Not sure what motherboard and case I should use for my PC Build

adam1234321 · 27 Oct 2019 at 20:45

My budget is around £550 and I’m having trouble choosing an appropriate motherboard and PC case for my computer. Here’s the build so far:

Processor: Intel i5-8400
Memory: Crucial 8GB DDR4-2666 UDIMM
Storage drive: Crucial BX500 240GB SSD
Power supply: Corsair VS550 550W
Operating system: Windows 10 Home.

The total cost of the things listed above amounts to approximately £400 which gives me around £150 to spend on a motherboard and a PC case. I’ve considered buying an MSI Z390-A PRO for my motherboard (£100) and a Phanteks P300 (£50) or a KOLINK Stronghold (£40) for my PC case but I’m not sure if these are good choices.

I don’t need a GPU since I’ll only be using this PC for music production and school work. However, I’m thinking of getting an RTX 2060 or a GTX 1660 next year when I get more money so that I could play games which are more graphics intensive, therefore I would need a motherboard which is compatible with either GPU.

Please let me know if I’ve missed out any fundamental components - my understanding of computer electronics is quite limited since only 16 and don’t know much about hardware

Minibiker · 27 Oct 2019 at 21:14

Welcome

What storage drives do you have with this build? I'm not sure on which Intel boards are decent around the £100 mark... So depending on which gets recommended by others I'd wait to see how much you have for a case, you may end up with a bit more than expected :cool:

adam1234321 · 27 Oct 2019 at 21:42

Minibiker said:
Welcome

What storage drives do you have with this build? I'm not sure on which Intel boards are decent around the £100 mark... So depending on which gets recommended by others I'd wait to see how much you have for a case, you may end up with a bit more than expected

My storage drive is a Crucial BX500 240GB SSD I forgot to include it in the list lol

And yeah I did a bit of research on intel motherboards and only found ones which are between like £150-£200. I could try to buy a cheaper power supply or spend £20/£30 more on the motherboard if there aren’t any decent options

LuckyBenski · 28 Oct 2019 at 18:24

Personally I would upgrade the PSU to at least a Corsair CX series if you're planning on adding a graphics card later.

In terms of motherboard is there a reason you want a locked CPU with a Z series chipset? If you want the option of upgrading to an overclockable CPU later then fair enough. If not you might consider some midrange boards in the B series.

adam1234321 · 28 Oct 2019 at 22:21

LuckyBenski said:
Personally I would upgrade the PSU to at least a Corsair CX series if you're planning on adding a graphics card later.

In terms of motherboard is there a reason you want a locked CPU with a Z series chipset? If you want the option of upgrading to an overclockable CPU later then fair enough. If not you might consider some midrange boards in the B series.

Good idea, I’ll get a CX550M instead

And I’m not really interested in overclocking anything, would the b360m be a good option for my build or should I consider a different model?

LuckyBenski · 29 Oct 2019 at 00:34

adam1234321 said:
Good idea, I’ll get a CX550M instead

And I’m not really interested in overclocking anything, would the b360m be a good option for my build or should I consider a different model?

The main difference for Z series boards aside from overclocking is usually some extra M.2 slots sometimes, and 4 memory slots over 2 on lower end chipsets. You'll probably find any board will satisfy you provided it has enough usb connections for you.