Let's make a gaming PC
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Aye, overclocking the cpu makes sense if you don't want to blow everything on a new motherboard.Steam: Ruffnekk
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[table][tr] [/tr] [tr] [/tr] [tr] [td] [/td][/tr][/table]Steam: Ruffnekk
Windows Live: mr of unlocking
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Stupid formatting.
Picked this up from a dutch site:
CPU: AMD Ryzen5 3600 boxed €175
M.Board: ASRock B450m- HDV R4.0 €50
GPU: ASRock Radeon RX 5600 XT Phantom Gaming D26G OC €308,72
Case: Fractal design Focus G mini: €47,90
Cooler: Cooler Master Silencio FP-120mm -PWM €10,95
RAM: G-Skill Aegis F4-3000C16D 16GISB €70,85
Power: Cooler Master MWE Bronze 450W V2 €46,04
SSD: Kingston A400 2.5" 480GB €61,04
Total €779,50
Decent budget build Gurt or does it need some tweaking?Steam: Ruffnekk
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Are you in the Netherlands, is that where you need to get stuff from? Just looking at PCPartPicker atm.
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Aye but pc partpicker is fine. Just keeping an eye on components and prices.Steam: Ruffnekk
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Here's a slightly specced-up PCPartpicker list -
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (€183.90 @ Azerty)
Motherboard: MSI B450M MORTAR TITANIUM Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (€124.95 @ CD-ROM-LAND)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (€85.85 @ CD-ROM-LAND)
Storage: Crucial P1 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (€75.02 @ Azerty)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB PULSE Video Card (€335.00 @ CD-ROM-LAND)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case (€54.95 @ CD-ROM-LAND)
Power Supply: Cooler Master MasterWatt 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (€74.99 @ Paradigit)
Total: €934.66
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-04 17:04 CEST+0200
Quite a bit over your budget there perhaps, but I think there's definitely room to cut down and find things cheaper if you look at sites that PCPP doesn't cover.
The Asrock mobo you listed up there probably won't work out of the box with the Ryzen 3600 CPU, and it seems like you wouldn't be able to update the BIOS without getting a bootkit from AMD which is a right faff. I would recommend a B450 board that has a 'BIOS flashback' function to enable support for the latest CPUs or one that has a pre-updated BIOS, such as the MSI 'MAX' series. I chose the MSI Mortar there as it has a USB BIOS update function, if you can find the MAX version you wouldn't even need to do that. It's recommended to get the BIOS updated after a build with Ryzen anyway though.
In general I wouldn't recommend getting the very cheapest bare-minimum capable parts available in most categories, for a few reasons:
With super cheap motherboards you often don't get things like heatsinks on the VRMs, which limits what kind of CPUs you might want to put in there, as well as things like overclocking and overall board lifespan, you also get barely enough ports and slots which limits future expansion.
Power supplies are definitely something you should be cautious of cheaping out on. Personally I would always recommend getting one that has a 0% fan RPM mode at passive loads, as swapping a noisy worn out PSU fan a few years down the line often isn't that doable. Really cheap shit power supplies can cause stability and performance problems, and can even be a fire hazard. To be fair the Cooler Master MWE one you put there is probably fine, I just can't recommend a PSU that doesn't have a passive mode as I think noise is a key factor, your mileage may vary.
And the cheapest SSDs can perform like shit once their capacity fills up, it's do with if they don't have a DRAM cache. I would advise going for drives a bit over the cheapest and checking reviews or asking here. That Crucial P1 I listed seems like a great price for a basic NVME drive.
Other things like individual GPU models within an AMD/Nvidia SKU mainly come down to things like fan noise, so it depends on your preference. -
A good alternative to upgrading just now to quality parts that will be a bit more future proof but not spending an arm and a leg is to just upgrade your current build bit by bit. Chances are you can reuse things like the PSU and case, and you can reuse the RAM though it may not be the fasted spec (overclocking the RAM might be an option).
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Hmmm, pc keeps dying. Either a total freeze up or just switching off. Happened once yesterday (pre- new monitor) then three times today. I was playing hollow knight on each occasion.
Is there an easy way to find out what caused it or a way of shortlisting options? My guess is it’s psu (simply because it’s made a few odd noises lately), or gpu (as it’s relatively old, but no issues before now and checked temps under load a couple of months back).iosGameCentre:T3hDaddy;
XBL: MistaTeaTime -
Get HWiNFO, run it in sensors mode, right click on the appropriate readings to bring up graph windows which you can move around. It's handy to get them up on a second monitor if you have one. You can hopefully then see if anything seems to be getting too warm before it dies.
Also clean install graphics drivers which could help.
What are your specs? -
CPU temps, motherboard VRM temps, GPU die temps, all worth checking. PSU stuff is harder to diagnose apart from eliminating other things.
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Cheers Gurt. Lovely list!Steam: Ruffnekk
Windows Live: mr of unlocking
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Cheers Gurt. Will try that later. I’m on an i5 4690k, 16gb ram, gtx970. Hyper 212 Evo on cpu.iosGameCentre:T3hDaddy;
XBL: MistaTeaTime -
NP.
Also what mobo and PSU do you have? Might be worth updating or resetting the BIOS too, might be some configuration error for RAM or something. -
Motherboard is an MSI Z97 Pc Mate (7850). Can't remember what the psu is, was a reasonably decent modular one, plenty power for the build.iosGameCentre:T3hDaddy;
XBL: MistaTeaTime -
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Send messageApologies for not posting here along the way, but after 'accidentally' pre-ordering a Valve Index a while back (although it still has a 5-7 week delivery esimate even now), I decided that now was the time to get hold of a new PC (my first upgrade in 12 years), and then, when lockdown kicked in, I decided I might as well build my own for the first time as a project. I was inspired by a Half-Life Alyx build suggestion that I found online and then used a few sites, including PC Part Picker, to refine it, which I was glad about given that various of the components that were included in the suggested build didn't actually appear to be compatible with the case!
I've ended up with the following, which was mostly surprisingly easy to build, although I had some annoying times trying to attach the stock cooler (I can see an upgrade being required in due course though, which will be a bit of a pain to retrofit) in the rather tight confines of the mini-ITX case, and the m.2 screw was so tiny!
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac Mini ITX AM4
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR-3200
Storage: Sabrent Rocket 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME SSD
GPU: Asus GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB Turbo EVO
Case: BitFenix Portal Mini ITX Tower (this is what the build was based around - it looks amazing!)
Power Supply: be quiet! SFX L POWER 600 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply
It switched on first time and the only thing I had to tweak in the BIOS was the memory speed from 2133 up to its native 3200 MHz. Installing Windows 10 Pro was fine. The only real issue I'm having so far is not being able to enable multichannel audio output from the optical S/PDIF built into the motherboard in Windows 10... -
Nice build. There's often audio drivers available from the motherboard's website.
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Quite similar to the one I'm eyeing up (from a couple of pages/months ago). Got a link with all the parts loaded?? -
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Send messageDoes this work? https://pcpartpicker.com/list/njNB4n
What do you know, there's a UK site too: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/
I bought the case, RAM, GPU and PSU from Overclockers (who had the case in stock then) and the rest from Amazon. I'm eyeing up the Corsair H60 liquid cooler if it becomes apparent that it needs it. -
GurtTractor wrote:GooberTheHat wrote:Hunk, if I was looking to spend a few hundred quid to upgrade my PC where would be the best place for me to spend it/what would you prioritise? These are the basic components. CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600K CPU @ 3.50GHZ MB: ASUSTeK Z170 PRO GAMING Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, Primary Bus: PCI Express 16x, Primary VRAM: 4095 MB Memory: DDR4 16310 Mb Storage: Seagate ST1000DX001 3.5 inch 1TB Hybrid Internal Solid State Drive
Hmm well it depends on what you do on the PC, but you could probably do with both a CPU and GPU upgrade. Most recent AAA or complex games of the past few years make good use of multiple CPU cores, and can see stutter or other issues on 4 or fewer threads. That said it might not be so bad if you are just playing on a 60Hz monitor, and/or are playing older games or things like strategy or builders that aren't about fast paced action.
The options for the CPU are:
Overclock your 6600K to ~4.5GHz if you haven't already, you will need a decent cooler on there to handle it. I had one of those and overclocked it for a while, will give you a bit more performance. I can help guide you in that sometime if you like.
Upgrade the CPU to a 6700K or 7700K which both have 4 cores and 8 threads, but you shouldn't be spending any more than £80/£100, and they seem to be going for far more than is reasonable atm...
Or upgrade to a new motherboard platform and CPU, Ryzen being the best bang for the buck. Obviously that would probably blow most of your budget which you might want to save for the GPU though.
In terms of the GPU you could definitely upgrade that and see some benefit in certain games. If you are only playing at 1080p and 60Hz then you might get a little more life out of the 970 yet. There are going to be some new cards out this year, though probably later on at this rate.
If all you have is that hybrid SSHD you should definitely upgrade your boot drive to a proper SSD, your board has an m.2 socket so you could get something like a 970 Evo or something cheaper. Even a SATA SSD would be a major improvement.
Also check what speed your RAM is rated for, the label should give you a clue. It might just be standard 2400MHz or something, but maybe you can use XMP to set it higher which can give you boosts in things. By default when you install RAM in a new system it will be at a base spec, you generally have to manually set it to run at its proper speed, I think that probably catches a lot of people out.
Thanks gurt. I do some gaming on it, mostly strategy / builder games, but would quite like to do some more action / AAA stuff at high res, so I guess a new graphics card is in order.
In terms of swapping hard drives, is that a simple process? I've always been a bit nervous that I'll end up corrupting my OS or something trying to migrate everything across.
I've got some sort of liquid cooling system built in which keeps the temps nice and low even with overclocking (it doesn't get over 55c even when stress testing at 100% for 5 minutes). Is there an easy way to check the ram, or do I need to open the case? -
In terms of trying to decide what to upgrade I would just think of any games that you've played recently that have performance that you aren't happy with, like if you can't run something at the settings you would like to, or are getting bad stutter etc. It's then worth seeing your CPU/GPU usage when playing those, you can use Windows' task manager or other tools such as HWiNFO. If the GPU is sitting at near 100% then you are GPU limited, same for the CPU though it's a little more complicated as you can be limited by a single core or by overall available threads. If the CPU usage is seeing over 80% core usage then it might be a limiting factor. Anyway if the GPU is well below 100% then something else will be the performance bottleneck.
You could try to clone the hard drive over, but I would massively recommend to just do a clean install. It's not that difficult at al all, the main pain is backing anything important up, then reinstalling stuff. But I would absolutely go to the trouble especially if you haven't done a clean install in a while, just doing that is likely to make everything feel a bit faster. I would just make sure you've thought of everything you would like to save, most games on Steam will cloud save, but otherwise you can search for how to find the right directory.
If game downloads are a pain or a drain on your data then you can back up the installation folders, then Steam can rediscover stuff you've placed manually during the reinstall making the process much quicker. You can also clone the entirety of your current drive if you're really worried about losing something important.
Liquid cooling systems take a while for the heat to fully soak into the fluid and radiator, a 5 minute test won't actually show how hot it can really get. You would need to run it for more like 20-30mins to get an idea of how it copes with continuous load. That said running a game is typically much less intensive that running a benchmark like Cinebench, so it sounds like you are probably fine there. It's worth monitoring and seeing what it gets to when you run games for a long time anyway.
I guess cooling is for the CPU, also a good idea to keep an eye on the GPU. -
Cooling is just for the cpu. Its a corsair something or other, with a load of case fans, and a lot of room, so I'm not too concerned about heat. I benchmarked the gpu when I got it and it didn't break 75c (which I was concerned about, but reading up apparently 73c is the optimum operating temp?).
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Yeah sounds like temps are no problem for you.
Oh yeah you asked about the RAM, if you open up the case and look at the labels on the DDR4 sticks (you may need to pull one out, PC turned off of course), it should have the speed in the SKU name or do a search and you should be able to get a rated MHz for it. -
Some interesting rumblings about Nvidia's next gen of cards, will be interesting to see what they announce later this week and what AMD can do in response.iosGameCentre:T3hDaddy;
XBL: MistaTeaTime -
Ooh maybe I should hold off any rash purchasing decisions then...
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Like getting a B450 motherboard....
Ah, it's not like I was going to get a Zen 3 processor anyway. A Ryzen 3700X will likely see me through to the next console generation. -
Do any of those things actually get stuff changed?[quote=Skerret]Unless someone very obviously insults your loved ones with intent, take nothing here seriously.[/quote] -
I can see this being a thing that gets amended if there's enough pressure.
If AMD simply don't have enough resources to update then maybe it's fine, as if like to see them continue to compete with Intel. It's just weird that they didn't make it clear earlier, as the only reason to buy a 570 motherboard was pcie4, which was not compelling for an extra £100.
Actually thinking about it, if theres a decent b550 motherboard that costs £100 then I haven't lost anything.
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