New PC advice

[amx]

My trusty old PC is a bit long in the tooth and fails all the windows 11 upgrade tests so it’s time for an upgrade. I used to be PC obsessed but haven’t kept up to date over the last 5 years or so, making me a bit clueless now.

Doesn’t need to be anything special. I don’t game. It’s mainly used for life admin, browsing / YouTube, storage of TV shows / movies in 1080p, eBay listing, some minor photo editing (removing backgrounds, colour correction, etc).

Main thing I want is for it to feel quick and have a good boot speed. And have at at least 512gb m2 (?) main drive, and 2-4tb of additional storage.

I’m not going to reuse anything from the PC as it’s being donated to my niece for YouTube / Minecraft.

Budget is £600.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

 

[Tetras]

Can you give us the specs of the old one, just so we know what an upgrade looks like?

Budget is £600.

Intel / DDR4 option:

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Intel Core i5-12600K 3.70GHz (Alder Lake) Socket LGA1700 Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-69X-IN) = £149.99
• 1 x Gigabyte B760M DS3H AX DDR4 (LGA 1700) DDR4 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MB-5BZ-GI) = £109.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan Z T-Force 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (SKU: MY-0AJ-TG) = £55.99
• 1 x Crucial T500 1TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-01089) = £59.99
• 1 x Team Group MP33 PRO 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-TMG-02682) = £92.99
• 1 x Antec CX600M ARGB M-ATX Mini Tower - Black (SKU: CAS-ATC-04160) = £54.95
• 1 x Phanteks AMP GH 750W 80PLUS Gold ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02517) = £84.95

• 1 x Thermalright Assassin Spirit 120 Evo ARGB CPU Cooler - 120mm (SKU: COO-TLR-02720) = £21.94

Total: £630.79 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

 

[amx]

Hi

Thanks for this it looks good!

My current specs are Ryzen 7 1700, 16GB Ram @ 1ghz (15-15-15-36), Asus B450 Plus, GTX 1060

 

[mickyflinn]

Hi

Thanks for this it looks good!

My current specs are Ryzen 7 1700, 16GB Ram @ 1ghz (15-15-15-36), Asus B450 Plus, GTX 1060

Admirable your donating your pc to your niece but your pc is easy for an upgrade , new CPU like the 5800x/5900x and 32gb of memory.

 

[amx]

Admirable your donating your pc to your niece but your pc is easy for an upgrade , new CPU like the 5800x/5900x and 32gb of memory.

That’s handy to know. Do you happen to know what ram I need? And can I mix in 2 x 8gb with the two I have as I have 4 ram slots?

 

[mickyflinn]

That’s handy to know. Do you happen to know what ram I need? And can I mix in 2 x 8gb with the two I have as I have 4 ram slots?

It's best to 2 x16gb 3200mhz rather than mess with 4 sticks as it can become a pain to run all 4 at the correct speed on AM4 . Plus you could use the older memory and CPU for your niece.

You would also need a motherboard bios update if not up to date for the 5000 series to work.

 

[amx]

It's best to 2 x16gb 3200mhz rather than mess with 4 sticks as it can become a pain to run all 4 at the correct speed on AM4 . Plus you could use the older memory and CPU for your niece.

You would also need a motherboard bios update if not up to date for the 5000 series to work.

Cheers.

Is there a best price v performance 5000 series option? There seems to be a big price jump between the 5800X and 5900X?

 

[mickyflinn]

Cheers.

Is there a best price v performance 5000 series option? There seems to be a big price jump between the 5800X and 5900X?

5700x is probably the best value for your needs 5900x if you want 12 cores instead of 8 cores .

The 5800x has a slightly higher clock speed than the 5700x that's the only difference between them.

Would probably consider a decent CPU cooler there's great options for £20 to £30 like the thermalright peerless assassin 120.

 

[SqualidChimp]

I'd agree 5700X is best value for price/performance. I have peerless assassin 120 on one right now and it is barely audible with the thing 1.5 feet from my head (until I start playing games but thats because I manually changed the fan profile to go nuts as soon as it gets mildly warm ) I have been very happy with the quality of the recent cheap thermalright coolers (spirit, assassin, etc).

 

[amx]

Thanks everyone. It’s given me some food for thought.

 

[Quartz]

My current specs are Ryzen 7 1700, 16GB Ram @ 1ghz (15-15-15-36), Asus B450 Plus, GTX 1060

Do your niece a favour and upgrade it to a Ryzen 5700X3D before you give it to her (make sure you update the BIOS first). That's the bang for the buck gaming CPU right now.

Doesn’t need to be anything special. I don’t game.

Take a look at Asus NUC / Mini PC builds (Asus took over NUC from Intel). For example, the Asus NUC 14 Pro is £1000 for a box with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD; the Minisforum UM790 Pro with 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB NVME drive is £525 and the UM890 Pro is £625. Just add a second NVME drive. Check out the Level1Techs, ServeTheHome, RobTech, and ETA Prime YouTube channels. Note that the UM890 can take an external GPU via an add-on OCULink adapter.