Please help spec me a new Gaming PC - £1200-1400

[The Scop]

Hi everyone,

With all the Coronavirus restrictions in place at the moment, staying at home has persuaded me to bring forward making a new gaming PC. I hope to buy the parts towards the end of April/some point in May.

I'm always so grateful for the help and advice you guys on the forum have given me, it's always much appreciated. My last gaming PC is still going 11 years strong . Of course technology has changed since then and I want something new and able to handle today's and tomorrow's AAA titles, especially looking forward to Cyberpunk 2077 later in the year.

I am open to all ideas, I have a budget of between £1200-1400. I already have a keyboard and mouse and my 1080p 24 inch monitor will do for now. I am hoping to buy a 1440p 144Hz monitor later in the year (ideally no bigger than 27 inch) so ideally the system can run the AAA games at High/Ultra on that new monitor.
---
CPU / Mobo / Cooler: With these I am happy go either the AMD or Intel route, I'm sure you guys know the best performance suited to my budget. I have never used water cooling before so perhaps it would better to get a nice air cooler for the cpu.

RAM: Ideally 32GB, I realise 16GB is perfectly adequate for gaming at present but some future proofing would be good, and when I play Cities Skylines on my laptop it can hit 15 ish GB at full load so extra memory would be awesome.

GPU: Nvidia has been my preference for sometime now, both in the old gaming PC and in my laptop. I've heard good things about the RTX 2070 and RTX 2080, but I suppose it depends what the budget allows for.

HDD / OS: I will need a copy of Windows 10 Home or Pro. SSD for the Operating System. I would also need an decent size HDD for storage of music, photos, etc (1-2TB). With regards to the games I have no idea if it would make sense to have another SSD reserved solely for them (guess it would mean faster load times) or whether they should just go on the Storage HDD?

Case / PSU / Misc: I don't have too much preference regarding the case. If it could have a window and lighting of sorts so I can see what's going on in there that would be nice. PSU wise I don't know the best watt level for the components but if it could be modular that would be awesome as I've had a non modular PSU blow on me before and I know it would be much easier to change over.

Minor bits wise I will also need some thermal paste, I've got plenty of screwdrivers, lol.


Thanks so much in advance for your help everyone.


Mark
(The Scop)

 

[EsaT]

About time to update, unless wanting coming consoles to curb stomp your PC.

Intel is really no-go if you're looking into future instead of past.
They're selling yester-yesteryear's hardware without any upgrade path beyond next-gen console level at luxury level.
Next-gen consoles will bring pretty much slightly underclocked (for energy efficiency) variant of Ryzen 3700X with its cores/threads as base level.

That would be the starting level if you want CPU to stay good for some years.
Then you could swap in improved architecture 12 core likely at good price from discounts. (16 core would be gross overkill for gaming for long time)
For no CPU updates until next complete overhaul 12core/24 thread 3900X would have cores to dedicate for even the heaviest games without background stuff affecting it.

In motherboards fair £100 MSI B450 Tomahawk Max would be bang per buck choise.
With good case cooling/ambient temperature it would do decently well with 12/16 core. (MSI rulez in B450/Asus&Gigabyte scam)
But if you want board with plenty of muscle to handle those higher CPUs without warming then X570 would give that.
In them MSI plain sucks with no better VRMs than their B450 board. And while Asus corrected VRMs they facepalmed in minus of X570, active chipset cooler, by putting that directly under graphics card to be baked by its heat.
That leaves Gigabyte with best balanced X570 boards with X570 Aorus Elite pretty darn well priced for feature set.

If wanting anything approaching similar life span, then 2x16GB kit is indeed good choise.
16GB simply doesn't have room for background stuff with heavier games.
With bloatness of everything doesn't need that much of for example multitab web browing to hog multiple GBs.

In graphics cards you won't get godo future proofness right now.
In fact future proofness per price pretty much worsers with price with shard drop in performance per price.
And unless you'll be updating that medieval resolution monitor soon, expensive GPUs make little sense.

2560x1440 VAs start from around £260 (out of stock) and cheapest IPS is at £350.


Better to have 1TB SSD to improve game loading times at least in heavier games.
While with more than enough of RAM, OS caches accessed files speeding up next level load up times, that doesn't last over shot down.
SSD caching would be better in that:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/did-some-benchmarking-of-an-ssd-caching-solution.2533859/


650W PSU is sweet spot for gaming PC, unless building up space heater.
Would need very power hungry for gaming PC for it to draw more than about 350W.
Phanteks AMP is now well priced.
Though if wanting like that decade of use, then something like 12 year warranty Seasonic Prime would do the job besides having more higher end than standard efficiency.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seas...-80-plus-platinum-power-supply-ca-07b-ss.html


While RGB won't ever make PC faster, it can certainly make it slower by overheating parts:

Though Scythe doesn't charge ridiculous scammery prices for RGB...
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/scyt...-cpu-cooler-with-pwm-fan-120mm-hs-04c-sy.html

 

[The Scop]

Cheers for your advice EsaT, that's a lot to process . I've looked at some of the components you've mentioned. Could you suggest a basket for me please? I only ask as there's so many RAMs, models of GPUs, PSUs, etc I'm in over my head as to which ones work best, the importance of all these different ram timings, and whether that influences whether the memory actually works or not with the particular motherboard. I like the look of that air cooler, and that motherboard looks a good choice for a gaming pc and also for an inexperienced builder such as myself to get and use/setup.

Cheers in advance


Mark
(The Scop)

 

[sideways14a]

3700x with either a 2070s or 5700xt depending on monitors ect..

 

[The Scop]

Cheers for your advice sideways14a. I have put together an initial basket. I realise it take me above my originally intended budget. I wanted you guys to see what you thought // if all the parts are compatible with each other // if there's any brands and/or parts you'd change // if the PSU is powerful enough // if I should get Win10 pro over Home, etc?

My idea with it was I'd put the OS on the Samsung 250gb M2 drive, games on the Samsung 1TB SSD, and pics, music, etc on the Seagate 1TB HDD.

MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £103.99
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core 4.4GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail £299.99
Scythe SCMG-5100TUF Mugen 5 TUF RGB CPU Cooler With PWM Fan - 120mm £49.99
Super Flower Leadex III 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply - Black £89.99
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £6.49
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M.2 2280 PCI-e 3.0 x4 NVMe Solid State Drive £89.99
Samsung 1TB 860 QVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 64 Layer 3D V-NAND Solid State Drive (MZ-76Q1T0BW) £109.99
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER WindForce OC 3X 8G 8192MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card £518.99
Phanteks Eclipse P400 Air Midi Tower DRGB Case - Black £83.99
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit DVD - OEM (MS-FQC-08929) £149.99
Seagate 1TB BarraCuda 7200rpm 64MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (ST1000DM010) £34.99
Patriot Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS432G320C6K) £158.99
-- Total £1697.38

I have no idea how to properly paste a basket in the forum like you guys do, argh lol. Hope all the info comes through and I haven't missed any components.


Cheers in advance again for your help/advice.


Mark
(The Scop)

 

[Joxeon]

I would go with a 1tb nvme as you only have 1 nvme slot on the tomahawk so you want to make the most of it, I would also steer clear of Samsung as they are overpriced with a 240gb costing 90 quid when you could get a cheaper brand 1tb for £30 more and you wouldn't notice a difference in terms of performance. You can download Windows 10 pro for free then get Cheap activation key for a couple of quid if you shop around.

 

[GregI]

Bad time to be buying the 3700x from OcUK. Last week it shot up £30-40. It used to be £259 which was good and then settled at £269. Now at £299 I'd be waiting again

 

[The Scop]

Thanks for your advice Joxeon and GregI. Much appreciated. I have revised my basket below. Can you guys take a look and let me know what you think, also please can you let me know if any of the parts are incompatible?

Following Joxeon's advice I have removed the Samsung SSD and re-focused to a larger 1TB nvme ssd. I have kept a standard HDD too. I'm guessing it would be ok to have Windows 10 on the nvme and also a few of the more meaty games, like Cities Skylines and Cyberpunk 2077 (in the future) and put the less demanding games on the storage HDD? (I use Steam and Blizzard for my pc gaming and both let you install games over several hard drives if desired). I have also removed Windows 10 from the basket and will get a key elsewhere as you've advised. As mentioned I will be ordering this around end of April/early May time (coronavirus permitting of course), so hopefully the prices may have gone down a bit too.

MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £103.99
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER WindForce OC 3X 8G 8192MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card £518.99
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core 4.4GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail £299.99
Super Flower Leadex III 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply - Black £89.99
Seagate 2TB Barracuda 7200RPM 256MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (ST2000DM008) £50.99
WD Black 1TB SN750 M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive Includes Heatsink (WDS100T3XHC) £189.95
Scythe SCMG-5100TUF Mugen 5 TUF RGB CPU Cooler With PWM Fan - 120mm £49.99
Phanteks Eclipse P400 Air Midi Tower DRGB Case - Black £83.99
Patriot Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS432G320C6K) £158.99
Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £6.49
Total: £1553.36


Thanks much in advance again for all your help


Mark
(The Scop)

 

[ST_Craig]

Bad time to be buying the 3700x from OcUK. Last week it shot up £30-40. It used to be £259 which was good and then settled at £269. Now at £299 I'd be waiting again

Yep. £270 from the bay. Awesome cpu.

WD Black 1TB

I think that is a bit OTT, especially for £189. I would personally look to a 500Gb WD Blue, these are going from around £60 for the SATA version, and £70 for the NVME. The Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB is a great priced NVME SSD, and fast for £72-74.

For GPU, I would personally look to pre-owned. You can get a 1080Ti 11Gb, for around £400, there are a few on the bay at the moment. And the 1080Ti is slightly faster than the 2070, as the resolution scales up. Obviously, no warranty, and it could have been mined, or overclocked. The 5700XT seems to be holding well against the 1080Ti, and the 2070 super. Problem could be the AMD drivers, most reviews are negative for the drivers.

For Harddrive, I would look to 3Tb, which seems to be the sweet spot for price and size. The Toshiba P300 is a good priced drive, and 7200. The Seagate BarraCuda 3Tb is only a bit more, but is a 5400rpm drive.

 

[sideways14a]

AMD drivers issue is massively overblown, if you need to shave a few quid then i would drop the 2070s and go for a 5700xt

 

[EsaT]

WD Black 1TB SN750 M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen3 Solid State Drive Includes Heatsink (WDS100T3XHC) £189.95

Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound (3.5g) £6.49

Silver overhype gunk hasn't been any top paste in long long time and bundled is basically equally good.
If wanting separate paste it would better be actually good paste and only when having more money than knowing what to do with.

In SSDs only things I would look at are tech: SATA vs NVMe, QLC vs TLC and then price.
And skipping out of stock £130 WD Blue SN550 we haved multiple NVMes at £150.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/seag...state-drive-rv.1-zp1000cm3a001-hd-3c0-se.html

And that Nvidia is definitely salty priced for performance, which isn't that much better in average than sub £400 Radeon 5700 XT.

 

[The Scop]

Thanks ST_Craig, and thanks again sideways14a and EsaT. When it comes to GPUs Nvidia is really just my personal preference, had some trouble with my ati 4890 back in the day. I have changed the Gigabyte 2070 out for the Zotac one (presently out of stock but sure they must get some more in the future). Its a tad cheaper and it has a 5 year warranty instead of the 3 of the Gigabyte one.

Apologies EsaT, the arctic brand thermal paste seemed to be in all the gaming pc builder mags back in 2008/9, lol my knowledge of modern bits/brands isn't so good xD. I did not realize the Scythe cooler came with some, that will be perfect

I have dumped the expensive 1TB WD Black nvme ssd and changed it for the seagate one EsaT suggested. 1TB should be good for the OS and what I would guess will be around 8-12 AAA games I would really care about speedy loads for (If it turns out I don't need that much space I'll change it at order for that 500GB WD Blue one also suggested). The rest of my retro/less demanding/nostalgia games can always go on the HDD, of which I changed to the 3TB Toshiba P300 as you suggested St_Craig. I have a lot of music and photos so you're right better more than less storage and at that great price.

I have put the changed spec below, please can you guys have a looksie, give me the nod of approval or any other suggestions, namely that it all works/is compatible together and I'll save this list for a few weeks time. I am of course happy to shop around the web for other prices but will always go for/support OcUK's shop if I can and the price isn't crazy different as they and you guys have been good to me the past 11 years.

AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core 4.4GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail £299.99
Scythe SCMG-5100TUF Mugen 5 TUF RGB CPU Cooler With PWM Fan - 120mm £49.99
MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard £103.99
Patriot Viper Steel 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit (PVS432G320C6K) £158.99
Zotac GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8192MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card £499.99 (Out of Stock at the moment)
Seagate Barracuda 510 1TB PCIe NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive RV.1 (ZP1000CM3A001) £149.99
Toshiba 3TB P300 7200RPM Performance Hard Drive (HDWD130UZSVA) £64.99
Super Flower Leadex III 650W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply - Black £89.99
Phanteks Eclipse P400 Air Midi Tower DRGB Case - Black £83.99

Total at present: £1501.91

Then in the future when I have some more money I will devote a rough £300 ish to getting the best 1440p 144Hz monitor I can for the money (ideally no bigger than 27 inches as haven't got space for bigger).


Cheers in advance for all your help


Mark
(The Scop)

 

[Biggilus]

Was about to start a post for a system that will probably be 99% similar to this so just chipping in here.

Somehow got it in my mind the tomahawk won't support a WiFi card? Unfortunately hard cabling an ethernet cable isn't on the cards in my current living space. And graphics cards, see most speccing nvidia, best bang for buck these days?

Ta in advance x

 

[lee32uk]

Was about to start a post for a system that will probably be 99% similar to this so just chipping in here.

Somehow got it in my mind the tomahawk won't support a WiFi card? Unfortunately hard cabling an ethernet cable isn't on the cards in my current living space. And graphics cards, see most speccing nvidia, best bang for buck these days?

Ta in advance x

You can just buy a wireless add in card if you need wifi, like the ones below. Or buy the MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC instead if you want it built in.

As for best bang for buck gpu that would probably be AMD. The 5700XT is usually cheaper than the 2070S for similar performance.


My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x TP-Link Archer T6E Dual-Band Wireless AC1300 PCI-E Adapter= £34.99
• 1 x ASUS PCE-AC56 Dual-Band Wireless AC1300 PCI-E Adapter= £34.99

Total: £78.68 (includes shipping: £8.70)
​

 

[Biggilus]

Nice one thanks Lee, do have something very similar in my current system I'll use, didn't know integrated was a thing and that was what was being referred to.