New gaming PC - Old codger asking for advice

[jingars]

Son has his eye on the following gaming system - price is excluding VAT:



Q1: Any views on the spec?
Q2: Any experience of CyberPower as a supplier? I will confess that they have rubbed me up the wrong way by emailing son with a "thank you for configuring a system - buy today and get an additional 3% discount" email; only to be told by a condescending chap in their sales dept that the offer is valid only on selected systems. They know precisely what system he is interested in, so why contact him with irrelevant offers they have no intention of offering?

As you might have gathered, they have wound me up and I would like to find an alternate / better supplier if possible. TIA.

[GrumpyTwig]

The lack of an SSD on that is a bit of an over site given the rest of the hardware.

www.pcspecialist.co.uk have a decent reputation, never used them as I always build them myself but you can configure something similar if not better on their website. They have live chat or phone, I'm sure they're happy to help someone if the series of drop downs is a bit daunting.

[jingars]

It does have a SSD - full spec, which I should have put up initially:

CASE:Cooler Master Mastercase MC500 Mid-Tower Gaming Case w/ Tempered
Glass Window Panel

CPU:AMD Ryzen 7 2700X - 8-Core 3.70GHz, 4.35GHz Turbo - 16MB L3 Cache
Processor, Pro OC Compatible

FAN:Cooler Master Masterliquid Lite 120 Liquid Cooling System w/ 120mm
Radiator, Extreme OC Compatible (Cooler Master CPU Water Cooling,
Extreme OC Compatible)

SSD:240GB ADATA Ultimate SU650 2.5" SSD - 520MB/s Read / 450MB/s Write (1 Drive)

HDD:2TB Seagate BarraCuda SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 7200RPM Hard Drive (1 Drive)

HOLIDAY1Keyboard & Mouse Combo) Cooler Master Devastator III RGB
Keyboard + Mouse Combo [+0]

MEMORY:16GB (2x8GB) DDR4/3000mhz Dual Channel Memory [+17] (Corsair
Vengeance LPX w/Heat Spreader)

MOTHERBOARD:ASUS PRIME B450M-A: M-ATX w/ RGB, USB 3.1, SATA3, 1x M.2

NETWORK:ONBOARD 10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT -- As standard on all PCs

VIDEO:GeForce® RTX 2070 8GB - Ray Tracing Technology, DX12®, VR Ready,
HDMI, DP, 4 Monitor Support (Single Card)

OS:Windows 10 Home (64-bit Edition) Perfect for most people with all
the core features of Windows 10 including: automatic updates, Cortana
and DirectX 12 graphics support (No Recovery Media)

POWERSUPPLY:Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite 600W 80+ Gaming Power Supply

SOUND:HIGH DEFINITION ON-BOARD AUDIO

WARRANTY:DESKTOP STANDARD WARRANTY: 3 Year Labour, 2 Year Parts, 6
Month Collect and Return plus Life-Time Technical Support

WNC:Addon PCI-E Wireless AWP1200E 802.11AC Wi-Fi up to 867 Mbps w/
Dual Antenna [+20]

[The_Jackal]

At the end of the day any pc costing a grand is going to be fast enough for games.
But it is a serious oversight to not have an SSD in it.
For a grand I dont want to be waiting for it to boot up like in the 90s.

[chris285]

Spec looks ok with the SSD, the one thing with builds like this is components not listed like PSU and such can get the cheaper versions and how they are able to build them at that price. For most it is fine, and i do like building my PC's and deciding what bits i want

[Art0ir]

That seems reasonable.

I'd encourage anyone to try building their own. It's very rewarding and the basic hardware knowledge you'll pick up along the way will be useful.

But if that's of no interest, that build seems decent value IMO. Plus 3 year warranty is nice.

[MintyScot]

jingars said:

Son has his eye on the following gaming system - price is excluding VAT:



Q1: Any views on the spec?
Q2: Any experience of CyberPower as a supplier? I will confess that they have rubbed me up the wrong way by emailing son with a "thank you for configuring a system - buy today and get an additional 3% discount" email; only to be told by a condescending chap in their sales dept that the offer is valid only on selected systems. They know precisely what system he is interested in, so why contact him with irrelevant offers they have no intention of offering?

As you might have gathered, they have wound me up and I would like to find an alternate / better supplier if possible. TIA.

Definitely a high end gaming computer. Your looking at any game on highest settings at 1440p resolution.

Not heard of that pc company though.

[red_slr]

I used Cyberpower years ago they have been around a long time.

More recently I have been using PCS. My last PCS tower was for work del in Jan and took about 14 days to arrive but cabling and general build was very neat and tidy - if that helps you.

[FourWheelDrift]

Putting the hardware listed into PC Part Picker - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/xvqnD2

Everything apart from the case and using the lowest retail price or the exact item it's £909.66 (without shipping the individual parts) so I asume the cooler is the stock Ryzen cooler.

So not a bad build for a pre-built, PC specialist specced similar is around £1,400. Never used Cyberpower to know how good the build is though.

Edited to add, not sure how I missed your full list above I just used the image specs here.

Edited by FourWheelDrift on Thursday 4th April 08:32

[jingars]

Apologies for not checking back sooner.

Some useful stuff in there - thanks to all for the responses.

Will investigate the self-build route; last two I built were i-5 based and that was a while ago.

[Art0ir]

I would advise anyone buying PC components now to check prices on Amazon.

Sometimes they will be as cheap as specialist outfits and even if they are £10-20 more, they will stand over them even outside the standard manufacturer's warranty.

I chanced my luck with them when my 980ti gave up and after returning it they credited the original price into my Amazon account and I was able to buy a 1080ti.

[jingars]

Using the PartPicker link kindly provided above, which does include Amazon as a source, the component purchase route is coming out to be more expensive than the condescending bloke in Gateshead's price for an identical spec system including case, power supply, cooling, keyboard and rodent

Will keep investigating.

[ArsE92]

Try Scan for both pre built and components.

[TameRacingDriver]

Either build one yourself (pcpartpicker as above is a good resource) or get someone like overclockers or scan to send you one of their pre-builds, at least they will come with half decent after service should anything go wrong, and they’re usually good quality parts inside.

PS. I live in Gateshead and I don’t know of any PC shops I would buy from so I’m not surprised.

[Phil.]

I bought a gaming PC for my son from OverClockers many years ago. Excellent service and the PC has been 100% reliable.

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/pc-systems/configur...

[Lazadude]

Another vote for Overclockers. I always build my own, but overclockers support is second to none. Can't praise them enough