Help with £1600 budget

[ping]

Hi,

I've posted before, but have a bigger budget now. I'm aiming for around £1500, but don't mind going to about £1600 if there's value in it.

I also care less about storage than I did before. I have lots of spare drives lying around, and will just buy a new one at some point in the future when I actually need it, so no need for a storage drive at the moment. I chose the case because it looked like a good choice for adding drives to.

Main use will be number crunching, programming, and playing around with pen-testing/capture-the-flag stuff. I'm not really a PC gamer so gaming isn't a priority, but ideally it would cope with older games and be able to stream TV shows on one monitor while working on another.

I'd like minimum 32GB RAM as I'll sometimes use Virtual Machines and other RAM-intensive programs.

My main monitor is LG 21:9 UltraWide 25UM57. I have a second VGA monitor which I'll probably replace with something better in the future, but I'm undecided on what it would be.

My main OS will be Linux, so no operating system required (although I'll probably dual boot with Windows eventually).

My attempt is below. I tried to follow the recommendations in the guide and don't really understand motherboards... The guide seems to recommend a minimum of 650W PSU, although the configurator warns me that I only need 450W?

Grateful for any help!

Case
COOLERMASTER SILENCIO S600 QUIET MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-4.7GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
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 Hyper 212 (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler Black Edition
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
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
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Price: £1,489.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/p!hYxByQgR/

 

[ping]

Hi, just wondering if anyone has comments on the above. Especially whether the motherboard choice looks OK for the rest of it! Thanks

 

[DarTon]

The 5800X is a hot CPU and will require a better cooler than the CoolerMaster Hyper 212. Really at least a H100i. The B550 TUF motherboard is ok but at the margin the B550 Strix or TUF X570 might be better given superior VRM.

It's marginal but I'd go with Intel rather than AMD right now. If you can wait a month or so I think there is a decent chance you can get this for a bit less once the B660 motherboards are available on the configurator. A Z690 motherboard is overkill for a non K 12700. Plus hopefully PCS will include something like the CoolerMaster Hyper 212 (120mm) fan on their Intel cooling selection.

Depending on what your legacy storage looks like, I've put in two M2 drives since it's better to have that redundancy. Delete one if you already have an M2 drive. GPUs clearly aren't a focus for you but the AMD RX 6600 would deliver better performance at a slighly higher cost.

Case
COOLERMASTER SILENCIO S600 QUIET MID TOWER CASE - Not a fan of this case but limited choice if you want a internal DVD
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 12-Core Processor i7-12700 (2.1GHz) 25MB Cache - Outperforms 5800X and is relatively easy to cool
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 (LGA1700, USB 3.2, PCIe 5.0) - Would prefer cheaper B660 TUF board but not yet available
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready! - Consider AMD RX 6600 instead
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W) - Ultra fast PCIe4 drive for OS/programs
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 670p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3500MB/sR | 2500MB/sW) - Fast M2 PCIe3 drive for data
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM - Consider external drive to improve choice of cases
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET - Dont even consider going lower than this. If anything think about a 750W PSU since it will run quieter and also leave room for later upgrades
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 150 Series High Performance CPU Cooler - Would prefer something like Coolermaster Hyper but not available but 12700 is not hard to cool so this is adequate. If you want something really quiet consider a H100i AIO.
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Price: £1,515.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/intel-z690-pc/HMXg2jUpt6/

 

[ping]

Thanks for the help!

So is it no longer the case that AMD is generally the better choice, or is it just due to my budget? It seems to be recommended in the guide and usually when people post an Intel build here they are encouraged to swap to AMD.

Also just wondering if there's anything functional you don't like about the case that makes it a poor choice? I'm willing to ditch the DVD drive if there's more to it than just personal preference.

 

[ping]

Oh, and I could definitely wait a month or so if there's likely to be a saving by doing so. Although I've already put buying a new PC off for a long time!

 

[sck451]

Intel's new release (12th generation) is very strong, their strongest in years. AMD are in a bit of a holding pattern until releases later in the year. So for now Intel is probably a little ahead in most systems. The downside is that the overall platform cost is a little higher, as there are no particularly strong mid-range coolers available and there is only the top-tier Z690 chipset available.

That case is kind of OK, but it's not great for airflow (=cooling=performance). The 4000D is much better -- you could always get a USB DVD drive and stick it on top. Otherwise I'd wholly endorse @DarTon's build.