My build plan

[whispercat]

I'm currently running on fumes with a 14 year-old desktop. I planned to upgrade several times but either didn't have the money (laid off twice during that time) or didn't like the processor choices). I did come close one year when Haswell came out.

I think this is the year I finally do it. I have the money now, and the recent generational leaps in CPU speeds and price/performance make it the ideal time. Never built a computer from scratch before, so it will be an adventure.

After going back and forth in my mind forever between Intel and AMD, I eventually settled on AMD. Both are close in performance but AMD will let me upgrade to next gen on the same mobo. Higher upfront costs, but I think it's worth it. I do plan to get into video editing, but not for a couple of years. I need something now in the meantime.

Already bought:

- Ryzen 5 7600x (just bought at a huge discount. Will use this until Zen 5 comes out. I'm hoping Zen 5 will run cooler or with less power. If not, then I'll just upgrade to a 7900x or 7950x which I should be able to pick up cheap at that time).

- Noctua NH D15s cooler

- eloop fans

- Phanteks P600s case

Still to buy:

- Asus ProArt B650 Creator mobo

- RAM (ideally would like to get ECC memory, but still researching which mobos support it)

- Seasonic Prime 750px PSU.

- GPU: Will use the integrated graphics on the 7600x until I'm ready to do video editing. Hopefully the GPU landscape will look different in a couple of years. Will probably go with whatever Nvidia has at that time, although AMD is starting to catch up.


Let me know if I've overlooked anything.

[CA_Steve]

Storage

How much do you need? What's your game plan for it? How are you going to do backups?

Chances are you can get away with just an M.2 PCIe SSD for everything but archival storage and an 'only spinning during backup' SATA HDD for the latter.

I haven't seen any reviews for the motherboard by review sites or even as customer feedback on Amazon, etc. Looks like it came out in Oct.

[whispercat]

Storage

How much do you need? What's your game plan for it? How are you going to do backups?

Chances are you can get away with just an M.2 PCIe SSD for everything but archival storage and an 'only spinning during backup' SATA HDD for the latter.

I haven't seen any reviews for the motherboard by review sites or even as customer feedback on Amazon, etc. Looks like it came out in Oct.

Doh! Lol...yeah, forgot about storage.

I have two Samsung Pro SATA SSDs. One is in my current aging desktop, and another spare. I'm not sure yet if I'll get an M.2 NVMe drive right away for my new build. I just finished reading an article about the recent problems reported with Samsung 990 Pro's degrading rapidly over time, which has led Puget System's to stop using them in their builds. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/puget ... 0-pro-ssds

I worry about things like bit-error rates and longevity, as most companies have adopted TLC and QLC exclusively. I think only Samsung uses MLC (more reliable) anymore.

When I start getting into video editing though, I'll likely need an NVMe SSD. I'll put my working project files on that, and keep my OS and programs, and cache/temp files on the two SATA drives. I've got a TerraMaster 5 bay drive that I bought a while ago (not currently using), and will archive my files on HDDs in that.

[CA_Steve]

I worry about things like bit-error rates and longevity, as most companies have adopted TLC and QLC exclusively. I think only Samsung uses MLC (more reliable) anymore.

<shrug> I think it's all about lifetime writes. I doubt your usage will come close to the SSD's lifetime writes over the PC's lifetime.

You might look at some real world tests for recent middle of the road cost NVME drives to see if there is a performance benefit beyond your working files.

[Japanese Capacitor]

Bought components are fine, but I would think about planned ones:

- you seem money concerned, so better have enough reasons to pay B650 Creator's quite high price besides just you being a creator.

- given that it's first gen od DDR5 Ryzens, I would definitely go with ram confirmed on QVL list of chosen motherboard (if you would like to increase chances of your pc building debut being trouble-free)

- these times I would definitely go with ATX 3.0 PSU. Corsair RMx Shift is safe; good enough to make buying even better discussable and really quiet with long range of passive operation.