Wife's laptop died, would appreciate some quick build help!

Associate
Joined
19 Aug 2012
Posts
21
Hi guys,

My wife was running an old Lenovo Ideapad Legion Y530, but it died on her last night and was badly needing replaced anyway, we had just been putting it off for a while. She uses her laptop for some programming/spreadsheet work, day to day browsing and gaming, so she needs to be able to do a bit of everything. Gaming wise she's happy playing at 1080p and won't need the bleeding edge parts, nor does she need to wait for the 40 series cards or new gen CPU's, she just needs a computer asap given her laptop has given up.

In terms of games she plays Valheim, Guild Wars 2, Divinity, Diablo but she has been severely limited by her laptop a) being fairly poor in general for gaming and b) degrading in performance as time went on. She's keen to play more games that she couldn't previously run on her laptop (She's excited for Stray, for example), but won't be needing to play Cyberpunk at 4k or anything crazy. She was playing these games on low settings and pulling 20fps at times, i have no idea how she managed to suffer through that experience.

I've put together a build with this in mind and hopefully the basket linking works below, but I'd also include a 3060TI FE, and we have a spare Phanteks P400 case to put it all in. Peripherals are not required.

My basket at OcUK:

Total: £728.10 (includes delivery: £12.30)​










My question is, is there anything here that is overkill or could be swapped out with something better? I'm loathe to spend the extra £100 on the 3070 FE given the type of gaming she does, so to me the 3060TI will be perfect to ensure she can play games for several years at 1080p without much issue. But i might be wrong!

Thanks guys.
 
Soldato
Joined
3 Apr 2009
Posts
3,973
Location
Warrington
Look like decent choices to me.

This memory kit is slightly faster and currently slightly cheaper: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cors...00c16-3600mhz-dual-channel-kit-my-4d3-cs.html
Guess you could consider going for 32gb, eg this is slightly more money and slightly slower, but would mean not having to upgrade RAM in future if new games start needing more:

The 850W power supply is a good idea if there's a chance of future upgrade to a high-end gpu, with next gen cards looking likely to be very power hungry. Could save some money by going for a 650W one now if that's not likely though.
Eg: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phanteks-amp-650w-80-plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-09q-pt.html

Could upgrade storage to gen4 nvme for a bit more (current benefits might be small, but faster storage might be more relevant for future games): https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cruc...3d-nand-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-074-cr.html

Yeah personally I would only go for an RTX 3070 for 1440p, doubt the difference would be that noticeable at 1080p.
 
Last edited:
Associate
OP
Joined
19 Aug 2012
Posts
21
Look like decent choices to me.

This memory kit is slightly faster and currently slightly cheaper: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cors...00c16-3600mhz-dual-channel-kit-my-4d3-cs.html
Guess you could consider going for 32gb, eg this is slightly more money and slightly slower, but would mean not having to upgrade RAM in future if new games start needing more:

The 850W power supply is a good idea if there's a chance of future upgrade to a high-end gpu, with next gen cards looking likely to be very power hungry. Could save some money by going for a 650W one now if that's not likely though.
Eg: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/phanteks-amp-650w-80-plus-gold-modular-power-supply-ca-09q-pt.html

Could upgrade storage to gen4 nvme for a bit more (current benefits might be small, but faster storage might be more relevant for future games): https://www.overclockers.co.uk/cruc...3d-nand-nvme-solid-state-drive-hd-074-cr.html

Yeah personally I would only go for an RTX 3070 for 1440p, doubt the difference would be that noticeable at 1080p.
That's a good shout on the PSU, i just defaulted to an 850w out of habit, oversight from my part. If i drop to a 650w and spent the extra cash on a better NVME that seems like a good way to optimise the build a bit since i doubt she'll be upgrading the GPU for a number of years. I've had good experiences with the Corsair RAM before and i'm not averse to her doubling up later down the line if she needs it, so i think i'll stick with the Corsair for now on that one. Conscious that it's a bit of a waste if she won't need the full 32GB, and it's not as if RAM is overly expensive should i need to upgrade her.

Thanks man, appreciate the advice.

I've also bought the 3060 TI already, so that part is sorted out.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
19 Aug 2012
Posts
21
I ended up going with the build in my OP, except i took GreatAuk's advice on the PSU and NVME. I also managed to find the RGB version of the Corsair RAM for less than the standard version, so i got that.

Thanks everyone for the advice.
 
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