2018-07-06 18:14:38 (edited by grryfindore 2018-07-08 07:44:07)

Hi,
So I am building a desktop pc for a friend of mine, and thought I would post the work I have done so far and if you guys see something that maybe problematic or such or any suggestions on the rig would be fantastic.
Havent really done this before,but here we go.

He needs it to be a budget pc, that is something that doesnt cost more than $700, lasts for at least 5 6 years as thats kinda a lot for here about 50k INR and works smoothly at least for that long.
So I am going for something powerful with costcutting at a few points,kind of a midway if you will,something that is a bit future proof too.
He just plays Audiogames and the other stuff that people end up doing on a computer,browsing and the like. so this maybe slightly overkill but I think this will last him at least for 7 years if not more.

here is the pc component list
its still a wip, and the motherboard I will be using is this
https://www.amazon.in/motherboard-GIGAB … rd+8th+gen

What I would really like help with is the power supply, as I dont think this kind of pc needs that power supply on the list, so something cheaper and more effective maybe better,same for the case.
a few questions I can think of atm are,
does he need a cpu cooler? also case fan,fan controllers,Thermal Compound, and if yes, what might be good but yet cheap well not the cheapest out there but I hope you get where I am getting at. smile
any recommendations? will the ram I have selected work fine with a i5 8th gen 8400 processor? or do I need a 2600 instead of a 2400?
Thank you!
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2018-07-06 22:05:57

This may help.

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/the-gee … -hardware/

2018-07-06 22:26:53

This article from Lifehacker could be useful.
https://lifehacker.com/5840963/the-best … 0-and-1200
As for wattage this calculator should help.
https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator
You do want CPU fans, and the more fans you have, the cooler the CPU will be.
Hope this helps

2018-07-06 23:15:47

If you haven't ordered your parts yet, you may want to think about building
This build.
It has a far better blend of CPU and GPU power thanks to the ryzen APU, the ram is 2x4 GB so will run in dual channel mode, and the case and PSU are solid choices. The motherboard is included in the build too so the price on the page covers everything. The CPU cooler bundled with the 2400G is also miles better than the Intel cooler, Given that your friend wants his machine to last longer this really is worth thinking about. The boxed Intel coolers that come with the non K CPUs are complete and utter garbage and you'd only end up throwing it away and buying something better. There is more than enough power here for audio gaming and all the other tasks you'd be doing and the thing will even attempt mainstream games and manage something playable, where the Intel HD graphics on the i5s shit the bed

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

2018-07-07 06:23:14

for a case, I"d recommend the Coolermaster HAF912 with uSB3.  Also, the Coolermaster 200MM fans for front and top, the 140 on the side and the 120 in the rear.  My PC is an AMD FX8350 with 32GB ram, and this system stays nice and c ool, considering AMD CPU's have a tendency to run hot.  ALso, the Hyper212 EVO cooler for your CPU, provided it works, fits in this case and the CPU stays cool as can be.   

The case is about 50 bucks USD and the fans are about 10-20 each, so for under $100 USD, it will stay extremely nice, cool, and quiet.

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2018-07-07 09:49:31

Hi guys,
Thank you for the links, they have proved to be of help. smile

The updated list looks something like
Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard Gigabyte H310M H 
Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
Samsung - 850 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Cooler Master - K380 ATX Mid Tower Case
Cooler Master - Elite Power 400W ATX Power Supply
Anything else I should consider? add,change?
will this motherboard require a wireless network card?

@Exodus the abovebuild looks neat, however my friend is into intels processors, or probably because intel is all your average joe hears about,anyway. I have considered AMD for my own builds as they cost a bit less than their intel counterparts, but dont jaws and the like have an issue with AMD processors?
btw, pcparts shows an incompetibility issue with the list you posted.
Also, I dont think he is likely to play any mainstream games,so a gpu doesnt really matter as much. from what I know.

After reading the lifehacker article, I tried to see the case they recommend, but here amazon has it for double its price! so unfortunately that coolermaster is out.
Same for the one G-Rad recommends, a shame both those cases were quite good.

One question I have on the powersupply though is my total shows 100w discluding the moniter so probably 130 150w, will the lowest power supply with 250/350w rating do? currently I have added a 450w psu, just to be safe but I am thinking it might be overkill and not necessary. after all, I am not using a graphic card and those seem to be the major users of power.
There are many cheap cabinets that come with smps and power supplys, are those any good? there by I may save costs,but I have read at a few places that they are generally not good and to be avoided. so yeah.

Thanks!
Grryf

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2018-07-07 16:38:52

yeah... They have to put that compatibility warning in because  of the lack of raven ridge supporting bios when that CPU launched. Most boards are shipping with updated bios now and AMD will send you out a boot kit should you end up with a board that hasn't been updated. As far as jaws and AMD go, I did run jaws a long time ago on AMD hardware with no issues. I think G-Rad does too? I am sure I saw mention of jaws in one of their daw topics anyway.  If you're friend is determined to go with intel, then you're really going to have to look into an after market cooler. I can't stress how crap the bundled one is. They are noisy, don't cool effectively and will probably not last 6 or 7 years. The Hyper 212 evo is a good one and can be had just about everywhere, the Scythe Kotetsu is a better cooler for not much extra but is harder to find. When it comes to PSUs, I'd pay more attention to efficiency more than the wattage. Could you go lower? Yes. But you really wouldn't want to. The PSU in my build stands a better chance of lasting 6-7 years. But as you can see I had to make sacrifices to keep prices roughly the same. You really don't want to skimp on a PSU, especially when that PSU has to power everything for the amount of time your friend is after.  Finally, does your friend need to build right now? This is literally the worst time to be building from scratch, DDR 4 ram prices are hideous right now and a lot of people are turning to pre built systems. Ram is over double the price it should be and manufacturers are being investigated for price fixing currently.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

2018-07-08 08:13:25

Hi,
Thank you a lot,Exodus for your help and for your detailed post. smile

Unfortunately he cant wait much longer, he is stuck on an machine that can only do xp, internet explorer doesnt work anywhere, firefox etc run slower than a turtle.

I will probably get a cooler,and at least this cooler you suggest is available around here, doesnt cost much,either, so it will do. Thanks!
btw, could you look at the psu I have chosen? the updated link is in the first post.

I still can not find a good case that has usb 3 slots on the front, and dont cost as much.
btw, what can you use the external bays in the case for? and the expansion slots?
Grryf

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2018-07-08 10:13:48

Pick up a 120gb ssd as they not that pricey at the moment.
I just picked up a couple for.
£24 = 120gb
£47 =240gb
£72 = 500gb

2018-07-08 10:35:01

Hi,
I already did a 250gb samsung evo ssd or at least its short listed.
I too, was quite surprised to see the prices on those things!!!
Wish I had a pc now... lol.
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2018-07-08 13:44:26

Hi,
Another update, case still has me stumped, but I have narowed it down to these 2 psus

Corsair VS450 450-Watt
https://www.amazon.in/VS-VS450-Manufact … b_title_ce
Cooler Master MWE 450
https://www.amazon.in/Cooler-Master-MWE … words=Smps

Besides the case in my first pc parts link, I am considering
Corsair Carbide Series 100R CC-9011075-WW
https://www.amazon.in/Corsair-Carbide-C … &psc=1

Any comment/suggestions or such on these would be welcome.
Thanks again

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2018-07-08 20:42:22 (edited by G-Rad 2018-07-08 20:47:27)

Well the case I mentioned, the Coolermaster HAF912 has a USB3 port on the front along with USB2 and audio, also has  dust guards in the slot bays, and infront of the intake and on the bottom for the PSU fan.

It costed me about $50 USD. 

It has 4 external 5.25 inch bays which are good for  optical drives like a blu-ray burner or DVD rom drive, and can also be used for  fan controllers and such if desired.

That Samsung 850 EvO drive is a good choice.  I have the 500B version in my build and love it.

Yes I do run an AMD build with no problems.    ALso the one thing I would change with your build is the 8GB being a single stick, I'd rather you go with 2 4GB sticks so you can run the ram in dual channel mode as opposed to single stick.   Also you will want to find something on the graphics side that can handle a decent amount of workload, for  if the video lags, it will lag the overall system as well, and you won't want that, additionally, you don't want to share system RAM with video if you can avoid it, or it will take away from that 8GB.

As for PSU units, I run a 750 Watt efficient unit that I paid $200 10 years ago on, and it still works nice to this day *jinx*.  I cannot remember the brand right off the top of my head,

Yes, though I do run an AMD system:

AMD FX 8350 8 core 4GHz CPU
Asus M5A-99FX R2.0 Motherboard
32GB Corsair Vengeance Pro  4x8GB sticks
500 GB Samsung 850 Evo SSD
WD 3TB Hard drive
Coolermaster Hyper212 Evo CPU cooler with  2x 120mm fans; one on each side doing a push/pull setup.
Coolermaster HAF912 Case with USB3 with fan cooling

My graphics card is a Sapphire  ATI Radeon HD6970 2GB GDDR5.

I've been running this machine for 3 years, and I don't think I will need to upgrade any time soon.

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2018-07-08 23:57:10

I'd swap in the PSU and ram from my build and use a corsair carbide 200r, it has the extra CPU cooler clearance over the 100R. A note about the cooler master 212, you want to grab the led version as it's not overpriced. Someone is attempting a scam there with the evo, it should cost half that. If stuff is starting to get too costly, drop down to the i3 8100. That's still plenty of power for general stuff and audio gaming. Or you could tell your friend to stop being a hater and let you build them AMD version I put together, they'll like it honestly tongue.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

2018-07-09 18:07:49

Hi,
finally decided a mixture he was comfortable with and which didnt cost to high heaven and back.
Just ordered stuff on amazon and it should be reaching him by jul 13 17, or so amazon says.

@G-Rad, that is a wonderful case and I looked at it when you first mentioned it, but its overpriced here by a lot hence not worth spending over $100.
in the end I went with the r100 as the r200 couldnt be delivered to his location, plus it was not sold by the seller and forefilled by amazon (a thing I look for) but just by the seller alone which does not result in good experiences,usually. that is not to say that forefilled by amazon always works out,but it almost always does. but I digress.

@Exodus, thank you for the worning, I never would have noticed the variation in price in the cooler master 212 evo, that is on order now. smile
I did decide to go for the psu you suggested honestly at 3999 it was slightly expensive but the bronz rating made it worth it. I added it in the morning,and would you believe it it got sold out by the seller I had selected, bah!.
ram though I could not add,sadly because of 2 reasons. 1 he wanted an 8gb stick so that he could upgrade to  16gb in the future,and crucial doesnt have service centers here if something goes wrong.

Here is what the build looks like atm.
Intel - Core i5-8400 2.8GHz 6-Core Processor
Gigabyte - H310M H Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard
Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory
Samsung - 860 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Seagate - Barracuda 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Corsair - 100R ATX Mid Tower Case
Corsair - CX (2017) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (waiting a day or 2 to see if the price goes down again or that old seller adds it back)

Thank you at all of you for all the ideas help and the suggestions, you did make the process much easier and painless than what it could have been.
smile
Lets hope there are no hitches while putting them all together!
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2018-10-17 14:20:48

Hi,
  I have decided to build a pc for myself this time, so thought I'd reawaken this from the dead rather than creating a new topic entirely.

Erm, so yeah. I am thinking a pc similar to my friends, but slightly better as I can go slightly higher when it comes to pricing. But I am thinking that may not matter at all, considering the prices of the processors have skyrocketed around here. The I5 processer I got my friend in July has risen from 14000 in july to 21000 right now, sheesh.
If it was just the I5 though, I would've kicked it down the drain and considered AMD but looks like AMD has also followed intel.
so I'll probably wait, maybe
My question for you guys is,
I was reading this artical the other day
best processors 2018 INTEL AMD
am I missing something, or is the title misleading or the author was drunk when he came up with this list?
or and the 8th gen intel sucks as compared to 7th?
Thanks all
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2018-10-18 00:56:48 (edited by magurp244 2018-10-18 01:39:39)

The reason for that likely has to do with the Meltdown and Spectre exploits discovered not to long ago that leverage the Speculative Excecution design of most modern processors, which hit Intel chips pretty bad. The patches to fix those exploits were expected to hit performance, but AMD's Zen Architecture, such as Ryzen, Threadripper, and Epyc, don't have the same vulnerability because they use a different Branch Predicator. You can read more about it [here].

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2018-10-18 06:43:12

Hi,
Thank you magurp244, that was an interesting read, even though half of the stuff in there flew over my head big_smile
My question is, that list doesn't include any intel 8th gen processors but does so with AMDS latest processors and intels 7th gen. so is the 7th gen currently better than 8th gen in terms of performance and pricing?Or are those AMDS older processors as well? I am not as familiar with AMD processors as I'd like to be.
I.E I know that I5 is your average better than I3 processor, the I7 is better and not likely to be needed by a person for standard tasks, 8th gen processors are better than 7th gen and so on.
Where as AMD I know nothing about so, yeah.
shrug.
Grryf.

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2018-10-18 07:51:36 (edited by magurp244 2018-10-18 07:55:38)

From the looks of things, the 8th gen Kaby Lake-X Intel processors were a [flop] and discontinued, so there's that. The AMD processors on that list are some of the latest, the Zen architecture is fairly recent and they've started making 2nd generation Zen chips, which is what the Ryzen 7 2700X is. There's a list of the Ryzen series [here] for comparison, with the Ryzen 3 being entry level, Ryzen 5 being mainstream, Ryzen 7 for performance builds, and Ryzen Threadripper being overkill, all released this year.

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2018-10-18 19:49:14

oh boy, I pushed this as high as I dared to push it while still keeping it  a bit more expensive than your friends. tongue

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1600 3.2GHz 6-Core Processor  (₹15149.00 @ Amazon India)
Motherboard: MSI - B350 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard  (₹8755.15 @ Amazon India)
Memory: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  (₹12108.86 @ Amazon India)
Storage: Kingston - A400 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (₹3422.00 @ Amazon India)
Storage: Seagate - Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (₹3750.00 @ Amazon India)
Video Card: Gigabyte - GeForce GT 1030 2GB Video Card  (₹9723.31 @ Amazon India)
Case: Corsair - 100R ATX Mid Tower Case  (₹3249.00 @ Amazon India)
Power Supply: Corsair - CX (2017) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (₹4799.00 @ Amazon India)
Total: ₹60956.32
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2018-10-18 23:00 IST+0530


It has everything I could squish into around 60K INR. The price could perhaps go lower if you used other retailers other than Amazon India.  I can totally understand why you want to just go through Amazon though. Your CPU cooler will be a wraith spire, But I couldn't find it on pcpartpicker to include here. It's bundled with the ryzen 1600 and is comparable to a third party cooler

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

2018-10-19 12:10:34 (edited by grryfindore 2018-10-19 12:12:09)

Hi,
@Exodus
I haven't actually read upon all the stuff that is new to me in that list you posted, but wanted to express my deepest thanks to you, for taking both the time and effort both the times smile
that is previously and now again. big_smile

a Rough look tells me that I could probably reduce the cost a bit (although 60k is fine) or keep it the same by doing a few things differently, I'll write them down below and would really love your input as to good or bad.

I am going in without having read upon the processor you selected, though I.E good bad against i5 etc. so later on my ideas may turn out to be meh.

could probably reduce the ram from 16 to 8, and use the cash that I save from that in a 2tb hdd instead, holy mother that ssd's price is so yummy atm. or, instead keep the hdd the same, reduce ram to 8 and get this processer instead.
amd 2600x
Although if I am spending so much on the processor may as well get the intel I5 8400? good idea bad idea?

I see that the current processor doesn't have onboard graphics, so it does need a seprat graphics card, but if I cut that out, I am left with 9k, which I could probably go with I5 8400 as I know it has onboard graphics or amd 2600x not sure if it does have onboard graphics??
or go with g2400 but is that better than the current processor selected? when I say better I mean performance longevity etc.
sheesh, that's a huge text wall of ramblings, sorry

I guess a bit of research and google should help with some of these questions. but like I said, I wouldn't mind your input.
anyone else that isn't Exodus also feel free to chime in big_smile

Thank you once again,Exodus
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2018-10-19 23:41:40

Hm, they don't seem to advertise it really well but the Ryzen G and GE series seem to be the only ones with integrated graphics so far, specifically the [Ryzen 3 2200] which comes with Radeon Vega 8 graphics, and the [Ryzen 5 2400] with Radeon RX Vega 11 graphics. There's a rundown on them [here] and one [here] for the 2600X series, both also offer comparisons to the Intel i5 8400.

From what I gather, the 2600X has about 20 to 30% better performance then 2400G.

The 2400G graphics beat Intel i5 8400's graphics, but i5 8400's CPU is a bit faster than the 2400G

The i5 8400 and the Ryzen 2600X are more or less tied in performance.

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2018-10-20 04:39:59

I really  did mean to come back and write a why these parts post, so it wouldn't just be a big stack o parts, but stuff happened. But I'll do that now.

The Ryzen 5 1600:
Six cores, 12 threads, a bundled cooler that isn't garbage and the option of overclocking if you desire.
The I5 8400 may have a slight lead  in single threaded performance, but it is only so if you obsess endleslly over numbers. Various spectre and meltdown mitigations have also eroded this lead somewhat. Should you put in the time and overclock, the ryzen will close the gap, while still giving the  i5 a thrashing  in multi threaded situations. From a price vs performance point, The ryzen destroys  any intel offering.


MSI B350 TOMAHAWK:
It's black with shiny bits on it, contains your standard on board audio in the form of the Realtek ALC892 and networking also by Realtek.  More importantly, all of the board's power delivery circuits are covered in heatsyncs. This will help should you venture into overclocking. The bios  has enough options also, this board will push the ryzen 1600 to 3.7 GHZ and beyond if you're lucky.


Corsair Vengeance LPX ram:
I can't stress this enough, ryzen loves fast ram... so 16 GB of this stuff was a natural choice. There are no RGB lightbars, and the attached heat spreaders are low profile. If you ever decided to upgrade to a big dual tower CPU cooler down the line then this memory won't get in the way.


The Gigabyte GT 1030:
This graphics card is tiny, draws next to no power and can be installed by dropping it into a PCI express slot. If you need to add a GPU to a machine that doesn't have one, or has crappy integrated graphics then you get this one. It will also game if it needs to.

Now, for your extra questions
Reducing ram to get more storage out the gate?
I'd say only do this if you know that you will fill a 2 TB drive right away. A 16 GB kit of ram at that speed is not at all bad price wise and you really can never have enough of the stuff. The expandable nature of a desktop means that you can buy a couple of 2TB drives as you need them. Don't be that person that buys a 256 GB iPhone and only uses 68 GB of the built in storage.

What about the other processors?
The 2600X is more powerful, but costs more. B450 motherboards also cost a little more and you'll still need a graphics card.
You could use the b350 board, but it may need a bios update to support  ryzen 2xxxx series CPUs.
The i5 8400 is currently hideously overpriced for what it is, even with the integrated graphics. Prices for something based around the i5 were coming out to much the same prices due to how overpriced it is currently coupled with the fact that you have to buy a third party cooler for the thing. A six core, six thread CPU should not cost that much, but there you have it.
The ryzen 5 2400g?
This is the one I have the biggest soft spot for honestly, 4 cores, 8 threads. Intel would have made you pay 2-3 times the price of this thing not so long ago for something similar. The integrated GPU is miles better than intels, It comes with the wraith stealth cooler (People have managed to overclock on this thing) and it still has plenty of power. If you don't feel that you'll need all the threads of the ryzen 1600, this is the one I'd recommend honestly. I could put another build up in post 19 later on, you can decide what tickles your fancy more between the two. I do honestly feel so bad for shitting on Intel so hard, but their stuff is just not worth it at the moment. They've been refreshing skylake for far, far too long now. To finish with, You thought your wall of text was bad? tongue

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

2018-10-20 12:44:48 (edited by grryfindore 2018-10-20 14:21:51)

Hi,
Thank you magurp244 and Exodus.
  I thought of the AMD 2600X because I believe I can get it with a difference of about 5k and at that point I was under the impression that it has  onboard graphics, but the dam thing needs a lot of power, and an seprat graphic card but thats a thing with all AMD processors anyway besides the g2400
Edit: actually if amazon.com is to be believed the 2600X is being sold at $149 plus import dutie etc I can probably get it for 16.5k slightly expensive than the 1600 at 15k but then the question is, will the power supply handle it well? and the mobo. if I keep this up, I will out run the 61k mark pretty dam fast. big_smile meh
Edit again, its the 2600 not the x, my bad.
although I could also try the 2600 the price difference between AMD 1600 and the 2600 is just about 2k or roughly $30 on amazon in. but then again, both of them seem to be quite similar so on second thought, why waste those $30 lol.
Still the 1600 seems like a decent processor just seems slightly slow at 3.6GHZ?
To be honest, I could probably even make do with an I3 8100 or an AMD equivalent, but (my favourite term it seems that I use a lot) longevity and future prooffing the current build makes me want to go for a processor that is as good as the I5 8400 amd 2600.

To be honest, I have heard lots of good things about the intel i5 8400 and if its price wasnt about  $100 higher than what it was in July, I probably would have gone with the dam thing or be it I also am leaning towards AMD because of its ratio of price VS performance. Also as an aside, import duties suck!

16gb ram seems good enough, and something that I would eventually have gone for, so getting 16gb ram or an HDD later is going to be about the same anyway but yes I am saving a few on this 16gb ram so it is probably a good idea.
You are right though about the 2tb hdds, I dont necessarilly need them just atm, I know I will in the future though, but I will pick one up as an when I need it.
Its just the crampt storage that this MBP has (128gb) that I am constently am on a lookout for better storage! lol.
The purpose of this machine would be to act as my main computer, running jaws so I would ideally want it to be good at performance, mostly audiogames but ocational mainstream games as well. not a frequent player, but keeping my options open as it were. watching streaming movies, downloading stuff and so on.
  Just saying all this to give you guys an idea as to what I am exactly looking for.

a few questions now that I am done thinking out loud lol
What difference if any do the threads per core make? I.E 6 cores 12 threads 6 cores 6 threads?
will it make a difference in how fast and how less often jaws runs and crashes? also audio editting, video conversion and so on.

Once I fix a CPU the rest should go faster, and I hope no prices race up by then wink
Thank you guys again if you have made this far lol
Grryf

Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might have been.
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2018-10-20 20:39:02

The clock speed of ryzen? I wouldn't really get hung up on that it is still plenty fast. It will feel even faster coming from a macbook with one of those 15 w core i5s in it. As far as future proofing goes, AMD have pledged to stay on that CPU socket until 2020, so you'll be able to upgrade to any ryzen CPU without tossing away the motherboard. First generation ryzen, (the 1600 as well as the rest of the 1xxx family) is extremely competitive with intels 8th generation, Ryzen plus, the refinement of the first generation (2xxx ryzens) took the fight to 8th generation intel even further both from the perspective of value and performance. You only want intel if you care about having the biggest numbers and are willing to pay a massive premium for 15 percent more performance.
You'll be able to do everything with the 1600. Gameing will be no problem, browsing and downloading and movie playback? Again no problem. The 1600 will chew through all those productivity tasks you asked about. Video convertion and rendering love multiple threads, the same goes for music production. More threads mean you can use more plugins for example. If you're into virtualisation 12 threads means you can dedicate more to your virtual machine without slowing down your host OS.
I can't say with 100 percent certainty if jaws will benifit from the extra threads, but G-Rad did music production on an AMD fx8350 with jaws and Ryzen demolishes the fx8350 in both single threaded and multi threaded workloads.
To summarise: You get  the i5 8400 if you care about one thing: The highest frame rates in games possible. For everything else: their is a ryzen CPU waiting to do more than just a good job for far less cash.

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2018-10-21 05:00:31 (edited by magurp244 2018-10-21 05:03:21)

Tough to say which would be preferable, the i5 8400 gives good performance and built in GPU that can get you up and running, but is expensive and probably can't handle high end gaming graphically on its own. The 2400G's performance does poorly including audio processing, but its graphics can handle gaming "good enough", i'm not sure if it would be a good pick long term since if you want better graphics you'll still need a new card, and if you do get one you'll still be stuck with the poor processor performance. The 2600X rivals and in some cases exceeds the i5 8400, but you'll need a separate graphics card to get running. The Ryzen 5 1600 is almost as good as the i5 8400 in terms of performance, so if you can save some cash getting that for a video card that would probably be the better buy.

I've been going over some benchmark reviews between the Ryzen 1600, 2400G, 2600X, and i5 8400, if you like I can post the stats and articles, but they more or less say the same thing.

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