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About LinkBacksThey are one of the few retailers which had Zen2 and Zen3 CPUs at close to RRP. A mate got their Ryzen 7 3700X for under £250 using a discount code and vouchers a few weeks ago from them.Originally Posted by danceswithunix
They are one of the few retailers which had Zen2 and Zen3 CPUs at close to RRP. A mate got their Ryzen 7 3700X for under £250 using a discount code and vouchers a few weeks ago from them.
Well at least it looks like the Hexus hivemind is pretty settled I'm sure the OP will be pleased to find and in budget!
CPU: £188 3600
PSU: £68 550W PSU
RAM: £64 16GB Ballistix 3200
SSD: £98 1TB WD Blue
Mobo: £70 B450M
Total: £488
or
CPU: £188 3600
PSU: £68 550W PSU
RAM: £64 16GB Ballistix 3200
SSD: £55 500GB WD Blue
Mobo: £120 B550M
Total: £495
Speaking of CES, I hope AMD announce the rumoured 65W 5900 - that would be an incredible chip for ITX builds! But I'm not holding my breath based on rumours.
I'm back! Sorry for the slow replies, unfortunately I still have to work during this rubbish time but will reply as quick as I can. Haha I’m glad the convos haven’t got too heated here while I’ve been gone. Behave!
Also I’d be tempted by a laptop. Laptops have really stepped up over the years but am I at a disadvantage getting one over a PC?. Thing is I just love a mouse, keyboard, and monitor. So even if I had a laptop Id plug it into all those when at home anyway and just unplug it and take the laptop if I wanted to move around to take it out with me. I guess that's stupid and I might as well just get a desktop in that case. Cheaper over the years because of easier upgrading etc
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I can answer some questions to clear a few things up and I’ll go through them in the order they were posted:
Oops, I didn’t know I was skimping on the RAM. This is what I meant when I said I'm rusty on the PC parts nowadays lol. I’d certainly be happy to spend that little bit more to go up to the better ones. Those ones links on Amazon sound like a good idea
Only reason I didn’t link CCL for my components as I don’t think I’ve ordered from them before so was making sure to stick to good websites I know like Amazon and Scan. But if others say CCL is good and has equally good customer service (thats the main thing tbh) then I’m happy to use them.
I’ll certainly aim for what you guy recommend – Ryzen 3600 with B550 motherboard. If the ‘in between’ CPUs like the 3100 etc aren’t as good when gaming etc then I agree about avoiding those. I honestly want the most power I can get for my budget in the hopes that it’ll last another good number of years without the need to constantly upgrade parts. Just like this computer, I’ve had it 10 years and only upgraded the graphics card, RAM, and added 2 additional hardrive. So the “better upgrade path with the B550” sounds ideal for me. An MSI one would be good as I’ve heard quite a lot of praise about MSI over the years, but a good backup would be ok if it’s the same spec for significantly cheaper
As for the NVMe vs Sata SSD debate, I’d honestly go for whichever is the cheapest of the two as I don’t think I’d care too much about the speeds. Going from a hardrive to either of those would be a big upgrade for me anyway haha
Omg, speaking of cable management in an Antec 300 case, you should really see mine now. I just have extra cables from the PSU shoved down under and down the side of the horizontal hardrive bays. I've cable tied them so they aren't a COMPLETE state, but it really isn't pretty in there. A semi-modular PSU would be fabulous. After 10 years I can happily say my case fans both still work too. The computer placement really isn’t’ great either. Shoved under my desk with the back close to the wall and front close to a radiator. I think getting the Antec case back then with decent sized fans over other cases probably saved me
Yeah I agree, I don’t mind slightly overspecing if it means the system will last me longer and be better future proofed. But at the same time I just want a good upgrade from what I have now without breaking the bank
Oh and just to confirm - Yeah, an extra £40 for B550 sounds worth it
The prices in the reply above do sound good to me. I’m just worried further down the line I might think about upgraded the graphics card, or all the drives to SSDs etc. Then it’s scary to think how much I’ve spent. It’s tricky making this build though, I just don’t know what I might be using this computer for in the future. But if I can just give it a good upgrade now then that would really be fantastic for me and I’ll just worry about the rest when I get to them
Hope that clears most things up?
While I'm using the temporary board for the time being, is it ok to leave Windows not activated?. Then when I get my new board that I'm going to keep try activate Windows 10 on that?. I just really hope it accepts the key because as I said, it's a Windows 7 home premium OEM key that I used to upgrade from Win7 to 10 for free early last year
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Right, lets start finalising these components. I think everyone agrees a Ryzen 5 3600 is the right way to go. So which motherboard is best from this link?:
https://www.cclonline.com/category/4...urerslist/368/
Also am I being silly just looking at MSI brand boards because I've heard good things about them and their customer service?
Last edited by Jager; 09-01-2021 at 04:16 PM.
That's a lot of motherboards to choose from. If you're not overclocking you don't need to worry about VRM quality, I believe, so just pick the cheapest one that has the features you want, and beyond that, it doesn't matter that much, certainly not enough to ponder the differences and read every single review.
Brand loyalty is worth something but not much. I typically choose between Asrock and Asus motherboards first as those are the ones I've settled on in the past through an extensive review-reading process, so now I just read reviews for products by those two until I find one that's good enough. There's so much choice out there that you can easily get bogged down, and then even if you do settle on one, you might get FOMO after you pull the trigger. It's not like some brands are luxury brands and others are cheapo, they're all occupying the same spaces, and if you do pick one that doesn't have a feature you end up needing, you can usually supplement your motherboard with a plug-in usb or pcie slot or something.
The MSI B550M Mag Bazooka and B550 PRO-A are more than enough and should handle even a Ryzen 9 5950X fine. The laptop deal is good because the GPU in it is close to a desktop GTX1660/GTX1660 Super AFAIK,however,its not going to have much of a CPU upgrade path.
The MSI B550-A PRO ATX AM4 Motherboard is around £134
and the MSI B550M Mag Bazooka is £124
I might be forced to for the Bazooka as it's a mATX VS the A-Pro which is an ATX. It's a shame as the extra 2 SATA ports on the A-Pro sounded good haha, my 4 ports on my current board are already full and I haven't had my disc drive plugged in for years (not like I ever use it). Is there something I can get to add more SATA ports if needed?
Also the Antec 300 isn't the biggest case and the power supply goes at the bottom with the fan facing upwards. So I'm worried about the fan being blocked a bit if somethings plugged in above it.
The Bazooka also doesn't have a VGA-Out which is the only thing my monitor supports. But my old GTX 660 has DVI out so I can connect it that way with an adapter. Do we know what's going to be better - My old GTX 660 or the onboard graphics?. ((EDIT// Just looked and DP/HDMI to VGA adapters are widely available))
If I find that the systems lacking I might just get a new graphics card at the end of this year or next year for under £150 and be done with it as then I've almost replaced the whole PC, besides the case and the 2 extra hardrives
Feels like there's been some mission creep here.
Just to recap, your budget is still £500, and what are your requirements please?
Just be careful what you plug the last slot.
I have an Antec 300 with an Asus X470 Pro full ATX motherboard in it.
I have a similar layout machine at work, and the last slot contains a x4 PCIe card. Most cards aren't that long, and most slots don't get used. The biggest advantage of full ATX is that things aren't quite as cramped, with maybe a few extra toys in the extra space.
The 3600 CPU doesn't have integrated graphics, so the motherboard video outputs are wasted in that case.
I think the debate on SSDs was more size than whether it should be SATA or NVMe. You want an NVMe drive, hands down, no contest. The savings for SATA are minimal, and NVMe is just better in every respect.
If possible go for a 1TB drive. Apps, and games in particular, are getting bigger all the time. I'm actually about to put in an order for a new 1TB SSD for our downstairs PC because I got a free game but at 160GB in size I can't play it unless I uninstall half the programs off the existing 500GB drive. It doesn't seem that long ago that I happily bought 250GB drives for PCs, but I wouldn't even look at such drives these days. That PC can take NVMe, so I shall now go see what I can find...
I think he's looking at about £550, 10% over bidget, taking Zhaoman's lists as a starting point:
CPU: £188 3600
PSU: £68 550W PSU
RAM: £64 16GB Ballistix 3200
SSD: £98 1TB WD Blue
Mobo: £120 B550M
Total: £538
though I think the motherboard price is a tad hopeful.
So yeah some mission creep, hence me arguing that a B450 would be good enough and Cat arguing that storage should suffer instead. But if the OP can stretch to both, then that's an undeniably nice upgrade there.
Why are we spending that much on a CPU? That's > 50% of our budget on the CPU/motherboard combo when it's far more powerful than our needs and won't be near the bottleneck for most games even when we upgrade our GPU. An i3 10100f will still chew through most tasks we throw at it.
I get your qualitative arguments for a bigger OS drive, and yes they're good value for money, but on a budget as tight as this, I really don't think it makes much sense to spend ~20% of our budget on one when we can get much more overall storage with regular SSDs or even mechanical ones and just being a bit thoughtful about what we put where. Being able to leave multiple huge games on the same superfast drive as our OS is a luxury that we probably don't need and can't afford. We should save money for our future GPU upgrade, imo.
Last edited by wazzickle; 10-01-2021 at 02:15 PM.
Just to clarify, my current PC I built 10 years ago and the only things I've upgraded are the graphics card, RAM, and added additional hardrives. I don't mind going a little over £500 for another PC that will last me another 10 years. I use my PC for anything. At the start I used to game on it all the time but now it's mostly on Xbox. I want a good PC that can handle anything I throw at it when needs be. I do lots of random things like video editing something, gaming etc.
I'm not the type of person to go low end on things I have to admit haha. I could build a £1,000 if I want, I have the money but I'm choosing not to. Hope that clears some things up
The OP has said they do some video editing with Sony Vegas,so 6C/12T is a good starting point. The Core i3 10100F is excellent value - I even suggested it for a budget gaming build on here,but a Ryzen 5 3600 should have better longevity. In fact one of the best value upgrades,is the AWD-IT Ryzen 9 3900/X470 bundle for £425,which meakes it cheaper per core than even a Ryzen 5 3600 with a B450/X470 motherboard. However,12C might be a beyond the needs of the OP currently. Hence why I suggsted a bit better motherboard with a Ryzen 5 3600 in case they need to put something in better. If they don't at least when most NVME SSDs become PCI-E 4.0 as standard,they will get the full speed out of it. Also the Ryzen 5 2600/1600AF would be an option if it wasn't so expensive now,and in my experience Zen2 showed much better performance in older games than Zen+ so £30~£40 is worth it IMHO.
Also,OP the B550M Mortar has 6 SATA ports but is £140,so you are paying £20 for two extra SATA ports:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/MSI-MORTAR-...mputers&sr=1-1
There is another cheaper alternative from ASRock,which is the B550M PRO4:
https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/...b550mpro4.html
The stock is only available at the end of the month so its why I didn't suggest it earlier,but you get 6 SATA ports for just over £100. However,the second M2 slot only runs at 2X speeds.
If you check the review here,its a solid looking motherboard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuPH9pCCK-E
The MSI B550M Mortar and Tomahawk have better VRMs and VRM cooling,but with your Ryzen 5 3600 it should be fine,and it will still run a Ryzen 9 reasonably OK IMHO(the pair of MSI motherboards will be better,but you are spending a decent amount more). HUB thought it was decent value for money.
Not a bottleneck *now* but the desire is a long term machine. There are a lot of "good enough" processors to choose from, but a 12 thread CPU should be a decent boost for video editing now and have some legs for years to come.
One of the machines here has one (I wanted ECC ram), with a 3600 in it. Very happy with it.
CAT-THE-FIFTH (10-01-2021)
Okay so, I've taken all your awesome feedback into account and redone the build. What's all your thoughts on this one:
CPU:
- Amazon/CCL/Scan
£189
Motherboard:
- CCL
£124
RAM:
- Amazon (Temporarily out of stock but can still order)
£65
Power Supply:
- Amazon
£68
(Is 550w definitely enough?)
NVMe SSD:
- Amazon
£95
Total: £541
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- Might upgrade the graphics card in the future when the prices drop. Will my old GTX 660 be best or will onboard graphics be better?
- Good enough to last me another 10 years with upgrade paths if needed? Haha
- Hopefully installing Windows 10 on the new system works ok, pray for me!
Last edited by Jager; 10-01-2021 at 07:36 PM.
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