April 2018 Build Guide

Another day another release

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Tags
  • RSS feed
  • Web IRC
  • Resources

April 2018 Build Guide

James Kerr

2018-04-21 10:31

Comments

Source

We've had a couple of 'exciting' months in terms of releases! Pinnacle Ridge and Raven Ridge have both been released into the wild along with Intel's reactive motherboard's (B360, H310 and H370) and CPUs (i5-8600). All up this has been a somewhat exciting couple of months since the last guide, PR narrows the gap with both clocks and IPC (thanks to AMD's improvements to the cache espically L2) but this ultimately doesn't change my person recommendations of if it's not an 8700k go with Zen.

Changelog

  1. Moved the 2400G to T11 along side the GT 1030.
  2. Moved the 2200G to T12.
  3. Replaced Summit Ridge recommendations with Pinnacle Ridge.
  4. Removed remaining Summit Ridge recommendations in favour of Raven Ridge.
  5. Split up tables for mobile/Non-Widescreen users.
  6. Added a note concerning the i7-8700 thermal and VRM throttling.

GPU Tiers

GPU Tier MSRP Recommended Resolution
Titan V, Titan X(Pascal), Titan XP [7] 0 >$900 1440p+ [8]
GTX 1080ti 1 $700 1440p+ [8]
GTX 1080, RX Vega 64 2 $600 1440p
GTX 1070 ti, RX Vega 56 3 $450, $500 1440p
GTX 1070 4 $380 1440p
GTX 1060 6GB, RX 580 5 $250, $230 1080p+ [8]
GTX 1060 3GB, RX 570 6 $200, $170 1080p
GTX 1050ti 7 $140 1080p
RX 560 8 $100 720p
GTX 1050 9 $110 720p
RX 550 10 $80
GT 1030, 2400G (Vega 11) 11 $80, $170
2200G (Vega 8) 12 $100

N.B. There are musings that crypto is starting to die down a bit due to the ETH ASIC miner but it hasn't crashed just yet so be careful.

CPU, RAM, Motherboard

Tier [5] CPU CPU Cooler Motherboard [4] RAM
1 8700k, 8600k Good 240MM CLC with delid Z370 (Z270 is not compatible), 4 RAM slots (when not mITX) 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 2666MHz 288 pin SDRAM
2 R7-2700, 2700x [3] Good single tower air cooler like an Cryorig H5 Universal or Wraith Prism B350, X470, 4 RAM slots (when not mITX), 0 PCI slots with above average VRM 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 3GHz+ 288 pin SDRAM
3 R7-2700 Wraith Spire (Stock cooler) B350, X470, 4 RAM slots (when not mITX), 0 PCI slots 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 3GHz+ 288 pin SDRAM
3 i7-8700 (non k) [10] M9i [10] Z370, H370, B360 (Z/B/H2## motherboards are not compatible), 4 RAM slots (when not mITX) 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 2400MHz+ 288 pin SDRAM
4 i5-8400, i5-8500, i5-8600 Intel Stock Cooler Z370, H370, B360 (Z/B/H2## motherboards are not compatible), 4 RAM slots (when not mITX) 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 2400MHz+ 288 pin SDRAM
4 R5-2600, R5-2600x [3] Wraith Stealth (Stock Cooler), Wraith Spire (Stock Cooler), Cryorig M9A B350, X470, 4 RAM slots (when not mITX), 0 PCI slots 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 2666MHz+ 288 pin SDRAM
5 2400G Wraith Stealth (Stock Cooler), Cryorig M9A [6] B350, X470, 4 RAM slots (when not mITX), 0 PCI slots 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 2400MHz+ 288 pin SDRAM
6 2200G Wraith Stealth (Stock Cooler), Cryorig M9A [6] B350, X470, 4 RAM slots (when not mITX), 0 PCI slots 2x8 or 1x16 DDR4 2400MHz+ 288 pin SDRAM

Everything Else

Tier [5] SSD (Required) [1] HDD (Recommended) [2] PSU Monitor [5] GPU Tier
1 480 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >3 TB 7200 RPM Good 650w+ 80+ Gold PSU like Corsair RMx, Seasonic Focus Plus, Bitfenix Whisper M and EVGA G3 1440p Adaptive Sync IPS, 4k IPS, 4K+ 1
2 480 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >3 TB 7200 RPM Good 550w+ 80+ Gold PSU like Corsair RMx, Seasonic Focus Plus, Bitfenix Whisper M and EVGA G3 1440p Adaptive Sync IPS, 4k IPS, 4K+ 1
3 480 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >3 TB 7200 RPM Good 550w+ 80+ Gold PSU like Corsair RMx, Seasonic Focus Plus, Bitfenix Whisper M and EVGA G3 1440p Adaptive Sync IPS, 4k IPS, 4K+ 1-4
3 480 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >2 TB 7200 RPM Good 550w+ 80+ Gold PSU like Corsair RMx, Seasonic Focus Plus, Bitfenix Whisper M and EVGA G3 1080p+, 1440p 1-4
4 240 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >2 TB 7200 RPM Good 550w+ 80+ Gold PSU like Corsair RMx, Seasonic Focus Plus, Bitfenix Whisper M and EVGA G3 1080p+, 1440p 2-5
4 240 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >2 TB 7200 RPM <= Good 500w 80+ Bronze PSU like Corsair CXM (white label) , Fractal Integra M or BeQuiet Pure Power 10 1080p+, 1440p 2-5
5 240 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >1 TB 7200 RPM <= Good 500w 80+ Bronze PSU like Corsair CXM (white label) , Fractal Integra M or BeQuiet Pure Power 10 1080p IPS 5-11
6 240 GB SATA (M.2 or 2.5") >1 TB 7200 RPM <= Good 500w 80+ Bronze PSU like Corsair CXM (white label), Seasonic S12 II/M12 II, Fractal Integra M or BeQuiet Pure Power 10 1080p IPS 5-11

Footnotes

[1] NVMe, PCIe drives should be avoided, see "Effective marketing or why you don't need an NVMe SSD" and "M.2, NVMe, Optane and You" for why.
[2] 7200 RPM HDD's provide the best value, there is no valid data on reliability.
[3] (1, 2) These are all the same CPU, the difference is stock clocks and the bundled cooler. They overclock to the same point.
[4] When presented with multiple choices choose the cheapest that has the features that you will actually use.
[5] (1, 2, 3) Assumption of gaming.
[6] (1, 2) This general price range of cooler, never get the Coolermaster 212 unless there is no better option (last choice.)
[7] Please do not buy these for gaming.
[8] (1, 2, 3) The + means that it is a bit more powerful than needed for the tier or high refresh/adaptive sync.
[9] You normally want to choose the Raven Ridge equivalent over these since they both feature an onboard GPU and have a single CCX removing the primary reason for high clocked RAM.
[10] (1, 2) This is a special case in that it requires both an aftermarket cooler (due to thermal throttling on stock) and VRM throttling as reported by TechSpot.

Comments

Comments powered by Disqus