£450 budget gaming build spec check

Chris Beard

Chris Beard

Chris Beard

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Hampshire
Please could I ask you to suggest any errors I made, or opportunities I've missed?:

CPU, GFX, Mobo, Memory - sub total £246
  • AMD Ryzen 3 1200 3.1 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£50)
  • PowerColor Radeon RX 480 8 GB Red Devil Video Card (£87 second hand)
  • Gigabyte GA-AB350M-DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£38 second hand)
  • Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 (£71)
Storage - sub total £25
  • Samsung 850 EVO-Series 250 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£25 second hand)
PSU - sub total £30
  • Enermax 625 W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully Modular ATX (£30 second hand)
Software - sub total £30
  • Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit, 5-machine license (£30)
Case - sub total £43
Cooling - sub total £36
  • Thermalright MACHO 120 REV.A 46.19 CFM CPU Cooler (£16 second hand)
  • 3 x ARCTIC F12 TC - 120 mm Temperature Controlled (£3 each, £9 total)
  • ARCTIC MX-4 2019 Edition 4 g Thermal Paste (£5)
  • Isopropyl Alcohol aerosol (£6)
Peripherals - sub total £40
  • Corsair K65 RGB UK Wired Gaming Keyboard (£22 second hand)
  • Creative Labs Pebble 2.0 4.4 W 2.0 Channel Speakers (£18)
Notes:
  • Already had mouse and monitor from 6 year old gaming laptop I'm upgrading from
  • Gaming at 1080p 75Hz on freesync monitor - games that are 3+ years old
  • Planning to upgrade in 24-36 months on CPU/GPU
  • Don't intend to buy any new games for more than £5 a pop.
  • Noise, not cutting myself on a cheap case and performance are priorities
Edit: fixed RAM module size!
 
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Would probably stump for a Ryzen 2600, it's double the price but it's also double the speed and longevity will be way better. The 1200 is a very weak CPU, though performance per pound at £50 is obviously good. For modern games it's very poor, IPC is not great, and it's only a quad core/quad thread CPU. Probably similar to an i5 from 2014 performance wise.

32GB RAM seems totally mental unless you have a very specific use for it.

Everything else is grand really.
 
Ah - it's not 32GB of RAM, my mistake! Will edit to fix.

Thank you for the advice on the CPU. I plan on overclocking the 1200 by ~25% and hope it will be a good match for the RX 480 (which may also struggle with current AAA titles).

I did consider getting something like a 1600 in the MM, but figured the extra cores might actually reduce the overclocking headroom (albeit I could disable some cores, perhaps even disable a full CCX manually, and I would get the extra cache). In the end I went for the cheaper CPU now so I can put that money towards something better in the future.
 
The RX480 is still good enough. The best thing about a GPU is that you can adjust settings to get a desired framerate. Can't do that with the CPU.

Something like BFV online for example would be pretty much unplayable on a 1200, overclocking won't make much difference.

It would be a fairly significant bottleneck to the RX480 in a lot of games, just depends what's being played. I can't stress enough that it's just a bad CPU for modern gaming.

A Ryzen 1600 destroys it realistically, much, much better option.

For example you're spending the guts of £40 on fans, thermal paste, CPU cooler. I'd much rather just use the stock Ryzen cooler (which is good and comes with paste) and use the stock case fan and get a 1600 instead.
 
Thanks for your reply Terrorfirmer. I had a quick look, although I don't plan on buying Battlefield V any time soon (it's quite a bit more than £5) I am happy for us to use it as an example of a CPU-hungry game.

It seems the 1300X (very much the same as an overclocked 1200) is actually the recommended specs for Battlefield V and it seems benchmarks show playing at 1080p should be fine: https://www.gpucheck.com/game-gpu/battlefield-v/amd-radeon-rx-580/amd-ryzen-3-1300x/

Am I missing anything obvious?
 
Benchmarks are always based on single player, it's the multi-player that hammers CPUs. It's a good example of how obsolete 4c/4t CPU's are.

Another example is the newest Assassins Creed. Hammers 4-core CPUs as well, and the 1200 has particularly bad per-core performance. For example, the Intel 9100F is also a quad core/quad thread processor, but performs far, far better. (not recommending it, just pointing out).

In the latest Assassins Creed for example, an RX480 would sit at low usage while your 1200 would be hammered at 100% usage most of the time, with framerates dipping to 30-40fps regularly. You can check out examples on YouTube.

Also in those cases, you don't really want your CPU running at 100% all the time either.

You might say "I don't plan playing either of those games" and that's entirely fine, but it's just the way games are going now, just best to pony up for a 1600 now, or a 2600, and not have to worry about that aspect of it.
 
Okay - thank you. My plan is to wait for the next Ryzen gen and then move to the 3000 series CPU second hand (perhaps a 3600). I'll do this as soon as I hit a game that I can't play with comfortable frames per second.

Any comments on other areas of the build, or advice? I know I need to check the BIOS on the GPU to ensure it's not a mining BIOS or outdated BIOS. Any other setup steps I might miss?
 
My i5 3579k which is 4 Cores 4 threads got maxed out in BF4 all the time in MP let a lone newer titles like BF1 and BV5. 2nd hand Ryzen 1600 or 2600 is the way to go with your budget. Lots of them are about at the moment with everyone upgrading to the latest Zen chips so you should be able to get a good base system (motherdboard, CPU, HSF, Ram) for not much money.
 
4 cores and 4 threads is still very much playable for 90% of the games out there. But this in a entry level perspective. The Ryzen 3 1200 is still a great buy at £50. Maybe try to find a used ryzen 5 1600 for even value. Or consider the 1200 as stop gap before better cpu later on
 
I'd look out for a Ryzen 1600 or 1600x CPU. Much stronger performance and an ideal match for RX480/570/580.

I sold my 1600X for £70, so a 1600 should be around £50-60 2nd hand

Also I saw a RX 480 Nitro+ go for £80, so you should look around more second hand for the rx480, or even rx580, as £87 seems a little overpriced for a 2nd hand rx480

SSD - you can pick up 250Gb for £25 new, so I'd look about a bit for one.
 
That psu may have been good at one point but it's ancient now. As it's 625w it has to be either a Pro 82+ (2008), Pro 82+ II (2009), Modu 82+ (2008) or Modu 82+ II (2010) meaning it could potentially be up to 11 years old. I realise that the budget may be tight but spending £30 on a psu that is 9-11 years old is a poor investment. The psu should not be skimped on and is not a place to save money. You could save yourself a lot of problems by buying a decent quality brand new unit instead of wasting money on a old clapped out unit.
 
Thanks pastymuncher - it’s 10 years old or so and is the 82 modu+

Take your point - I’m okay with the older supply; it is clean of dust and looks like it had an easy life.

I don’t think PSUs degrade that quickly, and I’m fairly sure they have protection in case of going wrong.

I have another PSU in another machine to test with should things go wrong.
 
Quartz said:
One of the big issues is that the capacitors degrade regardless of usage. Spend the extra £30 and get a new PSU.
Click to expand...

I'm fairly confident the caps are not going to go far enough out of spec in the next 10 years for it to matter. Even if I ran the PC 24/7 and ran it hot I don't think the caps will go outside of spec far enough for it be an issue. The PSU is rated about twice what I actually need.

And - let us say for the sake of argument that a cap does fail, the circuitry to protect the computer is over-engineered, so it's just a case of swapping out for a new PSU at that time.

Let us say however, for the sake of argument, that we did spend £30 more on the PSU - where does that cost come out of the build elsewhere? Less and slower RAM?
 
You don't need to spend £30 more on the PSU, you can get perfectly decent 450-500w Bronze rated power supplies, new with warranty for around the £35 mark. If you already had the £30 psu, then sure, go ahead and use it. However buying a 10 year old psu for £30 seems very odd (unless I've got the wrong end of this).

I'd echo what everyone else says; ditch the cpu cooler and the ryzen 1200, and try and spend the £105 on a new 1600 with stock fan, even if it means not purchasing windows 10, and running it unactivated until you you have the cash to purchase a key.
 
Chris Beard said:
That’s fair - which £35 450w bronze PSU would you recommend?
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The EVGA BR 450W Bronze is currently £35.99 on 2 of the UK's biggest e-tailers (which I won't list for obvious reasons). To be clear this isn't the best power supply you can get, not even close. It is however a tidy little unit, with a great 12v rail, all black cables and is new with warranty. It's unquestionably preferable to buying an used psu for 90% of the price though.
 
thedandyp said:
The EVGA BR 450W Bronze is currently £35.99 on 2 of the UK's biggest e-tailers (which I won't list for obvious reasons). To be clear this isn't the best power supply you can get, not even close. It is however a tidy little unit, with a great 12v rail, all black cables and is new with warranty. It's unquestionably preferable to buying an used psu for 90% of the price though.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't touch one of those and certainly wouldn't recommend one for anybody. Those units are rated at a pathetically low 30 degrees C (normal is 40 degrees C and the best units are rated at 50 degrees C) which will easily be passed in this heat. Cheap and nasty with very little quality. Don't skimp on the psu.
 
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