1st New build - advice request for a non-tech father for his teenage son.....

Richard1001

Richard1001

Richard1001

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11 Jul 2020
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Hi, this is my first post on your highly informative forum; our teenage son has saved up long and hard and has used the PC Part Picker website, along with advice from some of his school friends who have apparently built their own computers, to pick his preferred spec for his first gaming PC self build.

When I read through reviews of PC Part Picker, I see some comments indicating that their advice is not always correct, and there are often compatibility issues.

Please see his list below; am hoping that someone could advise me whether this looks like a reasonable wish list that is not going to result in lots of IT issues (we live in UK and would probably order most of this on Amazon).

Any advice gratefully appreciated; he is hoping I will place the orders on his behalf in the next few days.


AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-core processor
Corsair H100i RGB PLATINUM 75 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Asus ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Asus Geforce RTX 2070 Super 8 GB dual evo oc video card
NZXT H710 atx mid tower caase
Corsair txm gold 750 W 80+ gold certified semi modular ATX power supply
TP Link TG-3468 PCIe x1 1000 Mbit/s Network Adapter
Corsair LL120RGB LED 43.25 CFM 120mm Fans 3-pack
x 2 AOC 27G2U/BK 23.4" Monitor
Ducky One 2 Mini Wired Standard Keyboard
 
What’s his budget and how much does the above cost?

You can’t really promote other retailers though on this forum unfortunately. As they are direct competitors to OcUK themselves. :p

He’s got a good choice of parts mostly there. My only question is it best value for performance on each component.

The parts I currently doubt are best is the NVMe drive and why the network adapter card when the mobo has an onboard one? And the Corsair fan pack where does he plan to use that?

I’d also debate going 1440p for the monitor, if he’s going with a 2070 Super graphics card. Would look much more crisp than 1080p when you’ve got a capable GPU.
 
Hi Sparx,

Many thanks for the quick feedback; the items cost around 2.6k GBP I believe but he could go up to around 3k GBP. If there are specialist retailers in the UK people would recommend I’d be interested (online or with premises). We live in West Cheshire.

Good point on the monitors (that bit I did understand )......will check the spec. He did have 2x27” originally but dropped it down. What screen size would gamers normally use for duplicate screens when also creating/ designing games ?

He has a good sized bedroom and will buy a desk to set up these items. I assume the fan would be for the base tower which may need to be on a carpeted floor under a book.....but can check with him when he wakes up.......


Richard
 
Richard1001 said:
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-core processor
Corsair H100i RGB PLATINUM 75 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler
Asus ROG STRIX B550-E GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory
Intel 660p Series 2.048 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Asus Geforce RTX 2070 Super 8 GB dual evo oc video card
NZXT H710 atx mid tower caase
Corsair txm gold 750 W 80+ gold certified semi modular ATX power supply
TP Link TG-3468 PCIe x1 1000 Mbit/s Network Adapter
Corsair LL120RGB LED 43.25 CFM 120mm Fans 3-pack
x 2 AOC 27G2U/BK 23.4" Monitor
Ducky One 2 Mini Wired Standard Keyboard
Click to expand...
3700X is bang per buck CPU good for few years, after which it can be upgraded to improved Zen3 architecture CPU with 12 cores.

But that cooler is full of three letter long marketing liquid:
After coolant's short term loads absorbing heat capacity, those slim radiators don't have especially much area to dissipate heat into air.
Meaning best (still cheaper) heatpipe coolers have better continuous cooling per noise.
And if you want fancy naming, heatpipe coolers could be as well called as phase change coolers, because that's how heatpipes work:
There's small amount of liquid inside heatpipe, which evaporates in hot end absorpting lots of heat and then releasing heat when condensing back to liquid in cold end.
Unless broken physically they're as reliable as death and taxes, unlike water pipes with wearing pumps and other degradation mechanisms.

Already this £43 heatpipe cooler would be basically overkill for very frugal in power draw 3700X and well enough for 12 core Ryzens.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-brocken-3-cpu-cooler-140mm-hs-05a-al.html
And cheap and easy to replace fan is the only part which can fail and can't kill all cooling power.
Again if wanting marketing hype tubes, Arctic Liquid Freezer II actually has beefier than average radiators and without brand+marketing overprices.


That board is more expensive than all PCI express v4 giving X570 chipset boards and hence doesn't make much sense:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/giga...4-x570-chipset-atx-motherboard-mb-57w-gi.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/msi-...-am4-ddr4-x570-atx-motherboard-mb-351-ms.html
Sense making B550 boards would be closer to £150 than that price.


32GB is future proof amount of memory and 3200MHz CL16 good bang per buck choise.
Just get cheapest such without getting stuck on brand.
Except for Crucial Ballistix there's no guarantee of better than others overclocking memory chips.
Though with this kind budget 3600MHz would fit in easily after cutting brand&marketing hype BS excess in other parts.


That Intel SSD is QLC Flash based and should cost clearly less than TLC Flash based.
Especially if self building Sabrent Rocket (non Q) should be kept as limit below which QLC drive should be priced to be sense making.
QLC is technically worser than TLC in everything and cheaper price is its only point.
And if that price doesn't show to consumer, then marketing is screwing buyer into rear.


There are cheaper 2070 Supers than that Asus.
2070 Super's performance isn't anyway that good for its price, when in average only little slower Radeon 5700 XT can be gotten for ~£100 less.
And anyway with next-gen cards few month's away it isn't worth to pay any brand excesses and luxuries.
Even next-gen consoles coming in late fall/before Christmas have literally stronger GPUs.
Especially next Xbox has very strong GPU and might perform about same as the most overpriced current graphics cards.


That Corsair PSU is brand overpriced for mid level model with semi modular cabling and 7 year warrant.
Asus Strix, Phanteks AMP and Seasonic Focus are higher PSUs with 10 year warranty.
Also SuperFlower Leadexes are good.
PSU availability is just horrible at the moment (at least in UK) with this being about only one in stock.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/supe...old-modular-power-supply-black-ca-064-sf.html
You don't need any 750W PSU for PC drawing around 300-350W in gaming.


You don't need separate NIC.
It's been integrated into pretty much any motherboard for like 20 years.


And those RGB fans are Ridiculously Grossly Bloated overpriced:
You could get like 15 good normal fans at the price of those three!
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/arctic-cooling-p12-pwm-pst-black-fan-120mm-fg-04h-ar.html
And there are plenty of non-rape&robbery priced RGB fans
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/jonsbo-fr-502-120mm-argb-pwm-cooling-fan-fg-001-jb.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/akasa-vegas-x7-rgb-led-fan-120mm-fg-07c-ak.html
 
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