In the same boat. Im running an AMD-8350 now, so its getting old. Going to build a rig in late April. I have always used AMD except on my last build (for my wife) which was an i7 2600k (few years back). Ive been comparing Ryzen and Intel offerings, especially these two. http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-8700K-vs-AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X/3937vs3916 The link is a great site for comparing different cpu's. Well comparing everything. Im leaning towards the Intel chip. As far as GPU, Im leaning towards the Nvidia 1070. I always use Gigabyte boards. I've built probably 50 pc's and through trial and error settled on Gigabyte as my only choice. Well, DFI was my main source in the day, but they abandoned the "consumer" market and make only commercial specific motherboards. DFI was the LanParty company, which some may know. Miss those boards !! Anyway, I definitely will go solid state for the OS (Windows 7), and I always use a separate sound card (Sound Blaster of course).