Opinion on new pc

[christophede aristizabal209]

Finaly got around to upgrading my sons and mine pcs, so we bought 2 of these for gaming.

Case	CORSAIR CRYSTAL SERIES 680X RGB GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)	Intel® Core™ i9 Eight Core Processor i9-9900KS (4.0GHz) 16MB Cache
Motherboard	ASUS® ROG MAXIMUS XI HERO: ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)	64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card	8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive	14TB SEAGATE IRONWOLF PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 256MB 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
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive	NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply	CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable	1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling	Noctua NH-U14S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste	COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
LED Lighting	50cm UV LED Strip
Sound Card	Creative Sound Blaster® Audigy Rx
Wireless/Wired Networking	ASUS PCE-AX58BT WiFi 6 (802.11ax) 2400Mbps/5GHz, 600Mbps/2.4GHz
USB/Thunderbolt Options	MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System	Genuine Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [MUP-00003]

 

[christophede aristizabal209]

The idea is for 2 good gaming pc's capable of handling VR games and running on 4k monitors with a few years worth of future proofing. The last pcs we had were pretty high spec at the time and lasted 5 years (Frankly theyre still considered reasonably specced even now) (Gone seem to be the days when we had to upgrade every 18 months).

Only drawback is we will finally have to have windows 10 instead of windows 7...... which will be a bit of a culture shock. Had to happen sooner or later.

I did not go for the very highest specced graphic cards, mostly because from what I see on gaming benchmarks there isnt a huge difference in performance whilst doubling the price of the card. Correct me if Im mistaken please.

 

[SpyderTracks]

There’s zero benefit to 64gb over 16Gb RAM for gaming, including vr. Really a lot of the build is overspecced without offering any performance gains. I’d suggest cancelling or amending them quite drastically.

 

[Oussebon]

I did not go for the very highest specced graphic cards, mostly because from what I see on gaming benchmarks there isnt a huge difference in performance whilst doubling the price of the card. Correct me if Im mistaken please.

You are very mistaken I'm afraid.

Have you received the PCS yet? Can you still amend the order? Or cancel and re-order?

Frankly if you'd already received them I'd encourage returning for a refund and starting over.

For 4k Gaming, here is the kind of difference between an RTX 2070 Super and an RTX 2080 ti

~35-40% more performance. Which in real terms in a modern title is the difference between ~50fps average and close to 70fps average, keeping you above 60 a heck of a lot more with higher settings.

Here is the difference between a ~£200 CPU (e.g. R5 3600) and your ~£600 CPU in 4k gaming:

(9900KS isn't on there, so just read 9900K... Techpowerup didn't even bother reviewing the -KS)

So basically no difference.

As above, 64 and 32gb RAM are a ludicrous waste for gaming.

The Ironwolf Pro drives are a waste of money versus the regular ones. As for needing a 14TB drive... c'mon.. if you need that much storage you should be looking at some serious network storage. And I wouldn't at all bother with Optane - I consider it a waste of an M.2 slot, personally.

I'd also drop the sound card, stick to the 'normal' AX200 wifi card, or rather get the AORUS Master with its built in wifi.

 

[christophede aristizabal209]

Ok thank you very much for that. Changed to the 2080ti 11gb. I have reasons for the 14tb drive and its not really a huge expense. Optane is cheap, if it makes any performance difference I dont mind having it. Sound sure, not really bothered one way or another.

 

[Oussebon]

The RAM won't improve performance one tiny bit.

And as above if you really need that kind of storage it's likely Network storage is an option you should look at instead.

 

[Scott]

Optane will do nothing..... less than nothing with a 14TB drive.

You could save an absolute fortune on those builds while having exactly the same performance. If you changed both to AMD builds you would have far more future sustainability than you have with the Intel.

 

[ubuysa]

Why 64GB of RAM? Unless you have some massively RAM-hungry application you haven't mentioned that is not only a complete waste of money, it's actually going to make overall performance worse. That's because Windows has to manage all that RAM and that takes time and uses CPU cycles. If all that RAM is being usefully used then that extra management time is worthwhile, but if most of that RAM is sitting idle (as it will be) then the additional management time is wasted and would have been better spent running application code. There is no such thing as a free lunch - installing 64GB of RAM isn't a no-cost option.

Planning to potentially store 14TB of user data on a single drive is unwise for many reasons...

How will you backup all that data? With potentially 14TB of data on a single point of failure you'll need regular and frequent backups. I was involved in storage management many decades ago and no storage manager would ever commit all their data to a single point of failure. And whilst we're talking backups, how will you backup that 1TB SSD? That a fair chunk of data right there and when an SSD fails the data is generally gone for good.

You say rather cryptically that 'you have reasons for the 14TB drive'. If that means you have one application needing to store 14TB of data then a single drive might not offer the best performance. Windows can only have one I/O operation (input/output) running on each drive at a time, so if your data hungry application is multithreaded and multiple threads are trying to access the drive you'll see lots of queuing and awful performance. Similarly, if you have many concurrently running applications that all want to do I/O to that one drive you'll see lots of queuing again and similarly poor performance.

I don't know what the maximum seek time of that 14TB drive actually is, but if the drive becomes fragmented (as it will because of the way storage management works) you could be looking at some seriously big seek chains if fragments are scattered across the disk (as they may well be) and that will also result in dreadfully poor performance.

Optane is in my (fairly experienced) view a solution looking for a problem. I've worked with cached storage a fair bit in my long career and it provides significant benefit only in a fairly narrow range of data access patterns, outside of those data access patterns it can make performance worse by increasing the total access time. A 32GB cache fronting a 14TB drive is just not going to help enough to make the cost worthwhile, if it helps at all. Whether it's going to help depends on what you want to use that 14TB drive for, and you're not saying.

You are aware that with that 802.11AX WiFi card you're only going to see those sorts of data rates if you pair it with a new 802.11AX access point?

 

[christophede aristizabal209]

Thank you all for the advice. I've made some adjustments based on it. Yes the RAM is excessive and will likely remain largely unused but maybe that will change over the next few years and the performance hit from 'too much RAM' is very small indeed compared to not having enough. Not strapped for cash so paying for the 'just in case' isn't a problem. The size of the drive is useful in that I have about 6-7 TB worth of stuff and data on my current system and I backup any of it that is critical. Perhaps two smaller drives would be better but that would occupy an extra slot in the pc. I also have a couple of large 8TB externals so it is possible to backup anything I need. Most of the data is non critical so again its not a problem. The SSD with the system will be backed up onto an external drive. Keeping the drives defragged is something we do already.

These are not systems for work, mostly leisure, though my son will use his for university projects, so nothing is critical that is not backed up. Mostly going to be used for games, VR applications and video streaming. Some photo and sound editing. A little bit of movie making and video editing.

Yes I am aware of the Wifi requirements. Overall Im happy with the specs. Upgraded the video cards to make better use of the system. Cheers friends.

 

[Oussebon]

Thank you all for the advice. I've made some adjustments based on it. Yes the RAM is excessive and will likely remain largely unused but maybe that will change over the next few years and the performance hit from 'too much RAM' is very small indeed compared to not having enough.

Let's be 100% clear. There is 0 benefit to 64gb RAM for gaming, now, or in the future. By the time a future PC game could benefit from more than 16gb RAM, it will not matter if you have 16gb, 32gb or 128gb. Because the rest of your system will be a bottleneck long before RAM quantity is a factor.

32gb would be generously more than enough for casual video and photo editing. Indeed so too would 16gb, most likely.

Drop to 16gb or 32gb RAM and find something else to spend the money on that might theoretically, potentially, maybe have some actual benefit to you

 

[Scott]

Fancy ordering a 3rd and sending it my way?

 

[ubuysa]

Perhaps two smaller drives would be better but that would occupy an extra slot in the pc.

From a performance viewpoint, more smaller drives is a better option because it allows for multiple concurrent I/Os. The key to getting the best performance is to understand the requirements of the applications you plan to use, many applications specify multiple drives for best performance in their 'system specifications', so do read those carefully. If you plan to run multiple concurrent applications then separating their data across several drives can stop one data hungry application from destroying the I/O performance of the others. In addition, if you plan to partition that 14TB drive then you would most definitely be better off performance-wise in getting several smaller drives, each the size of one of the partitions you would have created. Using extra drive bays really shouldn't be a consideration, spec the PC for your needs not to save bays. Data storage I/O is a major performance bottleneck and some storage planning beforehand will pay dividends over just buying the biggest drive you can.

Keeping the drives defragged is something we do already.

But not the SSD of course.