Build vs Buy - Gaming PC

[Spoodzilla]

Been out of the game for 20 years. Looking to build a gaming rig around the £1000 mark. Been getting myself up to day with the current hardware, apparently raid 0 and overclocking aren't really things anymore.
Is it better value to build or buy pre built?
Can anyone advise on a good cpu/graphics card combination that fits into this price bracket? I'm guessing 4k gaming is out of the question at this price point.
I'm looking at a 750w psu, at least 32gb ram and 1tb storage. A fancy glass case and pretty lights would be nice too

I used to know which speed of ram to get to match up with CPU clock cycles, motherboard bandwidths, but totally out of touch these days!

 

[tamzzy]

self build is always better, if you have the time to diagnose problems if/when they occur
prebuilts usually cheap out on some parts (usually ram/mobo/psu) but you have the return-to-base warranty for as long as it lasts

for £1k, you'd be looking at a rough build of: ryzen 7600, rx7800xt or rtx 4070 (non-super), 32gb ram
this will run 4k, but obviously not at ultra settings. more suited to high-refresh rate 1440p gaming, which is the sweet spot imo

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DW-AM) = £179.99
• 1 x Asus Prime B650M-A WIFI II (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6K6-AS) = £129.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Vulcan EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLABD532G6000HC38ADC01) (SKU: MY-0B2-TG) = £89.99
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95
• 1 x SAPPHIRE PULSE AMD Radeon™ RX 7800 XT Gaming Graphics Card with 16GB GDDR6, AMD RDNA™ 3 architecture (SKU: GRA-SPR-00764) = £449.99
• 1 x AMD Radeon - Space Marine & Unknown 9 Awakening Games Bundle (SKU: DIG-AMD-02939) = £0.00
• 1 x Team Group MP44L 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-03128) = £52.99
• 1 x Aerocool Dryft Mini v2 Micro-ATX Case (SKU: CAS-AER-00607) = £55.00

Total: £1,042.90 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[Tetras]

I'm guessing 4k gaming is out of the question at this price point.

mickyflinn's tamzzy's build (7800 XT or 4070 non-Super) will get you playable framerates at native resolution in the majority of games, the other games you will need upscaling. It is a big ask for a 1K build though, so you're right that this is pushing it.

If you look at the charts on this page, it gives you a break down under 4K for each of the games tested, but note that they use the highest settings so you can do a bit better than the numbers quoted.

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Review

With the Radeon RX 7800 XT, AMD is going after the GeForce RTX 4070. Our review confirms that AMD has achieved performance parity in rasterization and is pretty close in ray tracing, at a much better price point, and they are giving you 16 GB VRAM, instead of just 12 GB.

www.techpowerup.com

This is a good video for giving some context on what is possible and what to expect:

 

[zaniro]

What kind of games do you play? CPU or GPU intensive bias might dictate what you prioritise.

 

[tamzzy]

mickyflinn's build

Disappointed

 

[SpellowHouse]

The only danger with self-build is when something goes wrong.
When you need to diagnose problems there are few ways to do it, so people usually resort to swapping things out. If you don't have access to some parts to swap out, then it can be really expensive and stressful process finding out what's wrong.

 

[WARburton]

its always better and generally cheaper to build your own.
ive seen people saving north of £600 on the same spec alien wear, there is a few venders that are more fair when it comes to prices but your then forced into a spec they offer and not really the spec you want or need

 

[WARburton]

mickyflinn's build (7800 XT or 4070 non-Super) will get you playable framerates at native resolution in the majority of games, the other games you will need upscaling. It is a big ask for a 1K build though, so you're right that this is pushing it.

If you look at the charts on this page, it gives you a break down under 4K for each of the games tested, but note that they use the highest settings so you can do a bit better than the numbers quoted.

AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Review

With the Radeon RX 7800 XT, AMD is going after the GeForce RTX 4070. Our review confirms that AMD has achieved performance parity in rasterization and is pretty close in ray tracing, at a much better price point, and they are giving you 16 GB VRAM, instead of just 12 GB.

www.techpowerup.com

i did have a bash at 4k with my 7800xt and it could do it, but mmmm sort of.
at 1440 its a bit of a monster for the price. on pair with the 4070s

 

[Spoodzilla]

What kind of games do you play? CPU or GPU intensive bias might dictate what you prioritise.

I would say a bit of all sorts, shooters, RTS, racing, MMORPG.

 

[Spoodzilla]

self build is always better, if you have the time to diagnose problems if/when they occur
prebuilts usually cheap out on some parts (usually ram/mobo/psu) but you have the return-to-base warranty for as long as it lasts

for £1k, you'd be looking at a rough build of: ryzen 7600, rx7800xt or rtx 4070 (non-super), 32gb ram
this will run 4k, but obviously not at ultra settings. more suited to high-refresh rate 1440p gaming, which is the sweet spot imo

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DW-AM) = £179.99
• 1 x Asus Prime B650M-A WIFI II (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6K6-AS) = £129.99
• 1 x TeamGroup Vulcan EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (FLABD532G6000HC38ADC01) (SKU: MY-0B2-TG) = £89.99
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95
• 1 x SAPPHIRE PULSE AMD Radeon™ RX 7800 XT Gaming Graphics Card with 16GB GDDR6, AMD RDNA™ 3 architecture (SKU: GRA-SPR-00764) = £449.99
• 1 x AMD Radeon - Space Marine & Unknown 9 Awakening Games Bundle (SKU: DIG-AMD-02939) = £0.00
• 1 x Team Group MP44L 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-03128) = £52.99
• 1 x Aerocool Dryft Mini v2 Micro-ATX Case (SKU: CAS-AER-00607) = £55.00

Total: £1,042.90 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

Thanks this is bang on the money. Any advantage of going R7 over R5?
Is this motherboard decent enough to handle any future upgrading?
I think the equivalent Nvid card is the 4070, is ray tracing all that? That seems to be where the Radeon cards really fall down.

 

[tamzzy]

Any advantage of going R7 over R5?

Not really, unless it's the 7800x3d

Is this motherboard decent enough to handle any future upgrading?

Yes but not really.
Basically the board is sufficient to handle the lower end chips, ie the x600, x700, x800 chips (so the 6/8 core chips)
However the vrms are not strong enough to handle the higher core count chips (12/16 cores)
If you're never going to need that amount of multicore CPU demands then the mobo is going to be absolutely fine.

I think the equivalent Nvid card is the 4070, is ray tracing all that?

Yes the 7800xt trades blows with the 4070 non-super
With respect to which one is better, the 4070 is more power efficient so you save some £££ with lowe leccy bills, and also nvidia cards tend to hold their value better in the used market. So over the lifetime of the card, they work out roughly the same.

As you said, ray tracing is better on the Nvidia cards, as well as them having better supersampling (DLSS Vs the current inferior FSR on the Radeon). If you do professional work then having cuda on the Nvidia card may also be useful.

In favour of the radeons is that the radeon's larger vram will always be useful over time for pure rasterisation performance.

tl;dr it's not a clear cut choice

Personally (ie, in my use) I don't have any use for ray tracing nor DLSS nor cuda so that's why I'm currently using a 7900XT (ex 3080 owner) and that the power draw of the 7900xt is the same as the 3080 so that factor (power consumption) is also a moot point for me.

 

[WARburton]

Yes the 7800xt trades blows with the 4070 non-super

honestly i dont think that's right, in 3D mark there is only 1,000 points in it and my 4070s was very much overclocked.

I scored 19 157 in Time Spy

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D, AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT x 1, 32768 MB, 64-bit Windows 10}

www.3dmark.com

I scored 19 837 in Time Spy

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER x 1, 32768 MB, 64-bit Windows 11}

www.3dmark.com

as yoiu can see here ther 4070 none Super is behind by a good bit

I scored 17 504 in Time Spy

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 x 1, 32768 MB, 64-bit Windows 11}

www.3dmark.com

 

[Tetras]

honestly i dont think that's right, in 3D mark there is only 1,000 points in it and my 4070s was very much overclocked.

TPU's GPU database has the 7800 XT listed as faster than the 4070 in raster by 7% (HUB's 45 game benchmark had 6-8%, though it is over a year old).

If you look at several reviews that have large test suites and compare multiple games, some games do favour nvidia, some favour AMD and with ray tracing enabled the 7800 XT is often a big chunk behind both cards.

Overall (raster, ray tracing, upscaling, power efficiency, price), they're considered competing cards, since the 7900 GRE is more commonly matched to the 4070 Super.

 

[WARburton]

i have owned both, and feel there no too fare apart but the 4070 is a big drop on both.
that said i do have one of the better cards

 

[Tetras]

i have owned both, and feel there no too fare apart but the 4070 is a big drop on both.
that said i do have one of the better cards

It might be influenced by the games you play, for example: in HUB's video, there are games that the 7800 XT is over 20% faster than the 4070 (across all resolutions). You do need higher-end CPUs to pull the best performance from nvidia cards too, or at least you used to.

 

[WARburton]

It might be influenced by the games you play, for example: in HUB's video, there are games that the 7800 XT is over 20% faster than the 4070 (across all resolutions). You do need higher-end CPUs to pull the best performance from nvidia cards too, or at least you used to.

i had a 7800x3d but yes i do play a very limited pallet of games

 

[tamzzy]

3D mark

3dmark is not really indicative of gaming performance and more of willy waving if anything.
Everything else, basically what @Tetras has said.

 

[Yrkoon]

im running a 7800xt and running every thing great at max settings on 2560x1440p and i play a lot of games, i do have a 7800x3d cpu as well though but the card was great on my old ryzen 5700x as well