Future Proof Gaming Build

[ConnorBCFC]

Hi all.

I need parts list ideas - I'm doing a build for a friend who has a big budget for a new gaming pc. The budget is £2500-3000.

I know the newgen GPUs are out soon, but they're insistent on having this build asap, with a view to upgrading to one of the new GPUs in the future, so if you could account for that, that'd be great.

Please also include case fans in the lists - cooling is going to be quite important as this budget.

Thank you.

 

[Gray2233]

Does he need a new monitor or a keyboard/mouse?

If he already has a monitor what are the specifications of it?

What sorts of games does he play?

 

[ConnorBCFC]

Does he need a new monitor or a keyboard/mouse?

If he already has a monitor what are the specifications of it?

What sorts of games does he play?

Nope, tower only. Not sure on monitor but been given a description of wanting 'the best parts possible'.

 

[Gray2233]

In most circumstances I'd recommend AMD, but given he seems to have a very high budget to spend and wants the 'best' for gaming Intel might be worth considering.

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Ti WindForce 11264MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £1,049.99
• 1 x Team Group 8Pack Edition 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C16 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit= £209.99
• 1 x Super Flower Leadex III ARGB 650W 80 PLUS Gold Modular Power Supply - Black= £114.95
• 1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £134.99
• 1 x Intel Core i7-10700K 3.8GHz (Comet Lake) Socket LGA1200 Processor - Retail= £389.99
• 1 x MSI MAG Z490 Tomahawk (Socket LGA 1200) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £194.99
• 1 x Corsair Crystal 680X RGB High Airflow ATX Case - Black Tempered Glass (CC-9011168-WW)= £224.99
• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer II High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 280mm= £94.99

Total: £2,414.88 (includes shipping: £0.00)
​

Could be worth dropping down to a 2070S or 5700XT if he plants on replacing the GPU soon anyway.

Here's an AMD version:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2080 Ti WindForce 11264MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £1,049.99
• 1 x Team Group 8Pack Edition 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-28800C16 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit= £209.99
• 1 x Super Flower Leadex III ARGB 650W 80 PLUS Gold Modular Power Supply - Black= £114.95
• 1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £134.99
• 1 x Corsair Crystal 680X RGB High Airflow ATX Case - Black Tempered Glass (CC-9011168-WW)= £224.99
• 1 x Arctic Liquid Freezer II High Performance CPU Water Cooler - 280mm= £94.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core 4.4GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £299.99
• 1 x Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard= £154.99

Total: £2,284.88 (includes shipping: £0.00)
​

You might get more out of the AMD build in the long run with the option to upgrade to a Zen 3 chip down the line if necessary. If he's running a higher resolution he wont see much if any difference between AMD and Intel, the Intel build is mainly if he desperately wants to draw out every last FPS.

If he plays games such as Star Citizen it could be worth going for a 3900X for the extra cores.

Listed 32GB of RAM as some games can use well over 16GB, such as a modded Cities: Skylines and a few other titles. It may not be necessary for the titles he plays.

 

[EsaT]

Can't call 8 core/16 thread CPU any future proof.
That's going to be mainstream for next-gen games with new consoles coming with non-boosting variant of Ryzen 3700X.
And Intel is bad in upgrade path with actually no higher core count improved CPUs coming and also prices of outdated models staying high.
More cores are coming with Alder Lake on new LGA 1700 socket and with big.little design instead of high number of full size cores...
While AMD goes to 16 full size cores on current AM4 platform and on current Zen 2 and coming improved Zen 3 giving nice upgradability, if taking very well priced 3700X for now.

Also looking into future needs it isn't sure when Intel actually brings out PCIe v4.
Knowing Intel's greedyness they might decide to force another platform/socket change for getting it just for the fun of screwing consumers into rear.
While AMD has PCIe v4 already.
This year it propably won't make much different in GPU performance, but in couple years GPUs should get powerfull enough.
Also there's possibility of changes in GPU use needing faster CPU-GPU communication.
Next-gen consoles having such powerfull integrated APUs no doubt gives game developers new things to consider.


For RAM 2x16GB is definite choise for that budget to make sure there's no need to close background web browsers etc.
Next-gen consoles are actually comnig with special techniques for streaming data from SSD just before use to compensate for small memory increase.

With that budget would definitely aim for 2TB SSD to have good amount of space.
Bigger games start hogging like 100GB or so.
Though availability/prices of 2TB NVMes aren't greatest at the moment.

For PSU this would be nicely priced 10 year warranty 80+ Platinum:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/frac...ted-fully-modular-power-supply-ca-08t-fd.html

For case we would need to know, if there's preference for clean look or if RGB is wanted.

 

[Journey]

Nope, tower only. Not sure on monitor but been given a description of wanting 'the best parts possible'.

What is the use-case for the machine? Just gaming?

If you don't know the monitor specs and he's running 2560x1440 at 60Hz, it seems utterly pointless to spend £3000 on a gaming PC, unless he plans on spending big on a monitor upgrade.

Is he one of the people it has to be the best or don't bother, or all the gear and no idea?

 

[ConnorBCFC]

What is the use-case for the machine? Just gaming?

If you don't know the monitor specs and he's running 2560x1440 at 60Hz, it seems utterly pointless to spend £3000 on a gaming PC, unless he plans on spending big on a monitor upgrade.

Is he one of the people it has to be the best or don't bother, or all the gear and no idea?

Having spoken to them, they are going to want to look at 1440p 144Hz monitors, with a view to moving to 4k.

You could put it that way, yes, lol.

 

[ConnorBCFC]

Can't call 8 core/16 thread CPU any future proof.
That's going to be mainstream for next-gen games with new consoles coming with non-boosting variant of Ryzen 3700X.
And Intel is bad in upgrade path with actually no higher core count improved CPUs coming and also prices of outdated models staying high.
More cores are coming with Alder Lake on new LGA 1700 socket and with big.little design instead of high number of full size cores...
While AMD goes to 16 full size cores on current AM4 platform and on current Zen 2 and coming improved Zen 3 giving nice upgradability, if taking very well priced 3700X for now.

Also looking into future needs it isn't sure when Intel actually brings out PCIe v4.
Knowing Intel's greedyness they might decide to force another platform/socket change for getting it just for the fun of screwing consumers into rear.
While AMD has PCIe v4 already.
This year it propably won't make much different in GPU performance, but in couple years GPUs should get powerfull enough.
Also there's possibility of changes in GPU use needing faster CPU-GPU communication.
Next-gen consoles having such powerfull integrated APUs no doubt gives game developers new things to consider.


For RAM 2x16GB is definite choise for that budget to make sure there's no need to close background web browsers etc.
Next-gen consoles are actually comnig with special techniques for streaming data from SSD just before use to compensate for small memory increase.

With that budget would definitely aim for 2TB SSD to have good amount of space.
Bigger games start hogging like 100GB or so.
Though availability/prices of 2TB NVMes aren't greatest at the moment.

For PSU this would be nicely priced 10 year warranty 80+ Platinum:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/frac...ted-fully-modular-power-supply-ca-08t-fd.html

For case we would need to know, if there's preference for clean look or if RGB is wanted.

Thanks for the detailed response. Are you suggesting I go down the Ryzen route? Any suggestions for coolers on the R9 3900/50X?

Thanks in advance.

 

[EsaT]

For "single shot"/"fire and forget" I would consider Ryzen 3900X the most capable for handling heavily multithreaded future games and web browser etc on background.
Star Citizen can give good workout for 12c/24t and only reason why majority of cores aren't fully occupied is extra "cores"/threads from SMT:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/dkac5j/i_knew_star_citizen_utilizes_multicore_well/
Two cores can't take really any extra load without bottlenecking and two others have most of their capacity used.

If CPU upgrade in year or two is possible, very well priced Ryzen 3700X now and upgrade to improved Zen3 architecture 12 core (probably 4900X) would be definitely the best longevity giving route.
Zen3 should be similar to Zen+ > Zen2 jump and it doesn't need to improve IPC that much and with little clock speed increase it takes also single core crown from Intel.
While consuming lot less power when under full all core load...
Honest TDP for Intel's 10 core chasing advertised boost clocks under full load is 250W.

While this would be quite nice for Ryzen's max ~140W real heat output:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/alpenfohn-brocken-3-cpu-cooler-140mm-hs-05a-al.html


For graphics card would definitely consider Radeon 5700 XT or 2070 Super as the most expensive sense making at the moment.
Those also handle 2560x1440 quite nicely.
For its huge price 2080 Ti is only 35-40% faster than 5700 XT.
GPU of coming new Xbox might perform same as 2080 Ti:
It has 30% more processing units than in 5700 XT and no doubt plenty of architectural improvements.
And before next-gen consoles AMD is bringing out big same architercture GPU with twice the processing units than in 5700 XT.

 

[Journey]

For graphics card would definitely consider Radeon 5700 XT or 2070 Super as the most expensive sense making at the moment.
Those also handle 2560x1440 quite nicely.
For its huge price 2080 Ti is only 35-40% faster than 5700 XT.

Totally agree with this, they'd lose a small fortune on the 2080 Ti in a few months, and could easily sell on the 5700 XT and grab new top of the line 3080 Ti or whatever if they want to go 4k 90Hz+ later in the year.

Spending more for the sake of it isn't a sensible or future proofing idea, so going with a mid range GPU now means that it will end up with a 'better future' after 6 months, rather than being stuck with a 2080 Ti for the whole life of the system.

 

[pc-guy]

Don’t need 32GB ram for games currently. And if in the future they need more ram it will always be cheaper to buy the ram at that time as ram gets faster and cheaper over time.

1440p no need for 2080ti, 2070 super or 5700XT anniversary would be fine. I would lean towards nvidia just because their driver is better and more polished than AMD offering

but for the rest definitely go with AMD platform if future upgrade is your goal. B550 and X570 have lots of PCIe lanes and PCIe4 support (not that PCIe3 bandwidth will be saturated at anytime soon). 3700x for now but down the line 4900x would be a realistic option for games.

 

[lee32uk]

Don’t need 32GB ram for games currently. And if in the future they need more ram it will always be cheaper to buy the ram at that time as ram gets faster and cheaper over time.

Games like Cities Skylines can chew through Ram when running lots of mods/assets etc. And he has a £3000 budget so no reason not to get 32GB. You are only talking about an extra £70 or so vs 16GB.

 

[Smiffy-UK]

For graphics card would definitely consider Radeon 5700 XT or 2070 Super as the most expensive sense making at the moment.

And before next-gen consoles AMD is bringing out big same architercture GPU with twice the processing units than in 5700 XT.

what he said, and I'm excited in reply to your second statement

 

[pc-guy]

Games like Cities Skylines can chew through Ram when running lots of mods/assets etc. And he has a £3000 budget so no reason not to get 32GB. You are only talking about an extra £70 or so vs 16GB.

That’s quite a specific game tho. . Great sim game. But I don’t think I will ever have the patience to play it.

 

[Gray2233]

That’s quite a specific game tho. . Great sim game. But I don’t think I will ever have the patience to play it.

It isn't the only one that does it funnily enough, it's why I suggested it initially.