Another AMD old-timer Looking for Build Advice

[GunnerMan]

I have the rig in my sig at home for my gaming rig that I put together just over a year or so ago but I don't get to using it as much as I would like. Anyhow, my work desktop is beginning to really bring me down and I am looking for something similar.

It's an old Dell with an i5-4440 and 16Gb of ram. The CPU is not bad in itself but it does leave me hanging on many workloads. The real killer seems to be the memory controller. Even with the 16Gb, I crash this thing about once a day due to out-of-memory faults whereas my rig at home runs very well on 16Gb.

I am thinking about going AMD as an upgrade because I really would like a machine that I can spin-up multiple VM's at a time without worry and still have them and the host perform halfway decent. I think the added cores and multi-threading performance of AMD will really help there.

I run 2 1440p monitors and 1 1080p but I don't do any graphics work so it's not an issue. I plan to throw in a couple GTX660's I have laying around to drive the monitors. I am more concerned with IO, VM, and multitasking performance. I would like to keep the build under $1000 so I don't raise too many eyebrows with the boss. I will need to order the parts in the next week or so.

I was thinking of something along the lines of,

AMD RYZEN 7 3700X CPU $379.99
G.SKILL Ripjaws V (2 x 16GB) DDR4 3200 $149.99
ASRock X370 Taichi $159.99
Seasonic FOCUS Plus 750W PSU $119.99
TBD Case $100.00
addlink S70 1TB NVMe PCIe $124.80
Total: $1,034.76

I also figure I could get a Ryzen 1700 as well and throw in a beefier CPU later on as I am pretty confident it will meet my needs going by my performance at home. It seems I would only need the X370 so I can run multiple video cards, is this really the case? Are there any other drawbacks to going with the cheaper chipset? What are some good motherboards in this price range? I don't plan to be overclocking but I also don't want a board with crippled BIOS or performance.

When it comes to RAM I am quite lost, I have looked at a few benchmarks on PCMark etc but I am not sure if there are any quirks to be aware of. I have never heard of addlink and the price seems almost too good to be true but it showed very promising benchmarks as well. I do plan to throw in a few standard TB HDD's as well. I am thinking maybe I should make sure I am going to get good ram, SSD(s), and board and skimp out on the CPU a bit.

I'd be grateful for your thoughts, I have been out of the scene too long and I don't feel quite comfortable making the choice in a short time without some input from those in the know.

 

[Thick8]

I ran 6 monitors on a pair of video cards in a Crosshair VI Hero motherboard (X370). It had a Ryzen 1700 @ 4 GHz and 32Gb (4x8) DDR4/3000 memory.
I just put a Ryzen 3600 and DDR4/3600 memory in that same board and it’s a much more “zippy” machine. Sorry, no hard numbers yet.
You would probably be fine with a non-x 3700 CPU as there is not really that much bang for the extra $50. Since you won’t be over clocking you can also save $ on the memory. I got the Crucial Ballistic Elite DDR/4 3600 for the same price you have listed for the 3200. I’m not familiar enough with the Seasonic PS to comment on it but you don’t want to go cheap on your PS.
PS. I’ll be putting the 1700 and memory on the auction block in the next couple of days.

 

[EarthDog]

I'd get something a bit better than the X370 board. No sense in a brand new CPU and 3 gen old (but still capable) platform. You seem to keep the systems for a while so I would say get the best X570 board you can afford. This wayu you get PCIe 4, so when GPUs come out that utilize (not use) the bandwidth, that will be helpful. Currently it helps with things attached to the PCH.. but that is about it.

 

[GunnerMan]

Thanks for the replies.

It sounds like I should consider a good board first and foremost, which I agree with.

I know I made this post in General CPU but do you have a recommendation on boards? I have always been partial to Asus but have run a few Gigabyte boards. I do keep my systems for a while.

I was looking at the Asus PRIME X570-P, Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS, Asus PRIME X570-PRO, and the AsRock X570 TAICHI ranging in price from $170 to $300 respectively. They all seem to offer everything I need. The AsRock looks like it has a few more PCI-E and USB ports but realistically I will probably not use them. I don't really care much about WiFi etc but I did see someone mention the AsRock's tend to work slightly better with higher memory speeds though I'm not sure the extra price is going to do a whole lot of me or not for this particular build which is for work and will never see a game. I also don't like that you apparently cannot turn of the LED's.

Thanks

 

[bassnut]

I have the X570 Taichi ….. nice board you shouldn't be disappointed.

 

[bignazpwns]

$300 the X570 Taichi is going to be the absolute best without stepping up a bit. As much as i hate Asrock thats the best and i say go for that.

 

[habbajabba]

Yup I was gonna get that board too with the ryzen 9 and a wx-5100 card for graphics. I'm too poor and cannot afford it til the prices come down by half (it'll take forever til I could even turn it on). The hd you want is the samsung 1tb nvme. $50 more but the fastest on the market right now.