Help/Advice with budget gaming build

Gederika · 30 Jun 2023 at 19:56

Hello!

I want to build gaming PC under £600 for casual gaming. Games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Planet Crafter, Hogwarts Legacy, No Man's Sky, upcoming Starfield etc.
I am not a hardcore gamer so don't really care for highest graphics settings, just want to have smooth gameplay at medium settings.

I already have Kolink Citadel Mesh case with case fans and 850w power supply.
I need motherboard, cpu, gpu, memory and storage and my budget is £600.

I already had a look and came up with this:

1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB (2x8GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit (CMK16GX4M2Z3600C18) (SKU: MY-4BW-CS) = £44.99
1 x Asus Radeon RX 6600 Dual 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-47K-AS) = £209.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 4500 Six Core 4.1GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D4-AM) = £74.98
1 x MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi (AMD AM4) B550 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-358-MS) = £119.99
1 x WD Green SN350 240GB SSD SATA M.2 2280 Solid State Drive (WDS240G2G0C) (SKU: HD-597-WD) = £15.95
1 x Crucial P3 PLUS 1TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 4.0 NVMe Solid State Drive (SKU: HD-07A-CR) = £47.99

What do you think? Advice would be highly appreciated!

gjbf1 · 1 Jul 2023 at 09:49

What resolution do you game at? If it's more than 1080 then that GPU might struggle with Hogwarts and maybe Starfield when it comes out.

Craig_d1 · 1 Jul 2023 at 12:17

I seem to remember the 4500 got apsolutely slammed in reviews as a'terrible' cpu when it came out and really crimped the performance in some games. If you really want to go pc route I'd go intel 12100F when you can get on preorder for £74.99 on OCuk. It's a better cpu by far and costs the same.

Am overbudget at the mo, but can be reduced
the strix b660-a is on offer reduced from £215. When tested, it was up there with the best motherboards for performance, but cost meant something like the MSI B660M was a better buy at time. Now it's down at £133 you're gettinga top notch board with excellent vrm so you can upgrade to a 13700k down the line(bios update required) without having to worry whether the board is good enough to handle it...there's also a £25 cashback on it at the mo with asus promotion, so you can get additional money off(so with cashback the board comes down to £108.29)
rather than a boot drive and a 1tb nvme, just put in a 2tb firecuda gen4 in. Again you can go cheaper such as the crucial p3 for £75 (so with asus promotion and this saving close to £50), but the cheaper drives have a 440TBW(so can write 440 tb before drive fails), whereas the firecuda had a 1200TBW endurance, so drive should last you a good while longer before it starts to fail, and comes with a 5yrs warranty...these are items you can take with you when upgrading down the line....but of course could just swap out for 1tb drive and use that saving money, but games take up a fair amount of space nowadays, and drives do slow down a bit when they fill up. personally, wouldn't bother with a sata drive. its slower than nvme and might as well have your boot drive nvme...you can always partition the nvme drive if you want to see 2 seperate drives in windows
For gpu, the radeon sapphire 7600 pulse is on offer(thank nvidia 4060for that) so actually cheaper than the 6600 which you have, which it replaces

so just an idea, but with board cashback, your down to £645, swap to 2tb p3plus and you're down to £622.50...drop to 1tb drive you're below £600

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Intel Core i3-12100F 3.30GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AS-IN) = £74.99
1 x Asus ROG Strix B660-A Gaming WIFI D4 - Intel B660 DDR4 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6HR-AS) = £133.29
1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-29200C18 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2D3600C18) (SKU: MY-4A5-CS) = £41.66
1 x Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB SSD PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive (ZP2000GV3A012) (SKU: HD-3EX-SE) = £97.49
1 x Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 Pulse Gaming 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-02Y-AM) = £207.49

Total: £669.91 (includes delivery: £114.99)

edit, as @gjbf1 states, this is really a 1080p gaming experience, though below 15 game av at 1440 it did manage to get 61fps whereas the 6600 got 49fps(so 7600 is a 26.5% uplift in fps over the 6600), so 1440 is doable ...if you want better, for the price, you really can't beat an XSX or PS5 at the price, but at least with pc, you have upgradeability

edit, had a quick look and you can buy 16gb (2x8) Corsair veangence rgb RT 3600c18 for £43.99 away also, which is nicer looking ram imho

Craig_d1 · 1 Jul 2023 at 13:22

as little edit above, vid below shows what the rgb rt ram looks like

Gederika · 1 Jul 2023 at 13:31

gjbf1 said:
What resolution do you game at? If it's more than 1080 then that GPU might struggle with Hogwarts and maybe Starfield when it comes out.

I am fine with 1080p gaming but I do have a 34" UltraWide so resolution is a little higher.

Gederika · 1 Jul 2023 at 13:37

Craig_d1 said:
I seem to remember the 4500 got apsolutely slammed in reviews as a'terrible' cpu when it came out and really crimped the performance in some games. If you really want to go pc route I'd go intel 12100F when you can get on preorder for £74.99 on OCuk. It's a better cpu by far and costs the same.

Am overbudget at the mo, but can be reduced
the strix b660-a is on offer reduced from £215. When tested, it was up there with the best motherboards for performance, but cost meant something like the MSI B660M was a better buy at time. Now it's down at £133 you're gettinga top notch board with excellent vrm so you can upgrade to a 13700k down the line(bios update required) without having to worry whether the board is good enough to handle it...there's also a £25 cashback on it at the mo with asus promotion, so you can get additional money off(so with cashback the board comes down to £108.29)
rather than a boot drive and a 1tb nvme, just put in a 2tb firecuda gen4 in. Again you can go cheaper such as the crucial p3 for £75 (so with asus promotion and this saving close to £50), but the cheaper drives have a 440TBW(so can write 440 tb before drive fails), whereas the firecuda had a 1200TBW endurance, so drive should last you a good while longer before it starts to fail, and comes with a 5yrs warranty...these are items you can take with you when upgrading down the line....but of course could just swap out for 1tb drive and use that saving money, but games take up a fair amount of space nowadays, and drives do slow down a bit when they fill up. personally, wouldn't bother with a sata drive. its slower than nvme and might as well have your boot drive nvme...you can always partition the nvme drive if you want to see 2 seperate drives in windows
For gpu, the radeon sapphire 7600 pulse is on offer(thank nvidia 4060for that) so actually cheaper than the 6600 which you have, which it replaces

so just an idea, but with board cashback, your down to £645, swap to 2tb p3plus and you're down to £622.50...drop to 1tb drive you're below £600

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Intel Core i3-12100F 3.30GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AS-IN) = £74.99

1 x Asus ROG Strix B660-A Gaming WIFI D4 - Intel B660 DDR4 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-6HR-AS) = £133.29

1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-29200C18 3600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK16GX4M2D3600C18) (SKU: MY-4A5-CS) = £41.66

1 x Seagate FireCuda 520 2TB SSD PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive (ZP2000GV3A012) (SKU: HD-3EX-SE) = £97.49

1 x Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 Pulse Gaming 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-02Y-AM) = £207.49

Total: £669.91 (includes delivery: £114.99)

edit, as @gjbf1 states, this is really a 1080p gaming experience, though below 15 game av at 1440 it did manage to get 61fps whereas the 6600 got 49fps(so 7600 is a 26.5% uplift in fps over the 6600), so 1440 is doable ...if you want better, for the price, you really can't beat an XSX or PS5 at the price, but at least with pc, you have upgradeability

edit, had a quick look and you can buy 16gb (2x8) Corsair veangence rgb RT 3600c18 for £43.99 away also, which is nicer looking ram imho

Thank you, really appreciate the help.
Looks great! Will the graphics card you recommended be ok for 1080p gaming on an ultrawide monitor?

Tetras · 1 Jul 2023 at 13:42

Gederika said:
I am fine with 1080p gaming but I do have a 34" UltraWide so resolution is a little higher.

6600 is definitely not suitable for native resolution in those games (you might be casual gaming, but they're some of the most demanding games available). In TPU's latest benches it can't even hit 30 fps average at 4K and is 54 fps average at 1440p.

Quartz · 1 Jul 2023 at 13:46

Gederika said:
AMD Ryzen 5 4500 Six Core 4.1GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D4-AM) = £74.98

Do try and get something better than this. Spend the extra £25 and get the 5500. Even better, spend another £50 and get the 5600.

Do note that the RX 6600 is a PCIe v4 x8 card and the Ryzen 4500 (and 5500) only support PCIe v3. This may modestly limit performance.

Gederika said:
I am fine with 1080p gaming but I do have a 34" UltraWide so resolution is a little higher.

You should be fine at medium settings. HZD, for instance, runs just fine at 4k on medium settings on my A770, getting 50+ fps.

Tetras said:
In TPU's latest benches

Those are at highest settings, though.

Gederika · 1 Jul 2023 at 18:14

@Quartz what do you think of the basket that @Craig_d1 suggested above?

throwaway4372 · 1 Jul 2023 at 18:21

that budget isn't really enough for the graphics card never mind the rest imo, save up until you have 1500 ish.
I think you're just wasting money if you try to achieve it with 600

Quartz · 1 Jul 2023 at 18:48

Gederika said:
@Quartz what do you think of the basket that @Craig_d1 suggested above?

I'd bump it to a 12400F for the 6 cores. And I'm not sure if the stock Intel cooler is sufficient to prevent throttling.

Craig_d1 · 1 Jul 2023 at 18:49

Gederika said:
Thank you, really appreciate the help.
Looks great! Will the graphics card you recommended be ok for 1080p gaming on an ultrawide monitor?

so for the 7600 pulse gpu using HU results

so some basic maths might give very rough idea if performance scales

1080p: 1920 x 1080= 2,073,600pixels
ultradwide 1080p: 2560x 1080 = 2,764,800 so 33.3% more than 1080
1440p 2560x1440 = 3,686,400 so 77.8% more pixels than 1080

15game av
1080p 88fps
1140p 62fps
so 22fps diff.....33.3% is 7.3fps

so if scales accordingly the ultrawide might give you 88-7.3= 80/81fps

as a side note, hogswarts legacy gave 63fps at 1080 and 51fps at 1440p, so same rules you might get 59fps at 1080 ultrawide

just realised my build above slightly scewed...I'm living abroad and was browsing as sunch, so price came out without VAT, though delivery at over £100 meant end result price was more than uk with VAT...ended up £665 incl...but still get £25 cashback and seen 2tb sn770 for £97 one 1 day deal today with free delivery (1tb for £49.99) etc so works out similar

below is a am4 build with a 5600 cpu...you can get slightly cheaper motherboard but this has good vrms..stress tested ran 3900x, vrm's were 70degrees, with pro vdh, it was 104 and the ds3h 118 degrees...no wifi on board but can get usb one for £15...as said above the sn770 is £49.99 away today with free delivery..£97 for 2tb version. I wouldn't go below the 5600...if doing that, would switch to the intel....12400f 6 cores also a good shout. but looking at £140 for cpu(was looking but thought I's check amd 1st see what they had, but as @Quartz says, 12400f is a 6 core and is a great little cpu)

My basket at OcUK:

1 x MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus (AMD AM4) B550 ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-35A-MS) = £119.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Six Core 4.4GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3D2-AM) = £149.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB (2x8GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit (CMK16GX4M2Z3600C18) (SKU: MY-4BW-CS) = £44.98
1 x Sapphire Radeon RX 7600 Pulse Gaming 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-02Y-AM) = £248.99
1 x WD Black SN770 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (WDS100T3X0E) (SKU: HD-58F-WD) = £67.99

Total: £631.94 (includes delivery: £0.00)

Can't think of what else to get 'new' wise...going up in gpu performance you'd be looking at the last gen 6700xt for £350ish, but £600 is not a lot to play with, hense maybe gaming console

oh, and don't forget to shop around, each place is doing some deal, though at the mo OCuk seem to have pulled their motherboard/cpu bundle deals..may be back next week, who knows

Quartz · 1 Jul 2023 at 18:56

Craig_d1 said:
below is a am4 build with a 5600 cpu...you can get slightly cheaper motherboard but this has good vrms..

That's an ATX motherboard and he has a mATX case.

Craig_d1 · 1 Jul 2023 at 19:07

Quartz said:
That's an ATX motherboard and he has a mATX case.

thanks, saw he had citadel mesh, just wasn't sure if atx or an mAtx one...
tough trying to find something £600 ballpark...other than going 2nd hand but that's a different set of problems etc..does 5600 come with a cooler in box do you know?
so matx

intel... MSI pro b660m wifi can be had for £109...fairly basic but get the job done
amd Asus Tuf gaming B550m plus wifi II for £139.99 on OCuk...has the cashback on it too so £25 off when you apply(you have to leave a review)...so £115

also checked price of amd cpu away...5600 £129, 5600x £149(ocuk £149 for the non x)