Help with new Gaming Build

[Iron Sights]

Firstly greetings, long time no see, hope you lot are all well

Anyway, I'm building a new PC for a sibling, don't need Monitor or Windows or Case
If I calculated this right the budget comes to around £688ish?
Ideas greatly appreciated, the budget is not set in stone I can increase it only if the gains makes sense price/perf. Also any savings are also welcome xD


CPU- Ryzen 2600 £158 https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...KL5A1OLE&psc=1
Mobo- MSI AMD Ryzen AM4 X370 GAMING PLUS Saw it was cheap? £70 https://www.ebuyer.com/791154-msi-am...0-gaming-plus?
Ram- £100??? I was thinking getting 8gb (2x4) now to save cost and getting 8 gb later when prices come down?
SSD- any 250 gb? £50ish?
PSU- I had in mind something like this, £70 overkill? https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/...afbag1-uk.html or https://www.ebuyer.com/830658-evga-s...120-gp-0650-x3
GPU- GTX10606gb £240 https://www.ebuyer.com/753389-palit-...060s15j9-1060j

[DanceswithUnix]

This RX 580 GPU should be faster as well as cheaper: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SAPPHIRE-Pu.../dp/B06ZXS3XBF
It keeps going up and down in price daily, £188 is on the low side.

People will tell you the PSU is overkill at 650W, which it is, but that is what I have as it makes the PC much quieter if the PSU isn't stressed.

I would use the money saved on the GPU on the SSD. £90 gets you 500GB which you can store a few games in and not have to bother with a hard disk.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX5.../dp/B0784SLQM6

[Iron Sights]

This RX 580 GPU should be faster as well as cheaper: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SAPPHIRE-Pu.../dp/B06ZXS3XBF
It keeps going up and down in price daily, £188 is on the low side.

People will tell you the PSU is overkill at 650W, which it is, but that is what I have as it makes the PC much quieter if the PSU isn't stressed.

I would use the money saved on the GPU on the SSD. £90 gets you 500GB which you can store a few games in and not have to bother with a hard disk.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX5.../dp/B0784SLQM6

Appreciate the suggestion. Does only having 4gb of vram have an impact on gaming these days?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I assume this is for gaming??

OcUK are doing this Ryzen 5 2600 bundle including a free SSD for £434.42 delivered with 16GB of RAM:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/amd-p...f-am.html#t=a1

Regarding PSUs a 450W to 500W will do. I have an SFX 450W PSU with a GTX1080 and the coolers on the PSU and CPU make more noise TBH.

That RX580 4GB is a good shout - my mate got one.

Regarding units - the Seasonic Focus Gold 550W is £80 but gets impressive reviews:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php...Story&reid=529

If you don't mind a semi-modular unit,the Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro 550W is based on the Seasonic unit:

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/550w...QaAuLPEALw_wcB

[DanceswithUnix]

Appreciate the suggestion. Does only having 4gb of vram have an impact on gaming these days?

It doesn't seem to, it seems the right amount for a card which isn't up to playing on Ultra setting or at 4K where the extra ram would help. Less than 4GB would worry me, I presume that is the amount that devs are targetting for such a card given how the 3GB 1060 has a few games where it doesn't seem quite enough but 8GB seldom seems to help.

Also nice on a budget system, you don't want a monitor now but if it gets an upgrade then Freesync is good to have.

Edit: Last PSU I ordered was for work, very nice but Cat's suggestions are cheaper and would probably suit you just as well. I was after something as unbreakable as possible for a compute server with this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/EVGA-SuperN.../dp/B0141B21JG

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

With some games,having extra RAM can help(ROTR or modded FO4),but interestingly more VRAM helps the most if you have less system RAM:

https://www.techspot.com/article/153...ed-for-gaming/

[DanceswithUnix]

With some games,having extra RAM can help(ROTR or modded FO4),but interestingly more VRAM helps the most if you have less system RAM:

https://www.techspot.com/article/153...ed-for-gaming/

Interesting article, basically says the obvious: you want at least 8GB of system ram and 3GB of vram on the GPU isn't really enough. I don't think that changes what we are looking at here though, the RX580 is a faster card than the 1060 and I don't see an extra 2GB of vram helping enough. The budget only allows 8GB of system ram.

My son is currently on a completely unbalanced set of cast-offs for a system with 24GB of system ram and my old 2GB R9 285 driving a 4K tv surprisingly well.

That bundle is interesting, but TBH I think you either need a bigger SSD or add a hard drive if the GPU is going to see any use, and I find it hard to recommend hard disks these days. For me that makes it a fairly pointless freebie, probably better off just buying the parts.

[Iron Sights]

I was wondering if I went for a cheaper PSU (dont mind semi mod), 250gb SSD, RX 580, would allow 16GB Ram
CPU -£158
mobo- £70 see above
PSU- £50-60
GPU- £190
SSD- £50~
RAM- ?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I was wondering if I went for a cheaper PSU (dont mind semi mod), 250gb SSD, RX 580, would allow 16GB Ram
CPU -£158
mobo- £70 see above
PSU- £50-60
GPU- £190
SSD- £50~
RAM- ?

You want reasonable speed RAM with Ryzen,and you do still need to be careful of what you need to get. I would avoid Corsair sets as its lottery of what RAM modules you will get,which will impact the speeds and timings you will able to run it at on Ryzen. 16GB of 3000MHZ/3200MHZ DDR4 is still £150 to £170.

The best stuff to get is the B-dies stuff but its like £200.

[DanceswithUnix]

TLDR: As long as your motherboard had 4 ram slots it is easier and cheaper to add RAM later than to upgrade the SSD.


So you could do, but might not be the best starting point.

I presume this is going to play games, in which case what is it going to be playing? I presume the monitor is 1080p?

A GPU needs textures etc to work from. The frame rate drops on a GPU with not enough vram because it is loading assets in from main memory. If they aren't in main memory, it needs to fetch them from disk/ssd to main memory first.

You should find that 8GB of RAM is enough for that, 16GB is a luxury.

I suggested boosting the SSD to 500GB because at 50GB per game you don't get much on a 250GB SSD. Heck, my 500GB SSD is full to the point I just had to uninstall a bunch of games to load up the Assetto Corsa game I just bought on the Steam sale. I also finally bothered to buy FO4 bundled with all the extra content, but I can't install that until I am bored of Assetto Corsa und remove it

At some point I will get a 1TB SSD for games, and re-purpose the 500GB one so it will be time wasted doing the swap but not money. I have a few 250GB SSDs in the house, they are in occasional use laptops because I just find they aren't big enough for a main storage device any more.

Edit: Cat's suggested Antec Earthwatts PSU is a good option. Some people just don't like semi-modular PSUs, but personally I figure I will always plug in the motherboard so I don't need that cable removable.

[DanceswithUnix]

... and Amazon have sold out of those RX 580 cards.

[Iron Sights]

Decided to buy everything seperatley but wanted to know which of these 2 kits would be better, same price
Vulcan T-Force 16GB 3200MHz
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team-...my-09s-tg.html

or
Dark T-Force 16GB 3000MHz
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team-...my-089-tg.html

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 3200MHZ kit probably,but best to look at the compatability list for that MSI motherboard you listed:

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/supp...support-mem-13

Neither of the kits are on there,so I would try and ask OcUK sales if it works fine.

Also,another issue is CPU compatability:

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/supp...US#support-cpu

The motherboard needs to ship with a newer BIOS to work with the Ryzen 2000 series,so it might be worth asking for the retailer to flash the BIOS for you.

[Dashers]

If it's purely for games, and it's likely that there will be a few games installed, then I'd swap the SSD for a Hybrid HDD of larger capacity. Games are frequently over 50GB a pop these days. The Hybrid HDD will keep the OS and boot times reasonably responsive.

I'm not sure if AMD offer tech similar to Intel where you can put in a small M.2 SSD and have it act as a cache to a HDD.