RTX 2060 or RTX 3060

[dani72]

I'm thinking of buying a new PCS build. I'm wondering what graphics card I should go for. I never play games on the PC. It is solely used for video editing using Magic Music Visuals & Nero Video as well as some bedroom DJ'ing & audio editing. I know that having a faster graphics card can make exporting videos quicker but would I really notice much of a difference between the RTX 2060 & RTX 3060? Ideally I'd go for the more recent graphics card, especially since it's not much dearer, but from what I can gather there's a lengthy wait for delivery of the 3000 series.

Another thing I was wondering is which motherboard brand I should go for. I had a Gigabyte one in my first custom (non PCS) build and it lasted 9 years but my most recent build had two of them die within 3 years. Are Asus motherboards better?

Any advice on the above would be appreciated.

 

[MrWilson]

Hi there,
What is your budget? There are a few people on here who are better equipped to deal with productivity builds so I will leave it in their capable hands, but having a budget to stick to will help them out a lot.
Is noise a factor, as you mentioned Audip work? Soundproofing tends to cost a bit extra, so if it isn't neccessary it gives a little extra to spend on the rest of the build.

 

[dani72]

Hi there,
What is your budget? There are a few people on here who are better equipped to deal with productivity builds so I will leave it in their capable hands, but having a budget to stick to will help them out a lot.
Is noise a factor, as you mentioned Audip work? Soundproofing tends to cost a bit extra, so if it isn't neccessary it gives a little extra to spend on the rest of the build.

My budget is flexible but I'd prefer not to go above €3,500 if possible. I don't need a monitor, keyboard or mouse and I'll probably reuse the sound card in my existing build.

I have a fair idea of what I'm going to get in my build it was just the graphics card I was unsure about.

 

[sck451]

It would be really helpful to see the whole build, especially in terms of a motherboard recommendation.

I'd think the 3060 would be better for you, but I'd have thought the 3060 Ti or 3070 would be better again. (With the 3080 there's both diminishing returns and diminishing stock!) I would be surprised if that couldn't fit in your budget.

 

[dani72]

It would be really helpful to see the whole build, especially in terms of a motherboard recommendation.

I'd think the 3060 would be better for you, but I'd have thought the 3060 Ti or 3070 would be better again. (With the 3080 there's both diminishing returns and diminishing stock!) I would be surprised if that couldn't fit in your budget.

To be fair I'm not really concerned about the budget as much as the wait time for the 3000 series graphics cards. All of them are listed as pre-order and I gather there's quite a wait to get them. I was hoping to get a new PC sooner rather than later.

 

[sck451]

There's an enormous wait for 3080s and 3060 Tis aren't even on offer from PCS at the moment. 3070s seem to be turned around quite quickly; I'm less sure about 3060s: I think the wait is longer.

Again, it would be helpful to see the full proposed build in order to offer the best advice!

 

[SpyderTracks]

To be fair I'm not really concerned about the budget as much as the wait time for the 3000 series graphics cards. All of them are listed as pre-order and I gather there's quite a wait to get them. I was hoping to get a new PC sooner rather than later.

Depends which card, it's really only the 3060ti, 3080 and RX6800XT that are low stocks.

 

[dani72]

There's an enormous wait for 3080s and 3060 Tis aren't even on offer from PCS at the moment. 3070s seem to be turned around quite quickly; I'm less sure about 3060s: I think the wait is longer.

Again, it would be helpful to see the full proposed build in order to offer the best advice!

Something like:

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 500D SE CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked Intel® Core™ i9-11900K Eight Core (3.50GHz @ up to 5.4GHz)
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Master (LGA1200, USB 3.2, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX, Wi-Fi) - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3060 - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
4TB SEAGATE IRONWOLF PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 128MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100x Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Ultra Quiet Fans
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
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
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
2 - 3 DAY DELIVERY TO REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Build Time
Standard Build - Subject to stock availability on pre-order products
Price: €3,240.00 including VAT and Delivery

 

[sck451]

Now, I'll preface this by saying that I am not familiar with the software you're talking about. The system requirements I can find online seem pretty low, so I'm definitely unsure if you need to spend anything like this much on a build.

But, if we presume that the normal rules for a video editing PC apply, then we can get you something much better for your budget. The key thing is to go for AMD rather than Intel. Partly because AMD is ahead in pretty much every way right now, and partly because the top-spec AMD processor has literally double the cores of the top Intel one. So let's go with that AMD processor, the 5950X. It is far more efficient in terms of power draw and heat output, and has far better performance on this kind of task. The overclock on the Intel chip won't do anything close to bridging the gap.

Then we can kit it out with the Crosshair motherboard, the 3070 as discussed, 64GB of RAM, a better storage configuration with more M.2 SSD space (and a normal desktop HDD, rather than a NAS one), a better power supply, and a better cooler. We can lose the special thermal compound and Bullguard. I've also suggested going down to the Silver warranty, because I don't think the Gold is worthwhile -- YMMV.

All this goes just a hair over the €3500 budget. You could trim that down a bit by downgrading to the Strix X570 motherboard and the 5900X CPU, at the cost of a bit of performance.

But I would want to know more about the software you're using, to make sure it really does need the money you're spending on hardware...

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 500D SE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16 Core CPU (3.4GHz-4.9GHz/72MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® CROSSHAIR VIII HERO WIFI (DDR4, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX/SLI) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB CORSAIR MP400 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 3480 MB/R, 1880 MB/W)
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
Corsair H100i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
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
NOT REQUIRED
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
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
2 - 3 DAY DELIVERY TO REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Build Time
Standard Build - Subject to stock availability on pre-order products
Price: €3,531.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/qTuE!RZFnr/

 

[Deleted member 17413]

For his programs a 5950X is not going to be a gain. From the info I can find, magic music visuals is heavily gpu bound, and not something that multithreads and Nero video seems to prefer 6 or 8 cores looking at the benchmarks on their site... 5900X would be a luxury and be of use for other stuff I suppose, but actual need here I think points at 5800X as the most suited, single core speed and 8 cores to best match the programs mentioned, with a gpu with grunt. Audio is going to be single core and RAM speed makes a difference here compared to 3200MHz, You can just drop the 5900X in the build below to a 5800X and save the 230 euros

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 500D SE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.8GHz/70MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX X570-F GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (2 x 16GB) - Contact PCS and ask for another 2 x 32GB sticks (about 200 Euros more I think)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
250GB Samsung 870 EVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW) - dedicated scratch drive
1st Storage Drive
4TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 5400RPM, 256MB CACHE - bulk storage
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W) - OS Drive/programs
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 520 GEN 4 PCIe NVMe (up to 5000MB/R, 4400MB/W) - Projects
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
Corsair H115i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler - would be tempted to phone PCS and ask for the H150i EC, Its maybe 15 Euros more, they would have to move three front fans to roof (2) and rear (1), config wont allow as front fans part of default case setup
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
NOT REQUIRED
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
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
2 - 3 DAY DELIVERY TO REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Build Time
Standard Build - Subject to stock availability on pre-order products
Price: €3,284.00 including VAT and Delivery - With amendments above by contacting PCS direct roughly 3500 Euros total, maybe a little over
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/fPZSG0hsGY/

 

[sck451]

Both sites seem to have pretty useless documentation for what they actually require, which is why my build is based around a generic video editing need.

My best guess from looking at the requirements is that you could get away with a 5600X and a 3060Ti, spend literally €1000 less and still have a competent build for these bits of software, but the documentation is so poor that I don't really know. (Personally, and I know I'm in a minority on this forum, I don't think the 5800X is a great value proposition for basically any purpose, but that's probably irrelevant to this thread.)

 

[Deleted member 17413]

For video editing you would sit around the 5800X or 5900X, even things like premiere pro prefer 8 cores and dont make much utilisation of more than that. A 5950 you are looking at a different kind of program, engineering/architecture/software development...heavy multithreading.
Nova Video had a mass of user benchmarks on different systems... with 6 core processors generally doing better than 8 core ones.
But this doesnt seem like heavy video editing to me either.

The music visuals also has several mentions about how its single thread, users even requesting or asking about why is doesnt multithread and info about it being gpu heavy and not being able to multithread due to the way it works, I dont see a 5950 being a good fit, 5900X as a push/luxury but the 5800X should do a clean job of it... I think a 5600X would not do so well with the varied set of needs.

 

[dani72]

For video editing you would sit around the 5800X or 5900X, even things like premiere pro prefer 8 cores and dont make much utilisation of more than that. A 5950 you are looking at a different kind of program, engineering/architecture/software development...heavy multithreading.
Nova Video had a mass of user benchmarks on different systems... with 6 core processors generally doing better than 8 core ones.
But this doesnt seem like heavy video editing to me either.

The music visuals also has several mentions about how its single thread, users even requesting or asking about why is doesnt multithread and info about it being gpu heavy and not being able to multithread due to the way it works, I dont see a 5950 being a good fit, 5900X as a push/luxury but the 5800X should do a clean job of it... I think a 5600X would not do so well with the varied set of needs.

I'm really not keen on spending too much money. My last PCS build died after less than 3 years so I'm wary of spending a lot of money on another PC in case the same thing happens again. How about something like this?

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 500D SE CASE
Overclocked CPU
Overclocked AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core (3.7GHz @ up to 4.7GHz)
Motherboard
ASUS® CROSSHAIR VIII HERO WIFI (DDR4, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX/SLI) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3060 - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
4TB SEAGATE IRONWOLF PRO 3.5", 7200 RPM 128MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RM SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H100x Hydro Cooler w/ PCS Ultra Quiet Fans
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
NOT REQUIRED
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
2 - 3 DAY DELIVERY TO REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Build Time
Standard Build - Subject to stock availability on pre-order products
Price: €3,170.00 including VAT and Delivery

 

[Deleted member 17413]

Its an old cooler that isnt controllerable through iCue, you dont want it, plus the corsair coolers come with preapplied high quality paste already so. Plus with powerful chips like that, you NEED good cooling... it will kill your computer otherwise. Build longevity it directly reliant on how well the components are kept. The case will take a H150i Elite Cap if you call PCS and get them to move the front 3 fans to rear and roof (which also then solves having no rear extract fan) That extra £50 on a cooler is an extra couple of years minimum on the CPU life and will boost its performance by keeping it well away from thermal throttling.

Ironwolf drives tend not to be as reliable as the barracuda, although the speed is a little less over 2TB ones...but its HDD, i'd still favour the barracuda and slight speed drop.

A separate 500GB OS drive and 1TB projects/plugins etc drive would still be beneficial instead of a singular M.2, and overclocked AMD chips arent a good choice in most cases...
AMD have a built in overclock, you would just enable precision boost drivce in BIOS for it and it would full advantage of the board.
Manually overclocking them often reduces performance, as AMD have a sort of core set of chips that are more powerful than the rest and you end up cutting them off on boosts. (you can get stuff to go in and manually overclock each core but you can do that without paying more for an overclocked chip already that you'd have to redo...)

Other than that, remove bullguard and take a RMx over an RM for PSU, better quality and better lifespan.

 

[Bigfoot]

You have selected an older cooler. I would go for the H115 Elite Capellix and drop the extra thermal paste. Over clocking AMD chips often gives less overall performance. It is best to drop Bullguard, as it has been reported to be troublesome. I found that 2x2TB Barracuda HDDs was cheaper than the 4TB Ironwolf. They also have a bigger cache and give you some redundancy against data loss (less on each disk).

The dreaded green bar has appeared, so someone else has probably listed everything I was going to say.

 

[dani72]

You have selected an older cooler. I would go for the H115 Elite Capellix and drop the extra thermal paste. Over clocking AMD chips often gives less overall performance. It is best to drop Bullguard, as it has been reported to be troublesome. I found that 2x2TB Barracuda HDDs was cheaper than the 4TB Ironwolf. They also have a bigger cache and give you some redundancy against data loss (less on each disk).

The dreaded green bar has appeared, so someone else has probably listed everything I was going to say.

Its an old cooler that isnt controllerable through iCue, you dont want it, plus the corsair coolers come with preapplied high quality paste already so. Plus with powerful chips like that, you NEED good cooling... it will kill your computer otherwise. Build longevity it directly reliant on how well the components are kept. The case will take a H150i Elite Cap if you call PCS and get them to move the front 3 fans to rear and roof (which also then solves having no rear extract fan) That extra £50 on a cooler is an extra couple of years minimum on the CPU life and will boost its performance by keeping it well away from thermal throttling.

Ironwolf drives tend not to be as reliable as the barracuda, although the speed is a little less over 2TB ones...but its HDD, i'd still favour the barracuda and slight speed drop.

A separate 500GB OS drive and 1TB projects/plugins etc drive would still be beneficial instead of a singular M.2, and overclocked AMD chips arent a good choice in most cases...
AMD have a built in overclock, you would just enable precision boost drivce in BIOS for it and it would full advantage of the board.
Manually overclocking them often reduces performance, as AMD have a sort of core set of chips that are more powerful than the rest and you end up cutting them off on boosts. (you can get stuff to go in and manually overclock each core but you can do that without paying more for an overclocked chip already that you'd have to redo...)

Other than that, remove bullguard and take a RMx over an RM for PSU, better quality and better lifespan.

So I guess something like this:

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 500D SE CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.8GHz/70MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® CROSSHAIR VIII HERO WIFI (DDR4, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX/SLI) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (4 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
12GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3060 - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
1st Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H115i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler
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
NOT REQUIRED
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
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
2 - 3 DAY DELIVERY TO REPUBLIC OF IRELAND
Build Time
Standard Build - Subject to stock availability on pre-order products
Price: €3,138.00 including VAT and Delivery

The AMD processors say that they are pre-order. Do either of you know the wait times for them?

 

[Deleted member 17413]

From what i've seen, the 5900X have been going out recently in about 2 to 3 weeks till delivery... I dont think tthere is much issue with them atm, before there were big delays. Most of it seems to be RTX 3080/AMD 6800XT and branded variants of those thats thehaving most delays right now.

That build is better, i'd still be tempted to push a 850W RMx just in case you upgrade the gpu but also to ensure decent headroom no many what yoou do with it now. (GPU upgrade would be expected in 2/3 years in gaming rigs... for your uses, it may be a nice option to have more headroom in 4/5 years time to upgrade to a more powerful card)

For video and audio though, its genuinely worth separating out for two M.2 drives, or at least a SSD drive that you can use as a scratch drive

 

[Bigfoot]

There have been reports of problems with 4 RAM sticks at 3600 MHz with AMD CPUs. I am not sure whether this has been confirmed as fixed yet. Others on here have got a solution by down looking the RAM slightly to 3533MHz.

 

[Bigfoot]

From what i've seen, the 5900X have been going out recently in about 2 to 3 weeks till delivery... I dont think tthere is much issue with them atm, before there were big delays. Most of it seems to be RTX 3080/AMD 6800XT and branded variants of those thats thehaving most delays right now.

That build is better, i'd still be tempted to push a 850W RMx just in case you upgrade the gpu but also to ensure decent headroom no many what yoou do with it now. (GPU upgrade would be expected in 2/3 years in gaming rigs... for your uses, it may be a nice option to have more headroom in 4/5 years time to upgrade to a more powerful card)

For video and audio though, its genuinely worth separating out for two M.2 drives, or at least a SSD drive that you can use as a scratch drive

Yes a 512GB 980 PRO with a 1TB PCS or Corsair m.2 drive would give you fats storage for current projects and scratch drives.

 

[dani72]

It's a pity that PCS don't do the "Submit Your Own Case" option any more. The one I'm thinking of going with (Corsair 500D SE) seems like a really good case but is quite colourful with the RGB fans. For someone who doesn't do any gaming it might be a bit much. The Fractal Define 7 case looks stylish but from what I've seen elsewhere has poor thermals. Given that my previous PC died after less than 3 years I would definitely be concerned about temps not getting too high. The Thermaltake Core X7 case also looks stylish (and would accommodate a Blu-Ray drive) but is getting pretty poor reviews on other sites.