I'm looking to build a new PC before the end of this year (i.e. Christmas) and was wanting to get some other people's perspectives. Parts list can be found below (please note the 3700x will probably be a 5800x, depends on availability), I'm looking to get a black/purple theme (I'm not looking to go into a lot of RGB). I'll be reusing my current GPU and upgrading that sometime later down the line (i.e. 2 years when next gen comes out).
My main concern is storage, I would absolutely love to not have any SATA driver to limit the number of cables. I'm not worried about speed at all (I am interested in seeing how future games take advantage of fast storage so I might take that back) any SSD is fast enough for me. I guess reliability is a concern, but I'm probably just being a pessimist. My current set up has a 500GB SSD and a 2TB HDD (~250GB free) , my natural thought is I want more storage than I have currently however I have a ton of steam games I never (will) use so I may not even need that much.
List is pretty solid otherwise, only thing stopping me from buying right now is waiting for sales (I have 2 month to wait after all). If I find a really good deal that's not on the list, I'm willing to swap out parts aside from the ones already purchased.
https://pcpartpicker.com/user/ExtremeDude2/saved/2dMmkL
I'm looking to buy the MOBO on the list today as it's on sale and it ends soon.
That motherboard should support Zen 3 just fine. That said, look for the correct bios that supports Zen 3. If it has it available for it, go buy it!
As for the system, the 2070 is a bit weak IMO compared to the rest of the build. 1440p at 165hz in the latest games would be beyond its ability without dropping quality settings. I'd recommend a 3070 or (ideally) a 3080 for that. Additionally, that case is good, and the CPU cooler is good, but I'd recommend a couple of extra fans (I'd recommend pure wings from be quiet) so everything has plenty of fresh air. But yea, pretty good build!
Oh, on a small note, games are definitely going to require an SSD more or less from now on. I'm steering clear of hard drives entirely for the build I'm planning. It helps that we have a great NAS for bulk storage, but you know.
(10-12-2020, 11:04 AM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Oh, on a small note, games are definitely going to require an SSD more or less from now on. I'm steering clear of hard drives entirely for the build I'm planning. It helps that we have a great NAS for bulk storage, but you know.
Just curious why you say that? You see disk access as being a bottleneck? (moreso than it is now)
I'm fine with going SSD only but wish it was easier to tell when the SSD is going to fail. Also, reading a few months ago on how to properly dispose of a HDD / SSD and it's a lot harder to get rid of a SSD.
(10-12-2020, 11:04 AM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]As for the system, the 2070 is a bit weak IMO compared to the rest of the build. 1440p at 165hz in the latest games would be beyond its ability without dropping quality settings. I'd recommend a 3070 or (ideally) a 3080 for that. Additionally, that case is good, and the CPU cooler is good, but I'd recommend a couple of extra fans (I'd recommend pure wings from be quiet) so everything has plenty of fresh air. But yea, pretty good build!
The monitor is more of a placeholder, but those are the exact same specs as my current monitor. I'm trying to swap my 2070 with my brother's 2070 Super, but otherwise I'm going to stick with it for now.
(10-12-2020, 11:32 AM)iwubcode Wrote: [ -> ]Just curious why you say that? You see disk access as being a bottleneck? (moreso than it is now)
Consoles are always the baseline that games are built for. And that baseline now means very VERY fast SSDs, so from now on, games are going to be built with the super fast streaming of very fast SSDs in mind. HDDs are just going to be out of spec.
(10-12-2020, 12:34 PM)MayImilae Wrote: [ -> ]Consoles are always the baseline that games are built for. And that baseline now means very VERY fast SSDs, so from now on, games are going to be built with the super fast streaming of very fast SSDs in mind. HDDs are just going to be out of spec.
and here i was hoping you were going to explain the whole new system of how data is being loaded and how the speed of SSD's help with that. (you know, the system PS4 has as well)
I dunno, seems like with how much RAM we have these days, an alternative to constant SSD streaming would be loading up everything there. If anything, I think consoles like the PS5 are going that route with SSDs because their RAM capacities are going to lag behind gaming PCs. 16GB in the PS5 is already arguably skimpy compared some PC builds these days. Can't blame them as they've got a price-point to hit.
I doubt developers would miss an opportunity to make use of the massive amounts of RAM on PCs in the future. In a few years, most of us will be sticking 64GB or more in our systems as the minimum, most likely. Obviously an SSD would definitely help initially loading all that stuff to RAM compared to an HDD, but I see the SSDs on upcoming consoles as overcoming a memory limitation that PCs don't necessarily have.
You underestimate how bad HDDs are. Sure you could load 200GB of game assets (yes games are that big now) to 240GB of memory, but at HDD speeds that would take *calculates* roughly 25 minutes. Now that's some load times! Of course we could just load up things as needed beforehand to work around it but... we just invented basic non-streaming loading, so um, yea.
The whole point of why SSDs are going to matter is that it will change game design. Games can now do more, such as rapidly changing levels on demand without any warning or setup from the game! Like, games themselves are going to change, and they are going to change in such a way that HDDs are no longer viable.
Of course, all PC games won't suddenly require an SSD overnight, but, it's coming, and it's coming fast. I'd say within 2-3 years? That's at which developers will no longer be making games for the old consoles and only making them for the new ones.
I wasn't really talking about HDDs at all though, just how SSDs are going to be used in the future. Basically small transfers vs one bigger transfer. I'm assuming SSDs are going to be the default in a few years. Even with SSDs, constantly streaming from them just doesn't make sense unless you're limited by RAM. You can load up huge chunks of data relatively quickly on SSDs today, and once it's transferred to RAM, just don't deallocate it. As RAM sizes increase on PCs, there's going to be less and less need for that kind of streaming.
I imagine you'd load up what's necessary to boot the game as fast as possible, then start loading everything else (as much as you can at least) in the background while the players begins. After that, you touch the SSD as needed. The way some people are talking up the PS5, it seems like you'd be constantly touching the SSD and loading smaller chunks instead of one large piece from the start. Again, makes sense if you're RAM limited, not so much if you can fit half your game there anyway.