First Gaming PC for my son

Conanius · 21 Mar 2025 at 17:10

Right, I'm trying to work out buying something that might have some longevity to it.

I'm tempted by an 8700G based system, with the thought process that at some point in the future a dedicated card could make an appearance.

Does anyone else have one of these?

mickyflinn · 21 Mar 2025 at 18:35

I think the 8700g is a great start for an AM5 build giving you plenty of future options. The gaming performance is close to a gtx 1650 which is pretty good for an integrated solution.

Do you have a budget ?

AMD's Radeon 780M integrated graphics get close to GTX 1650 in Geekbench 6 — Ryzen 7 8700G iGPU benchmark leaked

Desktop integrated graphics are getting really fast

www.tomshardware.com

Tetras · 21 Mar 2025 at 18:36

This might be of interest:

Personally, I wouldn't, because the graphics part is still fairly weak. Some discussion on that here:

Conanius · 21 Mar 2025 at 18:52

Ok interesting, thank you.

My head is saying get a current gen (ie AM5) board and a low end AM5 CPU that we can upgrade later if needed, opposed to going AM4 and a 5700X3D...

What gfx would you suggest?

mickyflinn · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:05

Conanius said:
Ok interesting, thank you.

My head is saying get a current gen (ie AM5) board and a low end AM5 CPU that we can upgrade later if needed, opposed to going AM4 and a 5700X3D...

What gfx would you suggest?

Ignore what I said about the 8700g I got pricing wrong it's not worth it.

Give us a budget.

Conanius · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:12

I'd say about 6-800 ish for the Base unit. Separate budget for monitor, keyboard, mouse.

I've got a 1TB SATA SSD I was going to put in it for games, so a small M2 of some sort would be ideal.

Tetras · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:18

Conanius said:
Ok interesting, thank you.

My head is saying get a current gen (ie AM5) board and a low end AM5 CPU that we can upgrade later if needed, opposed to going AM4 and a 5700X3D...

What gfx would you suggest?

Yeah, that's not a bad option. You could go for something like a RX 6600 (or 6650 XT if not much more) and pair that with a 7500F (if you're comfortable getting them... elsewhere). I think the 8400F is the cheapest AM5 option otherwise.

Rob_B · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:29

£600 for CPU, mobo, RAM, storage, PSU, case? Very do-able.

Asrock HDV m.2 can be had for £105, low end AM5 chip as mentioned by Tetras with a 6600/6700 or maybe even Arc. Do you want it specced up or just looking for ideas?

Conanius · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:46

Rob_B said:
£600 for CPU, mobo, RAM, storage, PSU, case? Very do-able.

Asrock HDV m.2 can be had for £105, low end AM5 chip as mentioned by Tetras with a 6600/6700 or maybe even Arc. Do you want it specced up or just looking for ideas?

I think I'm just looking at the art of the possible for now.

It is for when we move house, hopefully in the next couple of months. The "competition" is me getting some sort of £900 ish Gaming Laptop. Pros and Cons for both options, but I feel getting a proper Desktop PC is a better long term choice.

Based on the advice in this thread, and looking elsewhere, it looks like I could do something like:

- Cheap and Cheerful case
- XFX 6650XT Graphics Card
- AMD 8400F AM5 CPU
- Gigabyte B650M Motherboard
- Kingston Fury Beast 32GB DDR 5 6000Mhz RAM (who comes up with these names?)
- Corsair Modular Gold PSU 650W
- Crucial 1TB E100 M2 SSD

£703 Delivered.

That feels pretty punchy for a first gaming machine and 1080p?

Tetras · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:51

Conanius said:
That feels pretty punchy for a first gaming machine and 1080p?

Looks fine, yeah.

The endurance on the E100 is really bad though, FYI. E.g. 80 TB written for the 1TB model, whereas the 1TB T500 is 600 TB written

Don't pay too much for the 6650 XT either, otherwise I'd look into other options like the 7600, B580, 4060.

Conanius · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:56

The 6650XT was 229. Part of me wonders if its worth stretching a bit further for a 40 series card for the DLSS and FG

Tetras · 21 Mar 2025 at 19:57

Conanius said:
The 6650XT was 229. Part of me wonders if its worth stretching a bit further for a 40 series card for the DLSS and FG

The power consumption is my favourite part of the 4060

Rob_B · 21 Mar 2025 at 20:17

The 8400F is pretty sucky though IIRC ? You have enough posts so do you have access to MM ?

Conanius · 21 Mar 2025 at 21:11

Rob_B said:
The 8400F is pretty sucky though IIRC ? You have enough posts so do you have access to MM ?

I do, I guess I could just keep an eye on there.

Rob_B · 21 Mar 2025 at 21:19

Might be worth keeping an eye out for a cheap 7500/7600, personally I'd prefer one of those. There isn't a huge difference in lots of games but the double L3 cache on the 7500/7600 will help.

Craig_d1 · 21 Mar 2025 at 22:34

Conanius said:
I do, I guess I could just keep an eye on there.

AMD Radeon RX 6650 XT Specs

AMD Navi 23, 2635 MHz, 2048 Cores, 128 TMUs, 64 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR6, 2190 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

so 6650xt fo £230..a 4060 is 2% faster for more

I'd look at MM..few people upgraded to 9070/9070xt. couple of 3080 for £325 ish which will is 167% (so 67% uplift) on a 6650xt...might be a bit over budget but a 3070 will be had in budget just with a 29% uplift...3070ti just over with a 38% uplift

I'd look at maybe importing a ryzen 7600... £120 at mo from a few places

8400f can be noticeably slower than a 7600, so think the 7600 worth the littlee extra, though in other games little diff, so maybe worth going thru the games and seeing which ones are relevant if you really stretched