New Build Sanity Check - Living Room

[Thrasher]

Hi,

I'm at it again building a new system! Last system I got from PCS is still serving me very well (i7 7700k / GTX 1080ti) but now I want one for our living room. We got an amazing 65" LG C9 TV a few months ago and eager to use this for some couch gaming. I've seen Linus testing this at 1440p / 120Hz and 4k / 60Hz and with the g-sync compatibility we're hoping for something great.

So, living room build, requirements are;-

- 65" LG C9 TV as main display
- Must be quiet as possible
- Smaller form factor ( has to sit on the entertainment unit by the TV )
- Easy to clean / good dust filters
- No RGB / Gamery looks
- Run AAA games at 1440p / 120Hz or 4k 60hz (Online FPS / Single-player stuff respectively)

I think my last AMD CPU was the Athlon XP 1800 (so quite a few years!) and I've been with Intel since, but I kinda fancy going with a Ryzen build this time as from what I've read recently they are great price/performance even for gaming. So initial v1 draft spec I've come up with is below, only thing I'm 99% sure on now is using the Define S Nano case (preferable no window, hope PCS can fulfil this). Everything else is subject to change.

Other considerations/questions:

CPU - Initially chose the Ryzen 5 as I've heard it's a good price/performance point and should cope with AAA games fine at 1440p. My friend suggests going with a Ryzen 9 though for that bit of extra power.

Motherboard - Only 2 motherboard options seem a bit limited and I need to find out main differences between the B450 chipset and the X570 - things I've read elsewhere seem to pair up my CPU of choice with the MSI B450 Tomahawk, ( which isn't the right form factor for my chosen case but something like this could be ideal). I don't think I'm too fussed about overclocking, RGB or any fancy features, just want something reliable, solid and minimal wasted extras.

RAM - Highest rated RAM I can see is 3200MHz , but from what I've been reading it's worth going up to 3600MHz considering my choice of CPU - is this not available at PCS?

SSD - My main build has an m.2 NVME but I think I went a bit overkill there and for a pure gaming system I should probably cut back to something more sensible - is this a wise choice? I don't want to pay an extra £100+ to reduce load times by 1 second.

Budget - £1,500 - flexible but I'd rather not go over this.

Well this has turned out a bit longer than I thought and I'm sure I'll think of more to ask but for now, here's the spec - thanks in advance for any comments!



Case
FRACTAL DEFINE S NANO GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
Gigabyte B450 I AORUS PRO Wi-Fi AC (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
960GB ADATA SU630 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
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
Noctua NH-L9i Low Profile AM4, Super Quiet CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN PORT + Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi excluded on H310I-PLUS)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 4 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® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (1 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 13 to 15 working days
Price: £1,306.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-sff-gaming/Bxw6BjmKa9/

 

[Thrasher]

The case I included is basically just a smaller version of what I have in my main desktop by the looks of it (the Define R5 Mid-tower) and it won't be the smallest case out there for this form factor. I don't think it should be a massive difference in airflow, but I'll look into that.

I did just add the aftermarket cooler as I thought it would run a bit quieter and give a bit of room if I wanted to try a mild OC.

Going with the 1TB ADATA Sx6000 is probably worth it - I went with 1TB Samsung 970 EVO in my other build and I think that what was a bit overkill.

Silver warranty seems a no brainer, thanks.

 

[SpyderTracks]

You could be right on the air flow but then the same amount of heat will be in a smaller area so I would imagine it would make a difference (much like the large room in a house with all windows open should be cooler than an identical room a fair size smaller)

If you have the budget, then there's no harm in adding a cooler. However, AMD chips are not at all like Intel chips when it comes to overclocking...they really don't like it much as there is an in-built function, apparently, that works like an overclock....something like that anyway, I am just reiterating what I have read on here, might be worth looking into further.

I'll be honest, I was a little sceptical of the benefits of an M2 drive when I got my system....I also had a Samsung Evo SSD in my last system and the M2 drive, even taking into account the new system, is still much quicker.....Windows loads about 5 seconds faster and programs open noticeably quicker

Yeah, basically 3rd gen ryzen have a built in boost, plus their cores are set so that if the thermal efficiency is available, it will automatically overclock to it's boost on a few cores. It's so efficient at doing this that overclocking generally doesn't offer much more improvement and sacrifices the single core boost so actually your single core performance will be worse (as the max overclock will apply to the weakest core whereas boost applies on the strongest).

The AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen Deep Dive Review: 3700X and 3900X Raising The Bar

www.anandtech.com

 

[Thrasher]

I'm hoping the temp difference between the two cases will be minimal, I'd go with the full R5 again as it's been excellent but it just seems a bit too big for a living room machine, ya know?

OK that's interesting, having used Intel CPUs for so long I guess I'm still in that mindset. I'll do some more research on the real-world differences between the SSD choices, I can handle a few seconds longer boot time and loading in games - my main concern in the build would be high/stable FPS and I can't see it making much if any difference there.

Any comments on other parts of the build? Thanks very much though, you've given me some things to think about.

 

[SpyderTracks]

I'm hoping the temp difference between the two cases will be minimal, I'd go with the full R5 again as it's been excellent but it just seems a bit too big for a living room machine, ya know?

OK that's interesting, having used Intel CPUs for so long I guess I'm still in that mindset. I'll do some more research on the real-world differences between the SSD choices, I can handle a few seconds longer boot time and loading in games - my main concern in the build would be high/stable FPS and I can't see it making much if any difference there.

Any comments on other parts of the build? Thanks very much though, you've given me some things to think about.

To me it looks pretty sweet. TBH, I think in the micro chassis it’s only the h60 closed loop that’s available? The noctua is pretty fantastic. I think if it were a higher tier chip I’d probably worry, but not so much on the 3600, for gaming it’s just an incredibly efficient chip both in power requirements and thermals.