New build advice

[Aaron.102]

Hi,

I'm looking for advice on the cheapest possible build that offers the best bang for buck. Ideally around the £500 mark and looking to play mostly RTS style games. I have been comfortable with a Ryzen 3200g on an a320hdv motherboard up until now, so not a difficult one to better.

I was thinking of an 8600g build with the view of maybe adding a graphics card at a later date? And possible switching out the CPU much later on.

I would still be happy with the 3200 if it wasn't for a conflict with the motherboard that has made the constant driver crashes unbearable.

Thanks.

 

[Tetras]

Ideally around the £500 mark and looking to play mostly RTS style games.

CPU cooler is in the CPU box.

I'd strongly recommend spending an extra £30 on the 12400F if possible.

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i3-12100F 3.30GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-6AS-IN) = £73.99
• 1 x MSI PRO H610M-E DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 mATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-MSI-03383) = £59.99
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 32GB (2x16GB) 3600 MHz AMD Ryzen Tuned DDR4 Memory Dual Kit (CMK32GX4M2Z3600C18) (SKU: MY-4CL-CS) = £49.99
• 1 x Intel ARC A750 Gaming 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GX-08U-IN) = £169.99
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 1TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02681) = £44.00
• 1 x Kolink Inspire Series K2 ARGB Micro-ATX Case - Black Window (SKU: CA-046-KK) = £37.99
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95

Total: £520.90 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

I'd recommend the RX 6600 instead of the A750, especially if you're playing older games, but they seem to have disappeared from OCUK

You may find this video interesting.

If you do buy the Arc, you need to ensure that rebar is enabled in the BIOS for it to work properly.

 

[tamzzy]

I would still be happy with the 3200 if it wasn't for a conflict with the motherboard that has made the constant driver crashes unbearable.

my friend had the same issue with his 3200g + asrock mobo too, doesn't like running integrated graphics with the newer bios revisions i don't know why

you haven't told us the full specs of your current pc, but basically for £500, this would be what i'd do:
1) update bios to the latest, if you haven't already
2) drop in the 5600 (non-x)
3) upgrade your ram to 32gb ddr4 3200mhz (2x 16gb sticks), if you haven't already
4) if you have a small ssd, then get a 1tb nvme ssd
5) rest of the budget goes to the rtx 4060, why 4060? because it's the same price as the rx7600 currently, and much more power efficient, so you'd likely get away without needing to upgrade your current power supply. or just wait a bit (?) longer to see where the 5060/9060 will land.

 

[Aaron.102]

I was toying with a ryzen5600. Would this be a better option than the 8600 then? I was only looking at the 8600 for the possibility of a future upgrade path on the am5 platform. If I stick with am 4 I could re-use my current HDD and ram.

 

[tamzzy]

You don't upgrade often enough to justify a whole new platform imo. Going the 5600 route as I've described above will give you a massive boost in performance, whilst being easy on the wallet.

 

[Gray2233]

Just to add to the above, depending on the exact RTS games you play and settings, the 5700X3D might be worth looking at instead of the 5600. Certain titles within the genre absolutely love the extra L3 cache, but if it's mostly fairly old games (which I'm guessing is the case) you're likely better off saving the cash and going with the 5600.

You'll need to research this for sure but it's another avenue.

 

[tamzzy]

the 5700X3D might be worth looking at instead of the 5600. Certain titles within the genre absolutely love the extra L3 cache, but if it's mostly fairly old games (which I'm guessing is the case) you're likely better off saving the cash and going with the 5600.

if OP was satisfied with a 3200g (CPU and iGPU) performance for the games, then a 5700x3d is overkill
(also, a 105w tdp cpu on potato a320 vrm isn't the wisest)

 

[Gray2233]

if OP was satisfied with a 3200g (CPU and iGPU) performance for the games, then a 5700x3d is overkill
(also, a 105w tdp cpu on potato a320 vrm isn't the wisest)

You never know, he might be sat there playing at 5fps and wondering why 1v1 skirmishes vs AI take 5 hours, it wouldn't be the first time I came across something like that .

Honestly forgot how bad the VRM's were on those old boards tbh.

 

[tamzzy]

You never know, he might be sat there playing at 5fps and wondering why 1v1 skirmishes vs AI take 5 hours, it wouldn't be the first time I came across something like that .
Honestly forgot how bad the VRM's were on those old boards tbh.

I remember playing MMOs on iGPUs back when I was a broke uni student...that was fun lol
and yeah, A320 = 65W TDP cpus only

 

[Gray2233]

I remember playing MMOs on iGPUs back when I was a broke uni student...that was fun lol
and yeah, A320 = 65W TDP cpus only

WoW in a 40 man raid back in 2004/2005 on a 1.2ghz Duron was one hell of an experience, BWL still gives me nightmares, and I actually had a GPU to go with it!

 

[tamzzy]

WoW in a 40 man raid back in 2004/2005 on a 1.2ghz Duron was one hell of an experience, BWL still gives me nightmares, and I actually had a GPU to go with it!

I was playing Rohan and AION back in the day lol

 

[Gray2233]

I was playing Rohan and AION back in the day lol

I dabbled in a few but spent most of my time in Eve and WoW, stuff like RO/EQ/UO etc.

So I pretty much picked the most CPU intensive titles I could get my grimy mitts on and thought it'd be a good idea to run them on a budget AMD CPU, although to be fair I did pencil mod and OC the thing so it was more like an entry level XP. lol