Gaming PC

[Fishlegs]

My favourite site for clues:

https://www.logicalincrements.com/

[mdavids]

mikef said:

OP, you may find it cheaper to order CPU/Mobo/RAM as a bundle from CCL or AWD-IT instead of ordering separately, that's what I've been looking at

Problem is I can't get the gfx card I want, or even any card that isn't at a vastly inflated RRP, and the situation doesn't appear to be resolving itself any time soon. This is why I've been looking at ready built towers as this seems to be the only way currently to get a half decent gfx card without paying way over the odds.
Ordinarily I'd just build it myself but I haven't actully upgraded anything in years as I haven't been gaming on PC much so buying a full tower does actually make financial sense this time round. Just need to find something that isn't too much of a compromise, is usable at 1080p and will leave me with a simple gfx card upgrade once they're available at sensible prices.

[mikef]

I hear you - I keep watching the Nvidia 3000 Series Tonight thread on here and jumped when a PHer kindly posted news of a 3070 "drop" which I jumped on and got the card next day at pretty much RRP

[paulrockliffe]

mdavids said:

Problem is I can't get the gfx card I want, or even any card that isn't at a vastly inflated RRP, and the situation doesn't appear to be resolving itself any time soon. This is why I've been looking at ready built towers as this seems to be the only way currently to get a half decent gfx card without paying way over the odds.
Ordinarily I'd just build it myself but I haven't actully upgraded anything in years as I haven't been gaming on PC much so buying a full tower does actually make financial sense this time round. Just need to find something that isn't too much of a compromise, is usable at 1080p and will leave me with a simple gfx card upgrade once they're available at sensible prices.

Why not spend your money on the stuff that's not ridiculously over-priced and then buy a proper graphics card when prices sort themselves out? It's not ideal, but you could end up with a much better result if you can hold out on the graphics card for a while.

[mdavids]

paulrockliffe said:

mdavids said:

Problem is I can't get the gfx card I want, or even any card that isn't at a vastly inflated RRP, and the situation doesn't appear to be resolving itself any time soon. This is why I've been looking at ready built towers as this seems to be the only way currently to get a half decent gfx card without paying way over the odds.
Ordinarily I'd just build it myself but I haven't actully upgraded anything in years as I haven't been gaming on PC much so buying a full tower does actually make financial sense this time round. Just need to find something that isn't too much of a compromise, is usable at 1080p and will leave me with a simple gfx card upgrade once they're available at sensible prices.

Why not spend your money on the stuff that's not ridiculously over-priced and then buy a proper graphics card when prices sort themselves out? It's not ideal, but you could end up with a much better result if you can hold out on the graphics card for a while.

Thats definitely the best option, but no one seems to know how long this shortage will go on for, it's been months now with no sign of abating. I can wait, but it would be nice to know approximately how long for. I work in an industry thats heavily affected by the semiconductor shortage and the situation is grim, maybe prices will stay daft for the next year and beyond!

Pricing up individual components for the £1k system in my op but without gfx card and OS comes to about £600 leaving £400 to spend on gfx.The cheapest 1660 super is currently over £500 - its maybe a £200 card at best!!

[Monty Python]

I got lucky - gave up waiting for the RTX cards to come into retail (seems the system builders are getting stock on a more regular basis), so I ordered a pre-built with a 5600X and EVGA 3070 XC3 Black. It was going to take weeks to arrive but after a couple of weeks I got an email telling me the GPU was being upgraded to the 3070 FTW3 Ultra for free.

[mikef]

CCLOnline have a couple of RTX3060 models available online, but may not have by the time you read this...

[take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey]

Brainpox said:

take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

Brainpox said:

take-good-care-of-the-forest-dewey said:

HD is too small. You need at least a tb for gaming.

Games are knocking on the door of 100gigs.

Whilst I agree, at least hard drives are not in short supply and no need to go for extremely high performance drives for gaming. It is easy to add more capacity cheaply. So if that config is otherwise the most appropriate, then go for it and pick up a 1TB drive as well.

High performance drives are becoming necessary. Quite a few games advise them now and with xbox and ps both now using ultra fast drives, any cross platforms are likely to require the same for pc.

https://youtu.be/2NKnPTkRY2w

No difference in load times between PCI-E gen 3 or gen 4 MVME SSDs. Gen 4 is for high speed transfers or working with large files.

I was referring to HDD vs SSD and beyond given the build budget. Sorry, wasn't clear.

[paulrockliffe]

mdavids said:

Thats definitely the best option, but no one seems to know how long this shortage will go on for, it's been months now with no sign of abating. I can wait, but it would be nice to know approximately how long for. I work in an industry thats heavily affected by the semiconductor shortage and the situation is grim, maybe prices will stay daft for the next year and beyond!

Pricing up individual components for the £1k system in my op but without gfx card and OS comes to about £600 leaving £400 to spend on gfx.The cheapest 1660 super is currently over £500 - its maybe a £200 card at best!!

Yeah, I was trying to think of a time-frame on it, but I'm struggling to work it out, there's an argument that it won't be until production can be scaled up because demand might not be going away.

At some point it becomes more hassle than it's worth, but the best value for money graphics cards are sat in rigs listed on Gumtree. I paid £500 for a decent machine that has a 1080FTW in it, the cards are going for £300-400 on eBay at the moment. The machine would sell for £300-400 as an office desktop with just the onboard graphics, so £100 quid on the card and wait it out.

Or go all in and buy 5-10 old machines, split the cards out and sell the machines and the cards , then buy the card that you want with the profits.

[mdavids]

Update for anyone interested, after doing the maths I went for the following ready built system:

Ryzen 3600x
Asus Prime B450M-A mboard
16gb 3000 mhz RAM
1TB HDD
1660 Super gfx
No OS
Case
500watt bronze power supply

All the components, but not including the gfx card, come to £510 on PC part picker.
1660 Supers are going for at least £300 second hand on ebay, £400 for new
Total cost of the system was £700 so I've got the spec I wanted and picked up the gfx card for £190.
I'll need to add a M2 SSD and then I'll swap out the gfx for a 3060TI once they're available and sensibly priced.

[Sheets Tabuer]

I know it will make no difference but a ryzen is optimised for 3200mhz RAM.

[TonyTony]

You can get prebuilds with 3060ti onwards still, you just need to look in the right places. Argos seem to have 3060ti/3070/3080/3090 prebuilds in all the time still, just keep checking every day because they do sell out quickly.

I wouldn't bother with a 1660 or even a 3060.

The 5600 is good for what it is but for longevity you are better off with more than 6 physical cores now.

[mdavids]

TonyTony said:

You can get prebuilds with 3060ti onwards still, you just need to look in the right places. Argos seem to have 3060ti/3070/3080/3090 prebuilds in all the time still, just keep checking every day because they do sell out quickly.

I wouldn't bother with a 1660 or even a 3060.

The 5600 is good for what it is but for longevity you are better off with more than 6 physical cores now.

I've been looking for a few weeks now and if there's a 3060ti system actually in stock its usually hugely overpriced.

A 1660 will do me for now, I've got plenty of previous generation games to catch up on - my current PC is running a 560TI! And if I time it right I should get most of the £190 back its cost me when I'm finally able to snag a 3060TI.

Ultimately I'm looking for bang-for-buck, no matter what kit you get there's always something better just around the corner. I could spend a fortune and get the best of everything but it'd be overkill.

[TonyTony]

mdavids said:

I've been looking for a few weeks now and if there's a 3060ti system actually in stock its usually hugely overpriced.

A 1660 will do me for now, I've got plenty of previous generation games to catch up on - my current PC is running a 560TI! And if I time it right I should get most of the £190 back its cost me when I'm finally able to snag a 3060TI.

Ultimately I'm looking for bang-for-buck, no matter what kit you get there's always something better just around the corner. I could spend a fortune and get the best of everything but it'd be overkill.

Just seen what you paid for it, thats not bad to be fair. Howcome it doesn't come with an OS though?

I bought a pre build 3 years ago in the middle of the last gpu and ram crisis.

Its an i5-8400 and 1070ti, I just got an i7 9700F a few weeks back for £210, that'll do me for a long time now at 1080p/high refresh.

Edited by TonyTony on Wednesday 10th March 09:21

[jingars]

mdavids said:

Update for anyone interested, after doing the maths I went for the following ready built system:

Ryzen 3600x
Asus Prime B450M-A mboard
16gb 3000 mhz RAM
1TB HDD
1660 Super gfx
No OS
Case
500watt bronze power supply

Any plans re cooling?

I have recently assembled a Ryzen 7 3800-based machine (typing on it now), the spec of which was created by my son - although I did put my foot down and deleted all of the Halfords after market style RGB lighting and glass case side...

I wanted a quiet machine and so he specced a Corsair AIO cooler. Initially I was grumpy at the additional cost, but will confess to being a convert as the machine is whisper quiet. The Corsair iCue management software is also quite sexy, showing temps of all aspects of the mainboard, processor, and drives.

[mdavids]

TonyTony said:

Just seen what you paid for it, thats not bad to be fair. Howcome it doesn't come with an OS though?

OS is an £80 optional extra, but I already have Win10 so I'll just transfer my key across.

jingars said:

Any plans re cooling?

I have recently assembled a Ryzen 7 3800-based machine (typing on it now), the spec of which was created by my son - although I did put my foot down and deleted all of the Halfords after market style RGB lighting and glass case side...

I wanted a quiet machine and so he specced a Corsair AIO cooler. Initially I was grumpy at the additional cost, but will confess to being a convert as the machine is whisper quiet. The Corsair iCue management software is also quite sexy, showing temps of all aspects of the mainboard, processor, and drives.

No plans yet but thanks for the recommendation, I'll see what's like for noise and upgrade if it's annoying me

[Monty Python]

My current 4771 has a Corsair H80i in push-pull config and works very well - the 3600X has a lower TDP so something like it would be fine.

If anyone is interested in a 4771/1070/16GB/1TB system, it'll be available in a few weeks :-)

[mmm-five]

mdavids said:

Update for anyone interested, after doing the maths I went for the following ready built system:

Ryzen 3600x
Asus Prime B450M-A mboard
16gb 3000 mhz RAM
1TB HDD
1660 Super gfx
No OS
Case
500watt bronze power supply

All the components, but not including the gfx card, come to £510 on PC part picker.
1660 Supers are going for at least £300 second hand on ebay, £400 for new
Total cost of the system was £700 so I've got the spec I wanted and picked up the gfx card for £190.
I'll need to add a M2 SSD and then I'll swap out the gfx for a 3060TI once they're available and sensibly priced.

Be careful when you upgrade your GPU, as that PSU may not be powerful enough for a 30x0 GPU (is it even a modular/semi-modular one in case you need different connectors?).

I know you've mentioned you didn't spec an m.2 with the pre-built, so you'll need to get one before you install your OS (at least 256gb if it's just for the OS/apps - but 512gb/1tb if you're planning on putting games on there.

If you're happy with a bit of noise, the stock AMD Wraith fan/cooler on the 3600X is 'okay', but if you start seeing temps/noise levels you're not happy with then you may need to find a better cooling option from Noctua/Coolermaster/Corsair (I went for a Corsair 100i Platinum - which is now almost silent since I made my own fan profile in iCUE).