[Updated] PC building

Its 4AM here and I was just about to go to bed so I will just throw 3 things out there:

• I have been using that power supply for the past 3 years, 0 issues, good choice IMO.
• 8GB of RAM is a bit low for a gaming machine nowadays, might be worth going with 16GB.
• You don't have any storage listed. If you don't have an SSD already, you should consider fitting at least a small one for the OS and a game or 2 in your budget. Makes a huge difference in my option.

Sorry for being very vague, but again its 4AM and bed time. Hope someone else can throw their 2 cents in and help you with the rest. Good night :)

My thoughts:

• If you're using CAD I suspect you'll want more RAM. 8GB doesn't get you far these days. If it's within your budget I'd go with 16GB.
• Based on gpu.userbenchmark.com the two graphics cards you mention are basically on par so I'd go with whatever's cheaper.
• I don't see any reason why you couldn't update to a better graphics card later.
• as far as heatsink goes, generally speaking the stock one will do but if you want to do serious overclocking you'll want a better one.
• You may want to consider an SSD, possibly as a later upgrade. It's great to have your OS and high performance programs on (e.g. CAD) and I recall a high capacity, quite fast one being released recently for a very good price though I don't recall the manufacturer. Possibly Corsair?

I've built a few computers but I'm not an expert. Let me know if you have any other questions. Overall it looks like a very solid build.

I'm no expert on computers but I think you might need more storage?
250GB is used up pretty quickly if you're playing a lot of games.

8go can be low like said before but in the worst case you can upgrade later when you'll upgrade your gpu
Do you have hdd or ssd ? 240go ssd it's a quasi mandatory in 2018 (and for the licence of windows take it on a ebay store )
For the gpu , perfs are same , nvidia has some little bonus like physiX (on borderlands 2 etc ) but it's old , Hairworks are heavy for this gpu so don't really know .
IF you don't want overclock or only a little the heatsink of the 2600x do the job .

ps : if you are ok can i try the ga for Injustice :) ?

The only things I'd do differently are --

1. More RAM. 16GB is pretty much standard these days.
2. Like others have said, add an SSD for your OS and most used applications/games. Once you try it, you'll never look back.
3. Get an aftermarket CPU cooler. Stock coolers tend to be loud and do the bare minimum.

8 GB of RAM just won't cut the new games coming out. Go 16 GB and save room for more for later. Also make certain on power supply you have enough fans. One burnt out on me because of inadequate cooling. Also be sure to clean your computer religiously on a regular basis. Especially if you have animals, carpet, and you have to dust a lot. Remember your sound system too. That's so important. Also your monitor. My son took a lovely 28 inch tv and made it my monitor (I'm growing cataracts, lol. Hope you get what you want. Hope I helped.

I recently was shopping for a graphics card myself, and I think the two cards you mentioned both have good performance, though I personally prefer the Nvidia card more. AMD is the only graphics card that has ever died on me, whereas none of my NVidia cards ever did. If you really dislike noise, then definitely get the GTX. Just a word of caution, it's difficult to uninstall AMD drivers, and requires some special mucking around to do so (you can download a tool that theoretically uninstalls the junk drivers for you, except the program never worked for me). On the other hand, Nvidia puts telemetry stuff in with their drivers now (you can manually disable some of the telemetry).

16 GB = decent. Though I'd say make sure you get good RAM (rather than the budget RAM that goes bad after a year). If you are building your own system, I highly recommend getting RAM at a brick & mortar store with a good / lenient return policy in case the RAM is bad or turns out to be incompatible with your system (which can happen unexpectedly).

Case - just make sure it has slots for hd's positioned reasonably, and enough slots for however many new hd's or other drives you want to install later. Nothing worse than wanting to add a new hard drive, and finding out you've run out of slots, or that the position of the slot makes it impossible to run the power cable to both the new drive and the one right above it!

You can hold off on getting the heat sink & fan -- first just install the stock cooler, then run a temperature monitoring app like CoreTemp & see if your CPU cores get anywhere near the Tj-max temps when running Witcher 3 or any demanding program. If you need a better cooler: I've found Cooler Master makes some pretty good coolers.

CPU - I personally prefer Intels, as they seem to be compatible with more stuff. However, AMD is cheaper. I've never had a problem with Intel CPU's when building my own systems, I've had problems with AMD's though -- they've been fickle for me.

Motherboard - I like ASUS, they seem to have the gamer in mind, and they make it easy to expand / upgrade components.

Power supply - just make sure it has enough connectors, the right type of connectors, and the connectors are long enough to reach where they need to go inside your case! Also I recommend to invest in a good surge protector & plug it into a grounded outlet -- or you might end up with a fried power supply, and possibly a fried CPU, after any kind of power surge or blackout.

Storage - If you run Windows, figure 100 GB for the OS. That only leaves 150 GB for everything else. Highly recommend later adding a cheap, plain internal HDD 7200 rpm, a few TB's at least. (And, if you value your AutoCAD work, also consider getting an external / portable backup hard drive or even a flash drive -- portables are nicer for backup in that they are faster, lighter, quieter, and get power from USB rather than needing their own power adapter, however they are also more expensive than plain external drives).

I guess the main thing is to have fun building your own system! You will be really happy you did it afterwards!

Don't know the card or CPU myself for gaming.. I also need to look into that to replace my Home box.

From the little I've read. The 1060 6GB version is far better then the 3GB. stay away from the 3GB version. 1070 would future proof you but the 6GB of the 1060 should be a great card and run any current game very nicely. Should be fine for VR as well. ..... but thats based on what I've read. I've not done the research I would want if I was buying today.

But.

8GB is fine for a basic office machine and OK for decent gaming but you will want 16GB for a new gaming box. I would not start a current build with only 8GB.

250 is your minimum SSD. I'd go 512GB for your home box. 1TB would be nice but I don't currently think its needed or worth the extra cost. Your going to want to install everything to the SSD. That includes your steam games. It will make a big difference. A SSD is the biggest bang for the buck in terms of performance you can do. Everyone should be running an SSD now on all computers. I no longer buy office machines for work that are only HD based. I implemented a SSD policy a couple years ago. SSD for boot and all program installs and HD for general storage. All work boxes currently get a 256GB SSD and a 1 or 2 TB HD depending on what came with it when I set one up.

My home box (older then your old laptop) has gone from just a 2TB drive. to adding a 120GB SSD... to swapping in a 256GB SSSD to its current 512GB SSD with a 4TB HD. I still feel like I need space. my unRaid box has plenty of room however :)

I would go much bigger then 1TB for HD storage. I'd say 4TB is the current sweet spot for price. The price diff from a 1TB to a 4TB is not a big spread. Get the 4TB for any home box.

Friend, I never have luck with AMD (CPU or GPU). Always had a poor performance and broke very fast. So I changed to Intel and NVidia and since then everything works fine. I suggest an Intel I5 (or even an I3), with a GTX1060 (or even a 1050TI). I think 8Gb RAM is enough for now.
Thank you for the GA. I have an interest in Unloved GA if possible.

Good luck with your new machine.

Edit: I forgot to mention the Motherboards for Intel are so far with better quality than AMD due demands from Intel.

Not saying anything against SeaSonic, but highly recommend getting high quality PSU!
Check out Fortron or Fractal Design.
I'm using integra m 650w modular 80+ bronze.
SSD are hitting their lowest point, so I would suggest getting 500GB SSD. The price difference aint much and extra 250gb might be a lot.
Games and other programs getting bigger and bigger so I would suggest this.
Everything else looks really good.
Hope I helped and good lock, keep us posted when you build it.

Sorry to jump in here, but does anyone know if Vengeance 3000 DDR4 RAM is a good "fit" for a B450M Mortar motherboard? I've never done anything AMD but I'm also transitioning between an older Intel to a 2600x. Added you to my WL, for what it's worth!

Not an expert. Only thoughts.

1. If price is same or lower for 1060 take 1060. In other case take what you like more (allmost no difference in performance)
2. Ryzen 5 2600X is nice cpu for it`s price. High grade is more for profesionals and enthusiasts.
3. ASUS Prime B450-Plus seems more reasonable. MSI looks like is more for overclocking.
4. 16 gb is ok for gaming and education. Consider future upgrade to 32G
5. Any is good (for me) if power supplies place is on the bottom and have place for couple 90mm (in-out) fans.
6. I would prefer SeaSonic SSR-650RM 650W. But both are good.
7. No overclocking no need in advanced cooling.
8. Yes, for OS and couple games/ programs in that you want best performance.
   Note: there is three type of ssd - SLC, MLC and TLC. google the difference, some times it`s effects the choice.
   Good luck with upgrade :)

• Get more RAM. I found 8 MB to be limiting with Windows 10 (Chrome is using 4 GB right now!) and bought another 16 MB for a total of 24 MB, which is more than enough for what I do (nothing more taxing than gaming and internet). I would go for 16 MB (2 x 8 MB), leaving 2 slots free for future expansion if necessary. CAD needs RAM: "As a general rule, Revit requires 20 times the RAM of the loaded Revit (RVT) project file. So a 200 MB RVT file requires approximately 4 GB of RAM to open. Add to this the RAM needed to run the operating system and to keep other applications like a web browser open. To be safe, a 200MB RVT file requires at least 8 GB of RAM, while a 1 GB file requires roughly 32 GB." - https://www.augi.com/articles/detail/optimum-performance-hardware-for-revit
• Don't bother with an aftermarket heatsink to start with. It's an easy upgrade later on, and you will probably find that the stock one is adequate (that is what it was designed for). The case you are looking at seems to be well designed in terms of moving plenty of air for cooling.
• I would get a SSD big enough for the operating system, CAD file storage, CAD program (5 GB for Revit), and possibly any games you play that frequently load data, e.g. large open world games.
• Don't cut corners with the graphics card - that is going to be the hardest working component for most games. The parallel processing power of NVIDIA's CUDA technology used to be marketed as beneficial for complex modelling and calculations but I'm not up to speed on the current NVIDIA vs AMD battle with regards to CAD. Tom's Hardware currently has the AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB recommended over the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB for gaming value for money due to its similar pricing (in the market they have access to) and slightly better performance, particularly in DirectX12 games. It does, however, use more power under load.
• For CPUs, I'm not up to speed with the current state of play. Revit recommends "Multi-Core Intel Xeon, or i-Series processor or AMD equivalent with SSE2 technology (which the CPU you are looking at surpasses). Highest affordable CPU speed rating recommended. Autodesk Revit software products will use multiple cores for many tasks, using up to 16 cores for near-photorealistic rendering operations" - https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/System-requirements-for-Autodesk-Revit-2019-products.html
• Those won't be any motherboard related issues upgrading the graphics card in the future: even the NVIDIA GTX 2080 Ti uses the same PCIe 3.0 x16 connection. Greater power demands would be more relevant, and it looks like you have that covered.

Pretty solid build. I’d lean towards the gtx 1060 as most professionals I know swear by them for general compatibility and cuda. Plus the 1060 should be sufficient to run everything at high on 1080p.
Couple other notes - 16gb ram is totally necessary.

• you might want to look at a larger ssd. Prices are plummeting, expect another huge price drop within a month. Also, prices on NVE M.2 drives are getting to the point that they are worth considering. NVE drives don’t rely on SATA interface and therefore are blazing fast.

I wish I knew enough to help :/ (I'm learning myself.)
Thank you for the giveaway and I wish you good luck on your set up! 👍

I am not well-educated in hardware so sadly cant help you with advice. Have a BUMP instead! And i would like a chance in Injustice giveaway if thats okay. Have a great Sunday!

I too am running on my laptop that is pushing just past 4 years - but mine hasn't died yet. But I also have several gaming desktops and have bought over $50k of video cards, mobos, cpus and PSUs in the last 5 years (I was/am mining). Here's my thoughts:

1) I currently own about 50 1060s and 30 RX 470s. Not a single one has failed mining because I picked ones with very good cooling designs. AMD vs nVidia doesn't matter so much as both those cards are neck and neck more or less. The nVidia is the better option if electricity is expensive or you want a cooler running rig (this is why I sadly game on a 1050Ti even though I have lots of 1080Tis mining). The Pascal chips are insanely efficient. AMD with the 580 would have an extra 2GB of RAM and if you like your textures high or tend to do static things like CAD that could be more beneficial. AMD cards tend to be better at computation at the consumer level so your CAD might perform better with the 580. The pricepoint for the 1060 6GB is in fact way too high - you would be better off going with a 1070Ti if you can afford it. Otherwise the RX 580 is the better option. More GRAM helps for future games as well as better Vulcan/DX12 support for newer titles. nVidia 1060 will sadly only get slower as newer drivers come out (I thing i hate about nvidia). BTW the only video card I had die in the last 3 years was a 750Ti which never mined lol - so sad I used it to game and it died. Thermal cycles are the worst for video cards. EVGA is the best for nvidia. For AMD go with MSI, Asus or Gigabyte in that general order (I own all 3 brands. XFX makes some good cards at times, it varies model to model). If you're getting an aftermarket HSF as noted below, it makes sense to get a dual or triple fan option. Single blower fans are very reliable and do a wonderful job extracting heat from a case but they are loud - no point getting a silent HSF and then getting a loud GPU cooling solution.
2) Ryzen 5 is fine. With Zen 1 AMD had compatibility issues with a lot of RAM but the newer B and X 4xx chipsets are doing fine and honestly Intel is playing catching up in the middle tier. RAM choice is more important if you go Ryzen.
3) Asus X470 should be fine
4) As many have stated, you probably want to get 16GB. I know DDR4 is overpriced still (more than double what I was paying in middle 2016). Skip RGB silliness if you can and get a good set with good timings - especially if you go Ryzen instead of Intel I5.
5) Cases are always an aesthetic choice more often than functional
6) Seasonic is of course awesome. But if you buy OEM Seasonics you often pay less. EVGA is really blowing out insane sales on their proven G3 line which has SuperFlowers - I would just get a Gold 750 G3 and pocket the money unless you can get the Seasonic for the same price.
7) Ryzen stock wraith cooler is decent. It's usually a pain in the butt to change out to something that needs to be mounted to the mobo backplate because the board usually needs to come out again unless the case is nice enough to allow access to back of mobo. A cheap Coolermaster Hyper 212 is usually $15 to $25 and can allow for near Ninja level performance.
8) Probably the most important thing!!! Throw an SSD in there! The only reason I stand using my laptop is because I put a nice 750GB Crucial MX 300 I got on Amazon Black Friday for $99. Yeah I still think SSD prices are still too high but they are much better than a year ago. I would skip Samsung and just go with a Crucial MX500 model. The larger you go with SSD usually the better the performance. Get a 500GB minimum since 250GB leaves little room to work with. Anything above 500GB might be overkill unless your CAD and you Steam directory need it.

As far as future-proofing - the 1080/1080Ti will never get cheaper than they are now. nVidia has really been a disappointment in my eyes with the RTX series. They gave up die space for raytracing which is currently useless. Of course they had no need to compete because Vega 64 still lags behind. Ah the joys of duopolies. Once they sell out on the glut of GTX cards which I think they are keeping artificially high by pricing RTX cards in insaneland, the RTX cards will drop to a reasonable price at which point it would make sense to go to a 2080 because Raytracing might actually be in games then. What I'm hoping is AMD is able to divert enough money from their CPU profits to get their 7nm Vega nodes out next year. AMD might actually have something that would compete or beat nVidia in DX12 games. So if you have lots of money get a 1070Ti right now (the 1080/1080Ti seem to have jumped up in price $50 from a recent trough). If you're willing, resell your card later and buy a cheap RX580 (cheaper than 1060 6GB for sure) and spend it on the new AMD 7nm lineup next year or go to RTX since nvdia should have their issues sorted out with those 2080 cards by then.

Good luck on the new build, may the frames be with you!

Well, some people already said that you should go with 16gb of ram instead of 8. Besides that, for gaming perhaps you could go for a gtx 1070 instead, but I'm not sure if that's over your budget.
One important thing to know is when are you planning on buying the PC, since new AMD GPUs are supposed be announced in less than two months. Maybe you could wait, or buy everything except for the GPU, and if they offer better performance per dollar than NVidia go for AMD instead.
I read about your concerns with AMD, their CPUs used to be trash that would heat up a lot, but since Ryzen came out, they seem to be doing a far better job than Intel. Intel's CPUs nowadays are just refreshed products from 2-3 years. When it comes to value Ryzen 5 seems like the better choice. I have an Intel i5 4th gen, never had any problems in 5 years, but Intel is way overpriced now, so I'd say Ryzen.
With the GPU stuff... never owned something from NVidia, but they basically control the market now unless AMD releases something competitive during CES. A previous R9 270 stopped working when the some new drivers came out. I have an R9 390 and works fine.
It may be worth waiting till january to see what AMD launches, since changes between gens in GPUs tend to be way more notorious than with CPUs, but that depends on when do you need your PC.
As for the PSU, 600-650W should be more than enough, but look for one that is at least 80+ bronze.
Lastly, from what I understand, bigger SSDs are supposed to be marginally faster so a 500gb one should be faster. I have a 250gb and the difference with a HDD is huge. But they should drop in price even more in the coming months.
If you have any questions, let me know. Good luck with your build and thanks for the GA :)

I would say that CAD does nt take much ram unless u are using 3Dmax which slows down ur computer if u are rendering. (I have 2x 8gb ram for lptop and it works well).

3. One thing I looked for--and did not see--was any mention of Thunderbolt 3 support. TB3 uses the exact same size port as USB C, and all TB3 ports can run/power USB C (and supply USB 3.1 Gen 2 to USB 3.1 Gen2 devices). The only reason to not include TB3 on a motherboard is cheapness on the part of the manufacturer. More info here.
4. Consider getting a matched set of DDR4 8GB sticks, and put them in the correct slots in order to get dual-channel memory! (either 1 & 3 / 2 & 4 or 1 & 2 / 3 & 4--check). Since you have 4 slots, you can upgrade to 32GB in a couple of years by adding another matched set of 8GB sticks, and remember, RAM only runs as fast as the slowest stick installed.
5. We have had great success with Corsair PSUs over the years (read the reviews and don't get the model--by any manufacturer--where people claim they make great toasters. 😉). I am glad to see you are getting a modular-cable PSU--they are worth the money.
6. I recommend using the included m.2 slots on your mobo (whichever you get) for a SSD; if you can afford it, go for a M.2 SSD PCIe NVMe [PCIe 3.0 x 4, 32Gb/s (e.g. xxxGB SSD M.2 PCIe NVMe)].
   If you can afford it, the difference between a SATA 3 SSD at 6Gb/s and a PCIe (3.0x4) NVMe at 32Gb/s is, I think, worth it for large applications or for writing/reading huge amounts of data.
   The smallest I would go for would be 512GB, as some games (it seems more and more every year, including some from 5 years ago) are recommending that they be installed on a SSD.

• If you are concerned about a specific game, remember you can always check game-debate to check a particular game[s] with various hardware at your desired resolution.

• Furthermore, check (google etc) to see if there are incompatibilities between whichever motherboard you go with and the part number of the GPU. I do not know if the manufacturer of the GPU chipset matters (eg ASUS, MSI, EVGA etc)

• Regarding the GPU and noise, I do not know and am interested in the answer to my question, which is as follows:
  You have a scale of "neediness of hardware guts" which ranges from 1-100 (100 being high). You want to run a program which is a 50 on that scale, and you have two GPUs. One of the GPUs can hit 55 on the scale, while the other can hit 75.
  Question: All other things being equal, will the 75-capable GPU be quieter than the 55-capable GPU when running the program (which needs 50)? If yes, you might wish to upgrade the GPU to reduce the noise produced by running what would be GPU-intensive stuff on the GPU you currently wish to go with.

• One further note: Do not believe those who claim that Nvidia Quadro cards are no good at gaming. They are good, just not as good for gaming as the GTX series. I have a Quadro Mobile card and can attest that they (at least the Quadro mobile cards) are decent at gaming, just not as good as their GeForce GTX equivalents.

I would like to join your WL for the Injustice giveaway.

thankl you bumpy

• PSU is overpowered, but as I read you're planning to upgrade to a 1080Ti maybe in the future, in that case it makes sense.
• Heat Sink and Fan: stock ones are enough indeed, but they are often noisy. Still, I read good things about Ryzen's stock coolers. But I never used one myself (the Ryzens I set up at work came without stock coolers so we got independent ones).
• RAM yes 16 GB is a must. Actually, Windows 10 manages RAM like shit and at work I had to upgrade from 16 to 32 GB because just by opening lots of browsers and visual studio code sessions and opening+closing GIMP I sometimes ran out eventually. Note though that I disable swapping, which might be the main cause of those problems.
• For the CPU, check benchmarks, but last time I checked Ryzen provided great perf/buck ratio. At work we got, progressively, 3 Ryzen-based machines over the last 9 months, and everyone using them is really happy about their perf
• For disks, personally I go 100% cheap SSDs now, but with your budget I guess that's not possible so your updated choice seems good. Just remember that any SSD beats the hell out of any HDD, so no need to go for a fancy expensive SSD (just check a few reviews to make sure your particular pick doesn't exceptionally suck).

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/StudentPG/saved/
Hopefully you will be able to see my build above and it is funny but I looked at similar set up as you have. 2600x is a good choice, stock fan will ok if you do not OC and have good air flow in your case (best to check that in a review, as this will have big impact on your thermals). When it comes to GPUs I read a lot and there is a small difference between them, so go for the cheaper as someone mentioned before, I went for rx 580 nitro as there was good discount on amazon uk. Seasonic is a good brand and there should be no problems with that. I won't dwell on the RAM as others did that, only thing is go for the 3200mhz as it is sweet spot for the 2600x, it will work more efficient with higher ram speeds. All in all I am waiting for black Friday now :)

It's a solid build and others already said enough. For CAD and rendering purposes i strongly suggest to use Ryzen for its multicore capabilities. PSU gets a thumbs up, but some other alternatives might be EVGA B2 series and Corsair CXm series, depending on your local prices. If you plan into upgrading the GPU my suggestion is to save money now by getting a 1050ti and eventually upgrading to a 2080 later on when and if prices decrease. But if you want to play TW3 at high settings right now you should get at least a 580/1060 or maybe a used 1070.

My recommendation
Motherboard: Asus - ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard
RAM: Go to 16GB no 8GB and check compatibility list of your motherboard you choose
Power Supply: Check your needs https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator
(Update) Storage: (Not recommended 1 @ 5400 rpm (only a few months old))