MuseChick wrote:

My current PC is super old, frankenstein mess of a set up (mostly everything in there is over 6 years old) and I'd really like to build something better. I've only built one PC before but that was back in the early 2000s so I really have no clue what I'm looking at now.  I don't need anything top spec, I'm not a huge PC gamer but I'd like it to be able to handle the basics and some lite gaming well (mine is barely doing that atm). I'm not sure how much of my old PC can be salvaged, probably none of it apart from maybe the hard drives but I've got a budget of around 300. Any advice would be welcome!

£300 is a bit of a tough budget, but depending on what components you already have you might be able put something decent together. Let us know what you already have, I would hazard a guess that the primary components (CPU, mobo, RAM) will be somewhat obsolete, but you might be able to reuse some stuff, in particular the case, hard drives and the PSU. The make, model and wattage of the PSU will be useful.

Here is what I would recommend -

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Ryzen 3 2200G 3.5 GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£84.78 @ Aria PC)
Motherboard: MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£89.99 @ Box Limited)
Memory: Patriot - Viper 4 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory  (£55.90 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Crucial - MX500 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£57.96 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Cooler Master - MasterWatt 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply  (£53.36 @ CCL Computers)
Total: £341.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-22 10:38 GMT+0000

Would be £288 without the PSU. That's an APU system, so it's using onboard graphics from within the CPU. Peformance won't be spectacular, but it will at least allow you to play most things, and older/esports/graphically simple games will run just fine. And there is an excellent upgrade path with Ryzen, all the way up to an 8 core beast with that motherboard. New 7nm Ryzen CPUs will be coming this year which are looking like they will be a major upgrade over this generation, exciting!

Settings and resolution will be waay down, but it is at least possible to actually play something like Apex Legends with the 2200G -



8GB of RAM is kind of the minimum these days, so I would keep in mind a future upgrade of an additional 8GB. If you don't already have one, then the SSD is essential IMO. As long as the case you have is ATX compatible, it should be reusable.

The other potiential option would be going for used parts which can save a ton of money. I've been happy to go for used stuff a number of times before, but not everybody wants the hassle, and you can end up wasting money if you don't know what you are doing. Let me know if that's something you might consider and I can figure out the best used options. I feel like going for a Ryzen system makes a ton of sense now though, as the platform is up to date, and the upgrade path is solid.

Also keep an eye out for little deals and promos such as this - https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/amd-ryzen-3-2200g-vega-graphics-cooler-free-division2-game-sell-game-for-25-8999-ocuk-870-del-for-non-ocuk-forum-members-3183463

That kind of thing will help you claw back some pennies to spend on a GPU or something eventually.

No probs. Will be good to know some examples of the games you're wanting to play too, as well as other things like video editing/3D/music etc which might be relevant. Like for video editing for example you would definitely be wanting more RAM. If you could stretch the budget further that is one area where I would probably spend more actually, getting 16GB straight away saves the hassle of trying to find another matching set of 8GB later on. But it really depends on what you want to do.

That Ryzen APU looks really impressive.
Really hoping AMD can improve even more on this in the near future.
That pricepoint is insane.

Well the world's your oyster in terms of case aesthetics, tempered glass and RGB is very popular so I've heard. Otherwise I would probably just recommend something by Fractal.

Yeah the i5/mobo and RAM should be sold, does it have some kind of GPU in there though? And if the PSU is solid you might be able to reuse that. Take a pic if you like and I can probably identify if there's anything worth salvaging.

If video editing is something you are serious about then 16GB of RAM is probably a must. More cores would be nice too, though then you are stepping into much more expensive territory as you would probably want a dedicated graphics card. I think some of AMD's new CPUs this year will be 6/8 cores with integrated graphics which is cool, but for now the only choices are the 2200G and 2400G which have 4 cores and 4 cores 8 threads respectively.

hunk wrote:

That Ryzen APU looks really impressive. Really hoping AMD can improve even more on this in the near future. That pricepoint is insane.

Yeah it's looking like they will be, exciting stuff. AMD are really killing it with the CPU market right now, hope they can make a proper comeback in the GPU market too someday.

Wondering if related to either Impy or the guys behind Clove

But no, 10k, I'd buy a top end XPS 15", new OneWheel, Xiaomi laser projector, and maybe some kicks and denim

Blue Swirl wrote:

Muse, I know you stream a lot, could the old rig be re-used as a purely streaming machine?

That's basically what it is at the moment and is struggling big time to cope with just that!

MuseChick wrote:

Blue Swirl wrote:

Muse, I know you stream a lot, could the old rig be re-used as a purely streaming machine?

That's basically what it is at the moment and is struggling big time to cope with just that!

Ah, fair play. As much as I'm loath to say it, it might be off to Silicon Heaven for the old rig. Ebay it?

I think I'd much rather the information came from a big reputable website. After all those components are very expensive and I'd hate to ruin something

Ye gods I still can't get over that anti-static bracelet bit...

Hard drive question. I'm sick of managing my steam library so I've decided I want to get loads of space. Currently I have a 256gb SSD and a 2tb HDD in the machine and a 4tb HDD I'm going to stick in soon. My plan was to use the SSD for Windows and system stuff the 4tb HDD for steam and set the 2tb HDD up as a hyperspin/emulator drive. I don't think the 4tb drive is going to be big enough so what's the most cost effective way to get loads of space (thinking maybe 12tb) in and can I get the computer to treat it as one install drive?

That's some Steam library.

n0face wrote:

Hard drive question. I'm sick of managing my steam library so I've decided I want to get loads of space. Currently I have a 256gb SSD and a 2tb HDD in the machine and a 4tb HDD I'm going to stick in soon. My plan was to use the SSD for Windows and system stuff the 4tb HDD for steam and set the 2tb HDD up as a hyperspin/emulator drive. I don't think the 4tb drive is going to be big enough so what's the most cost effective way to get loads of space (thinking maybe 12tb) in and can I get the computer to treat it as one install drive?

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-create-one-large-volume-using-multiple-hard-drives-windows-10

Though it looks like some kind of RAID solution is better, I don't have experience with that but it might be worth reading around. Some comments from that article -

Do not use an OS level striped volume if you care at all about loosing the data stored on said volume. The failure of any of the drives striped results in complete data loss for the entire volume. If you have a true requirement for the performance increase striped arrays bring to the table, do yourself a favor and invest in a hardware RAID controller and stand up a RAID 5, 6, or 10 array where you have some redundancy.

This is a nice article,and thanks for writing it and all as its informative, but its kinda lost cause of an article. Why do either of these when RAID works so much better for redunancy, and why would you want to combine drives if one of them fails, and then you're screwed and all the files are lost?

Tiered storage is cool too, though that's more for combining SSDs and hard drive.

Third part of that handy noob-friendly guide -