Help with a GFX card/PC purchase

[Alcarius]

Hello all! First, thanks to any who dare to assist me in this!!

So I'm looking at 3 computers, two are at Best Buy and the other is a Costco membership purchase. I'm going to list the relevant stats of each, including the prices. I want a computer that is going to last me a few years. The one I'm replacing just hit 5 years old and it has really been showing its age the last 2 years.

	PC 1	PC 2	PC 3
Brand	iBUYPOWER	ASUS	CyberPowerPC
Price	$1,179.99 (normally: $1,349.99)	$1,499.99	$1,199.99 (normally: $1,349.99
Processor	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (3rd Gen)	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (3rd Gen)	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (3rd Gen)
Memory	16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2666MHz	16GB DDR4 SDRAM 2666MHz	16GB DDR4 SDRAM 3000MHz
Storage	SSD: 480 GB / HDD: 1 TB	SSD: 512 GB / HDD: 1 TB	SSD: 240 GB / HDD: 2 TB
GFX Card	AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT 8GB	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070S (Super) 8GB	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070S (Super) 8GB

I'd be happy to answer any other questions that would help you, help me. Or, if you have alternatives, please share those as well. I should note I'd like to play games at max, or near max, graphics settings. I play a wide variety of games a great deal of hours each week and do some extremely minor Photoshop work.

[Temp name]

I'd go with the 3rd option. 240gb SSD is a bit small, but you can always upgrade that down the line yourself, or do it at the start for ~100 dollars for a very acceptable drive in the 1TB area.

It's really down to 1 and 3. But for 20 dollars I'd absolutely get the better RAM, GPU, and more HDD space. PC2 is just, without a sale, too expensive compared to the others. If it was discounted to 1250 or lower I'd start considering it.

Question though, you ever considered building it yourself?

[Alcarius]

I'd go with the 3rd option. 240gb SSD is a bit small, but you can always upgrade that down the line yourself, or do it at the start for ~100 dollars for a very acceptable drive in the 1TB area.

It's really down to 1 and 3. But for 20 dollars I'd absolutely get the better RAM, GPU, and more HDD space. PC2 is just, without a sale, too expensive compared to the others. If it was discounted to 1250 or lower I'd start considering it.

Question though, you ever considered building it yourself?

I tried pcpartpicker.com, but I am apparently garbage at picking parts because everything was more expensive that what I could find online. I don't know enough about parts to know what is a good price, for good parts setup.

I should mention that the 2nd PC option also comes with an extended warranty of 4 years. Not sure if that will change your mind or not.

[Gaaz]

Go with #3 if you plan upgrading SSD in the near future to accommodate games on it as well as OS. If it is your buy and forget choice, then go with the #1 option. This extra space on the SSD will go a long way in terms of speeding up load times in a few select games you could install on it in addition to the OS. WoW on an SSD is vastly different to a WoW on an HDD in terms of comfort.
But it is hard to say with 100% which choice is better because we do not know what MB is being used in those builds, power supply, memory timings, case etc... A crappy A-Gaming X-570 board with likely throttle you under load even if you do not overclock your CPU, if your cooling is bad. A Tomohawk b450 Max will not, despite being a generation older. x570 board performances are rather inconsistent right now. Faster memory is nice, but if timings are bad, you will not get any benefit from that speed. Power efficiency may also play a role.

[Usernameforforums]

Option 3 /10

[Alcarius]

With further digging, I've found the motherboard being used in PC #3 is: AMD B450 Ultra Durable Motherboard with Realtek® GbE LAN with cFosSpeed, PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2, RGB FUSION 2.0, Intel® Dual Band 802.11ac WIFI, CEC 2019 ready

Link: www (dot) gigabyte (dot) com/us/Motherboard/B450M-DS3H-WIFI-rev-10#kf

[Laqweeta]

As others have said, I'd go with 3 as well. Better GPU and better RAM. Spend an extra $100 and grab a 1TB SSD and you'll be golden.

[Gaaz]

So you'd suggest downgrading the GPU and ram for more ssd space when ssds are cheap as shit? Brilliant... /s

I guess reading comprehension is hard for some... Let me explain it a second time. If he plans upgrading - option #3. If, for some reason, he does not (maybe this person is a 90yo grandma who is afraid to pry open a computer case for example) - option #1. We do not know what games he/she plays. For a game like WoW, there is no functional difference between a 2070 super and a 5700XT. Especially if he has a 60Hz monitor. Placing it on an SSD IS a functional difference. Load times of the Battletech can be as high as 5 mins on an HDD. SSD cuts it to about 30 secs.
Basically, a 10% difference between a 2070S and a 5700XT is not a major deal breaker. Especially if the rest of his/her hardware can not utilize the said difference. For a 60Hz, hell even for a 120Hz monitor there is no difference between these cards when it comes to 1080 resolution in games like WoW. As for RAM - do you know the timings on the 3000MHz set? Are you actually sure that it is going to be faster than a 2666 one? I thought so.

[Temp name]

With further digging, I've found the motherboard being used in PC #3 is: AMD B450 Ultra Durable Motherboard with Realtek® GbE LAN with cFosSpeed, PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2, RGB FUSION 2.0, Intel® Dual Band 802.11ac WIFI, CEC 2019 ready

Link: www (dot) gigabyte (dot) com/us/Motherboard/B450M-DS3H-WIFI-rev-10#kf

Just don't overclock your system and you're fine.

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I guess reading comprehension is hard for some... Let me explain it a second time. If he plans upgrading - option #3. If, for some reason, he does not (maybe this person is a 90yo grandma who is afraid to pry open a computer case for example) - option #1

Considering his response to me asking if he thought of building it himself, I'd say he's fine with doing that.

Option 1 makes no sense. Even if you were afraid of opening it yourself, if you're buying it in a big box store, you can, 99% of the time, just ask one of the guys there to do it for you. Either they'll do it, or point you in the direction on someone who can do it for cheap. Hell, just slapping in an SSD would probably be free because it'll take 2 minutes, at most.

[Gaaz]

The timings would have to be seriously fucked to make it perform worse. There's literally nothing to upgrade on the third option except MAYBE adding more ssd space. Which is cheaper than the difference in the more powerful GPU and RAM. You're hilarious though. Good luck with your "MORE SSD SPACE IS MOST IMPORTANT!!!" idea. Oh, and when someone is looking at PCs like those listed they're typically going 1440... You keep making your own assumptions and I'll tell them which is the best deal.

I would guess that you have no idea how memory bandwidth relates to memory timings with regards to performance? A difference of 2CL would make the 2666MHz module as fast as the 3000MHz one. And it is hardly outrageous to assume that this can be a 2666 CL16 module vs a 3000 CL18 one. A 2666 CL14 is actually going to be faster than a 3000 CL16 one. And the price for these modules is going to be roughly the same. Neither you or me have ANY idea about actual timings, therefore your assumption that 3000MHz one is going to be faster is moronic at best.
Way to bash someone over an assumption that they might have a 1080 monitor (on a 5 year old rig)... by assuming that they have a 1440 one with a refresh rate that can actually chew through either of these cards! Nice!
And I never stated that SSD space is the most important factor. Again - you have some serious reading comprehension problems. My statement was a binary choice of #3 if he planned a further upgrade vs a #1 if he did not. And for the record, I would even swap my 3200 MHz CL16 memory for a 2666 CL16 one in favor of a larger SSD in a heartbeat if faced with that choice. Simply because I do have a Battletech installed and waiting for 5 mins at the loading screen is a below average experience to say the least. But you do you, keep chugging those "best deal" suggestions

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Just don't overclock your system and you're fine.

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Considering his response to me asking if he thought of building it himself, I'd say he's fine with doing that.

Option 1 makes no sense. Even if you were afraid of opening it yourself, if you're buying it in a big box store, you can, 99% of the time, just ask one of the guys there to do it for you. Either they'll do it, or point you in the direction on someone who can do it for cheap. Hell, just slapping in an SSD would probably be free because it'll take 2 minutes, at most.

I know plenty of stores that void warranty if a PC case is even opened, let alone tampered with. I totally agree that upgrading a PC should be and actually is a trivial matter in most cases. But since I work in retail, I meet plenty of people who for one reason or another are not prepared to do that. Most common reason - parents buying a PC for a kid and do not want to bother with it further. So the package has to be "as is". Also, we do not actually modify our prebuilt systems. Just like you suggested, all we can do is point a customer to a 3rd party to do that. And if something they installed damages our components, our warranty is void as well. Since we have no further control over what components are going to be inserted after the sale, typically we advise not to upgrade the rig until the warranty expires.

[Alcarius]

I want to thank everyone for their input. I ended up going with PC #3 and a $80 960 GB ADATA SSD.