SFF build, so many choices, no clear idea where to start

[debo]

Hi everyone, based in London, UK and new to the forum; I think I can definitely say I'm "new" the the PC community. I put that in quotes because I'm not new yet my last system was a pentium 2 and since then I only had laptops and consoles so yeah, I'm basically starting from scratch all over.

So here I am, saying hi to everyone hoping to be welcomed and mentored about the good and the bad of this world.

I recently discovered the amazing and fascinating world of SFF and I starting getting very tickled by the idea of getting back into the games. However as per subject I have no idea where to start, I watched lots of videos and liked so many builds whether they are in the Ghost S1 or in the NCASE M1 and many more and it's hard to choose. So here I am asking for advices and opinions too.

As aesthetic goes, here some of the example I feel in love with:




I guess what I like the most is the idea of a full custom loop, because of the look but also because of the reduced noise, however, what prevents me from fully commit to it is that I didn't see any relevant benchmark about their thermals, I'm referring to those specific builds I linked.

Game wise I do play mostly, if not exclusively, Blizzard titles when it comes to desktop gaming, for everything else I will still probably fall back on my PS4 or switch but, with that say I'd still love to build something that packs a good punch and that can last for quite some time. I really to be taken by hand here so far the only two things that I seem to understand is that as water-cooling goes ekwb is king as well as noctua rules in the fans department but that's as far as it goes, oh and yes, that the intel vs amd vs nvidia war is still very much on.

Please helps and I will always be thankful.

Thanks everyone.

 

[ermac318]

I would ease your way in before going a full custom loop. You're going to have a big learning curve getting back into PC building it sounds like, adding custom loop complexity on top of that is probably quite a lot to chew off.

What you could do is start with a case and build it for air cooling, but with a plan to upgrade to a custom loop in the future. Great cases for this would be the NCase M1 (but that's not really in stock at the moment) or maybe the Cerberus (which is actually on a Black Friday sale right now).

Both of these cases are excellent air cooling and water cooling cases. There are tons of examples of each that you can base your work off in the future. In the short term, you could build out a system in either of these cases, and spend very little on air cooling, and then do a custom loop later.

That said, if all you are playing are Blizzard titles, there's really no need for a monster PC that would require watercooling in the first place. Overwatch is about the most graphics-intensive game they have, and that'll run on laptops with a 1660ti at 100+ FPS.

 

[debo]

Hey @ermac318 thanks a lot for the reply. As I mentioned the water-cooled part is mostly for aesthetics and noise reduction to be completely honesty with you also, I'm fairly sure that if I get back into the PC world I will then start for sure to play different titles and get into more demanding FPS games and such. With that said, I'm completely happy to start with normal air cooling and see how it goes and if not happy expand on that.

I didn't know about the Cerberus, it looks quite interesting but it would appear that a double radiator setup is not exactly easy to achieve, thinking about upgrading in the future, I guess I'll need to research a bit more on that; thanks for pointing that out.

In terms of Intel vs AMD vs nvidia what's the current state of the art? I'm seeing that AMD is having a come back in the CPU department, what about GPU? Are they competitive? What about AMD + nvidia compatibility? Back in the days it wasn't great, did things improved?

Also, if I were to start looking at builds and components what are good places/sites to search for in UK/Europe?

 

[ermac318]

Hey @ermac318 thanks a lot for the reply. As I mentioned the water-cooled part is mostly for aesthetics and noise reduction to be completely honesty with you also, I'm fairly sure that if I get back into the PC world I will then start for sure to play different titles and get into more demanding FPS games and such. With that said, I'm completely happy to start with normal air cooling and see how it goes and if not happy expand on that.

I didn't know about the Cerberus, it looks quite interesting but it would appear that a double radiator setup is not exactly easy to achieve, thinking about upgrading in the future, I guess I'll need to research a bit more on that; thanks for pointing that out.

In terms of Intel vs AMD vs nvidia what's the current state of the art? I'm seeing that AMD is having a come back in the CPU department, what about GPU? Are they competitive? What about AMD + nvidia compatibility? Back in the days it wasn't great, did things improved?

Also, if I were to start looking at builds and components what are good places/sites to search for in UK/Europe?

There are many dual-rad setups in the Cerberus, it's probably the best (current) SFF case for that. NCase M1 can do it (but its harder), SM570/580 can do it (but again not officially supported), and that's about it. Cerberus can do two full 30mm thick 240mm radiators.

As for your basic questions, I would go watch some of the year-end review guides that Gamers Nexus and Linus Tech Tips (although they haven't posted their holiday build guides they said they're coming) on YouTube as I think going through the entire state of the PC industry is a bit beyond the scope of this forum.

 

[debo]

@ermac318 thanks again, I'm going to search around then and have a look at the various setups. I think I was mislead by the review by Optimum Tech on Cerberus where they were saying it's a bit hard to plan around that case, but I guess it was just them.

As per the other question, absolutely, I simply wanted a pointer to the right direction rather than an exact answer, I'm happy to document myself, I simply need good resources to avoid getting lost in a rabbit hole of non sense.

Thanks again.