New PC, thoughts and advice please

valve90210

valve90210

valve90210

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Joined
17 Jan 2006
Posts
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Just before my son was born, I took the opportunity to build myself a PC, knowing it would be a good long time before I would be able to build a new one.

My boy turned 12 last week and I'm still using pretty much the same PC - I changed out the graphics card when my original died and that's about it.

The current spec:
i5 2500K
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P
32GB Crucial DDR3 PC3-12800
GTX 1660 Super
and a bundle of hard drives which I've amassed over the years.

Impressively, this PC still largely runs everything I throw at it (I game at 1080P and will continue to do as as I will be keeping my existing monitors) but it is starting to get a little long in the tooth and I want to build a new PC - budget somewhere about £700 ish.

It will be used for work, long days of InDesign and Photoshop, along with office tasks, so a lot of RAM is important; and gaming - I tend to play lots of FPS, driving, etc etc, so good gaming performance is important.

Id quite like a mATX build as at present I have a Zalman Z9 Plus case which has done me well but it's massive and I have to have it located tucked into a cubby hole away from my desk and run loads of extention cables which is ok but I'd rather like a smaller system that can site on my, sadly quite narrow, desk. I've been looking at the Fractal Design Pop Mini Air, and similar cases, so if I could make a build in something like that, that would be ace. I'd also quite like to go with a White and RGB themed build as I like the look of those.

Can anyone give me any suggestions as a starting point for the best bang for my buck?

Thanks
 
The best I could do for the budget, I'm afraid.

I had to disregard your request for white, as I just don't think it is feasible to be that picky and have a meaningful upgrade, unless you increase the minimum budget significantly.

The 12400 would be handy, but trying to keep the budget down.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £770.87 (includes delivery: £7.99)​

White build, just to show what I mean about pricing problems:

- PSU is silly overkill for this build, but not sure how to get a white one.
- There is a 3060 Ti that is £100 cheaper and nvidia is probably preferable here, but I wanted to try and move away from 8GB cards.
- The memory is not compatible with the motherboard, but I'd try to get a DDR5 board if you can.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £1,376.83 (includes delivery: £11.98)​
 
Intel Core i5-12400F 2.50GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail
CP-6AR-IN
£140 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Gigabyte B760M DS3H DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard
MB-5C0-GI
£86 (incl. VAT)
£83 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey
MY-0AJ-TG
£260 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Twin Edge LHR 12GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card
GX-12G-ZT
£270 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Intel Core i5-13400F (Raptor Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail
CP-6BB-IN
£210 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C40 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit - White
MY-0AW-TG
£500 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
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You have to shop around/ order and wait a little.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £694.84 (includes delivery: £7.99)​
 
AMD Ryzen 5 5500 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail
CP-3D3-AM
£90 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey
MY-0AJ-TG
£260 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Aerocool CS-107 v2 FRGB Mini Tower Case - Black
CA-23F-AE
£29 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Mmmm some nice options there, I very much take the point about the white theme, and to be honest it's certainly not a deal breaker, I might go for a white case and leave it at that! lol.

Which route do you guys consider the better option, Intel or AMD at this price bracket?

Also, I was wondering, how much of a premium is there for building a smaller form factor build? Would I get considerably more for my money sticking to an ATX system?
 
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valve90210 said:
Which route do you guys consider the better option, Intel or AMD at this price bracket?
Click to expand...
5600 or 12400 perform within 1% according to TPU's testing. Gamers Nexus did a video on the 5500 vs 12100 and I think the 12100 edged it for games, but the 5500 had higher productivity performance (I'd check the video though).

valve90210 said:
Also, I was wondering, how much of a premium is there for building a smaller form factor build? Would I get considerably more for my money sticking to an ATX system?
Click to expand...
For ITX? It depends, if you can find an affordable motherboard and case (especially if you can avoid SFX PSUs), then it isn't that bad, but motherboard availability and pricing is the main problem. For MATX? That's not a problem, you don't pay a premium for MATX.
 
Tetras said:
5600 or 12400 perform within 1% according to TPU's testing. Gamers Nexus did a video on the 5500 vs 12100 and I think the 12100 edged it for games, but the 5500 had higher productivity performance (I'd check the video though).


For ITX? It depends, if you can find an affordable motherboard and case (especially if you can avoid SFX PSUs), then it isn't that bad, but motherboard availability and pricing is the main problem. For MATX? That's not a problem, you don't pay a premium for MATX.
Click to expand...
That's pretty good then, seemingly very similar performance, I shall have a look at the video you mention and try to begin gathering my thoughts on what to go for.

Yeah it was MATX I'm looking at, I figured ITX would be more of a premium but wasn't sure about MATX, good to know it's not going to impact the performance I can get for the money.
 
valve90210 said:
Mmmm some nice options there, I very much take the point about the white theme, and to be honest it's certainly not a deal breaker, I might go for a white case and leave it at that! lol.

Which route do you guys consider the better option, Intel or AMD at this price bracket?

Also, I was wondering, how much of a premium is there for building a smaller form factor build? Would I get considerably more for my money sticking to an ATX system?
Click to expand...

AM4 and Radeon. You have some very nice drop in CPU upgrade options on AM4 and AMD GPU’s don’t offload a ton of work to the CPU so gaming performance is much better.
 
jigger said:
AM4 and Radeon. You have some very nice drop in CPU upgrade options on AM4 and AMD GPU’s don’t offload a ton of work to the CPU so gaming performance is much better.
Click to expand...

That sounds good. Am I right in thinking that I saw something about AMD having just recently released a new AM4 CPU? That's interesting re the GPUs, not something I've seen mention of really before. How do they do with things like Photoshop etc? (I'm imagining either Nvidia or AMD will be fine for this seeing as I'm running the latest versions of InDesign and Photoshop on my aging PC every day with few issues... just a little slowness here and there, and I'm guessing the performance of a new system will be leaps and bounds ahead of my current one!?
 
valve90210 said:
That sounds good. Am I right in thinking that I saw something about AMD having just recently released a new AM4 CPU? That's interesting re the GPUs, not something I've seen mention of really before. How do they do with things like Photoshop etc? (I'm imagining either Nvidia or AMD will be fine for this seeing as I'm running the latest versions of InDesign and Photoshop on my aging PC every day with few issues... just a little slowness here and there, and I'm guessing the performance of a new system will be leaps and bounds ahead of my current one!?
Click to expand...

Yeah the performance jump will be substantial. Nvidia GPU’s really need a very highend system behind them or the performance can tank significantly. Also as time goes on and game become more demanding the extra CPU overhead will only get worse.
 
@valve90210

Seeing as you have over 4k of posts, have you thought maybe look at the MM...your pc is old...and you've a tight budget at £700

An example
just yesterday, someone sold their tuf X570 mobo with a 5700X cpu and 32gb of 3200 teamgroup ram for £210 or today an i5 13500, asus prime z790A board and 32gb of 6600c30 ram went for £360.... A 2nd hand 3080 went for £350, 3070wrnt for £250 i think

then buy....a new lexar nm790 1tb ssd for £60, or 2tb for £109, new case and psu for £150, and youll have a system that will rock for £750 odd...

.you've done the hard work with the posts...put a wanted ad up and see what comes up. 100% it'll beat anything new....enthusiasts constantly upgrade, and there's always kit that isn't too old, and generally sold at a reasonable price
 
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Craig_d1 said:
@valve90210

Seeing as you have over 4k of posts, have you thought maybe look at the MM...your pc is old...and you've a tight budget at £700

An example
just yesterday, someone sold their tuf X570 mobo with a 5700X cpu and 32gb of 3200 teamgroup ram for £210 or today an i5 13500, asus prime z790A board and 32gb of 6600c30 ram went for £360.... A 2nd hand 3080 went for £350, 3070wrnt for £250 i think

then buy....a new lexar nm790 1tb ssd for £60, or 2tb for £109, new case and psu for £150, and youll have a system that will rock for £750 odd...

.you've done the hard work with the posts...put a wanted ad up and see what comes up. 100% it'll beat anything new....enthusiasts constantly upgrade, and there's always kit that isn't too old, and generally sold at a reasonable price
Click to expand...

I had thought about that actually, at the moment I'm just trying to get some thoughts while I get my money together to actually be able to afford anything, but yeah that's a good point. I may need to check in here to see what is good and works well together because I don't know a huge amount about what is what these days.
 
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