PC Upgrade.

[HarrisHawk]

I'm going to be upgrading my Gaming PC in a few months. So far this is what I have chosen for the build.

What do you think? Should I change anything?

Case: Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB White.
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 Tomahawk.
CPU Cooler: Standard Wraith Prism RGB.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X.
RAM: 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 3200MHz.
HDD's: 8TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5''. 2TB Seagate 2.5'' Barracuda.
PSU: Corsair RMx Series White RM750X.
OS: Windows 10 Professional 64 Bit.

 

[Jca93]

First off, nice build. I have had a 3700x for 2 years and love it. I am doing research to build a racing rig PC for a co-worker and have questions (not criticism).
1. What kind of gaming are you doing in what resolution? FPS, racing, role-playing?
2. I noticed no gpu listed, what’s your ideal gpu if you could find it at MSRP?
3. Why a 3700x instead of 5600x which is faster and cheaper? Do you need the extra cores/threads?

Thoughts- check pros/cons of 5600x and faster RAM assuming it’s compatible with MOBO. Other than that a great set up.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

In addition to the above, I don't believe the 3700X has integrated graphics, so you would definitely need a graphics card even if you wanted to do just basic work.

Also, why no SSD? I would recommend a decent sized SSD for your OS and applications. Though you will need more space if you also want to store games on the SSD.

 

[Jca93]

In addition to the above, I don't believe the 3700X has integrated graphics, so you would definitely need a graphics card even if you wanted to do just basic work.

Also, why no SSD? I would recommend a decent sized SSD for your OS and applications. Though you will need more space if you also want to store games on the SSD.

I believe the 2.5” drive is an SSD. The traditional type vs NVMe.

 

[HarrisHawk]

In addition to the above, I don't believe the 3700X has integrated graphics, so you would definitely need a graphics card even if you wanted to do just basic work.

Also, why no SSD? I would recommend a decent sized SSD for your OS and applications. Though you will need more space if you also want to store games on the SSD.

My current GPU is the PowerColor AMD Red Dragon Radeon RX480 8GB.

At the moment the build is on hold as the prices for everything keep jumping up and down constantly. I'm waiting for things to stabilize. My current Gaming PC's still on Windows 8.1 Professional 64 Bit. I've never bothered with SSD's. I've always gone for the Seagate Barracuda's. Either 2.5'' or 3.5''.

Someone told me that SSD's fail more often so than a traditional HDD. I don't know if that's the case though.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

My current GPU is the PowerColor AMD Red Dragon Radeon RX480 8GB.

Ah, that makes sense.

At the moment the build is on hold as the prices for everything keep jumping up and down constantly. I'm waiting for things to stabilize. My current Gaming PC's still on Windows 8.1 Professional 64 Bit. I've never bothered with SSD's. I've always gone for the Seagate Barracuda's. Either 2.5'' or 3.5''.

Someone told me that SSD's fail more often so than a traditional HDD. I don't know if that's the case though.

Yeah, it's not the greatest time to build a computer.

I've heard the opposite about SSDs. I found some data from a data center. It's not exactly apples to apples, but it doesn't show anything concerning:

Are SSDs Really More Reliable? Or Are Hard Disks Harder Than We Thought?

Do solid-state disks (SSDs) last longer than traditional hard disks? A new study shows that hard disks don't give up without a fight

www.forbes.com

SSDs are worth it.

 

[G.T.Ace]

I've always gone for the Seagate Barracuda's. Either 2.5'' or 3.5''.

Someone told me that SSD's fail more often so than a traditional HDD. I don't know if that's the case though.

Seagate has horrible failure rates and there's absolutely no reason to not get an SSD except maybe the price.
Trade off some capacity against speed. The board has two M.2 slots, use them, seriously.
Crucial, WD, and Samsung make the best ones.

 

[HarrisHawk]

Seagate has horrible failure rates and there's absolutely no reason to not get an SSD except maybe the price.
Trade off some capacity against speed. The board has two M.2 slots, use them, seriously.
Crucial, WD, and Samsung make the best ones.

I didn't know that about Seagate. I've had my Seagate External Hard Drives for years and they've never gone wrong. Even one of my first one's that I still have.

The 8TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5'' was going to be my main drive with my OS on. Other than Seagate which 8TB HDD would you recommend.

Ah, that makes sense.

Yeah, it's not the greatest time to build a computer.

I've heard the opposite about SSDs. I found some data from a data center. It's not exactly apples to apples, but it doesn't show anything concerning:

Are SSDs Really More Reliable? Or Are Hard Disks Harder Than We Thought?

Do solid-state disks (SSDs) last longer than traditional hard disks? A new study shows that hard disks don't give up without a fight

www.forbes.com

SSDs are worth it.

Yeah. The PowerColor AMD Red Dragon Radeon RX480 8GB is ok. I've not overclocked it or anything. It runs stock standard. GPU's are way too expensive at the moment. The one I have is still going strong though.

Are there any other cases that look similar to the ''Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB''? I did find the Corsair 4000D Airflow but I wasn't sure which 120mm RGB fan's would be compatible with it as the Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB comes included with three iCUE SP120 RGB Elite 120mm fans.

 

[G.T.Ace]

The 8TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5'' was going to be my main drive with my OS on. Other than Seagate which 8TB HDD would you recommend.

For what do you need an 8TB HDD?
I wouldn't recommend any. If your budget is limited get yourself a 500GB or if possible 1TB M.2 SSD for your system and often used programs and stock the rest up with SATA SSDs. Or, if you can, everything as M.2. As a CPU cooler I'd suggest a be quiet! Dark Rock 4 Pro.

Are there any other cases that look similar to the ''Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB''? I did find the Corsair 4000D Airflow but I wasn't sure which 120mm RGB fan's would be compatible with it as the Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB comes included with three iCUE SP120 RGB Elite 120mm fans.

Ignore RGB and rather focus on airflow, dust protection and capacity.

 

[Jca93]

For what do you need an 8TB HDD?
I wouldn't recommend any. If your budget is limited get yourself a 500GB or if possible 1TB M.2 SSD for your system and often used programs and stock the rest up with SATA SSDs. Or, if you can, everything as M.2. As a CPU cooler I'd suggest a be quiet! Dark Rock 4 Pro.


Ignore RGB and rather focus on airflow, dust protection and capacity.

Concur with SSDs. If you’re going with a 3700x you can use the included cpu cooler as mentioned in your original post if you’re not going to overclock the cpu. I’ve used the wraith cooler with no problems. I second sacrificing raw storage space for speedy M.2 and/or SATA SSDs. SSDs are a huge improvement when it comes to data access and start up speeds. It also makes your computer quieter because you don’t have the traditional HDD spinning all the time. A big HDD and AIO cpu cooler can always be added later, if needed, when you can get them on sale.

 

[Dave A]

As a CPU cooler I'd suggest a be quiet! Dark Rock 4 Pro.

I will second this, I'm using a Dark Rock 4 Pro to cool a 5800X and it does it with ease, it's also also very quiet as it's name suggests. Though I must add,my build also has 3 120mm Silent Wings 3 fans (2 front and 1 top), 1 80mm Silnet Wings 3 fan at the rear and the 2 Silent Wings 3 fans attahed to the Dark Rock Pro 4 that came with it.

The only downside to the Dark Rock Pro 4 is due to it's size you have to make sure it won't conflict with the case or RAM you're fitting.

@HarrisHawk depending on what ou are using your PC for, definitely consider a 5600X over the 3700X.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Yeah. The PowerColor AMD Red Dragon Radeon RX480 8GB is ok. I've not overclocked it or anything. It runs stock standard. GPU's are way too expensive at the moment. The one I have is still going strong though.

I was in a similar situation. I was using a HD7950 until I could get a 3060.

Are there any other cases that look similar to the ''Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB''? I did find the Corsair 4000D Airflow but I wasn't sure which 120mm RGB fan's would be compatible with it as the Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB comes included with three iCUE SP120 RGB Elite 120mm fans.

I've never used RGB fans before, but I would think any 120mm should be able to work generally. Fans depend more on the motherboard and power supply connections.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

I didn't know that about Seagate. I've had my Seagate External Hard Drives for years and they've never gone wrong. Even one of my first one's that I still have.

The 8TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5'' was going to be my main drive with my OS on. Other than Seagate which 8TB HDD would you recommend.

I would recommend an NVMe M.2 SSD as your main drive with Windows 11 OS for the upgraded storage stack. It will probably be the biggest PC upgrade you will noticeably experience and future games will likely start to have a SATA SSD as minimum requirement. You can get an 8TB M.2 NVMe drives but they are a bit pricey. 1TB and 2TB are very affordable nowadays. You can get a 2.5" 8TB SATA SSD for more of a reasonable price if high capacity storage is required, I have one as an external drive for backups mainly because I think it is likely significantly more reliable than hard drives but also a lot quicker to use. However, if you want to risk going with the noisy hard drives, then still make sure you have an SSD as your main drive to get majority of the speed improvement for day to day use but you still have the capacity benefit on the other drives.

 

[Samus]

An SSD as a boot drive is still the biggest single general performance upgrade you can add to any PC. Considering the low prices for a basic 2.5" SATA drive which will still stomp an HDD it's an absolute no brainer, but even the NVME drives are not that pricey.

I run a 256GB ADATA XPG SX8200 NVME as a boot drive as I really don't require any bigger, but now prices have come down even further the 512GB is a much better buy per GB, only £55 in the UK. I think pretty much the same as I paid for my 256GB drive in early 2020.

 

[G.T.Ace]

An SSD as a boot drive is still the biggest single general performance upgrade you can add to any PC.

True, but it also changes gaming performance a lot. Especially with games that stream from the drive (ie open world games).

 

[Saidur_Ali]

An SSD as a boot drive is still the biggest single general performance upgrade you can add to any PC. Considering the low prices for a basic 2.5" SATA drive which will still stomp an HDD it's an absolute no brainer, but even the NVME drives are not that pricey.

I run a 256GB ADATA XPG SX8200 NVME as a boot drive as I really don't require any bigger, but now prices have come down even further the 512GB is a much better buy per GB, only £55 in the UK. I think pretty much the same as I paid for my 256GB drive in early 2020.

1TB is the sweet spot for price at the moment. This 1TB M.2 NVMe is only £68.98.

 

[HarrisHawk]

I was just looking for an M.2 SSD on eBay and found this.

Samsung SSD 970 980 1TB, 2TB, 500GB 250GB PCIe M.2 (2280) NVMe EVO Plus 3500MB/s | eBay

Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB 500GB 1TB 2TB. Samsung 980 250GB 500GB 1TB. Interface PCIe 3.0 (X4). S. Read Performance 3500 MB/s 1TB. Connectivity 1 x M.2 (PCIe). 3300 MB/s 1TB. Model 970 EVO PLUS &. Digital Storage Capacity 250GB 500 GB 1000 GB.

www.ebay.co.uk

Would the 1TB 980 NVMe M.2 be sufficient?

I already have a secondary 2TB Seagate Barracuda in my current Gaming PC so I'd have that as well.

I think I'm still going to go for the 8TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5''. Only because I have terabytes of Assetto Corsa mods. It'll take days/weeks to put them all across. That's the only reason why I'm going for the 8TB. I could maybe go for a 6TB instead.

I've got to upgrade my PSU as well. I currently have a 650W ATNG PSU. I've never had a problem with it. But I think it might be a good idea to upgrade the PSU as well.

I was considering the Corsair RMx Series White RM750x.

I did also consider the ''Corsair iCUE 465X RGB White'' instead of the other Corsair case I mentioned. The Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB is slightly bigger than the iCUE 465X. I might go for the iCUE 465X instead as it's slightly smaller and does not really take up much room. In terms of both cases how sufficient are they for airflow?

Ok. I've decided this is what I'm going to now go with for the build.

Case: Corsair iCUE 4000X RGB White.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X.
CPU Cooler: Stock Wraith RGB Prism Cooler.
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 2x8GB 3200MHz White.
HDD's: 8TB Seagate Barracuda 3.5''. Samsung 1TB 980 NVMe M.2. Seagate Barracuda 2TB 2.5''.
PSU: Corsair CX-F RGB 750W.

As for the OS I'll have to wait until Microsoft releases Windows 11 online as I've had a look and I can't find it on eBay or elsewhere as of yet. As for the Seagate Barracuda 3.5'' main drive with the OS on, it might be 8TB or 6TB.

 

[Saidur_Ali]

Soon as your system supports PCIe4 x4 M.2 drive, I would recommend getting one of those instead. You can get a Crucial P5 Plus for £125.99 () but probably better to pay a bit extra for the faster Western Digital SN850 at £139.98 ().

Wow, that's a lot of mods. My AC install size is less than 44GB. Would a 4TB SSD be enough? I think it is better to avoid 3.5" drives for acoustic reasons and load times.

For OS, if you still have 8.1 license, you might be able to activate on your new machine. Then you can do free upgrade to Windows 10 and then do a free upgrade to Windows 11.

 

[G.T.Ace]

Only because I have terabytes of Assetto Corsa mods.

Why? You could easily delete half of it, most of that will be trash anyway.