Help me spec...

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29 Sep 2005
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My 14 year old son wants to build his own PC to replace the fairly ancient desktop he currently has.

I am well out of the loop by now, having not done anything for over ten years, but what I suggested was as a first phase he buy a Case, PSU, Motherboard , RAM and Processor and look to reuse his graphics card and HDD (which I changed to an SSD not long ago) in the short term.

I have no idea what to recommend though, and how much he needs to spend to get something reasonably future proof.

Can anyone help?!
 
AMD are occupying the value offering as they probably were last time you bought stuff. The difference is that a) they're offering competitive performance now and b) their AM4 platform has some longevity. Intel has been releasing new platforms every other year so a CPU upgrade almost always requires a new motherboard. AM4 has seen the release of its third generation of CPUs (Ryzen 3000) and we expect one more before they release a new socket.

16GB of RAM with decent speeds (especially relevant if going AMD) can be had for ~£75. A decent quality midrange motherboard for under £100, with reasonable power delivery components for future upgrades.

Then the choice of CPUs ranges from quad-core all the way up to 16. He could start with an older 4 or 6 core for £100 and plan to upgrade later.

Someone may be along with a basket of spec suggestions too :)

Also what is his current graphics card? I'm wondering if it's old enough that AMD's Vega graphics on some CPUs (APUs really) would be better. The Ryzen APUs have a G on the end of their name and have quite reasonable graphics integrated. Ordinary Ryzen CPUs don't have integrated graphics at all. This could save some cash early on until a GPU upgrade is feasible.
 
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