New workstation specs

[Liamthanks]

Hi all,

I am looking at building a PC to use from home for some private work or to be able to work from home when sick. I have been doing a bit of research and have put together what I believe to be a sufficient system for the projects I intend to work on. Can you advise if there is anything below that is overkill or potentially needs to be upgraded to get the perfect system? I was thinking that potentially a Ryzen 5 CPU could be a cheaper alternative.

CPU: AMD AM4 Ryzen 7 1700X - 3.4Ghz 8 Core, 16 Threads - ($319)
Motherboard: MSI B450M PRO-M2 - ($105)
Graphics Card: Asus GeForce GTX 1060 6GB - ($395)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200 16gb (2x 8gb) - ($225)
SSD: WD Blue 3D 500GB SSD - ($119)
HDD: Seagate 3.5" Barracude 2TB - ($85)
Case & Power Supply: Thermaltake Versa N-25 w/ 600W Power Supply- ($115)
DVD Writer: Asus SATA DVD Writer - ($18)
Total:$1,381

[Lingwisyer]

I would add another of your 2TB Seagates and put them in Raid 1 if you are not keeping file backups elsewhere. It is nice to have redundancy in case a drive fails, especially for work files. Also, the case comes with one fan? I would probably add a second.



Ling.

[Anonymous]

I would change the SSD drive to a samsung 960 pro m.2 drive as much faster that standard ssd.

Regards
Scott

[Liamthanks]

sboydturner wrote:
I would change the SSD drive to a samsung 960 pro m.2 drive as much faster that standard ssd.

Regards
Scott

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the suggestion. At $599 from my preferred supplier, it is quite the jump up from the $115 for the WD Blue, so not a viable option for me. How much does the speed of the SSD affect performance? And in what respects?

[Liamthanks]

Lingwisyer wrote:
I would add another of your 2TB Seagates and put them in Raid 1 if you are not keeping file backups elsewhere. It is nice to have redundancy in case a drive fails, especially for work files. Also, the case comes with one fan? I would probably add a second.



Ling.

Hi Ling,

Valid points, thanks for your feedback. I shall add another HDD and fan.

[mikas]

Liamthanks wrote:

sboydturner wrote:
..samsung 960 pro m.2 drive as much faster that standard ssd.

At $599 from my preferred supplier, it is quite the jump up from the $115 for the WD Blue

I just bought a Samsung 970 EVO for 150€. It shouldn't be any higher in dollars, probably less:
SSD 970 EVO NVMe M.2 500GB

I have tried it all, HDD, SSD, SSD RAID, and PCIe M.2 AHCI allready. NVMe should be even faster. It's not all about continuous transfer rates, it's about fast access times and low latencies too.

Fast program starts, fast system startups, fast file opens, fast file saves. Fast everything.
I believe SATA SSD is sufficient, but M.2 SSD would be great.

[Liamthanks]

mikas wrote:

Liamthanks wrote:

sboydturner wrote:
..samsung 960 pro m.2 drive as much faster that standard ssd.

At $599 from my preferred supplier, it is quite the jump up from the $115 for the WD Blue

I just bought a Samsung 970 EVO for 150€. It shouldn't be any higher in dollars, probably less:
SSD 970 EVO NVMe M.2 500GB

I have tried it all, HDD, SSD, SSD RAID, and PCIe M.2 AHCI allready. NVMe should be even faster. It's not all about continuous transfer rates, it's about fast access times and low latencies too.

Fast program starts, fast system startups, fast file opens, fast file saves. Fast everything.
I believe SATA SSD is sufficient, but M.2 SSD would be great.

Funny you mention that, I went and had a look into it after the previous comment and that model is actually the one I ended up choosing. It's $228 at my supplier, which I am happy with if it means better performance. Being an M.2, does this mean it has a different connection type? Are all motherboards compatible with this?

[Anonymous]

Liam,
I would shop around a bit more as I picked up one with a 500Gb capacity for just over AUD$200 a couple of weeks ago

Scott

[vistasp]

Liamthanks wrote:
Being an M.2, does this mean it has a different connection type? Are all motherboards compatible with this?

Yes, the M.2 connection is different from standard SATA. Most of the newer motherboards have these it but it's always better make sure. The B450 chipset usually has a single M.2 slot that supports PCIe as well as SATA drives.

[vistasp]

Just checked the specs on your board:

4x SATA 6Gb/s ports
Supports RAID 0, RAID1 and RAID 10
1x M.2 slot (Key M)
Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 6Gb/s 2242/ 2260 /2280 storage devices