2020: Time for a new desktop

[Skybird]

If you plan for a PC-bound VR set, you need to invest seriously to have performance reserves. You want these reserves in VR.

I know that Oculus Quest does not depend on and link up to PC like Rift did, but its range of titles is more limited and it cannot do some of the stuff you find for the Rift. Oculus runs some strange policies there, banning some Rift titles that have good reputation from being tested on Quest, although the developers say they are ready and have working versions. Also, no Google Earth+Streetview on Quest. Which is an absolute KO criterion, at least for me. Also, its all sold out currently.

i7 8700K is good stuff. I bought this one myself in autumn 2017. It eats everything I throw at it both in VR and 2D, but you need very good and huge air cooler (I have, it can be done, silently), or water cooling.

[Onkel Neal]

Thanks guys.

Once again I am leaning toward a simple prebuilt solution, like this
https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/4jnv

It's simple and easy and takes any worry of issues, mistakes building, and compatibility out of the equation. Plus half the components I look up are out of stock. When nothing goes wrong, building a PC is simple lego block building. I'm sure it's satisfying. But if I make a mistake, or there's BIOS issues, or anything else goes sideways, I have to figure it out.

Or maybe this, quieter with wc
https://deals.dell.com/en-us/productdetail/4ioh

[ET2SN]

Water cooling kinda died down after the "big horse power"/bit coin mining thing died out.

Think about it, would you put a fish tank on top of your TV and stereo? In case anything goes wrong, it will go wrong in very big way.

Silicon, electricity, and water still don't mix.

Even a fully sealed water cooling set up will require maint. after a while.

[Onkel Neal]

True, I'll probably regret that at some point, but it should be a quieter rig.

[Onkel Neal]

Done. Based on my XPS15 laptop being 4 years old and still more than enough PC, this desktop PC should be viable until 2030.

Dark Side of the Moon chassis with High-Performance CPU Liquid Cooling and 850W Power Supply
16GB Dual Channel HyperX(TM) FURY DDR4 XMP at 2666MHz
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) RTX 2060 SUPER(TM) 8GB GDDR6 (OC Ready)
9th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 9700 (8-Core, 12MB Cache, up to 4.7GHz with Intel(R) Turbo Boost Technology)
Dell Limited Hardware Warranty Initial Year
US Power Cord
Microsoft(R) Office 30 Days Trial
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 Processor Label
Wireless Driver for Killer 1650 Card
Custom Configuration
Killer(TM) Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 (2x2) 802.11ax Wireless and Bluetooth 5.1
1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
Dark Side of the Moon
Windows 10 Home 64bit English

Now... the wait

Thanks so much for your feedback and help.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by ET2SN

Water cooling kinda died down after the "big horse power"/bit coin mining thing died out.

Think about it, would you put a fish tank on top of your TV and stereo? In case anything goes wrong, it will go wrong in very big way.

Silicon, electricity, and water still don't mix.

Even a fully sealed water cooling set up will require maint. after a while.

Just asking: is there any new alternative to air coolers, good air coolers? I know these can work well since I use a good (and BIG one) myself (Noctua ND15), still there are two or three games that can out the temps to dangerous maximums bove 90°C that you do not want to run as default temps without wanting to shorten the lifespan of your CPUs, it happens even easier in VR.

[McBeck]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Just asking: is there any new alternative to air coolers, good air coolers? I know these can work well since I use a good (and BIG one) myself (Noctua ND15), still there are two or three games that can out the temps to dangerous maximums bove 90°C that you do not want to run as default temps without wanting to shorten the lifespan of your CPUs, it happens even easier in VR.

Too late for me to jump in, but here are a few comments for others:
1) AMD Ryzen 3600 is king at this point. It may loose a few FPS compared to Intel, but at a MUCH lower cost. If you wan to overclock Intel makes it impressivly difficult for you as you have to buy a specific line of CPU and MB.
2) The AMD MB to get should be ASUS and with the new 550 chipset to support PCI express 4. Asrock has recently seen poor quality.
3) Cooling, this has been tested extensively on various channels, BUT the fact of the matter is that closed loop water cooling is only better if you simply dont like big coolers like the Noctua ones. Aircooling using Noctua 15 is still just as good as the best watercooled ones.

[McBeck]

The setup I have in mind for my next build:
mATX (because I dont need a build in CD/DVD drive)

ASUS PRIME B550M-A motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Wraith Spire CPU
Noctua NH-D15 SE-AM4
ASUS Radeon RX 5700 XT ROG STRIX OC - 8GB GDDR6 RAM
Fractal design meshify C tower mini (because it looks amazing!)

Add MEM, disks, PSU etc as you need.