New to pc building, have I made the right choices?

[Giasgirl]

Hi, I’ve never done any sort of pc building but my son saved up a whole year (he’s 16) for a gaming pc and the prebuilt ones were overpriced for their components. I didn’t want him to be disappointed so I decided to built it with him, our components will be listed below, we have zero pc experience but I’m pretty quick on the uptake so watching a ton of builds on YouTube... do you think we’ve made good choices and also do you think the build will go together ok?

 

[Giasgirl]

AMD Ryzen 7 3700x
Wraith rgb cooler (stock)
MSI X570 gaming edge WiFi
Gigabyte wind force oc x3 RTX 2070s
WD black 256gb ssd m.2
WD velociraptor 1tb hdd
SeaSonic focus gx 750 80+ gold fully modular psu
Gamemax F15 mesh a rgb pc gaming case
Corsair vengeance rgb pro 2x8gb DDR4

still debating which thermal compound to use and which monitor to get. Any tips or insight on building the pc or how we did on the components would be greatly appreciated

 

[Giasgirl]

He wants it for gaming and VR with probably some streaming once he gets the extra money together for a camera/lighting/mic set up... He’s got a Keyboard already, got to get a mouse still. Only got £250 left in the budget atm so don’t know whether to get a cheaper monitor now or save a bit longer and use his tv in the meantime, tv is 55in Panasonic ambilight, think it’s only 60hz though, happy to take any advice!

 

[Giasgirl]

Have you already purchased the parts?

Yes it will all go together

Youtube have loads of videos on pc building.

Read the motherboard manual thourally a lot of people skip threw it.

Yes the parts have been purchased, we were on a budget so a few of them are second hand but the motherboard, psu, ram and graphics card are new

 

[Giasgirl]

Some say that it's best to build your pc outside the case first to test the components. It could save you a lot of hassle.

Here is a guide.

https://www.build-gaming-computers.com/test-pc-parts-outside-case.html

Thank you! Will definitely do that thanks for the link!

 

[Giasgirl]

With that build a nice 1440P Freesync 144hz + screen would be worth saving for, you're not far off actually at £250 and you can get some fantastic mice for under or around £30. Using the TV for games is a great idea mind you, but if he wants to play competitive PvP stuff something near-field with high refresh and low latency will be a benefit to him.

I would focus on Freesync as modern Nvidia cards will work with it, the same isn't true about AMD working with G-Sync. So going forward you'll have more options available should you decide to upgrade down the line.

Will go and take a look at that one now, it wasn’t on my radar so that’s awesome won’t hurt for him to use his tv for a bit till he saves up the rest. I know the motherboard isn’t the best out there but I’m hoping it’s good enough lol, its pretty nerve wracking trying to choose parts so many choices!

 

[Giasgirl]

Have you got win 10 keys can be had cheaply.

Have you got win 10 keys can be had cheaply.

I don’t have one but I was going to just pick one up off eBay for a couple of quid, no way am I giving Microsoft £100+ for an OS

 

[Giasgirl]

It's not the best X570 in the world but it certainly isn't going to be a genuine detriment to your lads setup, personally I'd have bought a good B450 for around £100 or a B550 for around £150. Something like the Mortar Max of both the B450 and B550 range for example, it'd have been money saved you could put elsewhere. For an X570 at around the £200 range the Gigabyte Elite or MSI Tomahawk would have been superior purchases. Depending on how much you paid for it and if you bought your motherboard local and/or it's easy to return I'd actually suggest doing so, it'd allow you to buy a nice new monitor outright with the savings while also getting an essentially superior motherboard.

You really should have signed up here and asked earlier as we'd have been able to help much more!

Regardless, as I mentioned earlier given you're doing this for the first time and have the initiative to not only build yourself but source both new and second hand components I think you've actually done quite a good job compared to 95% of what I've seen from people trying similar.

Thank you, I didn’t find this forum until I’d purchased everything unfortunately, would def have come and got some advice first... I did watch a ton of YouTube videos I think I’ve got Linus tech tips coming out of my ears at this point it’s good to know I didn’t totally balls it up though I paid around £180 on amazon for the X570 I just realised I’m going to need a fair whack of internet cable too, any idea what ratings I should look for? Never bought it before

 

[Giasgirl]

Your mobo comes with wifi (wireless network connection) so it should be absolutely fine without your running wire.

If there's issues after you've built it and tried connecting it to your router/modem look into solutions, but don't preempt problems in that regard or you'll run a never ending race.

Kiddos bedroom is at the opposite end on the house to the router so connection is a bit sketchy there, don’t want him dropping signal in a game, although it is a bit better since we upgraded our router... we’re quite rural so not great internet

 

[Giasgirl]

That board is rather crappy for the price with £100 B450 board level CPU VRM:
https://www.kitguru.net/components/...0-vrm-temperature-analysis-luke-deep-dive/11/
After shining in B450 boards MSI basically grabbed consumer scamming torch carrier role from Asus and Gigabyte.
B550 board would have given better VRMs for cheaper.
Or just that MSI B450 board with proper bang for the buck.
Which would have saved money into proper size SSD.
Games are becoming serious bloatware.
https://www.tweaktown.com/news/7070...e-requires-colossal-100gb-of-space/index.html
Yuo don't want to run such games from old spinning rust.

Oh wow that is one heck of a file size the ssd is pretty much just a boot drive I got it and the hdd pretty cheap so I’m not too worried about space for now, he pretty much plays one game at a time thankfully so not a huge library to worry about

 

[Giasgirl]

It well might be for phones and the like, but if you look at the motherboard you'll notice the big sticks hanging out of the back. His motherboard should be better at finding a connection than random mobile devices. It's not a guarantee but I would recommend testing it out prior to running wire, if you must Cat5e or Cat6 by the meter, whichever is cheaper. Just run it under your carpets or drill a hole or two if needed, it's hard to recommend without knowing your exact home layout.

That’s good to know, will test it out first and see how the receiver handles it

 

[Giasgirl]

You have picked this: WD black 256gb ssd m.2 and a mechanical WD velociraptor 1tb hdd.

Games for example COD Warzone use I think now 250Gb so you'll be using the mechanical HDD for all your games you need to get an SSD, with prices of SSDs now there's no need not to get a bigger one ideally at least 1tb and use that as your main storage.

WD Blue 1tb is recommended on here a lot I think about £100. Save the money that you were going to spend for the 256gb ssd and the velociraptor and put it to that.

Edit: Just seen in the thread you've already bought everything :- Can't you send them back for a refund these items?

I picked them up locally 2nd hand and cheap but will take a look at the 1tb ones, I think I have 2 m.2 slots on the board so could bump the 250gb one to second place

 

[Giasgirl]

It well might be for phones and the like, but if you look at the motherboard you'll notice the big sticks hanging out of the back. His motherboard should be better at finding a connection than random mobile devices. It's not a guarantee but I would recommend testing it out prior to running wire, if you must Cat5e or Cat6 by the meter, whichever is cheaper. Just run it under your carpets or drill a hole or two if needed, it's hard to recommend without knowing your exact home layout. You could also buy signal boosters that plug into your electrical sockets but they're hit and miss and dependant on the quality/age of your existing wiring.

As per @VortexA1 a larger SSD would be a good idea once you have the cash. I wouldn't say it's imperative but a lot of modern games like to stream data from the drive they're installed on, so there could be a performance hit if his game of choice wont fit on his boot drive. It also vastly improves load times, and if he's streaming he doesn't want people waiting around. Modern games are becoming pretty huge in some respects, there's a few popular ones now around the 100GB mark. So getting a decent but cheap 1TB SSD at the least is a good idea once you have the cash.

I can buy a larger m.2 in November if he’s running into problems, the joys of student loan time lol I had no idea games were so huge now!

 

[Giasgirl]

Growing all the time unfortunately.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think the current CoD is around 200GB.

A SATA based drive would be just fine, remember your M.2 slots are limited and frankly NvME (higher end M.2) drives don't do a lot for gaming over regular SSD's anyway. This is an area you can cut some costs as long as you avoid QLC drives and make sure what you buy has a good/reliable controller. For NvME's the WD SN550 is great, but for SATA based drives the likes of Crucial and Team Group make some great stuff.

Thank you, luckily he’s not into CoD yet he’s been dying to make the switch from Xbox and PS4 to PC so I’m sure he can wait a while for updated storage unless I can find some super cheap, he wants to see minecraft with RTX enabled and I think that will be enough for him atm

 

[Giasgirl]

I'm sure he'll love it in that respect.

I wish I had a parent like you when I was in the single digits! Or double, or anytime actually. Fancy adopting me?

He’s a good kid, also I remember wanting a pc when I was about 13 and my mother buying me this ancient (even by 1999 standards) piece of crap that must have been third hand and ran huge floppy disks I was absolutely gutted and I always remembered it... it’s a funny old life, how things work out...I’ll happily adopt any strays lol

 

[Giasgirl]

Pshh. lol.

I remember asking for a PC and being told it was a horrible thing I only wanted because I was a horrible person! I used my school PC's and it took me years to convince my parents having a PC would help my schoolwork. When I finally did have a PC they were convinced I was using the internet to find the devil. lol...

I guess this horrible person... well.

Parents have a lot to answer for, not sure what the devil would be doing in the internet, it’s not an episode of buffy if you ever do find the devil in the internet maybe ask for nicer parents, sweeten the deal y’know