New PC Build Help

[Eldarius]

Hi everybody,

I'm looking to build a new "Budget" gaming PC - I work in IT and have assembled hundreds of PC's before in the past so i'm capable of buying components and assembling the rig myself. In a nutshell, my motherboard/processor are quite old (i5 3700 series processor) and have packed in, time to build a new rig. The problem is, i'm moving house in the next 2 weeks which means i have a lot of stuff i need to buy so i want to build a rig i can expand upon but with solid foundations.

I want to play games like WoW:Shadowlands and COD: Warzone on high/ultra settings with good FPS.

In my budget, i have approximately £600 to spend, with a view of spending a further £400 in a months time to get a good graphics card. A friend has gifted me a pretty shitty graphics card that will be ok for a month or so until i can get the money together for a replacement (The card is a GTX 1050 Ti)

So in short: I want a decent motherboard, processor, CPU and SSD (500gb), and recommendation as to what wattage i'll need from a PSU. I've been working on the assumption 600W would be adequate.

What are your thoughts on below:

Case (£100) - Phanteks Enthoo Pro Full ATX Case
https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/...82E16811854069

Motherboard (£205) Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wifi Motherboard (AM4)
https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/...82E16813145165

Processor (£185) - AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Processor (AM4)
https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/...82E16819113569

Power Supply (£77) EVGA 600W Gold Standard Non Modular PSU
https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/...82E16817438157

SSD Storage (£56) Western Digital 500GB SSD
https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/...82E16820250087

RAM (£76) Team T-Force Vulcan DDR4 3200mhz 16GB (2x8GB)
https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/...82E16820331354

Total Cost: £641

After building the rig, i'd be looking at adding a perhaps another SSD drive in there, upgrading the graphics card and potentially adding some more RAM. I'm wanting to build a rig that (once i get a decent graphics card with it) handle most games on high settings, but not be some crazy ultra gaming rig that will handle anything i throw at it with the best settings ever.

[Kaneiac]

Just at a glance you can probably step down and save a fair bit of money on a b550 motherboard. Don't really see the need for a x570 with your specs

[Kagthul]

Just at a glance you can probably step down and save a fair bit of money on a b550 motherboard. Don't really see the need for a x570 with your specs

Theres very little reason for any consumer to use X570. Its basically for people who also do prosumer stuff on the side so they can benefit from more PCIe lanes or the like.

Anyone who is just daily driving and gaming can get by just fine B550.

And the GPU shortage isnt going to be solved in a month or two.

You're looking at September. Or later.

Otherwise, it looks fine.

Id maybe go with a better PSU (Spend out on a Seasonic S12III 650W) but the EVGA unit isnt going to explode or anything.

[Eldarius]

Just at a glance you can probably step down and save a fair bit of money on a b550 motherboard. Don't really see the need for a x570 with your specs

Theres very little reason for any consumer to use X570. Its basically for people who also do prosumer stuff on the side so they can benefit from more PCIe lanes or the like.

Anyone who is just daily driving and gaming can get by just fine B550.

And the GPU shortage isnt going to be solved in a month or two.

You're looking at September. Or later.

Otherwise, it looks fine.

Id maybe go with a better PSU (Spend out on a Seasonic S12III 650W) but the EVGA unit isnt going to explode or anything.

Fair enough - I've looked at the various ATX b550 motherboards, there's quite a lot of them. I'm not sure which one to go for.

What are your thoughts on this?

https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/...quicklink=true

[Kagthul]

The Tomahawk is largely regarded as one of the best of the bunch.

If you're budget shopping, the ASRock B450 Pro4 is just fine and decently cheap.

Also...

since you're going with the 3600..

You might actually want to consider the Core i5 11400.

Gamers Nexus just did a video on it. Its cheaper and performs as good or better than the 3600.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYdH...el=GamersNexus

Paired with a B560 motherboard you can OC the RAM and gain a fair bit of performance.

You also have an iGPU unlike the 3600.

Edited: Apparently in the UK you can actually get the 3600 for roughly the same price as the 11400, so that might be a wash (theyll perform about the same and cost about the same). The 10400F, on the other hand, is about 50 quid cheaper and will perform almost exactly the same (just a tiny bit slower boost clocks).

So, again, if you're "on a budget" that might be a better way to go. Something like this:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/Zckj7X

CPU: Intel Core i5-10400F 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor (£124.99 @ AWD-IT)
Motherboard: ASRock B560 Pro4 ATX LGA1200 Motherboard (£106.93 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £231.92
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-12 07:02 BST+0100

[Temp name]

I'd also try looking into a cheaper case. Not that the one you picked isn't good, it's just very expensive considering your budget.

[Viikkis]

In my budget, i have approximately £600 to spend, with a view of spending a further £400 in a months time to get a good graphics card. A friend has gifted me a pretty shitty graphics card that will be ok for a month or so until i can get the money together for a replacement (The card is a GTX 1050 Ti)

Unfortunately the situation with GPU stock and prices won't disappear in a month. You will probably need to use that old GPU from your friend for a longer while but at least it is okay card for WoW.

It's a shitty time to build a PC now so either stick with the old card and lower settings and wait for the situation to get better (hard to predict that one though) and another option would be to look for a decent pre-built as their value is now much better than usually due to the GPU prices (prebuilts are sold at MSRP) you can actually buy a whole prebuilt system for the price of a GPU it's insane.

[Ange]

look for a decent pre-built as their value is now much better than usually due to the GPU prices (prebuilts are sold at MSRP) you can actually buy a whole prebuilt system for the price of a GPU it's insane.

While its true, that its right now the cheapest option to go with a pre-build, the parts are not sold for MSRP but at least MSRP+20%. But its still cheaper since GPU and CPU scalping pushed the prices to way above +20% and with premium mainboard or premium PSUs also higher in price, you end up with budget parts that would also be used in pre-builds anyways.

If you dont care about specific parts of the build (like RGB parts, 240mm AIO instead of a 360mm, RAM Kit quality choice etc.) a pre-build right now is cheaper and at stock.

With how even the 11th gen Intel CPUs are rising in price, I dont think we even hit the worst time for building.

[Eldarius]

I'd also try looking into a cheaper case. Not that the one you picked isn't good, it's just very expensive considering your budget.

I've been looking for some pre-builds but for some reason around my budget they seem to be HDD heavy without SSD's which seems absolutely bizarre to me this day in age... I also have a Windows 10 license, so it's sort of dead money. If you know any good vendors / see any guild builds though let me know! I'm really not adverse to not doing the dirty work myself if the price is right.

I'd also try looking into a cheaper case. Not that the one you picked isn't good, it's just very expensive considering your budget.

I seem to be struggling to find full size towers these days - has technology improved so mid towers are the meta in building machines these days? All the mid towers i tried to build in the past were never big enough for the big graphics cards, which is why i've always gone with big towers. I've got a small 128gb SSD thats new, and 1TB HDD that's new and unused.

My initial thought is windows 10 on the 128GB SSD, big lad games on the 500GB ssd i want to buy, 1TB HDD for the non performance games / installs. So one of the things i need in a case in decent drive expansions with the ability to fit a wider graphics card longer term.

[Kagthul]

I seem to be struggling to find full size towers these days - has technology improved so mid towers are the meta in building machines these days? All the mid towers i tried to build in the past were never big enough for the big graphics cards, which is why i've always gone with big towers. I've got a small 128gb SSD thats new, and 1TB HDD that's new and unused.

You can fit full size 12", 3-slot GPUs in small mITX cases, much less mid towers.

My initial thought is windows 10 on the 128GB SSD, big lad games on the 500GB ssd i want to buy, 1TB HDD for the non performance games / installs. So one of the things i need in a case in decent drive expansions with the ability to fit a wider graphics card longer term.

You really shouldn't need a ton of drive expansion. 3.5" drives are sorta dead at this point. and 2.5 drives you can literaly put anywhere with double sided tape.

Not that youd need that much storage for a basic gaming rig, id think.

I went with a M.2 500GB SSD for the lack of cables.

Okay, so, build one is "cheap".

Itll still perform great, mind you. The 10400 is more than fine (see that GN video).

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/2RbBp2

CPU: Intel Core i5-10400F 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor (£124.99 @ AWD-IT)
Motherboard: ASRock B560M-HDV Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard (£76.33 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£64.79 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£49.76 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£42.96 @ Laptops Direct)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12III 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£50.47 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £409.30
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-12 10:43 BST+0100

The next one stretches your initial 600 pound budget, but will get you more performance:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/ZvkVQD

CPU: Intel Core i5-10600KF 4.1 GHz 6-Core Processor (£178.99 @ AWD-IT)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Pure Rock 2 CPU Cooler (£31.98 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME Z490M-PLUS Micro ATX LGA1200 Motherboard (£163.99 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (£64.79 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive (£49.76 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case (£42.96 @ Laptops Direct)
Power Supply: SeaSonic CORE GM 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£72.95 @ Box Limited)
Total: £605.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-12 10:48 BST+0100

Spends all the money, but the 10600KF will easily overclock to 5.0ghz with just a few clicks. For another 20 quid you can get the Non-F model with the iGPU just in case you think you might need it.

Also "upgraded" the PSU to the Gold Semi Modular (mostly for convenience). There's nothing wrong with the Bronze non modular unit (The S12III i put in the cheaper build).

Edit: looking at a picture of the back side, the Q300L has a mount for a 3.5” drive and several spaces for 2.5” drives (and you could likely put more 3.5” drives on the back side as well, with some clever application of double-sided tape.

[TJ]

I've been looking for some pre-builds but for some reason around my budget they seem to be HDD heavy without SSD's which seems absolutely bizarre to me this day in age... I also have a Windows 10 license, so it's sort of dead money. If you know any good vendors / see any guild builds though let me know! I'm really not adverse to not doing the dirty work myself if the price is right.

You posted in pounds so I assume you're in the UK. If so, what about this one?

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ocuk-...tml#t=b1d2f2g1

Decent specs and under £1000, that's also with a 500gb SSD. It doesn't say the motherboard or PSU (defo upgrade this), but you can always ring them up to ask them which ones they are and upgrade if preferred.

Edit: Was thinking for the long run with your included extra £400.