new build advice

I bought an Asus ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING mobo a couple years ago, than bought a AMD Ryzen 5 3600, have been happy with it. NOW I find out the 3600 isn't on the Win 11 list. (The 3600X is, and a couple other 3600's....shit)

My missus just got a new rig. She got it refurbished on Kogan. It could be a good starting point and would save a few bucks to put towards peripherals.

Gaming PCs - Dell, ASUS, HP and More

For example, she bought something like this. Pretty basic but it gives you an idea. That's a shade over 500 US dollars

I have a top of the line 2003 Alienware. Unused since 2007. I'll bet it still smokes on AH.

An abacus would smoke on AH

I just built a new system, and have a similar secondary box to what you're thinking about Hawker.

New system is an AMD 9800x3d CPU - Gscholz would jump for joy as I converted to AMD, my first AMD system since the Pentium 200s were around, and AMD came out with a "233" that was a whopping 33 mhz faster than the other IBM clones at the time. Intel/etc ever since, until December 2024.

Anyhow, it's fast, mild overclock (just the stock AI overclock with the XMP memory profile/etc), 64gb 6000 CL32 ram, I had a 5090 which was borked and had to be returned, in the meantime I'm "stuck" with a 5080, which actually isn't as awful as the reviews have made it out to be, in terms of bang/$. Seasonic 1200 PSU, 8 TB total of 4x2tb M.2 drives. Monotec case/360 cooler, new kids on the block in my local store, not a terrible case to build/work in, I'm actually impressed, as it wasn't expensive, and was...available.

I picked up a couple new monitors too, I've been primarily using the LG 4k 27" gaming units, they've been the highest rated 4k 27" gaming LCDs for a few years. However, with the advent of the new OLEDs, I got an Asus 32" PG32UCDM 4k 240hz Gsync OLED monitor (best, also the most $$$, by 33% or more, so that part sucks), and a 49" MSI OLED widescreen.

Still using the Varjo Aero for VR, also using the Quest 3, and I've found it to be surprisingly good, exceptional even, considering the cost of entry for the Oculus/Meta headset.

Still setting up all my HOTAS, I have..well, a ton of it, so I'll post pics of that once I'm satisfied with the layout. Still having unboxed the 49" either, it's going into action this weekend.

Enough of my usual BS, Hawker, very good system you've putting together. As I said, I have a similar system that I use for gaming on my office TV and as a secondary home theater/browsing unit. 14600KF (overclocks incredibly well, 14700k are usually very similar in that regard, just a bit faster), 64gb RAM (for playing multiplayer DCS you NEED 64 instead of 32 or you get frequent stutters on some maps), a 4090 GPU, and the rest is just the usual suspects. It'll get the 5080 once my 5090 returns to duty.

Considering the prices you can pick off the 14600 and 14700k(f)s up here, I recommend to almost everyone locally to go that route if they are trying to maximize their $.

I'm on the waitlist for a couple 9700xt cards myself, just to try them out in the third box (wife's/nephews/nieces), as it's still running a 3090. From all reports so far, you should be really happy with the 9700xt, if AMD is smart and prices it well, they'll seize a ton of the market IMO with that card.

Prelim pics, more coming once I get more in place. I'll deal with the wires/cables once I'm happy with placements/etc, doing that shit early means redoing it, a lot.

No new AMD cards for me on launch !!

My shop couldn't spare me even one, even though they typically have always accommodated me. the owner of Memory Express and his brother are guys I trained and issued their firearms license safety courses - there is a mandatory safety course for both non restricted and restricted firearms up here, separate courses and it's often a 2 day event every 5 years for everyone. Being an accredited instructor for the course back in the day in Alberta, I'd frequently cut the BS from those courses and teach certain people all they needed in one day instead of two, and spend most of the time on the range instead of sitting in a classroom.

Plus I've spent 10s of thousands with them since 1996 when they had just one store instead of 20-ish nationwide. But, that's how few cards they received, only a very few, and those went to people up the food chain from me. Should have one or two in a week they said, so we'll see.