New PC 2024/2025, AMD based

Hardware & Tech Questions
1

Hey y’all!

It is time for a new PC for me soon.

Sorry in advance for the wall of text, but I want to give you as much info as I can so you can see where I am coming from and where I want to go.

I only ever look at PC parts every 5 years or so, and otherwise avoid doing that in order to not go insane.
So naturally I have little clue what I am doing right now.
I read a few things online but I’d like to run this by our trusted Mudspike hardware guys to see if I am going into the right direction here.

In any case, a few years have passed since my last PC build, and basically everything I could do is a huge upgrade to my current system.
For reference: It contains an Intel i5-9600K and a Nvidia 2070super, 32GB RAM, and a few SSDs, and it is running on Win10. I bought it in 2019 and it has been running well ever since.
I am happy with what I built back then, even VR with the old Rift S runs halfway well (although I don’t use it much, for several reasons). I will keep that PC running for my wife and kids and just port over one or two of my SSDs.

For my new PC I want to go into a different direction.
For the first time since 2004 I plan to leave Intel and Nvidia and go the AMD route.
That has several reasons. Among them is pricing, but I also want to do finally try Linux on a new PC instead of only on old ones, and AMD drivers are just better there. So this time Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs are out of scope.

I will most likely build that PC with dual boot.
My dream is eventually leaving Windows completely, as almost everything I do runs on Linux just fine now, so I’ll try emulating and WINE and Proton and all that jazz on that new PC.
But I am aware that not everything will run well on Linux, probably the Rift S, DCS, and MSFS will run either poorly or not at all.
So yeah, probably dual boot for now. We will see.

Now, let’s talk about the hardware in more detail.
My price limit is around 2500€ so the top level hardware is out of scope.
I went to alternate.de and used their PC configurator to slap a few things together. Most likely I will not order through them though, but let my local shop build it for me (or build it myself, but I haven’t done that in a few years and the local guy offers it for free when you order an expensive PC. I have always been happy with him so far).

Here is version 001:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen™ 9 7900X3D (544€)
  • Mainboard: ASRock B650E STEEL LEGEND WIFI (230€)
  • Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 (76€)
  • RAM: Corsair DIMM 64 GB DDR5-6000 (2x 32 GB) Dual-Kit (264€)
  • GPU: SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 7900 XT PULSE 20GB (719€)
  • SSD: SAMSUNG 980 PRO 2 TB (176€)
  • Power: be quiet! Pure Power 12M 850W (117€)

For the case and its fans I estimate around 200€ combined.
I am not into the whole RGB thing and I have never had a problem with cheap cases or fans.
So these are placeholders:

  • Case: be quiet! PURE BASE 500 (78€)
  • Fans: Corsair iCUE LINK RX120 RGB Triple (115€)

Remarks:

  • I will keep my current monitor setup for now, which are two screens (1920x1080 and an old 1280x1024) but I am probably going to replace the 1080p screen with a higher res one (thinking of 2560x1440) and I won’t be able to connect the small one to that graphics card anyway so I’ll probably replace it first or use an adapter). So as silly as it sounds nowadays, the target resolution will be 1080p for now.
  • The above configuration is 180€ shy of my 2500€ target (so just enough for that pesky Win11 license), so this will already be the most expensive PC I ever built, I think. I am having second thoughts and might wait for the new generation of stuff to drop in early 2025, but I have no clue what is in the pipeline.
  • I am not planning on overclocking anything. I did so back in the day but it usually requires too much effort and/or way more expensive boards, power supplies, CPUs or GPUs and coolers, and causes heat issues, instability, and or costs too much time to optimize. And I don’t particularly enjoy it.

I did a bit of research on the CPU, Mainboard, and GPU already, below are some reasons for my picks:

  • CPU: I am aware that the 100€ cheaper 7800X3D almost as good. I just… picked the newer one I guess? Hoping that more possible optimizations will be done for this one. It looks good in benchmarks. (Windows and Linux).

  • GPU: I have no clue which manufacturers are good right now, I literally picked the first graphics card that had this chipset. The AMD drivers for Linux are solid and the gaming performance seems to be only surpassed by the really expensive (1000€+) cards.

  • Mainboard: That is a relatively cheap mainboard that is often recommended. There are very few mainboards that are not recommended for that processor, among them one of the Asus ones. Again: I have no clue which manufacturers are known for great or bad quality right now.

  • Cooler: I read that a rather cheap one will do, as this CPU doesn’t run particularly hot.

So yeah, I’d greatly appreciate any input from y’all.

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Before I really read your words, I’ll say just one thing:
Ryzen 9800X3D, coming out next week. If you can afford it, there’s really no reason to look elsewhere. It will blow away every other AMD CPU in gaming and should do fairly well in non-games as well.

It’s also going to blow away the new Intel Ultras and their 14th gen Cores aren’t too different.

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As @JediMaster mentioned at this point it is worth waiting for the 9800X3D. Official release is only a week away and then I would wait one or two months to see whether any issues pop up.

I am also in a position where I am in the market for a new PC soon:TM: and my plan is to go with a 9800X3D, 96GB RAM, and eventually a 5090. I am willing to brute force my way to good VR Performance :sweat_smile::sob:

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Star Wars Tatooine GIF by Jeremy Mansford

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Thanks, guys!

We will see how expensive the new thing is going to be I guess. Because I think that will be the single most important factor unless it is literally twice as fast or something.

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I’ve only skimmed your post and will certainly come with more advice later.

I really feel you with the AMD GPU and Linux stuff. I wanted that too, and even considered the tiny bump from RTX 3080 to RX 7900 XT for it.

I eventually decided against it because while the RX 7900 XT has good general performance, the first-gen chiplet design falls short in low latency scenarios, i.e. VR.

They claimed to have fixed a related driver issue last year but VR performance is still lagging a generation or a bit more behind.

Nvidia is, thanks to the AI boom, stepping up their Linux drivers game, slowly putting stuff into the kernel. That is not much use to you now, but they did already fix the big problems with their proprietary Linux driver this year.

If VR is of any value to you, I would recommend going with an Nvidia GPU for now.

There are plenty of Linux distributions that make it easy to run the latest Nvidia drivers and a recent CPU (thus recent kernel). I’ve been using Pop!_OS, which is Ubuntu-based should be really good when they finally release a stable version of 24.04. Bazzite is very popular too, it’s immutable and Fedora-based. Finally, there’s the Arch-based EndeavourOS which also ships Nvidia images.

All three ship images that include recent Nvidia drivers with zero setup required.

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Comments:

7800x3d is not almost as fast, it is faster for game workload. Significantly faster. Look at benchmarks of the games you like. Added benefit is easy cooling.

I got the Dark Rock pro 5 and it‘s the best cooler I ever had. Good choice.

Check out the Asrock B650 Livemixer. It’s cheaper because of the orange color, but actually has extra non-AMD USB controllers on board. Which is what you want, you just do not know that yet. :grinning:

GPU manufacturer XFX is lovely. It’s metal stuff, heavy. Heavy metal. I like my 6800xt.

RAM choice is good but used to be cheaper a few weeks ago?

Check out the BeQuiet 802 case. Bigger, better, nice to work in. Money well spent.

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Oh and for CPU, definitely wait for the 9800X3D. Even if, worst case, it is badly overpriced, it should still make the 7800X3D drop a bit in price.

Do not go for 7900X3D, only half of its cores have 3D V-cache. For gaming, it’s all about that 3D V-cache so you’re better off getting a 7800X3D, where there are no “slow” cores because everything has access to the cache.

Total number of cores is less important than number of cores with fast cache

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Faster than…?

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Anything! And the 7900X3D

Edit: i am waiting for MSFS2024 numbers. They will be interesting.

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:smile:
Certainly faster than me!

Ah! Thanks. Couldn’t quite read that from the context.

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Here’s examples. There‘s plenty more out there.

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Thanks for your input, @Freak and @Poneybirds !

Even if the performance is lagging behind a generation or two that’s still an improvement over mine right now. :smiley:

The thing with VR is: I cannot afford a better headset and the (price-wise) comparable Nvidia graphics card is only a 4070 which seems to be quite significantlyless capable in almost everything, so I am a bit reluctant.
I’d like to play in VR now amd then, but I doubt that I can justify spending so much more money just for that.

As for distributions: I’ll probably either go Arch or stick to the one I know best (Mint) I guess.

About the 7800X3D: I still don’t get it. Have games still not begun using all the cores?
Reminds me of why I bought an i5 instead of an i7 back then, because hardly any games used those additional cores and the single core performance of the i5 was great.
I mean: that 7900X3D has 12 cores and it runs at more MHz, and outside of gaming it looks pretty great. I would have expected better performance.

Anyway, good points. And it is even 50€ cheaper.

Side note: I don’t frikkin’ understand those naming conventions. Especially AMD confuses me to no end.

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It appears right now the 7800x3d has an inflated price, because production stopped and demand is high.

On November 7th AMD will announce the 9800x3d. At least they said they will.

So my advice is to lay back for a week and think through a few details. Like what you will plugin, and where. These things also matter in the long run.

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It turns out cache is so much more important for gaming than all the other metrics you’re used to from CPUs: number of cores, clock speed, etc.

Besides raw performance numbers, there’s another reason to want the single-CCD 3D chip where all cores are equal: if all cores are equal, you don’t need to worry about which cores your game is running on. With different cores, all kinds of weird problems can happen

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AMD laptop CPU naming conventions are terrible, but well explained.
AMD desktop is something like:

Ryzen

7 ← tier/ how expensive is it?

7 ← generation, includes architecture and node
8 ← usually same as the Ryzen X number, or 1 higher
0 ← this is always 0 or 5. 5 meaning better
0
X3D or nothing, whether any CCD on the chip has 3D V-cache

AMD’s X800 chips have for the past few gens been the “biggest” CPUs that that still had only one CCD. This is advantageous for the 3D chips, because as far as I know, they only ever put 3D cache on 1 of the CCDs, never on both.

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Ok, that clears up things a little bit. Thank you!

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Ignore „Ryzen 7“ and the likes. Look at the 4 digit number and the price instead.

The suffix can be

  • nada > Cheap bulk CPUs
  • X > winners of silicon lottery. Faster.
  • XT > warmed up old X wafers or something. 2nd gen.
  • X3D > A lot of cache for a lot of cash. FPS likes this.
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I don’t know much about the AMD CPU’s but I would say you are definitely doing the right thing staying away from the top end Intel processors. My i9 14900KS is certainly powerful but it has been a real pain trying to keep its temps at a sane level. I have it tamed pretty much, but at the cost of leaving some performance on the table…

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I am still hoping that Intel will somehow fix that, but yeah, it deterred me a bit.