Okay, so, remember last year(and all the other threads I've made)?

Hardware Build a PC
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Very nice. My side is showing it as $1007. Kinda more expensive than I thought. Swore it’d be more around the $600 or $700 area for not having a GPU… Fricken ram prices…

Anyway, it kinda caught me off guard though. Guess I didn’t state clearly enough that it was okay if it wasn’t ITX or in the Prodigy. I rethought it, and going dual channel 2x8gb on even a micro-atx board would still leave a path for 32gb later down the line.

So if you can find me a small case that looks nice and has good airflow, as well as a micro-atx mobo with, as you said, good VRM’s and lots of space for them so they can cool, then I think that will be my final build-ish.

Because I kinda also think I just want the big SSD. Remember I said there’s a medium possibility of video editing/rendering? I know you said I could add it, but after that one guy on one of my old threads said ‘some programs will only install to and run on the boot drive’ it kinda made me shy away from the idea of a small boot drive.

I REALLY don’t wanna have to deal with a full drive, not in the capacity limit reached or the slow-down sense. And you’re also forgetting the other thing I said I read about with windows having a limit of 2tb for hard drive size?

You did a really good job, though. I like the idea of that monitor quite a lot, but I will prefer to “suffer” through with my current one until I can purchase a much better one. Like I said. 1440p IPS 100hz+, hopefully HDR with adaptive sync.

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Didn’t read the whole thread, don’t know if OP has decided on dual or single channel. But here’s a good video showing memory performance. At 21:32 he shows a graph comparing the single channel and dual channel results.


Hope it helps some
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Definitely dual channel, then. And, as I said in my exact previous post, I’m okay with micro-atx and a bigger case. Just no monsters, and it has to flow well, look good, and fit the color scheme.

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Not sure that’s quite possible if you want 16 gigs fast ram and all other stuff…
We can cut down on some things, but it won’t come down to 600 and covering all requirements.
As for the Windows thing and the 2TB hard drives - there are drivers for use of larger ones, so that’s not an issue. Also I gave you 240GB boot drive. You won’t run out of boot space…

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On a apu?

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I’m telling you I will. My 300gb hard drive is 50gb away from being full. I have a few dozen .75-2.25gb movies on board, and only 3 games. Games are growing to upwards of 50gb nowadays, and I plan on having about 10-15 installed at any given time. I want them to load quickly, as well. I’m really thinking a big SSD would be my best bet.

As far as lowering other prices, the video I just watched proved 3200mhz was top tit and anything more was diminishing returns, it seemed. So you can bump the memory down to there.

Nix the water cooler and monitor, and like I said, I’m good with a bigger mobo and case, it doesn’t have to be ITX anymore, although, I’d still like to keep it on the smaller side. Good airflow and clean looks are key.

I wanna ask for just a liiiittle more PSU. Like 650 watt, maybe 700. Couldn’t see needing more than that, even with multiple fans, and upgrading to a stronger processor and more ram or a hearty GPU.

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https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VZj8jy
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor ($149.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($49.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Trident Z 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($167.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: ADATA - XPG SX6000 256GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($62.99 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Storage: Toshiba - Product Series:DT01ACA 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($51.99 @ Amazon)
Case: NZXT - H400 (White) MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($114.98 @ NZXT)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - FOCUS Plus Gold 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply ($75.98 @ Newegg)
Total: $673.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-07-27 01:26 EDT-0400

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Now THAT, my friend, is much more like it. Only thing that concerns me here is the mobo being B350. Will it still overclock and be a good board for upgrades? Say, if I decide next year or so that I want a more powerful Zen chip and get a 3700x or something and want to overclock that? ((Basically asking the difference betwee b350 and x370 or w/e))

And I have to still ask, do you really think a large HDD and small NVME are the best combo? I mean, yeah, I’d have a lot more space with movies and pics and everything moved to the HDD, I’m just worried about the NVME not being as fast as you advertise and that the cost could be spent on getting simply a bigger normal SSD.

((Seriously not trying to throw dirt at your build or skills or time taken to do this at all. This is killer work and just about perfect, I’m just trying to understand things. ))

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I can push it to X370 or even 470, but that will easily add extra say 50-100$ on top.

The board is not terrible. I run its larger brother B350 Pro4 (atx). It runs my not overclocked 95W 1700X just fine. The VRMs are warm though, so I wouldn’t recommend any serious overclock of an 8 core and larger. There are rumors 3700X or whatever will have more than 8 cores, so I definitely would not overclock that…
On top of that I forgot to add a couple fans for the front to help push air in the case. I would recommend Arctic F12 or F14. They are black and white, quiet, cheap, very high quality and have 6 years warranty.

Yes. Short answer yes.
Long answer - I have a standard SSD and a HDD. I would soon move to an NVMe and a HDD. All important software will be on the NVMe. The games and the rest - on the HDD. The hard disk will spin up only when you use it. There is no reason to spend extra money on an SSD on top of that. The NVMe is large and fast enough for boot and software. For the stuff that need speed you have the NVMe. What’s left don’t really mind running off a HDD.
You can get larger SX6000 for the price of a decent SATA drive, so I see no reason to buy the slower SSD if it’s the same price.

I understand your concerns. And don’t worry, I’m not offended cause you ask me questions.
Here’s the thing. If you really want the speed of the SSD on top of the NVMe, go for it. 60$ can get you 256 gigs. However, don’t replace the NVMe with a sata drive.
Sata - 550Mb/s
SX6000 - 1Gb/s…
Almost double the performance for similar price.

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The airflow in the prodigy isn’t bad at all when it’s set up right, but man fuck building in that case. There’s so many better options out there.

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Looks good. Personally not a fan of watercoolers but that is personal preference.

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As far as overclocking the cpu, I only care about getting 4ghz base clock stable. Beyond that would be icing.

I’ll be sure to add some fans. Idk what I’ll choose on storage. You kinda got me on NVME, but there are even better drives out there. And I want my games to load fast, all 10-15(maybe more) that I’ll have installed at any time.

Only thing left to ask about is windows. I don’t have a copy, not even a disc to get the OS on the system, let alone a legal key. I wanna be all straight up with it this time, pirated windows was a pain for me(but I couldn’t live with vista, so I took what I could get).

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This is where you are mostly not going to see a difference between NVME and SATA. The load times are mostly identical. If you’re looking for extra performance here it will heavily depend on the game.

As far as windows goes theres a thing called kinguin, but its like fightclub around here so thats all im saying. oh and you can get the windows ISOs from microshaft themselves. Use something like rufus to put it on USB.

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Of course there are. There are 240GB drives, that read and write with over 2Gb speed, but they cost twice as much. On the other hand this one is as cheap as a standard SSD but faster. And you seem to be budget restricted at the moment.

I wasn’t either, but this one is dirt cheap and is a 240… Just clip it to the AMD stock bracket, like a stock cooler. It’s quiet, it have white LED on the pump, so it fits the build colors. It soaks a lot of heat. It’s huge overkill even for my 8 core.

Go to microsoft website, download a legal version of windows 10, you can easily run it without activating it and you will lose a few customization options and will have a watermark in the bottom right. After that you can start key hunting for a cheap Windows 10 key…

OK, let’s make one thing clear. The plan I thought we are following, is the games being installed ion the HDD… Games should go nowhere near the NVMe. The NVMe is purely windows and basic software drive. Games and stuff go on the hard drive.

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I want all-round performance. And multiple guys in here are saying that an NVME won’t provide much benefit real world. Yes, it’s dirt cheap and the same price as a comparably sized ssd, but, I think I need to tell you that I have a 2tb external hdd.

So for all round real world performance, wouldn’t just a single ssd be best? Especially in the large storage capacity that I want?

Also, if games should go nowhere near the NVMe then wtf is it at ~250gb for?

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The way I run my system is the games that are most played go on the NVME SSD. I have a second sata SSD for other stuff. Then there are games/data I rarely interact with and that goes on a 4tb mechanical.

I have a Samsung 960 evo 240gb, Samsung 850 evo 500gb, and HGST 4TB for reference. The difference between my 960 and 850 in game load times is imperceivable, and even between my HGST and the 850 isnt as big of a deal as you might expect. I havent measured for myself but it feels like its merely seconds. Perhaps double digit seconds but nothing I would pull my hair out over.

As far as the topic of games on your SSD…

Todays SSD are a bit of a different animal. You dont really want to fill them to capacity if you dont have to because of the way wear leveling works. A 240gb drive filled to capacity generally wont last as long as one filled to 120gb. Also ‘some’ SSDs can slow down when near capacity for reasons I wont get into (you can google to learn about that) but the general rule I’ve heard is 70%, though I dont know how much weight I would put on that. I have experienced slows near capacity first hand on cheaper drives. Not saying that will happen but that it can happen.

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That was almost exactly the way I was going to scale my system. OS, Chrome, stuff like that: NVMe. Games, videos to be edited, stuff I need quickly: SSD. Movies, pictures, documents, BS that doesn’t matter performance wise: Hard drive.

And I wanted each one about 4x bigger than the last. Which would mean a 128gb NVMe, 500gb SSD, and 2TB HDD. Or I could go 250, 1tb, 4tb. Which would give me room for at least my top 3-5 games or so to be on the NVMe, anyway.

Actually, If I did it this way, I may be able to just have the NVMe and order the other two later, while keeping all of my heavy data on my external drive. I rarely watch movies that I have downloaded or access my pics on my pc, anyway…

I think I’ll do that. F it. Give me a better mobo suggestion for more OCing and future proofing and I’ll make the parts list myself from there. Might even reconsider the AIO cooler. ((I really like that case, you nailed that one.))

Question, though. Back to the PSU. Lets say I loaded the case up with fans, had an AIO, and a highly OC’d high draw CPU replacing the 2400g some day. And, lets say whatever top tit card exists at the time and maxed out ram capacity, too. Would 650w actually support all of that safely in todays low TDP world? ((kinda doubt it))

I read you don’t want to draw on a PSU more than 80% what it’s rated. Also, this is just out of curiosity sake and wanting to know about this, I most likely won’t end up with a setup like that unless I hit the powerball or land a 6-figure income.

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There was a time in my life where I had my steam library on a 3tb external that was always hooked up. I’m not ashamed to admit. It got the job done.

For an overclocking board I would probably go with one of these given your case limitations. The options in the mATX space arent that great. If you didnt mind something a bit bigger, there are better options.

OR

AIOs are nice in space limited designs or if you like the look but something like a noctua nh d15 is pretty damn good on performance. Given your light overclocking requirement it might not be a bad way to go given theres little to go wrong with them. Even with a decent overclock the noctua would likely keep temps in check. Are AIOs going to perform better? generally yes. Is it worth the possible risk of failure? I dont know, I have an AIO thats 4 years old and has been in 3 builds with 0 issues, but thats just anecdotal.

It would likely be fine. I run a 600w with my 7700k and 1070 combo with 7 fans, AIO, Mild OC, and all kinds of peripherals. Most people over buy PSUs but there is a decent reason. A switch mode PSU is most efficient ~ 50% load. Its not a huge difference but there is a difference. Also gives you head room down the road for more power hungry components.

As a general rule that is acceptable but build quality of the PSU is a big factor. Something like a SeaSonic platinum PSU I would hold to a higher standard than a corsair bronze. I would expect to be able to load the SeaSonic up to full capacity before overload protection kicks in. The corsair I might expect to pop if I kept it like that.

The ratings dont actually tell you anything but efficiency of the PSU but in theory the higher efficiency PSU should have better components in it. This is unproven of course, make of it what you will.

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Okay. Seems like everything is pretty well set, then. As far as mobo, I really don’t care about its size so much as the total build size. I don’t want a giant monster sitting on my desk or floor, but it definitely doesn’t have to be itx. My. Current pc is 19" tall, 9" or 10" wide and like 22" long. The nzxt 400 looks fantastic.

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Well the nzxt 400 will only do mATX but the sweet spot for AM4 boards is ATX right now IMO. Stuff like the taichi or the strix boards would be ideal but its up to you what you want. Dont let me shit on your parade.