Small/Mid-Tower ATX Case and PSU Recomendations

[Dizzy49]

I'm looking to upgrade my current PC to the following: PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor ($504.99 @ Best Buy)
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X62 Rev 2 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler ($159.00 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($189.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($187.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($187.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($79.98 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($149.97 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital SN750 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($365.45 @ Newegg)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Ti 11 GB AORUS XTREME Video Card ($1299.99 @ B&H)


The video card and two Samsung drives I already have. I currently have a full tower case and I just don't need anything that big anymore. I will not have any kind of optical drive.

I'm looking for a smaller case with mic and headphone jacks on the front, and at least 2 (preferably 4) USB ports, with at least two USB 3. I don't need glass sides or anything, I'm fine with plain black. Most important thing for me is decent airflow and making sure the motherboard and video card will fit.

I have an EVGA Supernova 850 G2 power supply in my current rig. Right now I'm not sure if I'm going to recycle my current rig down to my daughter or not. So I figure would look at power supplies so I know what to get should I need it.

Some extra info. I game casually, nothing cutting edge, usually games a year or so old. My rig is mainly used for work. The video card drives 3x 27" 4K screens. I do a lot of data processing, so it spends most of it's time crunching SQL queries and procedures (or watching videos while working). It sits next to me in my office in a 30"h x 25"d x 9.65"w cubby. There are some cutouts in the back so it's drawing air from behind the shelving and drawers in the back, but it can still get a bit warm.

Here are a few that I like, but they aren't much smaller than what I have (Corsair 800 I think, it's 9w x 22h x 22d)
BeQuiet Silent Base 601
NZXT H710


Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[MaddMann]

If the case is the only thing you are looking to upgrade and it will go in your office, I would suggest https://www.bequiet.com/en/case/1474 Looks sleek, is designed to lower noise, has a built in qi charger, and it has plenty of space! I have built a few of these now and every client has loved it.

I know you said you don't need RGB and clear sides, but they don't sell one without it =( I really like these for their utility as well as their ability and aesthetics

 

[Oussebon]

The Fractal R6 or R7 or Define S are also options

For PSUs, consider Corsair's 2019 RM series, or the slightly older RMx

And just to check, are you sure that the 9900k is a better choice for your work uses than an AMD R9 3900x/3950x?

 

[Dizzy49]

If the case is the only thing you are looking to upgrade and it will go in your office, I would suggest https://www.bequiet.com/en/case/1474 Looks sleek, is designed to lower noise, has a built in qi charger, and it has plenty of space! I have built a few of these now and every client has loved it.

That thing is huge, larger than what I already have! Looks great though.

The Fractal R6 or R7 or Define S are also options

For PSUs, consider Corsair's 2019 RM series, or the slightly older RMx

And just to check, are you sure that the 9900k is a better choice for your work uses than an AMD R9 3900x/3950x?

I think the R6 is about perfect. SLIGHTLY taller than I'd like, if they took out the one optical slot it would be perfect IMO. But the smaller ones I've found don't have decent front panel connections.

As for Intel vs AMD, honestly I had a REALLY bad experience with AMD in the late 90s and and avoided them since. I've read good things about the Threadrippers, but haven't really invested any time to compare performance.

 

[Oussebon]

AMD's new CPUs are outstanding, and the company has gone through massive changes over the last 5-6 years, nevermind since the 90s, and has turned itself around.

The 3950x is pretty much a Threadripper - except it's on the consumer AM4 motherboard platform, rather than the TR4 platform. But performance-wise it's in the same class as 2nd generation threadripper, actually beating some threadripper CPUs. It's more expensive than the 9900k, but gives twice the cores and threads.

The 3900x is the same price or a bit cheaper than the 9900k, and gives 50% more cores and threads (12/24 vs 8/16).

If your workloads are multithreaded, the performance difference with one of the Ryzen 9 CPUs is crazy and Intel doen't have much to offer there:
e.g. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15043/the-amd-ryzen-9-3950x-review-16-cores-on-7nm-with-pcie-40/5

 

[MaddMann]

AMD's new CPUs are outstanding, and the company has gone through massive changes over the last 5-6 years, nevermind since the 90s, and has turned itself around.

The 3950x is pretty much a Threadripper - except it's on the consumer AM4 motherboard platform, rather than the TR4 platform. But performance-wise it's in the same class as 2nd generation threadripper, actually beating some threadripper CPUs. It's more expensive than the 9900k, but gives twice the cores and threads.

The 3900x is the same price or a bit cheaper than the 9900k, and gives 50% more cores and threads (12/24 vs 8/16).

If your chess simulation workloads are multithreaded, the performance difference with one of the Ryzen 9 CPUs is crazy and Intel doen't have much to offer there:
e.g. https://www.anandtech.com/show/15043/the-amd-ryzen-9-3950x-review-16-cores-on-7nm-with-pcie-40/5

So I too have had bad experiences with AMD in the past, but from my experience even the new thread ripper is not good for traditional render systems or compilation programs. AMD has a lot of software issues that cause incompatibilities and does not sync well with a lot of linux programs that prefer high single core capability over high hyper-threading.

 

[Oussebon]

You seem to be saying that Threadripper including the 3000 series
1) has poor single threaded performance
2) has poor multithreaded performance (compiling and rendering) and
3) doesn't work with Linux.

None of those are accurate - and in any event it's not relevant to the OP's needs even if they were.

1) Zen 2 (the 3000 series) addresses a lot of the areas in which the first 2 generations of threadripper struggled with performance - especially the weakness of the memory architecture, as well as Zen 2 generally offering significantly higher IPC, and higher clock speeds versus 2000 series TR.

2) None of that is really relevant. The OP isn't going for the TRX40 platform - the point was you can pretty much get TR / Socket 2011 class performance on AM4. There were issues you needed to work around to boot Linux on TRX40 at launch (new platform, go figure), but it did work and isn't what the OP is looking to buy anyway.

3) Turning back to the CPUs that are actually relevant to the OP, the 3950x and 3900x both do extremely well under Linux:

Ryzen 9 3900X vs. Ryzen 9 3950X vs. Core i9 9900KS In Nearly 150 Benchmarks - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

And, of course, in single and multithreaded workloads in Windows:
(relatively lightly threaded PS, as an example: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...ore-X-10000-vs-AMD-Threadripper-3rd-Gen-1595/ )
(multithreaded - see Anandtech article linked in previous post)

even the new thread ripper is not good for traditional render systems or compilation programs

That experience is at odds with just about everything you should expect from modern AMD systems, TRX40 or AM4.

AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X / 3960X Linux Benchmarks Review - Phoronix

www.phoronix.com

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2tzTMN6-qU


Which I suppose means unfortunately your use case is ultra niche or there's something wrong with your system.

 

[MaddMann]

You seem to be saying that Threadripper including the 3000 series
1) has poor single threaded performance
2) has poor multithreaded performance (compiling and rendering) and
3) doesn't work with Linux.

I didn't say any of those things, I was not going for fanboy support. I am a network expansion specialist at Amazon and deal with these issues on a daily basis. There is a reason we don't use AMD in our network.

 

[Oussebon]

I guess there's not much point debating whether you said something that's there in black and white.

As an aside, Amazon does use AMD Epyc for at least some of its cloud computing.

However, both Threadripper (and Intel 2011) and Epyc (and Intel's server platforms) are completely irrelevant to the discussion here since the OP is not shopping in that end of things. Hence I'm not sure why the Threadripper bashing is indicated.

The question re: CPUs is Intel LGA 1151 vs AM4.