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The Solid State
Welcome to the Solid State! This build, is so named because I'm not using any mechanical hard drives. One storage device is an NVMe and the other is a 2.5" SSD. Additionally, this entire build was put together for under $1270 USD (before taxes and any shipping), or less than the cost of a new 2080 Ti. :)
For this build, 1440p gaming will be no problem and neither will streaming or content creation thanks to the 6 core/12-thread CPU and RTX 3070 inside. In an effort to save money, and also because the Zen 3 5600x is so hard to come by, I opted for the still very capable Zen 2 3600 CPU.
The end result is a build that's fairly balanced, doesn't break the bank, and should do very well at many tasks.
Check out the videos I made about the case, motherboard, GPU, and the build:
Why I chose specific components:
CPU
As previously mentioned, I opted for the 3600 because it's price to performance is pretty much the best right now for AMD. The 5600x costs $299.99 and the 3300x is nearly impossible to come by. It's a great little CPU for around the $124 mark, but again cannot be purchased. The 3600 performs well, has great boost speeds and memory support while also having enough cores and threads to readily handle multi-threaded tasks. Having used the 3600 in a previous build, I know it will perform well and the stock cooler will serve to keep the CPU cool.
Motherboard
The B550 chipset brings PCIe 4.0 to the mainstream. Unfortunately, most B550 boards aren't priced as low as their B450 counterparts were with most boards starting around the $134 mark (although you can find several for less, but the features included drastically declines). As such, I opted to find a motherboard that is as close as possible to the MSI B450 Tomahawk in terms of price and features. Enter MSI's B550-A Pro. It's $134.99, has USB type-c headers for the front I/O and also a type-c port in the rear. It has a robust power delivery and with a decent heatsink as well.
RAM
RAM just keeps on going down in price. It was a no-brainer to get DDR4 3600 for this build. It was just a matter of which brand and whether or not to get RGB. I opted to save money by leaving the RGB to the wayside. Enter the Corsair Vengeance LPX kit. It's fast, inexpensive, and has many a good user review. It's also a brand I haven't used in a build yet this year, so why not?
Storage
For storage, I knew I wanted to maintain a fast boot drive and larger mass storage drive. Having worked with the Western Digital SN550 NVMe drive before, I knew this would be a great boot drive and an inexpensive one as well. For mass storage, I'm using Team Group's 1TB GX2 2.5" SATA SSD. Neither drive has RAM cache, but they should still perform well enough. As I looked through parts, it's nuts seeing how much of a cost increase there is between drives with and without RAM cache.
Case
I've had the Corsair Carbide 275r in my basement for a while now, so it was a no-brainer to bring it up and use it for this build. It's a great mid-tower case with a lot of quality of life features. The only real downside is the front panel that restricts airflow and no USB type-c front port. Fortunately, you can bypass this by modifying it, and don't worry about messing up the panel should you decide to add more ventilation to it as Corsair sells extras on their website.
PSU
2020 has been terrible for many reasons and you can STILL add a lack of supply of PSUs to that list. After searching for weeks, I was able to luckily find the Antec 80+ Gold 750W PSU on sale. I was trying to go for something around the $100 mark and hit gold (no pun intended) with the Antec Neo Gold PSU.
GPU
I went with the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition GPU because it's a power graphics card that doesn't cost a lot. Reviews have already put this on par with the 2080 Ti, which is bonkers! Getting the same and sometimes better performance as a card that cost $1399 or more (usually more) for only $499 is awesome! I'm glad I was able to buy the card as since my purchase it's been continually, like all RTX 3000 cards, out of stock.
Accessories
I knew I wanted to add a little flair to this build, so I bought some RGB fans from Asia Horse. They're well built, and provide great cooling at low noise levels and give that sweet RGB lighting to boot.
That’s it for the Solid State build. After taxes and shipping, I spent $1365.24, which isn't terribly too bad. I think If I had an extra $135 bucks to spend (to bring it to 1500, I'd actually improve the storage to options with RAM cache for sustained performance. I'd also maybe opt for a 3rd party cooler.
What are your thoughts on this build? What would you do different or the same? Thanks, and as always, your support is greatly appreciated.
For this build, 1440p gaming will be no problem and neither will streaming or content creation thanks to the 6 core/12-thread CPU and RTX 3070 inside. In an effort to save money, and also because the Zen 3 5600x is so hard to come by, I opted for the still very capable Zen 2 3600 CPU.
The end result is a build that's fairly balanced, doesn't break the bank, and should do very well at many tasks.
Check out the videos I made about the case, motherboard, GPU, and the build:
- Corsair Carbide 275R: https://youtu.be/DOgrhOiBeyw
- MSI B550-A Pro ATX motherboard: https://youtu.be/rdBAGyxQdhs
- Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition: https://youtu.be/8dQFghwo9To
- Parts overview, build time-lapse, and benchmarks: https://youtu.be/b1voPBijKZk
Why I chose specific components:
CPU
As previously mentioned, I opted for the 3600 because it's price to performance is pretty much the best right now for AMD. The 5600x costs $299.99 and the 3300x is nearly impossible to come by. It's a great little CPU for around the $124 mark, but again cannot be purchased. The 3600 performs well, has great boost speeds and memory support while also having enough cores and threads to readily handle multi-threaded tasks. Having used the 3600 in a previous build, I know it will perform well and the stock cooler will serve to keep the CPU cool.
Motherboard
The B550 chipset brings PCIe 4.0 to the mainstream. Unfortunately, most B550 boards aren't priced as low as their B450 counterparts were with most boards starting around the $134 mark (although you can find several for less, but the features included drastically declines). As such, I opted to find a motherboard that is as close as possible to the MSI B450 Tomahawk in terms of price and features. Enter MSI's B550-A Pro. It's $134.99, has USB type-c headers for the front I/O and also a type-c port in the rear. It has a robust power delivery and with a decent heatsink as well.
RAM
RAM just keeps on going down in price. It was a no-brainer to get DDR4 3600 for this build. It was just a matter of which brand and whether or not to get RGB. I opted to save money by leaving the RGB to the wayside. Enter the Corsair Vengeance LPX kit. It's fast, inexpensive, and has many a good user review. It's also a brand I haven't used in a build yet this year, so why not?
Storage
For storage, I knew I wanted to maintain a fast boot drive and larger mass storage drive. Having worked with the Western Digital SN550 NVMe drive before, I knew this would be a great boot drive and an inexpensive one as well. For mass storage, I'm using Team Group's 1TB GX2 2.5" SATA SSD. Neither drive has RAM cache, but they should still perform well enough. As I looked through parts, it's nuts seeing how much of a cost increase there is between drives with and without RAM cache.
Case
I've had the Corsair Carbide 275r in my basement for a while now, so it was a no-brainer to bring it up and use it for this build. It's a great mid-tower case with a lot of quality of life features. The only real downside is the front panel that restricts airflow and no USB type-c front port. Fortunately, you can bypass this by modifying it, and don't worry about messing up the panel should you decide to add more ventilation to it as Corsair sells extras on their website.
PSU
2020 has been terrible for many reasons and you can STILL add a lack of supply of PSUs to that list. After searching for weeks, I was able to luckily find the Antec 80+ Gold 750W PSU on sale. I was trying to go for something around the $100 mark and hit gold (no pun intended) with the Antec Neo Gold PSU.
GPU
I went with the Nvidia RTX 3070 Founders Edition GPU because it's a power graphics card that doesn't cost a lot. Reviews have already put this on par with the 2080 Ti, which is bonkers! Getting the same and sometimes better performance as a card that cost $1399 or more (usually more) for only $499 is awesome! I'm glad I was able to buy the card as since my purchase it's been continually, like all RTX 3000 cards, out of stock.
Accessories
I knew I wanted to add a little flair to this build, so I bought some RGB fans from Asia Horse. They're well built, and provide great cooling at low noise levels and give that sweet RGB lighting to boot.
That’s it for the Solid State build. After taxes and shipping, I spent $1365.24, which isn't terribly too bad. I think If I had an extra $135 bucks to spend (to bring it to 1500, I'd actually improve the storage to options with RAM cache for sustained performance. I'd also maybe opt for a 3rd party cooler.
What are your thoughts on this build? What would you do different or the same? Thanks, and as always, your support is greatly appreciated.
Color(s): Black
RGB Lighting? Yes
Theme: none
Cooling: Air Cooling
Size: ATX
Type: General Build
Contests
This build participated in 1 contest.
| Rank | Contest | Date |
|---|---|---|
| #78 | Build of the Month - December 2020 | ended |
Hardware
CPU
$ 84.88
Motherboard
$ 109.99
Memory
$ 99.98
Graphics
$ 1,299.00
Storage
$ 53.99
Case
$ 83.59
Estimated total value of this build:
$ 1,948.02
Approved by: