£300 to £500

Threepwood · 9 Sep 2021 at 02:10

mickyflinn said:
All looks good .

An extra £20 will get you double the storage.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cruc...i-e-3.0-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-070-cr.html

I have the mortar max with the same drive, the bios and windows installation had a hard time finding the drive, unless you secure format it with the bios secure format first, don't ask me why the secure format can find the drive but it cant find it to boot from, idk, I was pulling my hair out until I finally found a redit post saying to secure format!
other than that, its a great drive, tho' its true size is 931GB after format andinitialisation, it also had to go in the bottom m.2 slot which is the m.2-1slot the furthest away from the cpu which is kinda counter intuative
but it's definitely an Mkey drive and the mortar max definitely has M key slots
HTH
go for it OP! I'm happy with the mortar max and the samsung p2 m.2!

Scoobyjacko · 11 Sep 2021 at 10:38

Threepwood said:
I have the mortar max with the same drive, the bios and windows installation had a hard time finding the drive, unless you secure format it with the bios secure format first, don't ask me why the secure format can find the drive but it cant find it to boot from, idk, I was pulling my hair out until I finally found a redit post saying to secure format!
other than that, its a great drive, tho' its true size is 931GB after format andinitialisation, it also had to go in the bottom m.2 slot which is the m.2-1slot the furthest away from the cpu which is kinda counter intuative
but it's definitely an Mkey drive and the mortar max definitely has M key slots
HTH
go for it OP! I'm happy with the mortar max and the samsung p2 m.2!

I assume that I can boot up, go into bios, and secure format the drive, prior to then restarting and booting from a Windows install USB (for starting the Windows install) ?

Tykey · 11 Sep 2021 at 11:16

Karl-Dale said:
Hi there i know your probs going to laugh at me, but for £300 to £500 could i get a PC that will play anything?
Kind Regards
Karl

have you considered a console?

Dg834man · 11 Sep 2021 at 18:24

Scoobyjacko said:
I assume that I can boot up, go into bios, and secure format the drive, prior to then restarting and booting from a Windows install USB (for starting the Windows install) ?

Bios is in the motherboard no operating system needed

Scoobyjacko · 11 Sep 2021 at 18:55

Sorry, yes, I understand that - I was basically trying to confirm how to get the drive recognised prior to installation of windows - I.e does bios recognise the drive and is 'secure format' performed via bios? Threepwood suggested bios wouldn't recognise the drive, so I wondered how he had performed the secure format?

mickyflinn · 11 Sep 2021 at 19:18

Scoobyjacko said:
Sorry, yes, I understand that - I was basically trying to confirm how to get the drive recognised prior to installation of windows - I.e does bios recognise the drive and is 'secure format' performed via bios? Threepwood suggested bios wouldn't recognise the drive, so I wondered how he had performed the secure format?

You need to go to secure erase in the advanced bios options.

https://us.msi.com/support/technical_details/MB_BIOS_Manual

Scoobyjacko · 11 Sep 2021 at 20:03

Cheers

Threepwood · 12 Sep 2021 at 02:27

Scoobyjacko said:
I assume that I can boot up, go into bios, and secure format the drive, prior to then restarting and booting from a Windows install USB (for starting the Windows install) ?

Sure, but maybe pdate bios first, as this is the only thing i didnt try before resorting to the secure boot because I had a very time consuming overclock on the ram inthe bios the board had to start with
I'm running b die 4000 mhz ddr4 ram at 3800 mhz with very tight timing,i really need to spend some time getting the ram to run at 4000mhz with the tightest timing itwill handle at that speed, but it was doing well in the max mem3 benchmark charts at 3800 very tight timings so im loathed to mess with that,i should save the current settings onto a usb and just crack on
I really regret not updating the bios first, and its been a long time since it first came out so there's been a fair few bios come out since then

Oh, make sure you dont lose the m.2 screw beforeyou need it for the drive

Scoobyjacko · 23 Sep 2021 at 15:39

Scoobyjacko said:
I think I'm gonna go with the apu, at least as a start. Thanks for the note around needing a bios update first, looks simple enough to do pre-processor. I'll probably buy the parts over the next couple of months, then we can build it together as an early Christmas gift.

As a nod to her rgb likings, I've put in a slightly different case, but I hope it's suitable.

Please let me know if I've slipped up here, or missed anything (will get an o/s of course)

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x be quiet! System Power 9 600W 80 Plus Bronze Power Supply Bulk= £54.95

1 x TeamGroup 512GB Vulcan G SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive= £46.99

1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey= £59.99

1 x AMD Ryzen 5 5600G Six Core 3.9GHz (Socket AM4) APU with RX Vega Graphics - Retail= £239.99

1 x MSI B450M Mortar MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £49.99

1 x BitFenix Nova Mesh TG SE A-RGB Midi-Tower, Tempered Glass - Black= £52.99

Total: £517.20 (includes shipping: £12.30)

Bought the Ryzen GPU last month, going to get the rest in the next couple of days - only just seen the B450M is out of stock - is this good as a replacement, in terms of compatibility with GPU/RAM/Power etc ?

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x MSI MAG B550M Mortar (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £109.99

Total: £119.89 (includes shipping: £9.90)

dfour · 23 Sep 2021 at 15:48

lternatively get a micro-atx case

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x Aerocool Aero One Mini Eclipse ARGB Micro- ATX Case - Black Tempered Glass= £49.99
1 x Phanteks Eclipse P200 Air Mini-ITX Case, Tempered Glass - Black= £62.99
1 x Kolink Citadel Mesh RGB Micro-ATX Case - Black= £64.99

Total: £196.09 (includes shipping: £18.12)

with the msi mag b550M you posted above.

GreatAuk · 23 Sep 2021 at 17:22

Scoobyjacko said:
My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x MSI MAG B550M Mortar (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard= £109.99

That should also work fine, and is a decent motherboard (brings various benefits being b550 over b450, has a stronger vrm etc too).

However it is also a fair bit more expensive. The b450 mortar max may be out of stock here, but a competitor still has it for the same price it was at before, and a different competitor has the b450 tomahawk max (similar board, but atx size - oddly has one fewer m.2 slots, and a dvi port rather than a display port, may be a few other small differences too) for £10 more. I'd be tempted to stay with the b450 mortar max for the price difference, although acknowledge that a b550 board has advantages (perhaps more so if there's any chance of the cpu being upgraded to a higher core count model in the future)

Personally if I was spending a little bit more on the build I would keep the board as it's a very decent price, but go for slightly faster memory (eg https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cruc...00c16-3600mhz-dual-channel-kit-my-20q-cr.html ) and a slightly better psu (https://www.overclockers.co.uk/supe...0-plus-gold-power-supply-black-ca-004-sf.html )