1700 vs i7 7700k vs 6800k for art content

1700 will proform better with multithreaded apps like content creation

if u really want a workstation class cpu, seeing that u can afford the 6800k, get the 1800X. the 1800X competes with the 1000 buck 6900k.

I have no background in content creation or it's related software but from what I have read it looks like photoshop only uses alot of cores when you use certain filters and 3d creation. But blender does use cores. I have always used Intel myself, but in your case I think Ryzen makes sense. Don't write it off for the fanboy crap. It is a viable option, just as Intel is a viable option.

I've never owned an AMD chip but modern cpus last quite a number of years as long as you don't do any crazy overclocking or anything. They certainly last just as long as intel because many in my family love AMD machines. The Noctua will work fine, it looks like they offer a free am4 mount bracket with proof of purchase.

Non-moving parts, such as CPU's, memory and motherboards, tend to last a long time. Moving parts, such as fans, hard drives, graphics cards and mice, have shorter lifespans. Your mileage may vary.

Yes, a Noctua CPU air/heatsink-fan cooler will work fine with the Ryzen platform as long as it's AM4 compatible. Noctua is pretty much a flagship, premium case fan and cpu-heatsink air cooler brand. Totally trustworthy and highly regarded 5/5 stars

As for your first post,
ryzen 7's offer more value than the i7-7700k given the fact the ryzen 7 offers 8 cores 16 threads versus the intel i7 offering only 4 cores 8 threads. Thus, ryzen 7 plows through content creation, productivity, rendering, transcoding, compression, et cetra. The only shortcomings ryzen 7 has against intel include single thread peformance (thus, poorer gaming performance potential), less overclock potential (since its architecture is unstable above 4.0ish) and simply gaming in general (since most games don't use more than 4 cores anyway).

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/amd_ryzen_7_1800x_processor_review,9.html

At stock clocks all Ryzen 7 CPUs are actually lower power and under heavily threaded loads, slightly more efficient that the Intel HEDT CPUs (that's the 6, 8 & 10 core range). By "Noctua Fan", you mean a CPU cooler right? Which one? Noctua do sell a few ultra low-profile CPU coolers for ultra compact home theatre PCs and the like. You wouldn't want one of those for an 8 core workstation rig. As long as you've picked one of their tower coolers (U12, U14, D15 - or the single fan "s" versions of those coolers), then yeah, they should be capable of keeping temps well under control. The U12 might start seeing high-ish temps with a large overclock on Ryzen or a 6800K. Could be an issue if you have high ambient temps. But at stock or in a normal working environment, should be absolutely fine.

To you main question, you should absolutely get a Ryzen CPU IMHO. Unless you're really, really opposed to overclocking (which you shouldn't be), you really should save money and get the 1700 and overclock it to at least 3.9Ghz too. Watch one or two youtube videos and you should have it done and stable within an hour. Then you basically have 1800X performance (or near enough that it makes no difference) and $170 change.

Ryzen has got a bad reputation for single threaded performance, but that's primarily come from gaming workloads, where it does show some limitations. If you look at productivity tasks (like Photoshop), clock for clock and core for core, Ryzen will run basically neck and neck with Broadwell CPUs (like the 6800K you're considering). That 6800K also has a lower clock speed, so in single threaded productivity workloads the 6800K and a 1700 are going to trade blows. Now if you overclock both, the 6800K will go a bit further, so would eek out a small 10-15% performance lead in single threaded tasks, however the 1700 has two extra cores which means that it is still significantly faster in multi threaded tasks, and it's a good chunk cheaper, can be run (and OC'd) on far cheaper motherboards, and includes a pretty decent cooler.
The only way you consider the 6800K over the 1700 in your situation is if you overclock it, only value single threaded workloads, and are prepared to pay a good chunk more. (There are platform advantageous with the 6800K like additional PCIe lanes and quad channel RAM - but from what you describe those things aren't really relevant for you).

So then you consider 7700K vs 1700. These are priced similarly and with a bit extra IPC on Kaby Lake and higher clocks, the 7700K is about 20-25% faster at single threaded tasks - if you push the 7700K to 5Ghz or so. On the other hand, the 1700 has double the cores and threads, so any multi-threaded workload is going to see the 1700 win by a much larger margin than that.

While gaming does run better on the Intel CPUs, Ryzens are still very capable gaming CPUs and more than enough for "light" gaming.

No doubt others will see it differently, but I think you'd be far better served from a Ryzen 1700, with a simple clock bump to 3.8 or 3.9Ghz. Keep the voltage under 1.35V and it should last a very long time.

I have had 1 CPU die in 20 years (and it was due to voltage if I'm not mistaken). My big 3 components in terms reliable/unreliable are

1) Power Supply
2) Motherboard
3) Hard Drive/SSD

Even with those, some have been bullet proof for years. As far as Intel vs. AMD... it's almost always come down to the quality of Motherboard and RAM in my experience.

in some places the cryorig r1 costs less than the nh d15 and vice versa. choose which one is cheaper. this is assuming that u go for a 1800X. if u go for a 1700, stick with the stock cooler unless u r gonna overclock it

The 1700 comes with a fantastic cooler (for a stock cooler). I have it personally, and I've been too lazy to hook up my AIO liquid cooler... no issues with heat at all, though I am not inclined to do any overclocking (though it would probably be fine at 3.8Ghz or lower).

Those temperature generalisations were absolutely true with AMD's old Bulldozer CPUs and their iterations, but Ryzen is a brand new ground up architecture which is much more efficient.

The D15 is a fantastic cooler, but it's probably overkill unless you're going to overclock that CPU as far as you possibly can. If you really care about noise the D15 could probably be run with the low noise adapter making it virtually inaudible. The U14 is great, probably a better fit for mild-moderate OCing.

RE Performance, by going Ryzen @~3.9Ghz, you are sacrificing *at most* ~30% on single threaded tasks compared to an overclocked 7700K. Compared to the more expensive 6800K you're sacrificing *at most* ~%15... and that's worst case scenarios when both are overclocked. If you were to go out and spec out a $10,000 Photoshop workstation it would probably have a Xeon CPU which would be roughly equivalent to Ryzen @ 3.9Ghz in single threaded tasks, and actually slightly slower than overclocked consumer chips. So no, it's not going to cause any problems with Photoshop whatsoever, and when you throw a Blender workload, or one of the Photoshop workloads that do scale with multiple threads, it'll demolish Intel's competition unless you spend $1000 on a 6900K.