So, my ~4 year old PC's power supply just died last night. (Well, it's at least that, maybe more, TBD - it's never good when you smell burning right?!?!). I'm going to try replacing the PSU as a hail mary but it's probably time for a new box, since I won't have a ton of confidence in it going forward.
The recently deceased was a Shuttle SFF w/ Z87 motherboard, 16GB, I7 4770K, EVGA GTX 960SC graphics. I'm hoping I can transplant the 2.5" 500GB SSD (~1.5yr old) and the 250GB M.2 SSD (~4yr old) into the new one, but I'm thinking about just getting a 1TB SSD instead. I have a 2TB HDD (or maybe 4TB, I forget) drive that I can probably retire at this point, it has very little on it except backups of the SSDs...
I usually go for good bang-for-the-buck video cards (not premium), pretty high-end CPU, and extra memory. I have 2 1920x1200 (note - weird aspect ratio!) monitors that I like a lot and will keep. I play relatively non-demanding games (EVE, WoW) but want it to look nice with settings on "Very High" - I haven't pushed "Ultra" in a low time. I also use this PC for consulting/productivity work, the games are just the most demanding thing it will have to do.
If I do a shuttle again, something like this (? - it's an H370 motherboard, not a Z370 though, which surprises me a bit). I think(?) I can finally stop having an optical drive - the last PC had one and I used it almost never, but they are cheap so if I can fit it, fine.
I'm thinking about maybe a micro ATX or similar for the first time in a while, I just want a small-ish enclosure that can handle a good video card cooling-wise, and 4 DIMM slots (maybe 16GBx2 is enough for me though, convince me that will be ok?). I really don't want any RGB / plexi panels, if I can avoid them.
So, questions I have:
1) Intel processors, looks like Coffee Lake is still the micro-arch for a desktop gaming machine? I see i5-9600/9600K, maybe i7-9700/9700k or i3-9350kf as options. I don't know a thing about AMD currently, as I have used Intel for a decade or longer now, what's a good comparable as a Ryzen? (7-2700X?)
2) Z390 vs Z370 for intel - any strong feelings here? 390 has integrated wifi (don't-care), and some usb 3.1 goodies (maybe this matters?) I have read that for an i5-9600 it will be supported on a z390 without any bios upgrades, which is a pretty big advantage. I need to go look into micro ATX Z390s unless someone knows a good one.
3) for a new video card, something like an RTX2060 vs GTX1660Ti? This ~$300 range is where I usually try to be for a video card. I am a little lost on the architectural differences though.
4) what's a non-blingy micro ATX case, with good airflow?
I started messing around with all of this on PC parts picker but nothing really has jumped out at me yet.
The recently deceased was a Shuttle SFF w/ Z87 motherboard, 16GB, I7 4770K, EVGA GTX 960SC graphics. I'm hoping I can transplant the 2.5" 500GB SSD (~1.5yr old) and the 250GB M.2 SSD (~4yr old) into the new one, but I'm thinking about just getting a 1TB SSD instead. I have a 2TB HDD (or maybe 4TB, I forget) drive that I can probably retire at this point, it has very little on it except backups of the SSDs...
I usually go for good bang-for-the-buck video cards (not premium), pretty high-end CPU, and extra memory. I have 2 1920x1200 (note - weird aspect ratio!) monitors that I like a lot and will keep. I play relatively non-demanding games (EVE, WoW) but want it to look nice with settings on "Very High" - I haven't pushed "Ultra" in a low time. I also use this PC for consulting/productivity work, the games are just the most demanding thing it will have to do.
If I do a shuttle again, something like this (? - it's an H370 motherboard, not a Z370 though, which surprises me a bit). I think(?) I can finally stop having an optical drive - the last PC had one and I used it almost never, but they are cheap so if I can fit it, fine.
I'm thinking about maybe a micro ATX or similar for the first time in a while, I just want a small-ish enclosure that can handle a good video card cooling-wise, and 4 DIMM slots (maybe 16GBx2 is enough for me though, convince me that will be ok?). I really don't want any RGB / plexi panels, if I can avoid them.
So, questions I have:
1) Intel processors, looks like Coffee Lake is still the micro-arch for a desktop gaming machine? I see i5-9600/9600K, maybe i7-9700/9700k or i3-9350kf as options. I don't know a thing about AMD currently, as I have used Intel for a decade or longer now, what's a good comparable as a Ryzen? (7-2700X?)
2) Z390 vs Z370 for intel - any strong feelings here? 390 has integrated wifi (don't-care), and some usb 3.1 goodies (maybe this matters?) I have read that for an i5-9600 it will be supported on a z390 without any bios upgrades, which is a pretty big advantage. I need to go look into micro ATX Z390s unless someone knows a good one.
3) for a new video card, something like an RTX2060 vs GTX1660Ti? This ~$300 range is where I usually try to be for a video card. I am a little lost on the architectural differences though.
4) what's a non-blingy micro ATX case, with good airflow?
I started messing around with all of this on PC parts picker but nothing really has jumped out at me yet.