Help with building a gaming/streaming PC.

[protato]

Hi, I'm currently in the market to be buying/upgrading to a new PC. My main uses for it would be for gaming, streaming, and video editing. I do have a 10 year old pc (970, 16gb ddr3, and i7-4790k) that I could possibly salvage parts from but don't mind and also understand my parts probably wouldn't be compatible with current motherboards and such. Any advice and reasoning for picking the parts would be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

Budget - $2,000-$2,500 (give or take a little bit depending on value for the money)
Resolution - 4k preferred but not needed
System Purpose (gaming, workstation, HTPC, etc) - Gaming, video editing, streaming
If a gaming system, what games and settings are desired? - Wow, Apex, and current/possible new releases
Any other intensive software or special things you do (Frequent video encoding, 3D modeling, etc) - Streaming, video editing
Do you plan to overclock? - No experience with overclocking, so probably not any time soon.
Country - US
Preferred Stores / Sites - Any store, but I do have a Micro center near me, so preferably Micro center.
Parts that can be reused - 4Tb HDD, Maybe old pc parts
Do you need an OS? - Currently have windows 10 on my pc, not sure if I could re-use. If not, yes.
Do you need peripherals (e.g. monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, etc)? - Overall no, but current monitors do not support 4k. I can always get/upgrade my peripherals at some later point.

[Kagthul]

Uhh.. not to put too fine a point on it, but can you wait like 5 weeks?

Both Intel and AMD are within weeks of releasing their new CPUs (Ryzen 7000 for AMD and 13th Gen "Raptor Lake" for Intel).

Also, i take it the video editing you would be doing is of your stream/gameplay and not like, for-real-money-this-is-my-irl-job?

[protato]

No, I'm in no rush at the moment to build my PC, just trying to get a head start so I know what to look for when I do decide. (probably within 6-8 weeks). And no, it's no my full time job, but it is my part time job currently, and will eventually become my full time once I've gotten my viewership high enough to live solely on that income.

As for the new intel vs amd chips, any rough idea right now which is looking more promising? Thanks

[tomten]

No, I'm in no rush at the moment to build my PC, just trying to get a head start so I know what to look for when I do decide. (probably within 6-8 weeks). And no, it's no my full time job, but it is my part time job currently, and will eventually become my full time once I've gotten my viewership high enough to live solely on that income.

As for the new intel vs amd chips, any rough idea right now which is looking more promising? Thanks

Are you looking to have someone build it for you or build yourself? If building yourself, Do you have any build so far? Any preference on amd/intel/nvidia?
Have you looked at a gaming monitor? Since your current doesn't support 4k. What monitor is it? What does it support?
You're not gonna like having a brand new computer on an old 1080p monitor for example? I would make room for a new monitor in the budget.

Far as current, intel shames amd and most likely will continue to do it.

[protato]

Are you looking to have someone build it for you or build yourself? If building yourself, Do you have any build so far? Any preference on amd/intel/nvidia?
Have you looked at a gaming monitor? Since your current doesn't support 4k. What monitor is it? What does it support?
You're not gonna like having a brand new computer on an old 1080p monitor for example? I would make room for a new monitor in the budget.

Far as current, intel shames amd and most likely will continue to do it.

No, I currently do not have a build. I did slap together a very "rough" build on pc-part picker with a high end intel and 3090 just to get an idea of what I should put aside for a more current high end pc. I probably would pay Micro center to build it, but I can also do it myself. If I do decide to have someone build it, won't be part of the budget. Budget is specifically for pc parts, I can add extra for any other peripherals, having someone build it, etc.

As for preferences, intel slightly, but otherwise no. Whichever would work better for my intentions I'm fine with and don't mind spending more on a more expensive CPU if it'll preform better. And for a monitor, you do have a very solid point. But no I haven't recently. My two monitors are Asus, and I've loved them a lot. So probably stick with that brand if they are still decent. And glad to hear that information about intel vs amd.

[Alcsaar]

Just wanted to chip in and say if you're planning on streaming, maybe consider picking up a capture card and using your current PC to do the streaming workload for you while you play on your new PC. I imagine that processor is probably good enough to do capture card streaming.

[tomten]

Just wanted to chip in and say if you're planning on streaming, maybe consider picking up a capture card and using your current PC to do the streaming workload for you while you play on your new PC. I imagine that processor is probably good enough to do capture card streaming.

Most, if not all high end cards support hardware level encode/decode for streaming and it has almost no impact on gaming itself.
And with his budget? It wont really be an issue either way, I would spend any leftover on a 2nd monitor.

- - - Updated - - -

No, I currently do not have a build. I did slap together a very "rough" build on pc-part picker with a high end intel and 3090 just to get an idea of what I should put aside for a more current high end pc. I probably would pay Micro center to build it, but I can also do it myself. If I do decide to have someone build it, won't be part of the budget. Budget is specifically for pc parts, I can add extra for any other peripherals, having someone build it, etc.

As for preferences, intel slightly, but otherwise no. Whichever would work better for my intentions I'm fine with and don't mind spending more on a more expensive CPU if it'll preform better. And for a monitor, you do have a very solid point. But no I haven't recently. My two monitors are Asus, and I've loved them a lot. So probably stick with that brand if they are still decent. And glad to hear that information about intel vs amd.

Ok, can you just show me your rough idea on pcparts picker and link the build link here? Include a monitor?
It will help for 2 reasons, you'll browse parts, look at them a bit, maybe check out a quick VS review, you get a feel for highest end lines, prices, monitors, new standards etc.
This helps you from getting screwed over and sold shit you dont need and it will also help everyone here, because you know what we're talking about when we recommend acrynoms, series etc etc.

Even if you dont build it physically, I strongly suggest you to build it and you can have that micro center ASSEMBLY for you, make all cables neat, have them install your copy of windows(you need to buy one) and stress test the part quickly. It will cost between 30-80 euro depending on country/store/whatever.
Its something I strongly suggest for doing. One, learn your computer, learn the parts, the lingo but pay someone that does 20 computers per day to sort it out, you will thank me later

Quote me and ill check back in tomorrow and help you with what you presented, sleepy time in my timezone

[Kagthul]

As for the new intel vs amd chips, any rough idea right now which is looking more promising? Thanks

From current info - AMD's launch presentation benchmarks and Benchmarks of final Engineering Samples logged in of Raptor Lake/13th Gen, they are looking to be extremly close to one another in performance as far as gaming goes. Like.. within 5% of less. Now, if AMD fibbed or massaged their benchmarks in the presentation, they may be a bit behind, but my feeling is that we're looking at the two companies basically trading blows.

Where Intel will likely pull ahead will be heavily multithreaded (which will affect video editing) because they are going higher core count. The 13900K is going to be a 24 core Processor with 32 threads. - 8 Performance Cores (with Hyperthreading) that hit 5.8Ghz out of the box and a whopping 16 Efficiency cores (which hit the mid-3Ghz range, and each one performs like a Skylake-derived core).

As an example of how effective the E-cores really are, the current gen 12900K which is 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores (24 total threads), handily beats the 16-core, 32-thread 5950X in multithreaded workflows by 10-15% or more. Given that with current info, Ryzen 7000 and Raptor Lake appear to be similar in performance per core, the 13900K will probably have an even larger advantage over the 7950X because of 8 additional E-cores over the 12900K. But for gaming, it wont really matter (no game needs that many cores). And thats assuming you head straight to the top end. Since you want to make this your job, there is some merit to getting the top end SKU of whichever. you go with, as more cores/power = less time doing renders. If you were just doing this as a hobby or side thing, i'd say you could easily get away with a 13700K or 7700X, because a little extra render time isnt that big a deal when money isn't on the line.

Quite honestly, though it would definitely cost more, in your shoes, i'd seriously consider building two rigs - one to stream/do video work and one purely for gaming. The gaming rig could easily be much "lower" powered - there's not going to be any real difference between an overclocked 13600K (or 7600X) and a 13900K/7950X as far as actual gaming performance. My wife does it this way (though shes just a hobbyist) - she duplicates the video out to her M1 Mac Mini and does all the streaming & recording (and editing, afterwards, if needed) from the Mac. That method also completely avoids there EVER being any chance of your streaming/recording possibly affecting your game performance. If your budget wont stretch, then one rig with the best CPU you can get (from either manufacturer) is definitely the next best bet.

AMD will be out a little sooner (street date on Ryzen 7000 is the 27th of this month). Intel is planning on their official announcement on the same day (yeah, thats definitely NOT a coincidence), and street date is tipped for the second week of October.

Given that most of the SKUs from both company appear to be simply slotting into existing price points of the things they are replacing, your ~2500$ budget should be enough even with Ryzen 7000/Raptor Lake to land you a top-end CPU and beefy GPU.

You might seriously consider ordering a 3090Ti right now - they are showing up at ~1000$ (from a 2500$ MSRP) as places try to fire-sale them ahead of the 4000-series launch. And while, yeah, a putative 4080 or 4080Ti might be more powerful than the 3090Ti (and the 4090/Ti definitely will be) they wont be available at launch (theyll sell out, even without scalpers) and you're likely not going to be able to land one for months.... and its not like the 3090Ti is suddenly going to become bad because its a smidge under the new top end cards.

Here's an example build - just imagine "13900K" instead of 12900K (going to be the same price, pretty much) and Z790 instead of Z690 (though, since Z690 will support Raptor Lake, you might be able to score a good Z690 board for cheaper after the launch that will perform pretty much identically). Everything else should be roughly the same. Im going to go with DDR5 here, to make the comparison between Ryzen 7000 and Raptor Lake fair (you MUST use DDR5 with Ryzen 7000, while Raptor Lake will still support DDR4). For the Ryzen build, again, just imagine "Ryzen 7000" instead of 5000, etc. Prices should be the same or very similar.

Intel Build (again, imagine next-gen CPU - but you may want to go ahead and get this MoBo, as it is what puts the budget over and it has absolutely bonkers amounts of fast I/O, which is why i went with it.) There are a ton of very good boards with less I/O down in the 200-250$ range, if you need to stay below 2500$ no matter what.

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/4DfHJM

CPU: Intel Core i9-12900K 3.2 GHz 16-Core Processor ($569.99 @ Best Buy)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black 82.51 CFM CPU Cooler ($99.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX Z690-E GAMING WIFI ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($399.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL32 Memory ($169.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 24 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card ($1079.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse G360A ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 210-GQ-1000-V1 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($129.99 @ EVGA)
Total: $2664.88
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-09-08 23:25 EDT-0400

Ryzen Build - again, imagine Ryzen 7000 (and, perforce, a new motherboard, as it will NOT socket into AM4 boards - early pricing leaks seem to point to new AM5 boards being a fair bit pricier than their AM4 equivalents, so the MoBo might be +100$ or more).

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/s7nHJM

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor ($548.86 @ Adorama)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black 82.51 CFM CPU Cooler ($99.95 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: EVGA X570 DARK EATX AM4 Motherboard ($399.99 @ EVGA)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory ($169.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Ti 24 GB GAMING X TRIO Video Card ($1079.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse G360A ATX Mid Tower Case ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: EVGA 210-GQ-1000-V1 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($129.99 @ EVGA)
Total: $2643.75
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-09-08 23:30 EDT-0400

The AMD build MAY be another 100-150$ more depending on if the early leaks about X670 boards being pricier than X570 are true. (Edit: Seems to be true: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTVo...l=JayzTwoCents)

For both builds you're going to want to put in more mass storage (which you may already have) to record video to and edit from.

The case is a good, no-frills, easy-to-work but still not ugly case. YMMV. Comes with 3 intake fans (which are from Phanteks and are pretty decent) so you wont have to buy a ton of extra fans.

You can also swap the Noctua cooler for a 360mm AIO if you want for not a ton more (another ~40ish $). Itll cool *marginally* better than the big ass Noctua.. but it wont be night and day and the Noctua can keep either CPU well within temp limits.

Again, those are just rough examples given that the prices of incoming parts are likely to be the same or just marginally more expensive than the ones they are replacing.

[protato]

Most, if not all high end cards support hardware level encode/decode for streaming and it has almost no impact on gaming itself.
And with his budget? It wont really be an issue either way, I would spend any leftover on a 2nd monitor.

- - - Updated - - -



Ok, can you just show me your rough idea on pcparts picker and link the build link here? Include a monitor?
It will help for 2 reasons, you'll browse parts, look at them a bit, maybe check out a quick VS review, you get a feel for highest end lines, prices, monitors, new standards etc.
This helps you from getting screwed over and sold shit you dont need and it will also help everyone here, because you know what we're talking about when we recommend acrynoms, series etc etc.

Even if you dont build it physically, I strongly suggest you to build it and you can have that micro center ASSEMBLY for you, make all cables neat, have them install your copy of windows(you need to buy one) and stress test the part quickly. It will cost between 30-80 euro depending on country/store/whatever.
Its something I strongly suggest for doing. One, learn your computer, learn the parts, the lingo but pay someone that does 20 computers per day to sort it out, you will thank me later

Quote me and ill check back in tomorrow and help you with what you presented, sleepy time in my timezone

Appreciate the input! I definitely do like knowing what is going into my pc and knowing why, kind of why I asked for reasons on the choice between amd vs intel to start. I know a few things about PCs but I definitely don't keep up with current parts, and what is better for what intentions all the time, though. As for having micro center assembly my pc, I'm 95% positive I will just because that's their job and if I'm spending this kind of money, I would rather have a professional do it.

- - - Updated - - -

From current info - AMD's launch presentation benchmarks and Benchmarks of final Engineering Samples logged in of Raptor Lake/13th Gen, they are looking to be extremly close to one another in performance as far as gaming goes. Like.. within 5% of less. Now, if AMD fibbed or massaged their benchmarks in the presentation, they may be a bit behind, but my feeling is that we're looking at the two companies basically trading blows.

Where Intel will likely pull ahead will be heavily multithreaded (which will affect video editing) because they are going higher core count. The 13900K is going to be a 24 core Processor with 32 threads. - 8 Performance Cores (with Hyperthreading) that hit 5.8Ghz out of the box and a whopping 16 Efficiency cores (which hit the mid-3Ghz range, and each one performs like a Skylake-derived core).

As an example of how effective the E-cores really are, the current gen 12900K which is 8 P-cores and 8 E-cores (24 total threads), handily beats the 16-core, 32-thread 5950X in multithreaded workflows by 10-15% or more. Given that with current info, Ryzen 7000 and Raptor Lake appear to be similar in performance per core, the 13900K will probably have an even larger advantage over the 7950X because of 8 additional E-cores over the 12900K. But for gaming, it wont really matter (no game needs that many cores). And thats assuming you head straight to the top end. Since you want to make this your job, there is some merit to getting the top end SKU of whichever. you go with, as more cores/power = less time doing renders. If you were just doing this as a hobby or side thing, i'd say you could easily get away with a 13700K or 7700X, because a little extra render time isnt that big a deal when money isn't on the line.

Quite honestly, though it would definitely cost more, in your shoes, i'd seriously consider building two rigs - one to stream/do video work and one purely for gaming. The gaming rig could easily be much "lower" powered - there's not going to be any real difference between an overclocked 13600K (or 7600X) and a 13900K/7950X as far as actual gaming performance. My wife does it this way (though shes just a hobbyist) - she duplicates the video out to her M1 Mac Mini and does all the streaming & recording (and editing, afterwards, if needed) from the Mac. That method also completely avoids there EVER being any chance of your streaming/recording possibly affecting your game performance. If your budget wont stretch, then one rig with the best CPU you can get (from either manufacturer) is definitely the next best bet.

AMD will be out a little sooner (street date on Ryzen 7000 is the 27th of this month). Intel is planning on their official announcement on the same day (yeah, thats definitely NOT a coincidence), and street date is tipped for the second week of October.

Given that most of the SKUs from both company appear to be simply slotting into existing price points of the things they are replacing, your ~2500$ budget should be enough even with Ryzen 7000/Raptor Lake to land you a top-end CPU and beefy GPU.

You might seriously consider ordering a 3090Ti right now - they are showing up at ~1000$ (from a 2500$ MSRP) as places try to fire-sale them ahead of the 4000-series launch. And while, yeah, a putative 4080 or 4080Ti might be more powerful than the 3090Ti (and the 4090/Ti definitely will be) they wont be available at launch (theyll sell out, even without scalpers) and you're likely not going to be able to land one for months.... and its not like the 3090Ti is suddenly going to become bad because its a smidge under the new top end cards.

Here's an example build - just imagine "13900K" instead of 12900K (going to be the same price, pretty much) and Z790 instead of Z690 (though, since Z690 will support Raptor Lake, you might be able to score a good Z690 board for cheaper after the launch that will perform pretty much identically). Everything else should be roughly the same. Im going to go with DDR5 here, to make the comparison between Ryzen 7000 and Raptor Lake fair (you MUST use DDR5 with Ryzen 7000, while Raptor Lake will still support DDR4). For the Ryzen build, again, just imagine "Ryzen 7000" instead of 5000, etc. Prices should be the same or very similar.

Intel Build (again, imagine next-gen CPU - but you may want to go ahead and get this MoBo, as it is what puts the budget over and it has absolutely bonkers amounts of fast I/O, which is why i went with it.) There are a ton of very good boards with less I/O down in the 200-250$ range, if you need to stay below 2500$ no matter what.



Ryzen Build - again, imagine Ryzen 7000 (and, perforce, a new motherboard, as it will NOT socket into AM4 boards - early pricing leaks seem to point to new AM5 boards being a fair bit pricier than their AM4 equivalents, so the MoBo might be +100$ or more).



The AMD build MAY be another 100-150$ more depending on if the early leaks about X670 boards being pricier than X570 are true. (Edit: Seems to be true:

For both builds you're going to want to put in more mass storage (which you may already have) to record video to and edit from.

The case is a good, no-frills, easy-to-work but still not ugly case. YMMV. Comes with 3 intake fans (which are from Phanteks and are pretty decent) so you wont have to buy a ton of extra fans.

You can also swap the Noctua cooler for a 360mm AIO if you want for not a ton more (another ~40ish $). Itll cool *marginally* better than the big ass Noctua.. but it wont be night and day and the Noctua can keep either CPU well within temp limits.

Again, those are just rough examples given that the prices of incoming parts are likely to be the same or just marginally more expensive than the ones they are replacing.

Really appreciate all the information! That's exactly what I was looking for, and was thinking it was that way but wasn't 100% sure. I will probably aim for the intel raptor lake CPU. As for two pcs doing both, it is a great idea, but as for right now I would rather put my entire budget towards the one PC, but appreciate the advice. I do have a 4 TB HDD (barracuda seagate) and also an old 500GB SSD samsung (950 Evo if I remember correctly). Assuming the 950 is too outdated to use on a modern motherboard though?

[Kagthul]

Really appreciate all the information! That's exactly what I was looking for, and was thinking it was that way but wasn't 100% sure. I will probably aim for the intel raptor lake CPU. As for two pcs doing both, it is a great idea, but as for right now I would rather put my entire budget towards the one PC, but appreciate the advice. I do have a 4 TB HDD (barracuda seagate) and also an old 500GB SSD samsung (950 Evo if I remember correctly). Assuming the 950 is too outdated to use on a modern motherboard though?

Not at all. I wouldnt use it as a boot drive (Im assuming its a 2.5"/SATA drive) simply because the M.2 NVMe drive will boot faster, but you can still use it. It would be a good scratch disk to edit from because its a lot faster than any old spinning HD. Edit: if it is M.2, even an older PCIe gen, either board i picked (and most boards at the 200+ price range - hell i think that ASUS board for the intel build has FOUR) have more than one M.2 slot. Just put it in one of the other slots (reserve the Gen 4 or Gen 5 slot for the new drive, which is Gen 4). Itll work just fine; the slot being faster doesnt affect it - they are backwards compatible.

If you want to add a ton of mass storage:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easy...?skuId=6425302

Dont let that "normally 209" shit fool you. Ive literally never seen them full price. The drives inside are actually rebadged WD Reds (normally NAS drives that are another 80+$ more expensive, these have a white label, but teardowns confirm they are Reds). Just rip the case apart and get the drive out. This will also leave you with a perfectly fine external enclosure for drives.

I did my entire NAS this way (5x8 TB drives, in Raid 5+1, so 24TB of usable space with double redundancy) when they were down to 140$ish.

[swisscheese]

Your old samsung will be fine to use. It won't be as fast as some of the newer ones, but nothing you'll really notice anyway

....
I did my entire NAS this way (5x8 TB drives, in Raid 5+1, so 24TB of usable space with double redundancy) when they were down to 140$ish.

Yes! I've used those for all of mine. I've been waiting for the 16-18gb prices to come down a bit so I can upgrade...running low on space