New Computer build that is future proof

[FuujCraft]

Hey guys,

So I desperately need a new Computer and saved up about 3000 Euro for a new one. So I am looking for suggestions for a computer that I dont need to upgrade for the next 5+ Years. It should be able to play most if not all current and and upcoming games at the highest framerate and Resolution. So run wild with the parts, as money isnt the issue this time. I am not really up to date with current tech, I built my last computer in 2011 or so.

[Samuraijake]

Someone can correct me or add if they want.

but the main parts you'd want to invest in without having to worry about touching it in the next 5 years are

Power Supply 850+ watts (just make sure it has enough Watts to support your current parts and any future upgrades youd want to add later)

CPU - I-7 or something that has a "K" at the end, which means it can be overclocked to work faster and harder to meet future demands down the line

Graphics card - Nvidia 2080 is the latest.


Brands that seem to have decent reviews - Corsair , Nvidia, EVGA.

[Kagthul]

"Things that dont exist"?

Oh, wait, this isn't Jeopardy

- - - Updated - - -

On a more serious note, though, now is like the WORST time to be building a "future proof" computer, what with new GPUs coming out in 3 months-ish looking to provide a 35-50% performance increase at each product segement.

[Rathwirt]

Yeah. Get a nice solid base of a computer with a modern CPU, lots of RAM, SSDs, and a quality power supply. Then get a decent video card. Get a really NICE graphics card in a year or two. My current computer was top of the line "future-proof" six years ago, and all I had to do was finally replace the video card this year. That's the main tech that advances right now.

[Temp name]

Wait 6 months, then ask again. New GPUs are coming out in about 3 months, and depending on who you believe it'll be between 20 and 50% uplift in performance.
CPUs are going to be out sometime this year, but probably more on the early winter side of things rather than in a month or two

Yeah. Get a nice solid base of a computer with a modern CPU, lots of RAM, SSDs, and a quality power supply. Then get a decent video card. Get a really NICE graphics card in a year or two. My current computer was top of the line "future-proof" six years ago, and all I had to do was finally replace the video card this year. That's the main tech that advances right now.

CPUs are jumping leaps and bounds right now, just not really noticeable in games because they are still made to use 4-8 threads.

[Mouri Kogorou]

things you can invest in currently (find sales / best prices):
- Case, try to avoid mini-itx sized cases because they are harder to build and require small hands
- power supply, anything between 600-800 watts, fully modular and has good rating
- i think going for AMD B550 / X570 mobo is very safe now, find wifi-6/ax and 2.5Gb/s+ ethernet option if you want it future proof
- NVMe 4.0 SSD, they are getting bigger in storage size now.
- keyboard / mouse / mic / headphones
- AM4 CPU cooler
- 2x8GB or 2x16GB DDR4-3200+
- invest in proper monitor, this is very very important, G-sync, 1440p or 4k (if you go high end GPU), 120mhz+ refresh rate

things you should hold off buying for now:
- wait for RTX 3000 series (3 months?)
- wait for Zen 3, Ryzen 4000 series. (end of year?)

[Thunderball]

Not recommended to invest in anything right now pretty much. Prices are stupid or new standards are right around the corner.
- Case and PSU you can get if you manage to find a decent price, but for PSU there's a pretty big chance that ATX standard will become obsolete before a good PSU runs out of steam.
- With PCI-e 4.0 in it's infancy and 5.0 around the corner I wouldnt invest into a platform right now. Add in DDR5 that's right around the corner aswell as Intel 10nm chips that are coming likely next summer - it's rough right now especially considering the prices.
- True wireless headphones are getting pretty big right now, but they are still way too expensive, and prices are again, not good. Other peripherals are not going anywhere, but the prices are, again, bad right now.
- Storage options are gonna continue to get cheaper and faster, so there's not really a point of buying anything unless you're getting a platform with it.
- Monitors are going very slowly, but I wouldnt consider anything that's not 4K 120Hz IPS future proof right now. Not aware of any good deals for those atm, so skip.

So overall dont buy a PC right now if you can wait, you could try to grab something out of the categories that are not getting obsolete too fast in the holiday season if there's a good deal, but that's about it. Wait a year if you can.

[Temp name]

things you can invest in currently (find sales / best prices):
- Case, try to avoid mini-itx sized cases because they are harder to build and require small hands

Unless you want something small and movable.

- power supply, anything between 600-800 watts, fully modular and has good rating

Depends on what build you're going with. 500-550 is plenty for midrange, even with overhead. 400 is fine for highend if you want to run it at capacity

- i think going for AMD B550 / X570 mobo is very safe now, find wifi-6/ax and 2.5Gb/s+ ethernet option if you want it future proof

Wifi 6 maybe, but to take advantage of 2.5gb ethernet you need at least a switch capable of it, and some other component that can do it. Unlikely. Also just get 10gbit like a regular person in an add-in card.

- NVMe 4.0 SSD, they are getting bigger in storage size now.

And completely pointless because you won't notice the speed outside of file transfers over a link that can handle the multi-gigabyte per second transfer speeds, or playing back super-high res video files.

- keyboard / mouse / mic / headphones
- AM4 CPU cooler

no shit

- 2x8GB or 2x16GB DDR4-3200+

3600MHz for zen2. It literally gives you 5-10% more performance over 3200. Also anything over 16gb is pointless for a gaming/Daily rig.

- invest in proper monitor, this is very very important, G-sync, 1440p or 4k (if you go high end GPU), 120mhz+ refresh rate

I don't notice VRR on my monitors. I went from 165hz G-sync to 144hz nothing and didn't notice the difference. That said if you're more susceptible to tearing, then maybe.
Also, it's 120hz. 120mhz is 120 000 000 hz, and literally no monitor goes that fast (yes I'm nitpicking)

things you should hold off buying for now:
- wait for RTX 3000 series (3 months?)
- wait for Zen 3, Ryzen 4000 series. (end of year?)

And then there's no real point in getting anything else on the list if you can't get a CPU or GPU

Not recommended to invest in anything right now pretty much. Prices are stupid or new standards are right around the corner.
- Case and PSU you can get if you manage to find a decent price, but for PSU there's a pretty big chance that ATX standard will become obsolete before a good PSU runs out of steam.

As long as you get one of the 200+ dollar ones, yeah. I wouldn't trust a ~100 dollar PSU to last more than 10-12 years.

- With PCI-e 4.0 in it's infancy and 5.0 around the corner I wouldnt invest into a platform right now. Add in DDR5 that's right around the corner aswell as Intel 10nm chips that are coming likely next summer - it's rough right now especially considering the prices.

PCIe 5 is no where near consumer level. Not to mention there's already no reason to get PCIe 4 over PCIe 3 for a consumer, there'll be even less going to PCIe 5.
Now DDR5 is maybe worth it. But we'll probably be seeing that in 2022 at the earliest. Neither AM4 or LGA1200 can support it, so we'd need new sockets, and with AM4 getting a new generation of CPU at the tail end of 2020, and LGA1200 supposed to support next years Intel CPU as well, we won't be seeing DDR5 in consumer PCs until at least 2022. As for Intel 10nm.. Doubt it. They've been saying they'll launch "soon" for years now. And it'll have to support the same socket, so doubt they'll change the architecture.

- Storage options are gonna continue to get cheaper and faster, so there's not really a point of buying anything unless you're getting a platform with it.

But there's no real reason to get even the currently-fastest SSDs over the step-down. You will get literally no performance benefit. Maybe with Optane SSDs, which are specialized for low-latency operation, but even then it won't be much.

- Monitors are going very slowly, but I wouldnt consider anything that's not 4K 120Hz IPS future proof right now. Not aware of any good deals for those atm, so skip.

Wat. Considering we don't even have GPUs capable of 4k60 reliably in modern games, there's no reason to go 4k. Add on top of that that at any reasonable distance you won't be able to see the pixel density increase over 1440p.. Wasted power to run it. Absolutely go for high refreshrate though, if possible

So overall dont buy a PC right now if you can wait, you could try to grab something out of the categories that are not getting obsolete too fast in the holiday season if there's a good deal, but that's about it. Wait a year if you can.

I'd say wait 6 months instead of a year. But that's because I doubt Intel will bring anything worthwhile in the next generation

[Mouri Kogorou]

Depends on what build you're going with. 500-550 is plenty for midrange, even with overhead. 400 is fine for highend if you want to run it at capacity

future proofing, i said in the top "Check for sales / price" you might find a 700 watts PSU cheaper than 600 PSU.

Wifi 6 maybe, but to take advantage of 2.5gb ethernet you need at least a switch capable of it, and some other component that can do it. Unlikely. Also just get 10gbit like a regular person in an add-in card.

both are required for future proofing, specially if you have a smart tv, you want good connection to run 4K content that is not heavily compressed.

And completely pointless because you won't notice the speed outside of file transfers over a link that can handle the multi-gigabyte per second transfer speeds, or playing back super-high res video files.

see above
also PS5 and XSX are coming with SSDs at that speed so we expect games to get larger and tuned toward having high speed SSD.
as he said
future proof.

no shit

yes, i tried to make a complete list, no need to act like an ass.

3600MHz for zen2. It literally gives you 5-10% more performance over 3200. Also anything over 16gb is pointless for a gaming/Daily rig.

3200 ++++ meaning anything he can afford above 3200

also, future proofing you want 32GB, we talking minimum 5 years ahead, you never know what he will start running.

I don't notice VRR on my monitors. I went from 165hz G-sync to 144hz nothing and didn't notice the difference. That said if you're more susceptible to tearing, then maybe.
Also, it's 120hz. 120mhz is 120 000 000 hz, and literally no monitor goes that fast (yes I'm nitpicking)

mhz typo
120hz was minimum i recommended, now you cant nit pick monitors, they dont come with (120 / 144/ 165 / 200 / etc) option, each monitor has a limit.
i recommended a future standard for proper gaming, 60hz is old school and the trend in FPS gaming is that you need 120 and above.

And then there's no real point in getting anything else on the list if you can't get a CPU or GPU

as i said, it all depends on prices and sales, if you can fild good sale / price then go for these items.

[Thunderball]

As long as you get one of the 200+ dollar ones, yeah. I wouldn't trust a ~100 dollar PSU to last more than 10-12 years.

No PSU would last that long without a cap replacement but I dont think ATX has more than 5 years left. All it takes is to chiplet GPUs to hit the market.

PCIe 5 is no where near consumer level. Not to mention there's already no reason to get PCIe 4 over PCIe 3 for a consumer, there'll be even less going to PCIe 5.

Agreed, but then again, chiplet GPUs could hit the market and ruin everything. Imagine a GPU that is 300$ and it outperforming current fastest card. That tech is might be less than 3 years from consumer market. PCIe 4 wasnt near consumer level too until it popped up on X570.

Now DDR5 is maybe worth it. But we'll probably be seeing that in 2022 at the earliest. Neither AM4 or LGA1200 can support it, so we'd need new sockets, and with AM4 getting a new generation of CPU at the tail end of 2020, and LGA1200 supposed to support next years Intel CPU as well, we won't be seeing DDR5 in consumer PCs until at least 2022.

All it takes is one of the big boys to adobt it. The tech is ready. I dont think the platform is a problem at all. Remember Skylake? It supported DDR3 and DDR4 on the same processors and PCHs. Used to be the same thing with Haswell-E Xeons (I dont think there were any X99 consumer boards with DDR3, but there were server ones).

As for Intel 10nm.. Doubt it. They've been saying they'll launch "soon" for years now. And it'll have to support the same socket, so doubt they'll change the architecture.

Ofc they wont change the core architecture, but they dont need to. Adding memory support doesnt mean redesigning the CPU.

But there's no real reason to get even the currently-fastest SSDs over the step-down. You will get literally no performance benefit. Maybe with Optane SSDs, which are specialized for low-latency operation, but even then it won't be much.

That's true, but everything that's layer memory based is getting cheaper over time and will continue to do so.

Wat. Considering we don't even have GPUs capable of 4k60 reliably in modern games, there's no reason to go 4k. Add on top of that that at any reasonable distance you won't be able to see the pixel density increase over 1440p.. Wasted power to run it. Absolutely go for high refreshrate though, if possible

We also have GPU market stagnation that is going on for a while due to companies being unable make big enough monolithic dies. We all know how it all got solved on CPU level so I expect it to happen on the GPU market relatively soon too.

I'd say wait 6 months instead of a year. But that's because I doubt Intel will bring anything worthwhile in the next generation

Not only about Intel. Probably have to wait about the same for midrange Ampere too.

- - - Updated - - -

3200 ++++ meaning anything he can afford above 3200

3200 is the same memory as 3600 and costs the same. All that matters is timings. 3200CL15 and 3600CL15 are two very different beasts.

[Lurker1]

There is really no such thing as future proof sooner or later your pc will be outdated then you upgrade for while then you get to a point where you need to start from square one again and buy a pc all over again repearing the cycle op imho.

[ntlntl]

LIsten to Temp name, he knows what's good for you.

For a gaming computer:
You don't need more RAM, 16G is enough
You don't need high-end Motherboard, X570 has irrelevant features
You don't need expensive SSD, any SSD will do
You don't need 4K monitor, 1440 is enough for pairing with a strong card.
You don't need PSU greater than 500W

Those points narrow your build choice much. I hope you find a suitable computer for gaming.

In short, we can't future proof anything by buying the expensive one. You better wait till the end of 2020 for any new tech reveal. You could also cut your budget in half, get one now and save some for later GPU.

[PtrN]

There's a guide out there called "logical increments" that can help you decide where to best spend your money given your budget.

A 3k Euro budget should give you one great build assuming you don't need to include all the peripherals in it. Right now is a weird spot to build though. We're right around the corner from the next generation of GPU's, with CPU's trailing after that. Given that we have the next gen of consoles also coming soon we can expect an hike in new game requirements.

As others have said, there is no such thing as future proofing a build. It just cannot be done. You can create a computer that has upgrade paths for sure. But again with the tech that's around the corner we're expecting some fundamental changes in the tech that will limit or handicap your upgrade paths and effectiveness of the upgrade.

Just know that the only way you're going to build something that can play the newest games 5+ years from now at max settings is if you drop an obscene amount of money into parts that are not worth the cost (something like a Threadripper with 4xSLI'd 2080 Ti's). Then maybe.

Best bet is to do some research. Decide if you want an AMD or Intel CPU. I personally am an AMD fanboy but either will work. At your budget an Ryzen 7 or i7 series is more than enough to game, and you can probably upgrade to Ryzen 9/i9 if you wish. Games that aren't Dwarf Fortress aren't bottlenecked by your CPU. Figure out what you want to do for your GPU, nVidia or AMD. This is the biggest factor for game performance. With new GPU's around the corner you do have the decision to wait and go big when they drop or take advantage of the price drop of the current gen when that happens.

If the need for a new computer is urgent that's what I'd do. I'd do a build with a budget GPU now and wait for the new GPU's to drop, then upgrade. There's very little chance a high end CPU now will be a bottleneck for gaming in 2025, most likely it'll be the GPU (and possibly the bandwidth to the GPU but that's nothing you'd be able to upgrade without a new build).

Get a decent PSU. I'd go for 750W or higher to give you some breathing room. Get one from a good brand. The PSU is the last thing you want to skimp out on as if you get a knock-off and it goes it can take the rest of your rig with you. Make sure the PSU is modular, makes building a heck of a lot easier.

You only need 16GB of RAM. Make sure your mobo has 4 slots and slot in 2x8 sticks. That way if you need to add more you can just add two more 8gig sticks.

I've seen some talk about monitors. Don't go splurging on a 4k 144Hz monitor. Unless you are SLIing 2080Ti's you'll never use it to it's potential, it requires more GPU power than we can make. You can have 4k or 144Hz. Being so close to the screen I'd go with a 2560x1440 monitor that can do 144Hz over a 4k 60Hz. That's the decision I made and I've been very happy with it, higher refresh rates beat out the marginal upgrades in resolution.

[Temp name]

No PSU would last that long without a cap replacement but I dont think ATX has more than 5 years left. All it takes is to chiplet GPUs to hit the market.

I mean, they would. Caps only really degrade at higher temps, and if you run a ridiculously overpowered PSU, they won't get hot. So they won't degrade. And I'm not sure Chiplet GPUs would break ATX specs.

Agreed, but then again, chiplet GPUs could hit the market and ruin everything. Imagine a GPU that is 300$ and it outperforming current fastest card. That tech is might be less than 3 years from consumer market. PCIe 4 wasnt near consumer level too until it popped up on X570.

Until it shows up with benchmarks, I'm not going to assume it will magically outperform everything else at lower prices. It just feels like snake oil to say that at 300 dollars in 3 years you can outperform a 1000 dollar card today. And PCIe 4 isn't consumer level even today. Yes, consumers can buy it, but there's no point.

All it takes is one of the big boys to adobt it. The tech is ready. I dont think the platform is a problem at all. Remember Skylake? It supported DDR3 and DDR4 on the same processors and PCHs. Used to be the same thing with Haswell-E Xeons (I dont think there were any X99 consumer boards with DDR3, but there were server ones).

I mean, technically all current CPUs from intel support both DDR3 and DDR4 (Blame laptops).. But the Motherboards don't. Unless they for some reason share a memory slot design, which would just be weird.

Ofc they wont change the core architecture, but they dont need to. Adding memory support doesnt mean redesigning the CPU.

No but it means redesigning the MOBOs, which we were promised wouldn't change

That's true, but everything that's layer memory based is getting cheaper over time and will continue to do so.

Oh yeah, but as long as you can get a cheaper option that performs the same, why pay more?

We also have GPU market stagnation that is going on for a while due to companies being unable make big enough monolithic dies. We all know how it all got solved on CPU level so I expect it to happen on the GPU market relatively soon too.

I mean, unlike CPUs from 2011 to 2017, GPUs have still made huge performance leaps in the same time. I wouldn't call the market stagnant. And with the next generation of GPUs once again looking to be a 20-50% uptick in performance (depending on which leaks you listen to), this isn't stagnation.

Not only about Intel. Probably have to wait about the same for midrange Ampere too.

Possibly. They won't release at the same time as the top-end cards, but if the top-end cards are out in 3 months, the mid-range should be out in 6.

future proofing, i said in the top "Check for sales / price" you might find a 700 watts PSU cheaper than 600 PSU.

Yeah, but a 500w will probably be cheaper. And good enough. And if you really want to "future proof" a PSU, get a stupidly overkill one like 850-1000w that'll never get hot or even have to turn on its fan, so it'll last longer.

both are required for future proofing, specially if you have a smart tv, you want good connection to run 4K content that is not heavily compressed.

Again, to take advantage of 2.5g ethernet you'll need a 2.5g compliant switch and TV. Which, uh.. TV's don't. I'm not aware of a single TV with a 2.5g port. And even without heavily compressing the video, you're still looking at only ~100mb/s for 4k. Which is nowhere near 1000mb/s which is the limit for 1gb/s (even with overheard it's probably in the 920-950mb/s range). And again, just get a 10gb add-in card like a regular person.

see above

Same

also PS5 and XSX are coming with SSDs at that speed so we expect games to get larger and tuned toward having high speed SSD.

nah. Currently you're more limited by RAM than by storage speed. Let's assume you have a 5.5Gigabyte/s SSD (current max for consumer SSDs on pcie4). And 16GB of RAM. That will take ~3 seconds to completely saturate your RAM. Or at the lower end, if you have a 3.5GB/s which is a good PCIe3 NVMe drive, it will take 5 seconds. Will you really notice that difference? And that's assuming the game completely fills up your RAM, which it fucking won't. Because in addition to that you have to remember that most of what is loaded in is textures, which won't be loaded in at full resolution anyway, because that will fucking kill the GPU.

It's possible that you can use the SSD as a kind of secondary RAM, but that already happens if you run out of RAM (look up page file), and it fucking KILLS performance, because it's so slow to access. RAM access is orders of MAGNITUDE faster. Meaning that even if you get the best SSD you'll still feel everything chug when you go to page to the SSD instead.

Or, let's give everyone the benefit of the doubt, everyone gets the magic SSD from Sony that can do 9GB/s. Cool, DDR3 1600c11 (jedec spec) does 12.8GB/s. And that's old as fuck, and considered obsolete. DDR4 2666 at jedec spec does 21.3GB/s. DDR4 3200C16 does 25.6. And that's just transfer speeds, not the access times which are for RAM in the sub-1 nanosecond range, and for SSDs in the high single digits I believe, or low dual-digit

So, let's say you run along and suddenly run out of RAM and page to your SSD, are you going to notice if it's 64% slower (9GB/s SSD compared to 3200C16) or 86% slower (3.5GB/s SSD compared to 3200C16)? Because, no, you won't. You'll just notice that you're chugging

SSDs are slow as fuck, even with PCIe gen 4.

as he said
future proof.

so? Futureproof doesn't mean throwing money at things that don't give you any performance either now or in the future.

yes, i tried to make a complete list, no need to act like an ass.

Yeah, there kinda is when you're speaking bullshit

3200 ++++ meaning anything he can afford above 3200

Or you can just say 2666+ then! Because you either buy 3200 if you're strapped for cash and just trying to get something, or 3600 if you're not (for Zen2). 2666 and 3200 cost the same at the moment, so there's no reason to go below that, and 3600 is basically 10 dollars more, and performs 10% better. And if you go above 3600 there's no guarantee your FLCK can follow, so you'll lose performance. And yes, you do lose performance if you go with an unmatched FLCK and RAM speed. A lot of performance.

also, future proofing you want 32GB, we talking minimum 5 years ahead, you never know what he will start running.

Unless he starts doing work, he won't need 32GB. And if he does, he can add in the extra RAM when he needs it. There's no, literally no, reason to get 32GB for a gaming system. I mean, fuck, if you literally only game and don't have anything open besides your game, you can make do with 8GB

mhz typo

Figured, but didn't want to assume.

120hz was minimum i recommended, now you cant nit pick monitors, they dont come with (120 / 144/ 165 / 200 / etc) option, each monitor has a limit.
i recommended a future standard for proper gaming, 60hz is old school and the trend in FPS gaming is that you need 120 and above.

You'll notice I didn't disagree with you on that. I just disagreed on Gsync being needed.

as i said, it all depends on prices and sales, if you can fild good sale / price then go for these items.

And risk DOA parts you can't check letting the warranty expire. I see no reason to get parts one by one instead of all together unless you have no other option