I'm an average PC user/enthusiast. I do some gaming, watch movies or surf internet. I have some money saved so I'd like to treat myself with a new PC. For almost the same price I can have:
- Asus Z10PE-D16 WS + 2x E5-2667 V3 ES QEYA
- Gigabyte X399 AORUS GAMING 7 + 1x Ryzen Threadripper 1920X
What would you guys choose?
If you are indeed an average/enthusiast user who mainly surfs, watches movies, and occasionally games,
don't get either of your selections. In your situation, both will be a pain in the ass for negative benefit.
In the case of the ES QEYA chips, they're alpha/pre beta, so are probably not that stable and definitely have bugs and compatibility issues...not to mention, you'll need 8 sticks of ram to do it right, you'll probably have BIOS issues, as you'll need a specific version to run pre beta chips, and none of your applications actually can take advantage of having a pair of NUMA nodes...in fact, it'll probably make things worse. the QEYA only run at 2.9GHz, aren't overclockable, and require ECC ram that runs at a maximum of 2133.
The 1920x is most of a kilobuck, the motherboard will run you another $400, plus you'll need 4 sticks of *fast* memory...and fast means *expensive*, as threadripper is internally divided into NUMA nodes interconnected at the speed of your ram...and threadripper excels at nothing you claim you want to do.
For your uses, get a hotrod, not a tank, and go with an Intel i7-8700k (6 cores, 12 threads, 3.7GHz base, turbosmto 4.7GHz, and is overclockable) at $360...or the i5-8600 (6c6t, 3.6-4.3GHz, overclockable) for a hundred dollars less.
Add a motherboard like an Asrock Taichi z370 for $220 (z370 mbs range from about $120 on up to $300+, but unless you're trying to set OC records, don't bother with anything much more than around $230.)
Then bust your nut and scratch your itch to spend $$$ by purchasing a fancy schmancy gtx 1080ti and a fast NVME drive like a Samsung 960 pro (or a pair), 32-64GB of decently fast memory (don't go much faster than ddr4-3200 or 3500, as the added expense is nowhere near worth the little bit of extra performance, unless you're trying to set OC records) and a solid PSU.
Spend a bit of extra dosh and get a *nice* PSU, as it'll likely follow you between builds. I'm a fan of the Corsair Axi series with a 10 year warranty, although they can be a bit pricey. Expect to spend $100-$200, and get something quite a bit overpowered, like 850w-ish, and aim for Energy Star Gold rating or better. The reasons for overpowered PSUs are that because they're not being stressed much, they provide *very* stable and *very* clean power as a function of not loading them near capacity, and as a bonus, if you plan it right, it can run silently without the fan even turning over.
A good heatsink by Noctua, or a Corsair AIO liquid cooler (h100 or h115) and a well reviewed case will round out your build.
This is a *great* pc for gaming, nearly the best, and it'll rock any browsing or movie watching task you'll do, including 4k UHD blu-ray (with the right drive) which neither of your two selections will do. It'll be much easier to build, less of a pain in the ass to configure, and will likely have less strange incompatibilities and slowdowns. Plus, you can overclock a bit nice and easy if you just a bit more performance to tide you over. Lastly, it will whup up on anything you throw at it that doesn't need a bazillion threads, and do *quite* well on things that do (as the clock and ipc are much higher).
