Building first PC in 15 years - out the game!

Barks

Barks

Barks

Soldato
Joined
20 Jul 2008
Posts
4,474
Long story short - used to be really into PCs and gaming in my teens and have decided I want to get back into it. I know how to put a PC together but I've been out the game for so long now my knowledge of the latest products is lacking.

Target budget is around £1300 for a pure gaming PC but happy to go over that if it means a certain component will make a material difference. What I want to avoid is spending extra $$$ to get very marginal gains in performance... I simply don't have the knowledge at the moment to pick out the sweet spot if that makes sense.

Have also got an additional budget of £400 to cover a monitor (get the impression high refresh rate is a must but 4K is a bit meh) and keyboard/mouse.

I've had a look in the OCUK shop but really don't know what I'm doing. Even if someone could suggest a great mobo+CPU combo as a starting point that might give me a bit more confidence.

Would be grateful for any suggestions!
 
For gaming would definitely prioritize getting 120+ Hz monitor over 3840x2160 resolution, which is anyway super demanding for GPU.
And 2560x1440 144Hz VA monitors start from £260 and IPS monitors from £300.
While for high refresh rate 3840x2160 you can count options with fingers of illegal Chinese fireworks factory worker...
Maybe there might few options for Christmas... of some other year in future.
Simply getting any 3840x2160 high refresh rate monitors out seems to be slower than drinking tar.


In graphics cards situation is basically historically bad with Nvidia having pretty much all around brand overpricing and then performance per money going bad and super bad fast in upper models.
Also there are new graphcs card coming out later in this year, which should bring major performance boosts.
So really best to plan on taking now good performance per price card and then upgrading in future.
Radeon 5700 XT is basically the most sense making card.


In CPUs there are multiple choises.
Ryzen 3600 is definite bang per buck choise for all Intel stagnation era games and most current.
But heavier games start asking for 8 cores for running best.
Which is also the next-gen game base level with both PS5 and XSX coming with basically non-boosting variant of Ryzen 3700X.
And then Star Citizen is giving good workout for 12 core/24 thread 3900X
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/dkac5j/i_knew_star_citizen_utilizes_multicore_well/
Who knows if Ryzen Remastered also does same for multicore what original still does for single core...

If getting X570 board also improved Zen3 architecture CPUs coming later this year would offer update options for high core count models in two years from discount.
B450 boards got their official support canned and are limited to current Zen2 Ryzens up to 16c/32t


In memory 2x8GB is enough for most current games, which have been mostly designed for cramming into small memories of antique consoles.
But if you want to have multi-tab web browsers etc open on background then 16GB is fast getting deductions toward 10GB, which starts being little for demanding games.
Some modded games would actually benefit from some more.
2x16GB kits are around £150.


For SSD WD Blue SN550 is the best priced 1TB drive at £150.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds100t2b0c-hd-56l-wd.html
£10 more gets "full speed" 3½GB/s read drive, which just doesn't make any difference to game loading times.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/tosh...-3.0-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-04n-ts.html


For PSU Seasonic Focus Gold 650W is 10 year warranty model
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...w-80-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-06v-ss.html

In cases fashion is now for disposable toys withoyt any upgradability with new ports etc.
There are very few cases with 5.25" giving that future expandability/upgradability.
BeQuiet's Silent Base 600 has bays behind door for clean look.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=silent+base+600
In Pure Base 5.25" bays are visible.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/search?sSearch=pure+base+600
 
That's very helpful indeed, many thanks.

How about the below as a starting point?

Few things I'm not sure about and need to research: Most cost effective way of buying/installing the OS, Cheapest way of kitting out the interior with some subtle blue LED lighting and fans, any other extras I need not here (for example, it looks like I'll need to buy a WiFi card - I don't think WiFi even existed when I last built a PC). Also would it be expensive to get the whole setup as quiet as possible (that's a nice to have not necessarily a requirement).

The GPU is the hardest part for me as they're all similarily priced and seem to be identical. Not sure if there's a real bargain to be had at the moment on any particular model but they look homogenous.

My basket at Overclockers UK:
Total: £1,464.38 (includes shipping: £14.10)
​
 
Last edited:
Also is the 650W PSU you suggested definitely up to the task? I'm sure even going back 15 years that seems a bit low... maybe memory is playing tricks?

Cheers
 
Just buy license from web.
Installation image can be downloaded from Microsoft's page.
Microsoft charges lunatic prices for making user their unpaid Wintoys10 alpha tester for known buggy patches.
Half dozen years ago MS literally fired most of their testing department, because some grass smokers decided testing software is so last millennium!
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/23/microsoft_windows_10_crisis/


Forget that Silver overhype gunk, which hasn't been any top paste in long long time.
Good bundled pastes are basically equal:
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-comparison,5108-9.html

And that Hyper 212 is brand overpriced for run of the mill model.
It's equal to £21 Arctic Freezer 34, which also has extremely good fan:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/arctic-freezer-34-cpu-cooler-120mm-hs-077-ar.html
Lots of coolers are just out of stock.
From stocked selection Brocken Eco Advanced would be very good size cooler for 3700X with mid dense fin stack good for lower fan speeds.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-brocken-eco-advanced-cpu-cooler-120-mm-hs-05j-al.html
And Brocken 2 is quite hefty cooler:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpe...ion-dual-fan-cpu-cooler-140-mm-hs-05h-al.html
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-am4-mounting-kit-for-brocken-coolers-hs-057-al.html


That Corsair is still expensive for not future proof 2x8GB size.
Double sized kit costs only £25 more.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team...ual-channel-kit-rgb-black-tf1d-my-0a4-tg.html
Command interleaving on dual rank DIMMs also gives nice performance boost per clock in memory usage heavy games.


Avoid Asus in AMD graphics cards.
They often just slap cooler designed for Nvidia into them adding ga(y)mer brand hype overprice.
And 5700 XT Asus cards are just mediocre for the price or total garbage.

Aorus Elite is one of the best sensibly priced X570 boards.
It has modern design overkill level VRM, sense making chipset cooler capable to semi passive cooling (unlike Asus boards) and also feature set is good for the price and well balanced.

Quality 650W PSU has always been enough for most PCs.

Plenty of case lights.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cases-and-modding/modding/case-lighting-and-led?sPage=1&sSort=3
 
Thanks fella, all very helpful.

Am I definitely right in not considering Comet Lake at this price point? OCUK seem to have a pretty damn good deal on custom-built Comet configurations although I kind of want the project and challenge of building it myself.

I'm also weary I'm spending all this dollar on what will basically rival a PS5 when it is released later this year.
 
Comedy Lake is 6th gen Skylake rev.5 and with that old 14nm+++++++ node kept pushed for always little more clocks has Chernobyl high heat output.
AMD has actually improved Zen3 architecture coming, which you could later swap into X570 boards.
Conservative 10% IPC improvement and little more clocks would put it ahead Intel in basically everything.
And of course Intel doesn't have anything to answer AMDs upgrade path to up to 16 cores.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom