2K Intel Gaming Desktop PC

[Erasamus]

Hi Guys.
Any comments on my build, im still pre order so can change anything. I'm replacing my 2011 PC so not up to date on latest specs. Looking at other threads seems a lot of recommendations for Ryzen based for gaming but I thought the Intel was faster so have been looking at mid-high range i7. I selected Intel Optane memory, will this speed up my HDD. I would also like recommendation for a new monitor around 24". I want to run Shadow of the Tomb Raider at high/ultra settings.
Thanks

QTY
1
£1,616.67
ex VAT
£1,940.00
inc VAT and Delivery

Case
LIAN LI LANCOOL II GAMING CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™ i7-10700K Eight Core (3.8GHz @ up to 5.0GHz)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z490 UD (LGA1200, USB 3.2, CrossFireX) - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE IRONWOLF PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 128MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
Intel Optane Memory
32GB INTEL® M10 OPTANE MEMORY - USE WITH MECHANICAL HDD
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100x Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Ultra Quiet Fans
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Cable Management
3 x PCS 1.5M Zip Cable Tidy - Professional Cable Management
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 18 working days
Promotional Item
Get Rainbow Six Siege: Gold Edition with select NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs!
Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z490-overclocked/AXZ3xTCKSc/

 

[Erasamus]

HI.
Thankyou for your comments and l have decided to choose the monitor first, looking at 1440p monitor with 144hz refresh rate and I will probably choose a Ryzen CPU and wait for the release of the new GPUs and then reconfigure.

 

[Erasamus]

Having read more of the excellent posts and replies I have reconfigured and included a new monitor.


Case
LIAN LI LANCOOL II GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF X570-PLUS GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 520 GEN 4 PCIe NVMe (up to 5000MB/R, 4400MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Lite 240 High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Extra Case Fans
1x 120mm Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Monitor
IIYAMA G-MASTER GB2760QSU-B1 27"
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
TIMED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND - MON-FRI (BEFORE 2PM)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 18 working days
Promotional Item
Get Rainbow Six Siege: Gold Edition with select NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs!
Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/TgUr5yCxqk/

• https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/why-buy/#iso

 

[johtri]

Why the Ryzen 7 3700X or 3800XT for mostly gaming ?, unless your multi-rendering using photoshop , streaming etc whilst gaming then you could save even more money on buying a Ryzen 5 3600XT or even lower as for most games it is the GPU that's more important though some newer games will utilise the CPU cores more but very few if any at the moment utilise more than 4 so 6-core is where you want to be atm as you can always upgrade to a better CPU in a few years when the time comes , the Ryzen 5 3600XT is more than capable of driving information to the GPU without "bottle necking" and using the extra money you can save you can put towards in a 2TB SSD instead of the 2TB HDD as these are becoming more obsolete (though they still have their uses) due to the slow speeds compared to a SSD or even faster M.2NVME drive which are becoming much cheaper these days, games will load faster from these compared to a HDD also when you want to transfer large game files or any files for that matter then you will wish you had an SSD or an M.2 NVME drive over a HDD .. trust me i replaced my HDD and now my 4-core gaming PC feels so much faster and so much better for it .

 

[Scott]

Why the Ryzen 7 3700X or 3800XT for mostly gaming ?, unless your multi-rendering using photoshop , streaming etc whilst gaming then you could save even more money on buying a Ryzen 5 3600XT or even lower as for most games it is the GPU that's more important though some newer games will utilise the CPU cores more but very few if any at the moment utilise more than 4 so 6-core is where you want to be atm as you can always upgrade to a better CPU in a few years when the time comes , the Ryzen 5 3600XT is more than capable of driving information to the GPU without "bottle necking" and using the extra money you can save you can put towards in a 2TB SSD instead of the 2TB HDD as these are becoming more obsolete (though they still have their uses) due to the slow speeds compared to a SSD or even faster M.2NVME drive which are becoming much cheaper these days, games will load faster from these compared to a HDD also when you want to transfer large game files or any files for that matter then you will wish you had an SSD or an M.2 NVME drive over a HDD .. trust me i replaced my HDD and now my 4-core gaming PC feels so much faster and so much better for it .

It's all about the return of investment and the expectations of longevity.

When the budget is tight, the 3600XT is a fantastic chip for gaming, in fact so is the 3300X (which is where I would start personally with lower budgets). Once you get into mid/high budget ranges you can look to consider future gaming needs and ideally higher frequency chips. The 3800XT allows for 4.7Ghz gaming, which isn't a kick in the shirt off of Intel.... and with it's improved architecture (IPC) it makes it even closer than paper would suggest. You can't get to this level with the 3600XT and the usefulness of that higher clock speed will come into its own over time.

New consoles are employing 8 core/16 thread AMD chips. Being on the same architecture and makeup will allow for easier porting and better performance due to the games being optimised for this sort of layout. It's well known how much of an impact this has on gaming performance.

Simply with both of the above points this shows the longevity that such a chip will likely offer. You will get further down the line before needing to consider an expensive upgrade. Buying 2 CPUs over the course of a handful of years would be wasteful to me. Buying one that has you covered over the course without having to dig into the innards has its own benefits (once you start pulling at a thread you end up buying a new jumper).

Now, don't take this the wrong way..... but in my mind sacrificing PC performance for storage performance is just bonkers. Plugging in a HDD, as you have found, is one of the easiest upgrades that anyone can do and it can be done at any stage during the lifetime of the system. From the build above the primary drive is an extremely fast M2 NVME drive, this allows the system to be blisteringly quick. Sure you may need to wait an extra 10 seconds on the game loading but that's hardly an inconvenience compared to the plus points of going for a high end build to begin with.

 

[Erasamus]

Thankyou for the interesting points raised on the CPU. I opted for the Ryzen 7 3700x in the end. As a newbie to custom build I initially thought I had to have the fastest CPU from intel and obsessed with having a I7- 9600k and a RTX2080s and hadn't considered much else.
I now realised that it is unrealistic to build a balanced machine on 2k with these components and I hadn't taken a monitor into account either.
1 month on and I wouldn't even consider Intel, I am thinking of my preferred resolution and monitor first and that the RTX2070S will cope with pretty much anything I want to do at 1440p, so thankyou to all the resident advisors for the guides and posts on these forums and I would advise anyone to read at least 20 posts on here before they commit their hard earned cash.

 

[johtri]

Tbh You have a fair point but all i am saying is when you go to SSD or an Nvme drive from a HDD you will never go back to using a HDD unless you need a very large storage disk , but if you want speed overall in basically everything then SSD or NVME is way to go.. as ERASAMUS explained at first how he wanted Quote : " I selected Intel Optane memory, will this speed up my HDD. " .
I mean why bother with an HDD in first place

 

[ubuysa]

Tbh You have a fair point but all i am saying is when you go to SSD or an Nvme drive from a HDD you will never go back to using a HDD unless you need a very large storage disk , but if you want speed overall in basically everything then SSD or NVME is way to go.. as ERASAMUS explained at first how he wanted Quote : " I selected Intel Optane memory, will this speed up my HDD. " .
I mean why bother with an HDD in first place

It's just not cost effective to simply buy the fastest drive you can without considering what you'll be using it for.

Windows and programs that need a fast load time do benefit from the fastest NVMe drive you can afford, but where user data is concerned the most cost effective solution depends entirely on the data types you have.

Music and video files for example, gain zero performance benefit from being on any type of SSD, so paying for an expensive NVMe drive for this type of data is a complete waste of money. For these types of data an HDD is the most cost effective option.

Even user data that does benefit from an SSD (high res images, large databases, etc.) don't need the blistering speeds of an NVMe SSD, a cheaper M.2 ACHI or a SATA SSD will provide excellent performance at a fraction of the cost of an NVMe drive.

It's really necessary to understand what you need to store on your drives and to choose the most cost effective drive for your data types - the budget (and the chassis) allowing of course.

 

[Scott]

Tbh You have a fair point but all i am saying is when you go to SSD or an Nvme drive from a HDD you will never go back to using a HDD unless you need a very large storage disk , but if you want speed overall in basically everything then SSD or NVME is way to go.. as ERASAMUS explained at first how he wanted Quote : " I selected Intel Optane memory, will this speed up my HDD. " .
I mean why bother with an HDD in first place

I think you may be mis-reading the spec of the build. It has an M2 drive on there as the primary drive. The 2TB drive is purely for archive storage and older files. The system will be blisteringly quick with the M2 as the main

I would never recommend a system nowadays without an SSD/M2 drive as they would just feel like they were crawling.

 

[johtri]

Yes its good to have a fast NVME drive for the OS as the primary drive but doesnt have to be 512GB either , the 256GB would do just as nice but i would only use that for the OS as i would if it were the 512GB one , i wouldn't have it any other ways tbh ... i get where you are coming from , but if you want a gaming PC close on £2000 and if you can afford that sort of money then you would want fast load up times too , i know i would ( Remember HDD drives were once the price the SSD are at now) .. and to be fair SSD is about half the price from where they were this time last year and saying that games only take approx 10 secs longer is total none sense , some games can take a whole lot longer to load and your gaming experiences start from there.

 

[Scott]

Yes its good to have a fast NVME drive for the OS as the primary drive but doesnt have to be 512GB either , the 256GB would do just as nice but i would only use that for the OS as i would if it were the 512GB one , i wouldn't have it any other ways tbh ... i get where you are coming from , but if you want a gaming PC close on £2000 and if you can afford that sort of money then you would want fast load up times too , i know i would ( Remember HDD drives were once the price the SSD are at now) .. and to be fair SSD is about half the price from where they were this time last year and saying that games only take approx 10 secs longer is total none sense , some games can take a whole lot longer to load and your gaming experiences start from there.

I'm not going to sit and debate or argue with you. We don't agree, and that's honestly OK. We are both entitled to our opinions

If you are going to present an argument for load times though, I wouldn't choose an advertisement on a product trying to exemplify their reasoning for purchasing

I'm happy to contest reasoned research and have a good debate when I feel there is merit to the discussion. Here I just don't feel that way so would rather just abstain. Hope you understand.