New Gaming PC build - sensecheck/advice

[daddy cool]

I don’t keep up to date with PC specs, and build a decent system very infrequently. Only really play 1 or 2 games - basically whatever the latest Battlefield game is (currently BF5) and something else.
Ive dabbled with overclocking in the past, but not really that bothered, just want a solid fast system out of the box that will last another 5-10 years!

Current set-up (about 9 years old, except GPU which is ~5 years):
• Intel i7-2600k
• ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Mobo
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 RAM
• Corsair CPU watercooler
• MSI R9 390X GPU

Will be keeping my Corsair 750W TX PSU and Antec case, 1TB SSD, and LG 34” Ultrawide monitor (which uses Freesync, hence staying with AMD cards)

Planning on an Radeon RX 5700XT GPU (£450), as that should see me for a good few years.

Thought I might stray away from Intel processors for the first time, as AMD seems better bang for buck. Very quick draft build:

• Ryzen 5 3600 (£180)
• MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS AM4 DDR4 ATX Motherboard (£166)
• Corsair Hydro H80i v2 CPU Cooler (£100)
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz (£147)
Total: £593

Does this seem ok/compatible/best I can get for the money? Anywhere I can save money (eg, Motherboard?) but still keep it a good gaming system? It needs to be a PCi4 Mobo though, to take full advantage of the GPU, but I guess I don't need all the bells and whistles.
Presumably the existing 750W PSU is still enough juice for the new system?

Whole upgrade is basically a grand, which does make me wince a bit!

[Jinx]

daddy cool said:

I don’t keep up to date with PC specs, and build a decent system very infrequently. Only really play 1 or 2 games - basically whatever the latest Battlefield game is (currently BF5) and something else.
Ive dabbled with overclocking in the past, but not really that bothered, just want a solid fast system out of the box that will last another 5-10 years!

Current set-up (about 9 years old, except GPU which is ~5 years):
• Intel i7-2600k
• ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Mobo
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 RAM
• Corsair CPU watercooler
• MSI R9 390X GPU

Will be keeping my Corsair 750W TX PSU and Antec case, 1TB SSD, and LG 34” Ultrawide monitor (which uses Freesync, hence staying with AMD cards)

Planning on an Radeon RX 5700XT GPU (£450), as that should see me for a good few years.

Thought I might stray away from Intel processors for the first time, as AMD seems better bang for buck. Very quick draft build:

• Ryzen 5 3600 (£180)
• MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS AM4 DDR4 ATX Motherboard (£166)
• Corsair Hydro H80i v2 CPU Cooler (£100)
• Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 DRAM 3200MHz (£147)
Total: £593

Does this seem ok/compatible/best I can get for the money? Anywhere I can save money (eg, Motherboard?) but still keep it a good gaming system? It needs to be a PCi4 Mobo though, to take full advantage of the GPU, but I guess I don't need all the bells and whistles.
Presumably the existing 750W PSU is still enough juice for the new system?

Whole upgrade is basically a grand, which does make me wince a bit!

To be honest you don't need PCIe 4.0 for the GPU - PCIe 3 has plenty enough bandwidth for current GPUs. The latest NVMe drives though will take advantage of it and of course it will become the standard further down the line (the only current GPU that performs measurably better on PCIe 4 is the AMD 5500XT as they put it on an 8x rather than 16x bus width - so on PCIe 3.0 x8 it is bottlenecked somewhat whilst 4.0 x8 is fine).
Can you wait a couple of weeks? The new B550 motherboards should be available and also rumours are the 3000 cpus may get a refresh (so 3600XT might be available)

[geeks]

Also have a look at the last Linus Tech review of storage, it would seem NVMe 4 isn't worth the uplift either.

[daddy cool]

Jinx said:

To be honest you don't need PCIe 4.0 for the GPU - PCIe 3 has plenty enough bandwidth for current GPUs. The latest NVMe drives though will take advantage of it and of course it will become the standard further down the line (the only current GPU that performs measurably better on PCIe 4 is the AMD 5500XT as they put it on an 8x rather than 16x bus width - so on PCIe 3.0 x8 it is bottlenecked somewhat whilst 4.0 x8 is fine).
Can you wait a couple of weeks? The new B550 motherboards should be available and also rumours are the 3000 cpus may get a refresh (so 3600XT might be available)

Cheers - see, that's why I ask for advice, because all of that is mindblowing stuff! In fact, im dreading doing the new build, because its been such a long time since ive done some tinkering.
Yeah, im not in a great hurry, i'll keep my eye on the prices and the bits you mentioned .

[tonyb1968]

I've just upgraded my 5 year old system (or is it 6?) anyway it was a i7 5930k with 16gb of memory and a GTX 1080Ti to a Ryzen 9 3900X Asus ROG Strix Z570, a couple of MVNE 1TB drives, a 2TB HDD and a 500GB HDD (already had the 2 HDD's and one of the MVNE drives).

I would probably look at the 3600X over the 3600 (the X is £210 v £170), there is a refresh coming but its unclear whether its for OEM as 3rd gen Ryzen is due to be released in the next 3-4 months, so its up to you if you want to wait or not, but either way the 3600X is a good bet and can still hold its own.

PCIe 4, for the 5700XT you don't need to worry, if you wait for one of the new Nvidia 3000 cards then its going to be worth it as the RTX 2080Ti does push that PCIe 3 a bit and if the specs are to be believed for the new nvidia cards, its going to benefit from pcie4 over pcie3.

Look around for the parts cost though, scan have your cooler for 10 quid cheaper at £90 and the base 3600 is 170 quid (£210 for the 3600X), you can wait for the B550 boards but the Z570 are a good shout as well.

[Trustmeimadoctor]

3600 dont go x not worth it. Its been available for 144 recently
Motherboard b450 still worth it tomahawk max for circa 110

5700xt i just picked powercolour red dragon up for 364

32gb ram not worth it unless you work with large files 16gb 3200 or 3600 for about 80

[Scooobydont]

Worth using this, brilliant site for collating parts and prices

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/

[Trustmeimadoctor]

Yep but dont take their word on their prices being best available tho. Check out hotukdeals too. Prices are artificially high at the moment unfortunatly

[DuncsGTi]

The AIO cooler is overkill if you want to cut the cost a little.

I built my system a couple of weeks ago. The Ryzen 5 3600 runs hot on the standard cooler (93ish degrees in prime 95) but with a £30 coolermaster 212 it happily sits at sub 70

[fuzzymonkey]

DuncsGTi said:

The AIO cooler is overkill if you want to cut the cost a little.

I built my system a couple of weeks ago. The Ryzen 5 3600 runs hot on the standard cooler (93ish degrees in prime 95) but with a £30 coolermaster 212 it happily sits at sub 70

Yes very true, get one of the giant air coolers like from Bequiet and it will be practically maintenance free for the next 5 years and wont be at all noisy

[daddy cool]

I realised i never updated this thread - i bought all my bits a few weeks ago and built my new system up. In the end went for:

AMD Ryzen 5 3600
MSI MPG X570 GAMING PLUS AM4 DDR4 ATX Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance LPX (32GB)
Corsair HX850 - 850 Watt Fully Modular PSU
Coolermaster 212
Sapphire RADEON RX 5700 XT NITRO+

I only wanted 16GB (2x8) of RAM, but accidentally ordered 1 stick of 16GB, then the next day thought "fk it" and got another 16GB stick rather than send it back.
The Mobo was probably overkill, but i like my kit to last ~10 years so figured it was worth getting the newer tech.
The new PSU replaced a 750W which would have been ok, but was about 14 years old, and was non-modular, so i thought i'd take the opportunity to upgrade. The modular aspect is a joy, and everything is so much tidier now i only use the cables i need. However, i have a weird issue - plugged into an extension block, which in turn is plugged into the wall, i get noticeable coil whine when gaming. However, plugging the the extension block into a 30m extension coil, and then plugging THAT into the wall socket completely removes the cable whine - WTF?!
I was going to get an NVMe drive to take advantage of the MOBO, but costs were spiralling, so for now ive reused some existing drives - a 240gb SSD for the OS, a 1TB SSD for all my games, and a 4TB mechanical drive for general storage.
The new graphics card is a beast - both in terms of physical size, and performance. My 34" Ultrawide monitor is limited to 75fps, but with everything in Battlefield 5 set to Ultra (and running at 3440x1440) it almost never dips below 75fps anyway.
All went together pretty easily to be honest, though the Coolermaster cooler was quite fiddly to fit and squashed the thermal paste around a bit. Seems to work ok though, and temps arent too high. Its an ugly beast (vs the Corsait watercooler i had previous) but i rarely look inside the case so not the end of the world.
Biggest issue was reactivating Windows 10, as it threw its toys out the pram when it sensed new mobo/CPU etc, but got there is the end, and im back to being fully legit now.

So, all came just shy of a grand... ooof! Mind you, the graphics card should see me for ~5 years, and rest of it 5-10, and overall im really pleased with how stable its all running. My old ASUS Mobo was never officially supported for Win10, so there were lots of annoying quirks due to running Win7/8 drivers. Plus as the old graphics card was (i know now) dying, my gaming sessions were very hit and miss. But its all good now!

[hiccy18]

Looks good, the P180 series have stood the test of time well, decent airflow for an older case.

Have you tried changing your extension block and trying that on its own?

[daddy cool]

hiccy18 said:

Looks good, the P180 series have stood the test of time well, decent airflow for an older case.

Have you tried changing your extension block and trying that on its own?

Ive tried every combination you can think of! Different extension block, some components into one block then the wall and others into a socket on the other side of the room, direct into wall sockets.... basically the 30m cable reel is acting like some kind of "electrical signal cleaner"...

What i should do at some point is disconnect the 850W PSU and test out the old 750W (which i guess i can have outside the case temporarily) just to doublecheck. However, its all running quite nice so im wary about messing everything up!

Yeah, did think about getting a new case, but love the "monolith" look of mine. Only think that would improve it would be a cut-out section behind the CPU area, as changing the cooler in future would mean removal of the Motherboard to access the backplate.

[Trustmeimadoctor]

C- on the cable management

[daddy cool]

bks, its at least a "C".