General Discussions

[Freddy_T-Power]

I hope are  well and safe.

I've been Helping Fixing n Building Regular usage PC's for the past 20+yrs for FREE around the Globe, especially now w/Videos  on FB.

But became a PC gamer 2yrs ago but have only played my games in the LOWEST settings.

But The Internet Is Flooded w/so much Info, and I was crossing My Fingers YOU may help me to CHOOSE the correct Parts to Buy or Build 
( Depending on Price Deference ) 

My 1st AMD GAMING BEAST Maybe PC Part Picker can help??
https://pcpartpicker.com/
so This is what I'm looking for:

1-No Matter what I Get the Main and ONLY CONCERN is:
I want The MOST POWERFUL Gaming PC that I can use for Hours but SAFELY w/o the Need of a WATER-COOLER SYSTEM 
( so it's safe to say I won't be Overclocking anything ) and all this inside a HUGE PC CASE.  

2--I want The Best of the 1st and 2nd Choice of CPU / GPU and MOTHERBOARD to make it as Future Proof as Possible, w/what's in the Market Today ( Even if it's not easily available at the moment ) I'm in no Hurry as long as I know My Choice is a Great one. 

3--The Only Other thing besides Gaming is viewing My Movies from my HDDs and Netflix etc
4--Finally My other concern is what is the LOWEST PSU I can SAFELY use for these Needs?

Please and Thank You
May The Games be With You!

Freddy T-Power

[mrpete · Accepted solution]

I'm not going to be too specific with my replies to your requests in terms of what CPU, motherboard, video card or PSU to buy because your needs are for gaming and I'm more of a server / workstation / Linux / DBMS guy. But I will give you some things to think about.

You said: I'm Finally swaying away from INTEL -AND- build an "AMD GAMING BEAST"

Hey, what's not to like about the 7 nanometer design rules used in the Ryzen 3000 and 5000 CPUs? You get tons of compute power and rather modest amounts of heat that you then have to "dispose of" with fans / heat sinks / etc. For the Ryzen 3600/3800/5600/5800 (and all their variants) you can easily get away with air cooling = water cooling is not necessary. Gamers Nexus gave the Ryzen 3600 their blessing = said that that CPU had enough "grunt" to be a good gaming CPU. Plus the other 3 Ryzens I mentioned are all more powerful than the 3600. I went with the 5600X for my workstation. Its single thread compute scores are #6 in the world behind only 2 Intel and 2 AMD CPUs, plus the new Apple CPU. Now for gaming you want to look at the multi-threaded scores. More CPU cores = higher multi-threaded scores.

Now, I don't know if the CPUs I've mentioned above are sufficiently "beastly" for you. It may depend on if you demand high frame rates while using "ultra settings" and/or use a 1440 monitor. Driving a full HD (1080p) monitor will be easier for your video card and will boost you frame rate vs using a 1440p monitor.

You said: make it as Future Proof as Possible

The two more popular chipset choices for recent vintage Ryzen CPUs are B550 and X570. Of those two the X570 is somewhat more future proof. One drawback of the X570 chipset is that it actually has an I/O chiplet from the Ryzen Matisse CPUs right inside the support chip and that chiplet generates a bit of heat while giving somewhat superior I/O processing (lanes/PCIe 4/etc) vs the B550. Thus the B550 is cooler. The chipset heatsink on all X570 motherboards has a tiny fan on it. Now on my X570 mobo that fan never comes on except for a few seconds at bootup to test that it works. However, I have seen one or two folks complain bitterly online about their X570 mobo and its chipset heatsink not being beefy enough and their support chip is at crazy high temps. My MSI X570 Tomahawk does not have that problem. That said, its chipset is at a constant 40 degrees C no matter what stress test I throw at it. It's at that temp doing both nothing and utterly stressed out. Go figure ...

So, now select your motherboard based on your individual needs (features desired) and which chipset you want (B550/X570). Boy there are a lot of options. Avoid the cheap, cheap ones. Midrange should do you fine. The net is your friend. See what reviewers and users of the mobos you are considering think of those mobos.

In terms of frame rates achievable by your new beast (at a price) system the #1 factor will be your video card and the #2 factor will be the CPU. Once the CPU is sufficient more horsepower won't get you much. The motherboard doesn't play much of a factor in frame rates.

If you want to build a VERY capable Ryzen system, one piece of good advice I can offer is to make your system boot off of an NVMe drive. The amount of data that can be passed per second via an NVMe interface is multiple times that of a SATA AHCI interface. SATA AHCI can get you maybe 500 - 600 MBytes/sec depending on the drive. NVMe can get you 1500 - 3000 MBytes/sec depending on the drive / PCIe 3 vs 4 / etc. Now that is not going to get you increased frame rates, but it will make your boot times and times for "general operations" rather better. You don't have to load your games onto the NVMe drive ... meaning that that drive doesn't have to be HUGE. Putting your games onto a SATA SSD drive will still give you decent load times.

You said: "What is the LOWEST PSU I can SAFELY use?"

Oh boy. That one requires calculations and I would suggest reflects a bit of the wrong attitude. You don't want to "build a beast" and then "juice it" from a somewhat wimpy PSU.

There is something called the "PSU Tier List" that takes itself very seriously, but I've seen some folks online who seem to know whereof they speak say something in the vein of "how can you take that list seriously?" So, look at the list, but take it with a grain of salt. Narrow down your list of desired PSUs and then go and read as many GOOD reviews of those PSUs from reputable websites that you can find. Note: reading the review of the 750 watt PSU in a certain line <> reading a review of the 650 watt PSU in that line that you are actually considering buying. Each PSU in a line that some company sells is going to be designed a bit differently (sometimes quite differently) than some other PSU in that line, for better or worse. Sometimes different PSU models (550/650/750/800) in a single line will have different OEM manufacturers. Virtually no PSU sellers manufacture the PSUs that they sell. On the other hand several PSU sellers are VERY knowledgeable about what to ask for from their OEM manufacturers. When it comes to PSUs YMMV.

So, to build a "beast" you are going to need to lay your hands on a great video card. I hope you can get such a card in these COVID times we live in. Such cards appear to be in VERY short supply at this time.

You want a quality PSU that has enough power for you needs AND maybe you even want some EXTRA power to accommodate that next (power hungry) video card that you will buy in the next year or two. That last part is your decision.

Add together:
- the watts needed by your video card (the main factor most times in a "beast")
- the watts needed by your CPU + mobo VRM section
- the watts needed to spin any HDDs you have (low #, but add it)
. . . . Forget about the greater # of watts needed to spin up the HDDs.
. . . . That spin up happens when your video card is "standing still."

The power needed to drive SSDs (NVMe too) and audio circuits is generally tiny. I have no idea about the power it takes to drive VR headsets.

OK, you have a watt number. Now add 50 to 100 watts to give yourself some headroom and you have yourself the minimum watt "size" of the PSU that you should buy. Do you want to get a bit "bigger" PSU that will accommodate that next (power hungry) video card that you will buy in the next year or two? It's your decision.

Good Luck!

Edited: changed "Putting your games onto a SATA drive" to "Putting your games onto a SATA SSD drive."

[Freddy_T-Power]

Wow!? TY! You have Given Me More info than anyone I've asked, I greatly appreciate your Time to reply.

You're Awesome!