£2k to £3k New Build Advice

mr.sly · 2 Mar 2024 at 15:15

Hi,

I've not owned a PC since 2007. I'm completely out of the loop with what the most reliable and best value components are.

What I'm trying to achieve is build a reasonable PC to use now for gaming but will allow me to upgrade to 5000/6000 series GPU or in the future, without having to build a whole new PC. I've got a budget of £3000 but would like to come in below that, so I can save the remaining funds for future upgrades/games.

Any advice, changes or components I've missed? Is there a benefit to having all 9 case fans or can I reduce the cost a little by going to 3 or 6? I'm starting from zero, so I need to buy everything except a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I don't care about AMD or Intel, so happy for any Intel based options. I do want the 40 series, for DLSS, as I'll be using a 5k monitor and don't want to spend the money on a 4090.

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER WindForce OC 12GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics (SKU: GRA-GIG-01543) = £619.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £349.99
1 x MSI MAG B650M Mortar WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-377-MS) = £190.00
1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-00996) = £109.99
1 x Corsair Force MP700 1TB NVMe PCIe 5.0 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: HD-070-CS) = £159.95
1 x DeepCool AK620 Digital CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: HS-01J-DC) = £69.95
1 x Corsair RMe Series RM850e Fully Modular Low-Noise ATX Power Supply v2 (CP-9020263-UK) (SKU: CA-27N-CS) = £124.99
1 x Corsair 2500X AIRFLOW Micro ATX Dual Chamber PC Case – Black CC-9011265-WW (SKU: CAS-CRS-01586) = £129.95
1 x CORSAIR iCUE LINK RX120 120mm PWM Fans Starter Kit (SKU: COO-CRS-01761) = £84.95
6 x CORSAIR iCUE LINK RX120 120mm PWM Fans Expansion Fan (SKU: COO-CRS-01760) = £24.94
1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Home 64-Bit DVD - OEM (KW9-00632) (SKU: SW-18J-MS) = £107.99

Total: £2,109.42 (includes delivery: £11.98)

BongoHunter · 2 Mar 2024 at 16:00

Nice build - you could definitely save a few quid though.

Spending £110 on case fans alone is a bit much, there are plenty of decent fans available for £10 or less. You could easily get a decent (though less blingy) CPU cooler for £40 as well.

Should be safe with a 750w PSU as well.

Unless your particularly attached to Asus - there's another £50-60 to be saved by going with a different brand 4070

Tetras · 2 Mar 2024 at 16:03

mr.sly said:
Is there a benefit to having all 9 case fans or can I reduce the cost a little by going to 3 or 6?

The 7800X3D is pretty low power, so it doesn't need a lot of airflow, but it does get HOT by design, so a bit of help for the air cooler isn't a bad idea.

The 4070 Super is also modest (for a midrange/high-end card) and most models have fairly hefty cooling, so it's not necessary to house them in a wind turbine.

To give you an example: I'd be pretty comfortable with both of these in Lian Li's 216 and just using the included fans, or maybe a couple slow turners in the top just to help out.

If you plan on upgrading to a much beefier and more power hungry CPU and graphics card in the future, then I'd definitely recommend having more than 3 fans.

Note: I know nothing about that case or how efficient it is at cooling with 2, 3, 6+ fans.

Eddie99 · 2 Mar 2024 at 16:15

Things I would change:

Thermalright PS120SE CPU Air Cooler (£30.39)
Thermalright TL-C12C X3 (£13.90)
Thermalright TL-C12C (£5.39)

That would be £130.22 saved on the air cooler and case fans which you could put towards a 4070 Ti Super.

Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 TI Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card

Order Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 TI Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

I'd also swap the SSD for this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cruc...gen4-m.2-solid-state-drive-sto-cru-01089.html

5abr3 · 2 Mar 2024 at 17:48

As far as the fans are concerned I have 2 140mm's in the front of my case and 1 in the rear (these case fans are Fractal fans that came with the define R5) and a DH15S cooler (2x 140mm fans on that, the Peerless Assassin is supposed to be much cheaper and just as powerful).

After 3 or 4 hours on DCS the CPU temperatures don't seem to get above 65C on my 7800X3D

Edit: hit send before finishing, I would suggest you run with a few and if it's not to your liking you can always add more later

mr.sly · 2 Mar 2024 at 18:00

Thanks all.

BongoHunter said:
Nice build - you could definitely save a few quid though.

Spending £110 on case fans alone is a bit much, there are plenty of decent fans available for £10 or less. You could easily get a decent (though less blingy) CPU cooler for £40 as well.

Should be safe with a 750w PSU as well.

Unless your particularly attached to Asus - there's another £50-60 to be saved by going with a different brand 4070

750w PSU still be okay, if later I'm looking to move to a 5000 series, say a 5080 (I know it doesn't exist yet and we don't know how much power it needs but I guess based on historical data)

Eddie99 said:
Things I would change:

Thermalright PS120SE CPU Air Cooler (£30.39)
Thermalright TL-C12C X3 (£13.90)
Thermalright TL-C12C (£5.39)

That would be £130.22 saved on the air cooler and case fans which you could put towards a 4070 Ti Super.

Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 TI Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card

Order Zotac GeForce RTX 4070 TI Super Trinity Black 16Gb Graphics Card now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

I'd also swap the SSD for this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cruc...gen4-m.2-solid-state-drive-sto-cru-01089.html

Thanks for those, I'll take a look. I'd not even considered the 4070 Ti Super, I'd only looked at the 4070 Super and 4080 Super.

As for the SSD, that was a question I was meant to put in my first post. Assuming for purely gaming, there's no benefit to PCIe Gen 5 for the SSD and performance wise in games a PCIe Gen 4 is just as good?

Eddie99 · 2 Mar 2024 at 18:14

mr.sly said:
Thanks all.

750w PSU still be okay, if later I'm looking to move to a 5000 series, say a 5080 (I know it doesn't exist yet and we don't know how much power it needs but I guess based on historical data)

Thanks for those, I'll take a look. I'd not even considered the 4070 Ti Super, I'd only looked at the 4070 Super and 4080 Super.

As for the SSD, that was a question I was meant to put in my first post. Assuming for purely gaming, there's no benefit to PCIe Gen 5 for the SSD and performance wise in games a PCIe Gen 4 is just as good?

Yes there's no benefit to Gen 5 for gaming, and that motherboard doesn't have a Gen 5 NVMe slot anyway.

mr.sly · 2 Mar 2024 at 18:17

Eddie99 said:
Yes there's no benefit to Gen 5 for gaming, and that motherboard doesn't have a Gen 5 NVMe slot anyway.

Glad I posted now. Swapped out the MB at the last moment because I needed Micro-ATX, when I decided to go with the Corsair 2500X over the 6500X. Didn't even notice it didn't support Gen 5.

mr.sly · 3 Mar 2024 at 11:18

Am I right in thinking, that if I want to connect more than 3 fans, I'm going to need some sort of controller like this?

TL-FAN-HUB Controller

mickyflinn · 3 Mar 2024 at 11:41

mr.sly said:
Am I right in thinking, that if I want to connect more than 3 fans, I'm going to need some sort of controller like this?

TL-FAN-HUB Controller

Only if you want to control them from one source.

You can normally put 3 fans on one motherboard fan header as a rule .

If you want cheaper fans that link via a cable the Arctic P12 pst are excellent value for money for £6 each.

Arctic P12 PWM PST Black Fan - 120mm

Order Arctic P12 PWM PST Black Fan - 120mm now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

mickyflinn · 3 Mar 2024 at 12:14

What about a 240nm/360mm aio in the roof (exhaust), 3 fans at the bottom (intake) , 2 fans side chamber (intake) ?

mr.sly · 3 Mar 2024 at 13:06

mickyflinn said:
What about a 240nm/360mm aio in the roof (exhaust), 3 fans at the bottom (intake) , 2 fans side chamber (intake) ?

I did consider an AIO. For the extra price, I wasn't sure how much benefit I would get from it.

At the moment I'm thinking of going with Eddie99 suggestion:
Thermalright PS120SE CPU Air Cooler (£30.39)
Thermalright TL-C12C X3 (£13.90)
Thermalright TL-C12C (£5.39)

Although, not sure what layout he was thinking of when he suggested those.

Got any suggestions of decent AIO with a good performance to cost ration, considering the price of the Thermalright setup.

Eddie99 · 3 Mar 2024 at 15:04

mr.sly said:
Am I right in thinking, that if I want to connect more than 3 fans, I'm going to need some sort of controller like this?

TL-FAN-HUB Controller

No, you can get splitters and a lot of fans will come with built in splitters. It depends on the fan for how many you can connect to a single header, they're normally around 0.2-0.3A per fan and a header is usually 1A.

mickyflinn said:
Only if you want to control them from one source.

You can normally put 3 fans on one motherboard fan header as a rule .

If you want cheaper fans that link via a cable the Arctic P12 pst are excellent value for money for £6 each.

Arctic P12 PWM PST Black Fan - 120mm

Order Arctic P12 PWM PST Black Fan - 120mm now online and benefit from fast delivery.

www.overclockers.co.uk

I found the Arctic P12 to perform much worse than the Thermalright TL-C12C when I tried swapping the fans on my CPU cooler, and they had a weird hum/whine even at a low RPM. They were below average in this noise normalized restricted airflow test too.

mickyflinn · 3 Mar 2024 at 16:04

mr.sly said:
I did consider an AIO. For the extra price, I wasn't sure how much benefit I would get from it.

At the moment I'm thinking of going with Eddie99 suggestion:
Thermalright PS120SE CPU Air Cooler (£30.39)
Thermalright TL-C12C X3 (£13.90)
Thermalright TL-C12C (£5.39)

Although, not sure what layout he was thinking of when he suggested those.

Got any suggestions of decent AIO with a good performance to cost ration, considering the price of the Thermalright setup.

Benefit mainly from a clean look rather than a huge cooler dominating the motherboard but you can't argue with the stellar performance of the Thermalright cooler.

As for aio look at Thermalright again for value but also check out reviews.

Eddie99 said:
I found the Arctic P12 to perform much worse than the Thermalright TL-C12C when I tried swapping the fans on my CPU cooler, and they had a weird hum/whine even at a low RPM.]

I been using mine as case fans and not heard any weird d noise at low rpm and was suggesting the same for op as case fans not to replace the cooler fans, but fare point noted.

Eddie99 · 3 Mar 2024 at 16:14

mickyflinn said:
I been using mine as case fans and not heard any weird d noise at low rpm and was suggesting the same for op as case fans not to replace the cooler fans, but fare point noted.

The P12's do perform okay in the unrestricted airflow test, but it's not realistic because even case fans are going to have some airflow restriction with dust filters and grilles.

Craig_d1 · 4 Mar 2024 at 12:32

mr.sly said:
Hi,

I've not owned a PC since 2007. I'm completely out of the loop with what the most reliable and best value components are.

What I'm trying to achieve is build a reasonable PC to use now for gaming but will allow me to upgrade to 5000/6000 series GPU or in the future, without having to build a whole new PC. I've got a budget of £3000 but would like to come in below that, so I can save the remaining funds for future upgrades/games.

Any advice, changes or components I've missed? Is there a benefit to having all 9 case fans or can I reduce the cost a little by going to 3 or 6? I'm starting from zero, so I need to buy everything except a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I don't care about AMD or Intel, so happy for any Intel based options. I do want the 40 series, for DLSS, as I'll be using a 5k monitor and don't want to spend the money on a 4090.

Curious about your case though...the 2500x being a dual chamber unit so all glass for the area where the pc parts are etc for display so to speak, but then you have no rgb, so with the tint in the glass, it really will be a black glass box on one side. Is that the intent...the width then make it chunky for a desk also. Speaking from someone with a 5000x case and the 011d evo, the glass on the corsair case is so dark, you really can't see in...if you want no rgb and dual chamber, I'd look at the evo case..the tint is a lot less so at least you'll see your components...(only going by pic above for the 2500x which shows dark tint on glass similar to my 5000x)
If you want to keep it going for gen 5 and 6 nvidia gpu's, I'd also maybe look at something like the asus B650e-f mobo for £190 on offer at mo..the gpu slot is gen 5(you actually get a gen 5 nvme slot also)...so you shouldn't ever have to worry about gpu throughput so to speak... not sure what matx mobo's have that, would need to look a bit tbh...

Craig_d1 · 4 Mar 2024 at 12:41

I'd look at the phantom spirit 120 evo also..check the chart out below...pg 2...can cool a cpu up to 238W...so will breeze the 7800x3d...got the arctic a35a air cooler on mine, and whisper quiet

Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 EVO Review: This isn’t a competition. This is a massacre.

As long as it will fit in your case, this is the air cooler you should probably buy.

www.tomshardware.com

mr.sly · 4 Mar 2024 at 13:19

Craig_d1 said:
Curious about your case though...the 2500x being a dual chamber unit so all glass for the area where the pc parts are etc for display so to speak, but then you have no rgb, so with the tint in the glass, it really will be a black glass box on one side. Is that the intent...the width then make it chunky for a desk also. Speaking from someone with a 5000x case and the 011d evo, the glass on the corsair case is so dark, you really can't see in...if you want no rgb and dual chamber, I'd look at the evo case..the tint is a lot less so at least you'll see your components...(only going by pic above for the 2500x which shows dark tint on glass similar to my 5000x)
If you want to keep it going for gen 5 and 6 nvidia gpu's, I'd also maybe look at something like the asus B650e-f mobo for £190 on offer at mo..the gpu slot is gen 5(you actually get a gen 5 nvme slot also)...so you shouldn't ever have to worry about gpu throughput so to speak... not sure what matx mobo's have that, would need to look a bit tbh...

I did have a lot of RGB in there to begin with and then walked it back but figured I'd stick with the case in case I decided to use any RGB later. Watching reviews of the 6500x I think the glass is clear, so probably just the marketing shots making it look so dark.

Good call out on the motherboard though. Didn't really consider that 5000/6000 might require Gen 5. I did consider the 6500x case to begin, so I don't mind swapping that out to get a different motherboard if required.

Eddie99 suggested the Phantom Spirit 120 as well, which I have added to my basket. I'll update the post later with my current thinking, as a few things have changed now after taking in everyones advice.

mr.sly · 4 Mar 2024 at 14:47

This is the current basket:

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Gainward GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER Panther OC 16GB GDDR6X PCI-Express Graphics (SKU: GRA-GNW-01536) = £769.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Eight Core 5.00GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DT-AM) = £349.99
1 x MSI MAG B650M Mortar WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-377-MS) = £190.00
1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C36 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit (SKU: MEM-CRS-00996) = £109.99
1 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01089) = £91.99
1 x Corsair RMe Series RM850e Fully Modular Low-Noise ATX Power Supply v2 (CP-9020263-UK) (SKU: CA-27N-CS) = £125.00
1 x Corsair 2500X AIRFLOW Micro ATX Dual Chamber PC Case – Black CC-9011265-WW (SKU: CAS-CRS-01586) = £129.94
1 x Microsoft Windows 11 Home 64-Bit DVD - OEM (KW9-00632) (SKU: SW-18J-MS) = £107.99
1 x Arctic MX-6 Thermal Compound - 2g (SKU: TH-01S-AR) = £5.99
2 x EK Water Blocks EK-Cable Y-Splitter 3-Fan PWM (10cm) (SKU: WC-9AK-EK) = £3.49

Total: £1,899.85 (includes delivery: £11.98)

With the added CPU cooler and case fans:

1 x Phantom Spirit 120 SE
6 x Thermalright TL-C12C

Eddie99 · 4 Mar 2024 at 15:10

mr.sly said:
Good call out on the motherboard though. Didn't really consider that 5000/6000 might require Gen 5.

They won't require Gen 5, they will be backwards compatible. The performance difference from Gen 3 to Gen 4 is 2%, so the difference from Gen 4 to Gen 5 will likely be nothing at all. The main benefit of Gen 5 will be being able to use fewer PCIE lanes for the same performance.