Looking for some feedback on a new build + some advice projecting out 1-2 years in the future. Some background first though, so buckle up as it's a long read.....
My current build (i7 3770K, 16GB DDR3, 7970 3GB card, 256GB Crucial SSD, 1TB Samsung Spinpoint HD) is used primarily for gaming, but also used daily for web browsing, document editing, etc. It's about 4.5 years old and is overdue for an upgrade. I usually upgrade on a 4 year cadence and then remain completely hands off until my next build (I broke that rule by adding another 8GB of memory to my build in 2015, but I digress). As such, I always try and project out gaming hardware requirements before I order, which I think I've done a reasonable job on the last few builds. Right now I current game on a 1080p monitor AND tv, but I'm likely going to move up to a 4K TV within 18 months.
I decided to wait for my new build until this year to see how Ryzen and Vega will shake out. I had intended to wait until late fall to make a final decision on parts, but the wrinkle here is that my wife needs a capable machine to do some extensive Lightroom/Photoshop on for her fledgling photography business. Right now she's using my i7 based Yoga 2 Pro laptop, but it isn't cutting the mustard. The plan is to give her my machine to use for 1-2 years, but she needs it ASAP. So I may need to accelerate my build somewhat AND it may influence my current build plans.
I've thrown together a tentative build in PCPartpicker
here - the 1080 can be ignored as it's just a placeholder for now, as are vendor choices - I'll likely order everything either through Newegg or Amazon. Ditto for the memory choice, although 16GB of DDR4 is the intended target.
The key decision is the use of a Ryzen based CPU. I was originally thinking of getting the Ryzen 7 1800x because I'm betting on multicore/multithreading use increasing significantly in games in the next 2 years or so. But the $500 price point is a bit much to swallow, so I thought I'd roll with the 1600x for the next year or two and then potentially upgrade to a Ryzen 2 CPU and toss the 1600x into my wife's next build. The problem there is that the Ryzen chips don't compare very favorably to Intel in either Photoshop or Lightroom benchmarks, so it probably won't be the optimal choice to base her machine on 2 years from now. That means I either stick with it myself for 4 years and compromise on my 8 core dreams. Or eat the cost and toss it in 2 years or so in favor of what I assume will be a cheaper, more capable 8 core model.
To further make my head hurt, I then started mulling the idea of going with a new Intel build (probably based on the i7 7700K), with the premise that this would be what I'd end up giving to my wife in 2 years and then I'd go through the platform decision process again. The benefit there is that she gets to keep using Intel chips for her work and I get some more breathing room to see if AMD steps up its game with Ryzen. Whatever video card I buy now would be repurposed in that build however and I'd replace it with something more suited to my wife's requirements.
So I'd be curious to hear people's thoughts on my somewhat schizophrenic build plans. I'd also welcome feedback on the power supply wattage and memory brand/speeds. I typically have bought Crucial memory, as I've never had an issue with it for the last 3 builds I've done. But I'm not sure it'll play nice with Ryzen in terms of speed settings.
I've also typically bought over specced PSU's, preferring never to deal with any headroom issues. My second to last build had a 750W PSU and my current build has a 650W PSU. The reality here though is that I don't think I've come anywhere close to maxing out either of those units. I'm never going to run an SLI setup and I can't envision using more than 1 HD and 2 SSDs + an optical drive. Therefore, a 500-550W PSU would probably be fine. Again though, I'd prefer to pay an extra $20-30 now rather than ever have to deal with headroom issues down the road.
Again, thoughts there would be welcome and thanks in advance!
