So, I built a high-performance Ryzen 9 based CPU for 1.8 lakhs.

As many of you have requested for the build spec and the details of the purchase, I thought I’d write about it today.

The purpose of this system is purely business driven:

Video editing & rendering, trading, optimization, and eventually some machine learning and data analytics.

I expect the machine to pay 100 times up and above the cost of building it in the next 5 years.



Specifications

i) Ryzen 9 3900x - Rs. 39,300/-
ii) Gigabyte Aorus Pro Wifi - Rs. 24,500/-
iii) Samsung NVME M.2 1TB SSD 970 Evo Plus - Rs. 13,550/-
iv) WD Blue 4TB HDD 5400 RPM - Rs. 7,500/-
v) Gigabyte GEForce RTX 3060 Gaming OC 12GB GPU - Rs. 60,000
vi) Corsair Vengeance 32GB 3600MHz RAM (16GBx2) - Rs. 15,600 (7,800 per stick).
vii) Cooler Master mastercool 240L Liquid Cooling - Rs. 6,600/-
viii) Corsair 4000d airflow cabinet - Rs. 6,700/-
ix) Antec HCG 750W 80+ Gold PSU - Rs. 7,300/-

Total cost - Rs. 1,81,050.

First thing to do is all thanks to few people on Twitter who rightly guided me, so many followers who gave me suggestions.

Thanks to you all.

@Mahaaveer and @kswindia have both been very kind, taking painstaking effort to guide me despite it being a waste of time for them.

Mahaaveer is an aerospace/nautics engineer and is currently doing Machine Learning projects for government.

Anything ML and CV based projects - you can approach him.

@KSWIndia is a creator and musician, check out his YouTube too!

Cost Research

I started off assuming costs in Delhi would be better because it has the biggest IT marketplace in Asia (Nehru Place). But I was wrong.

That said, if you’re in Delhi, I’d suggest you check with

i) Computer Empire ii) Cost to Cost

Cost to Cost - this shop is reliable, but a bit costlier than everyone else.

Computer Empire - they seem to have the best prices in the Nehru Place shops.

The biggest revelation I had was, the best place to buy computer parts is from Kolkata, not Mumbai, not Delhi.

Second best place is Chennai. Most of the computer parts, even reputed brands have their mfg in Taiwan/China. Chennai distributors get it imported directly.

There are some reputed places in Kolkata which should be your first place to look at for computer parts.

Start looking for prices online:

1) mdcomputers.in 2) vedantcomputers.com

Amazon, Flipkart, etc., are trash for buying computer parts. Stay away from those.



Best suppliers

Chennai wise, go with the following two suppliers.

i) Delta peripherals - very professional and very cost efficient. They have original parts, lowest prices. 9884411731 is their number.

ii) Challenger computer - second best and they also build you gaming PCs acc to your req.

For Challenger computer, contact Yunus - 8056072229.

Even though I bought only the processor, motherboard, SSD and HDD from them, they were kind enough to assemble the system for free for me.

I bought the other items except GPU from Delta.

GPU is from Vedant Computers.

I got all the quotes over mobile/whatsapp. The most difficult ones to speak to and get quotes from were the Nehru place shops.

SMC international - don’t even bother with them. Costly on all fronts, and also have some attitude.

Cost to Cost, Computer Empire - always busy.

But cost to cost has uploaded and update price list on a daily basis. No negotiations entertained on that. So, you can just assume that to be the price.

Same for Delta Peripherals in Chennai. If you build everything from Delta, you can negotiate.



The Process of build

I did 2-3 weeks of research for this (more like @Mahaaveer and @KSWIndia did most of it and helped me refine my crude initial spec idea).

And had I ordered last week, I’d have saved 7k out of this as GPU was 7k lesser last week.

Coming to the build itself.

My requirement was for video rendering, big data analytics (handling terabytes of data), and machine learning eventually.

So I wanted it to be a one time business investment, and wanted to get the best within 1.5L budget which expanded to 1.8L.



Ryzen 9 3900x:

I am not a gamer, but even for a gamer, this would be a too good processor.

Threadripper would be great if I have a purpose for it. I don’t yet have one. Maybe in future, but not now.

AMD Ryzen 9 beats the living daylight out of Intel on all fronts.

That said, Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 are still way better than Intel i5 and i7 respectively. Like at least 30-40% better.

For better price to performance ratio - go with AMD chips today. Intel has lagged, and no sign of any M1 processors soon for retail market.



Gigabyte Aorus Pro Wifi X570:

Motherboard wise I wanted to get the best at <25k range that incorporated future support also.

Gigabyte has good support in India. Hence went with this board.

Only MSI Meg x570 Unify was better (or ASUS Strix ROG) but that’s overkill.



RTX 3060 GPU 12GB:

I can’t afford 3070 or anything newer. GPU prices have been going crazy too. I definitely did not like paying 60k for a product whose MSRP is less than 35k.

But 3060 12GB GPU is the best price to performance GPU currently. Also more than sufficient.

With this, you can run most of your games, initial machine learning efforts, etc., before you scale up to a multi-GPU set up if you’re doing independent projects and/or kaggle competitions.



Samsung 1TB NVME M.2 970 Evo Plus SSD

Again, since this is the primary disk, I wanted it to be the best and most reliable. Also, wanted something with DRAM.

There are several DRAM-less disks for cheaper. But Samsung is the leader in SSDs currently and this one has DRAM.



WD Blue 5400RPM HDD 4TB

4TB should be more than sufficient for my needs. This would act as a secondary storage on which most of the data stored would also be backed up into cloud. Mostly for archival.

Seagate holds the record for disk failures. So, went with WD.

Toshiba and Hitachi seems to be the best among the HDD brands for making sure your disk doesn’t run a higher probability of risk of failure.

But for secondary disk purpose, WD Blue should be fine.

WD Purple is for surveillance (more writes less reads). Don’t buy that.



Corsair 4000d airflow

Mahaaveer helped me learn about temperatures, heat dissipation, and cases built for optimal heat dissipation.

I fell in love with the Corsair 540 cube case. Such beauty, but out of my budget. So, settled for the second best in the range.

This cabinet is very well built, with mesh and good space for cable management, and damn it is so heavy.

Also, comparing many different cases, in this price point, Lian Li Lancool 215 and Corsair 4000d airflow were contenders and Corsair is way better.



Cooler master 240L liquid cooling system

I wanted to go with liquid cooling and went with something with 2 fans and within 7000. Wasn’t too specific, but this model had very good reviews under 7k range.



Corsair 32GB 3600MHz RAM

Again, several people recommended Corsair RAM for their reliability.

Most RAM manufacturers are okay. But Corsair is the best and next would be GSkill and then Crucial/Kingston.



Antec HCG 750W 80+ Gold PSU

NEVER COMPROMISE ON PSUs. Always get the best PSU in the price range possible - and make sure you cover the wattage of your build. My build’s wattage would come to 450w max.

When going for PSUs, get Gold rated and above.

Also, among the OEMs manufacturing PSUs, turns out SEASONIC is the best brand, and Antec EAG and HCG PSU lineup is done by Seasonic. So, I went with Antec HCG 750W PSU since that was the only one available.

Check for Seasonic based PSUs and pick one acc to your build wattage.

Corsair, NZXT, etc., would also be fine, but those are a bit pricier.

Also, try and get a PSU that is fully modular. Semi-modular might pose an issue, but nothing that should make you drop the decision though.



On GPUs

Most GPUs on the NVIDIA series are made with design guidance and document given by NVIDIA with manufacturers making some improvements.

Usually GPUs don’t die - very low rate of failures.

There are several brands of GPUs based on NVIDIA RTX series.

Gigabyte ASUS EVGA Zotac Galax Colorful and so on.

EVGA > ASUS=GIGABYTE > Zotac > Galax > Colorful

GPU wise, thermals and temperature management matters.

Typically cheaper cards have poor thermal management, are hungrier for power more than the established brands, and so on. But some cards from Colorful are way superior thermally than the rest.

Colorful sounds like a ripoff brand - but is mostly a copy of MSI, but with very good presence in China. They are among the top two-three manufacturers and suppliers of GPUs in China.

MSI is also quite okay GPU wise.

For India support and RMA - go with Gigabyte/Asus/Zotac.

Galax was formerly known as Galaxy and they have a good presence in Europe and in other parts of the world. They are an enthusiast brand and have high quality products typically. So, you would be fine if you bought Galaxy cards too - they are usually cheaper.

Don’t do the assembling yourself though unless you know what you’re doing. At least for the first time, talk to someone for help/guiding you through it, or watch enough YouTube videos to learn it thoroughly.

If you do it wrong, high potential to ruin the build in the first day.

If you’re anywhere in south India, you’d save good money coming to Chennai and getting your hardware setup built and taken back to your hometown.

If you’re in North India - go to Kolkata > Delhi > Mumbai.

Also, just did some research.



Update:

For liquid cooling, go for ARCTIC LIQUID FREEZER ii 240 model. The best in its price range.

I didn’t do much research about liquid coolers, which in hindsight I should have. For only 2000 extra, this is the best liquid cooler among most.