Spec me a build to replace my aging 2500K system.

valve90210

valve90210

valve90210

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17 Jan 2006
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Just before my son was born, I took the opportunity to build myself a PC, knowing it would be a good long time before I would be able to build a new one.

My boy turned 12 in January and I'm still using pretty much the same PC - I changed out the graphics card when my original died and that's about it.

The current spec:
i5 2500K
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3P
32GB Crucial DDR3 PC3-12800
GTX 1660 Super
and a bundle of hard drives which I've amassed over the years.

Impressively, this PC still largely runs everything I throw at it (I game at 1080P and will continue to do as as I will be keeping my existing monitors (2 x Samsung S24E200) but it is starting to get a little long in the tooth and I want to build a new PC - budget somewhere about £1,000 ish.

It will be used for work, long days of InDesign and Photoshop, along with office tasks, so a lot of RAM is important; and gaming - I tend to play lots of FPS, driving, etc etc, so good gaming performance is important.

I'd really like to go with the Lian Li Lancool 205M Mesh in white, as I like it looks and it'll (just about) fit on my unfortunately narrow desk. A little RGB would be nice if possible without sacrificing performance for the money.

I don't need a keyboard or mouse as Ill use my existing ones and I don't need wifi on the motherboard if that saves me anything.

Can anyone give me any suggestions as a starting point for the best bang for my buck but with consideration of longevity I'd like a bit of an upgrade path so this system can last me a good few years.
 
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I think my priority for graphics card would be it's gaming performance, as my 1660 Super has no real issues in Photoshop etc even on my aged system.

Games wise, recently played games include Dying Light 1 & 2, Ghost Recon Wildlands, motortown, stardew valley (lol), satisfactory, scrap mechanic, trail makers. That kind of stuff, basically anything my lad wants to play that is co-op, and probably some VR games on his Quest 2.
 
I am so out of touch with PC parts, I have no idea about pretty much any of the parts in either spec. lol. I'm sort of leaning towards the AMD build as I often hear good things about AMD CPUs these days when it comes to value for money.

Is the 7600X a decent CPU, likely to last me a good while? I'm sure the performance of all the new CPUs will be vastly improvements over my current one but have no idea how much of a step up.

I know nothing about the 6750XT is that a decent card, I've been an nvidia user for pretty much all my PC gaming life, and have some awareness of their current and previous range of cards, whereabouts does the 6759XT sit in comparison, and how much of a jump up from my 1660 Super would it be? (I'm guessing somewhat considerale)
 
Thanks for that, the 6750XT does seem to be a decent bit of kit then, as does the 7600X, seems like those would be good options for me, and as you say the AM5 platform having guaranteed support for another couple of years seems like a good choice.

Just having a bit of a search for 6750XT cards, any pointers for ones which fit my budget and are they likely to fit in the case as some look pretty long?
 
Looks to me like the 7600x would be a huge step up from my current PC. My main concern really will end up being gaming as although I use my PC for work, my 2500K does everything I need it to still, and that includes running the latest versions of Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator and I can't say it's ever really had too much of a hard time except on huge projects with a large number of pages chock full of images and complicated vector objects with effects.

the 6750XT also seems to be a huge jump up from my 1660 Super so I'm sure will do a grand job. My son's 1080ti seems to perform VR duties happily on his PC so again I'm sure this card would do a good job too.
 
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Gray2233 said:
It'll be just fine, although for longevity with a view for future upgrades 750-850W might be worthwhile but really isn't necessary for the recommended hardware.
Click to expand...
Any recommendations for power supplies that might be worthwhile with an eye to the future? If not to much extra, it might save me a bit in the longer term.
 
Thanks, I shall have a look around and see what I can find.

Also just noticed your edit about swapping out the 7600 instead of the 7600x, makes sense, if the performance is virtually identical.

Hoping to get my head round it all an order it this week with any luck.
 
Looking about I can get the Corsair RM850x Shift for about £150, is it worth spending the extra £60 not for future compatibility? Or would that money be better spent on additional storage for now?
 
Tetras said:
In my opinion: no, your budget isn't high enough to justify that, because the extra £60 could e.g. pay for a RX 6800 non-XT or a 7700 non-X.

If you buy a card that requires a 16 pin connector in the future, they do include adapters in the box for pre-ATX 3.0 PSUs, so the original RMx will still be usable.
Click to expand...
Makes complete sense, thank you,


On the memory front, any reason I couldn't go for:

TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C40 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit - White


Over the suggested:

TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel Kit


The price is the same?
 
Gray2233 said:
Should be fine, there's a chance it might not run at those speeds with your cpu, but at worst it'd still run at the same speeds as the initially suggested set.
Click to expand...
I see, worth the punt then as it's the same price.

Any particular thermal paste to go for, when I built my last PC I went for artic silver but I see there are loads of different options now, anything better than anything else, or substantially worse? (probably want to avoid liquid metal as that just seems like a recipe for disaster for someone who is essentially a beginner builder. lol)
 
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Lovely, that's kind of what I thought. Good to know the HSF will come with something.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £627.90 (includes delivery: £0.00)​


Just about to order the above, along with a 6750XT and a Corsair RM750x from elsewhere. And a HSF when I find one... lol
 
Lian Li Lancool 205M Mesh Micro-ATX PC Case White
CA-7B3-LL
£75 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail
CP-3DW-AM
£219 (incl. VAT)
£200 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
Asrock B650M PG Riptide (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard
MB-18Y-AK
£159 (incl. VAT)
£155 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
TeamGroup Delta RGB 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-51200C40 6400MHz Dual Channel Kit - White
MY-0AW-TG
£140 (incl. VAT)
£90 (incl. VAT)
Find out more
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Gray2233 said:
XMP basically lets you set the rated speeds in the bios with a quick selection, EXPO does the same thing only for AMD as of AM5.

That said, you can just manually input the timings/speeds/voltages as rated on the kit and it should be fine, some people don't like the faff but if I'm honest the amount of issues we see from people trying to run EXPO makes me inclined to set things up manually anyway.
Click to expand...
I see, so I can essentially get the ones I've got in my basket and then in the BIOS put in the 40-40-40-84 and it should work? And if not I can ask on here or have a little cry...lol
 
Cheers, I'm going to give the original one a try. I know it's daft but I want some RGB on this build because it actually represents a huge change for me, for many years everything of mine has had to be black, clothes PC parts, cars, you name it and I've had a lot of struggles mentally which I've gone through and come out and I'm trying to embrace positivity and happiness and bring some 'colour' into my life and this system is a physical representation of that as a reminder to myself.

I know it's stupid but it some how feels really important to me.
 
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Well, it's all arrived and I've built it, just getting a few bits installed now. seems to be running nicely. The BIOS worked fine with XMP so ram is running as it should. Thanks for all the help getting the parts picked out, I am so far out of touch with PC stuff these days I didn't know where to start!

I've ordered a couple of additional bits, another fan for the back of the case for exhaust, and a second 2tb NVME drive as I figured it would be good to have plenty of fast storage space and easier to do now before it's all cable managed. I've also got a cheap SSD coming which will be the drive I used for my work OneDrive files, leaving the really fast storage just for my own stuff! Besides a few questions about the modular power supply, the biggest headache was creating a bootable USB for windows so I could install it, the media creation tool kept failing so in the end I used Rufus which was actually very helpful as it bypassed the online account stuff so I've got a nice local account (which I'll spoil with adding my work MS account but nevermind) and it's running nicely. Now just wish I could bring back quick launch... lol
 
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