so that's why I went with that speed. Do the B450's support 3600?
First think first, as I said earlier, forget B450, aim B550/X570 (both support 3600 and way better RAM speeds). Second, I greatly doubt the price difference between 3200 and 3600 will be of just 10$. The 3600 ones you have seen should have poor timings (CL17 or worse). I wouldn't consider 3.600 memories if they weren't almost CL16 and better CL14; but you will find the price difference then will hurt you more your budget.
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08And I did read somewhere about how RAM needs to be set in the BIOS to take full advantage of it's rated speed (technically overclocking), so it'll be something I do even though I'm not big on overclocking. I'm definitely not going to OC the CPU or GPU.
I already told you so. ANY decent stick of DDR4 memory is rated at default speed of 2.400MHz; that's the maximum official speed that the industrial standard for DDR4 specifies (the JEDEC specification). Anything over that speed has to be enforced in BIOS and it's an overclock, even it's done through automated profiles configured in the RAM chips (XMP profiles), that the motherboards recognize and auto-adjust themselves once activated. Reliable brands and range of products either for the motherboard and the RAM DIMMs ensure that automatic adjustment to be safer. Gigabyte Aorus and G.Skill Ripjaws are safe bets for that subject.
So, if you want to run your Ryzen CPU at it's stock max RAM speed, you will have to overclock the RAM; even if it's an operation considered safer for the actual standards for that kind of stuff. And if you want to run the RAM at 3600 you will have to overclock it still more and also your CPU memory controller (to work over the 3200 base max speed). And to gain the best performance, you will have to overclock too the infinity fabric internal CPU bus to 1.800 too. The CPU and motherboard you choose is pretty capable of that without problem and what you purchase when buying RAM DIMMS over 2400 are modules that the manufacturer "grants" you they can work stable at that XMP overclocked profile. So technically it's an overclock but it's complexity is a joke and the safety level is very high.
There's also another option when purchasing 3.600 RAMs now for your Ryzen: downclock them. Make them run only at 3.200 BUT tight the timings (CL and other) to lower values to reduce the overall latency of the module. That will give you a nice boost in performance too, as good as even running higher clocks. But it's a bit more trickier to accomplish if you had never done it before. There's a software called DRAM Calculator for Ryzen (https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ry ... alculator/) that helps a lot with all that kind of configurations.
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08It's not easy to find a 75Hz G-sync compatible monitor lol. And I'm thinking because it wouldn't be that important on a monitor that can only display up to 75FPS. I'm not a serious gamer and don't plan to be, so I might just go with a 75Hz monitor and not worry about any kind of sync, unless I find one on sale for under $200 in the near future.
You will not find 75Hz G-sync monitors because nobody would pay the extra premium price of G-Sync for such high max refresh. Bear in mind that G-Sync CANNOT work under 30Hz refresh and FreeSync under 45 (approx). So, G-Sync on a max 75Hz would have very little margin to work. Why then exist FreeSync 75Hz monitors if they have worse working margin? Because FreeSync works with the basic standard hardware that any monitor MUST have already to comply with modern HDMI and DP specifications. So, as the hardware is already there, it can always be used even if the benefit isn't so much.
Reignman wrote: ↑11 Aug 2020 02:08Because now I'm leaning more toward the 2k side of things like you suggested. I'm shooting for 1440p down the road after all, so it would be nice not to have to buy a new monitor later.
As I linked before, there are monitors for a little extra cost that are 2K and good enough over the paper. But probably their image isn't so good as it sounds. I would prefer to don't change now the monitor, use some of the money to improve the rest of the PC now (like on the RAM); and wait a few month with the old monitor. When on black Fridays and such kind of sales at the end of the year, you will probably find some real good models (that could cost 350 to 400$ now) for around 280$ to 300$ and that would be a good purchase.
Last but not least, something I didn't mentioned because is not necessary now and you don't have budget: CPU cooling solution. The default Ryzen 7 cooler will be enough for a time (specially as you maintain well your computer). But for a long lasting system and if you ever purchase a better CPU, you must consider a better cooler. Want an advise? Noctua NH-U12A. PERIOD. Raise the middle finger to anything else out in the market: any prebuilt AIO or any fancy colors/RGB or any other useless garbage and even to most 15cm dual fan coolers will beat the dust before that one. I'm still perfectly cooling my actual R7 3700X with a bit lesser range Noctua that I purchased for my previous CPU... almost 12 years ago! (they sell cheap kits to upgrade to newer sockets, that's upgradability at the best). No noise, no vibrations, no bad performance, easy to maintain, easy to replace fans if ever you would had a problem (that you would not)... there's no discussion possible for anything that isn't a ultra-tier or hard-overclocked system.
Regards
