Isn't RGB all the craze because you can control them via software?
Maybe it says something on the box of the memory dimms. It probably suggests you to install some kind of app/bloatware to control a few LED patterns. Perhaps it can show CPU usage or something when you're in Windows, at least that's somewhat useful.
How about we just say that Dave may not have made the best choice, but he didn't make a bad choice (especially considering the circumstances) ... and move on.
Can anyone actually tell me, ignoring "bang-per-buck", if there is anything fundamentally "wrong" about my build?
Could I have gotten *better* performance (for my needs) for a *lot less* cost?
Is my CPU or motherboard or memory or drive or cooler fundamentally *unfit for my purpose* in some way?
Because I have yet to hear this in any of the comments.
The arguments all seem to be based on "bang-per-buck", with, at least on the forum here, advocating for an essentially lower performance system.
These kind of discussions are the same for when people buy 2nd hand cars. Some would buy German, other Japanese, and finally some people get a French car because they are usually quite cheap.
You can't say what was the right choice at the moment of purchase. You can find out how the car drives, search online for approximation about how reliable the car is and the fuel economy. But that's about it.
Some people have great luck with their French purchase. Others can get top brand model and have endless problems. Some people are strongly opinionated about the subject, and will always say "should have gotten ....".
I think the extra $ you paid for this build, is mainly for the platform. The 7820X dropped pretty severely in price due to the competition offerings (including 8700K, probably). The 7900X is what I would still call an overpriced CPU. Also, mid to high-end X470 boards aren't exactly cheap neither.
You're using quad channel memory, unfortunately can't find any benchmark that correlates memory bandwidth with performance in video workloads. My guess is that it does make some difference, since video processing is usually quite cache size dependent..
Whether the X299 platform is "outdated" or obsolete; that could also be the point. 2700X and X470 is out for only 2 months. Although Ryzen and AM4 as a platform is pretty mature by now, you could still have frequent BIOS revisions on these boards. Something you don't want for a daily production machine or workstation. From the video it seems that this build was plug'n'play and just worked. You could potentially have done a lot worse if you struck on some memory incompatibility issue or something.
So IMO there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the build. It works and it performs according to the review figures. With AMD vs Intel competition now going on, this build is probably "last gen" in about a years time anyway, so what gives.