Gaming build for £1000

[FosterCB]

My friends asked me to help him do his first build! Exciting

His budget is £1000, including peripherals!

I have an idea of what should be included but from speak to a friend we have very different ideas. I think it would be cool to see some suggestions

[kalniel]

How urgent is it? Components are in poor supply at the moment, if he can wait until next year things will get better.

[Pob255]

the days of cheap mid ranged builds has sort of gone now, few questions, use? (that's the big one, if games what games?) you ok with 2nd hand?

[virtuo]

2nd hand will certainly help, you are going to struggle if you need a monitor in that budget as well.

If it's mainly for gaming, you'll probably want to target 1080p/60fps and use it with an existing TV if possible, which frees up some budget. Again if it's for gaming I'd go mid-low ryzen and push as much budget as you can to a GPU.

[FosterCB]

It's not urgent, but knowing the friend. He's impatient

I don't think he will go for used (stupid)

I managed to get something close to £1000 going for a 3060 TI FE and a 3600x, obviously this is silly as I've played the game of founders and thats a full time job in itself. But the I used £369 of the budget towards GPU basically. What should my fall back be?

I managed to find a decent 1080p 165hz curved monitor for £160 so thats basically where I am thinking the bulk of the budget goes. I guess I was thinking more Mobo and ram etc. I don't have the best knowledge on will it really make a difference spending £50 more in places etc.

Cheers for the recommendations

[Zhaoman]

I'd probably get a dirt cheap B450 mobo and drop in an AMD 2600 or 3100 CPU with 16GB 3200Mhz memory. This hopefully would not cost more than £250 and gives an easy upgrade path to Zen 3 processors in future while giving good performance for now. SSD, PSU and case should not cost more than £200 if you choose budget options which leaves £550 for the GPU, monitor and peripherals. It looks like your budget of around £370 for the GPU seems about right unless you can find some good deals for the other components. This is where it gets tricky. You can't buy any 3060Ti cards for less than £400 at the moment even if you do happen upon them when in stock. So either wait for 3060/6700XT and hope for availability or get a second hand card if you can find a decent deal. Not easy either way!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Actually CPUs are not so much of an issue on the Intel side,its mostly on the AMD side sadly. People who couldn't buy Zen3 have gone out and bought Zen2 and Zen+ CPUs now - even the secondhand prices ofa Ryzen 5 2600 are not that low. CEX sells it without a cooler for only £20 less than a Core i5 10400 for example.However,if you really need a CPU now don't ignore a Core i5 10600KF for £220 either.

Edit!!

If you can wait another 6 months then perhaps it makes sense,as both GPU ranges would have been launched,Rocketlake will be out,etc.

[DanceswithUnix]

Does your friend have an existing system that can take a 3060ti?

My last build was for work, it was tricky because by the time an email had got to company purchasing and they went to buy the item it was out of stock or the price had changed. I'm still sore at the toerag at the Amazon warehouse that stole my 3900XT and ram. In the few days it took for the parcel to turn up the 3900 prices had jumped up and the 3700X went down, so now I have a 3700X in the build as Amazon refunded rather than replaced and that was what I could get.

So, if you are on a strict budget then right now it will take some really ninja purchasing, but it can be done. My build was just under £1000 with a rubbish video card (as it is a work machine) but an OTT motherboard and a bigger CPU than you need, and more importantly done in a tearing hurry.

So, if you really want a 3060ti then perhaps that could go in an existing machine for now. It might be horribly bottlenecked by an existing CPU, but should work and give something to be getting on with.

If you have signed up with the Hexus Scan free shipping, then last I looked they had the 3500X 6 core 6 thread cpu for £130 *if* you have a cooler you can put on it. I have spares, not everyone does, but if you do that is a nice cheap price that you could probably resell later easily from if you wanted to upgrade. If you pay for shipping and a cooler, the deal sours.

Go check out the Stock Informer website, and find their Discord channel. I find the website pretty much useless, but the discord channel is very responsive. I got a PS5 for my son using the Discord bots to tell me that stock was in. Currys list a 3060ti at £400 if you can get in fast enough for those 5 minute periods when they are listed as in stock.

[Froger007]

There is some good B550 boards out there for about 100 or slightly more. AMD with newer gen is the way to go. Go for the cheapest new stuff and you should come in under budget.

[cptwhite_uk]

Ryzen 3500X are available on AliExpress for £100. Zen 2, 6 cores. Takes around 2 weeks to arrive, and purely for gaming they offer superb value for money with the higher IPC and just enough cores to not be limiting. They out-perform the Ryzen 3100 comfortably in most titles.

My default go to for a decent MB is the ASrock B450 Pro 4 (ATX) *or* B450M Pro4 (mATX) (or F variants). They offer a comprehensive header set for fans, decent enough VRM etc. If you want to go higher end the Gigabyte and MSI B550 line are good options too, as are ASUS. Avoid ASrock on the B550 range. The MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI has a VRM quality better than the lauded B450 Tomahawk, so as a budget B550 option that's also worth consideration

You can see a full breakdown of B500 VRM thermal performance here (based on an overclocked Ryzen 3950, so worst case scenario)
https://youtu.be/JxczZChFaZI?t=909

My sugestion for a £1000 build:

CPU - Ryzen 3500X @ £100 (AliExpress)
CPU Cooler - Deepcool Gammaxx GTE v2 Black @ £27 (Scan)
CASE - Your choice, but obvious options are the Phanteks P300A (£43 @ OCUK), Corsair 4000D Airflow (£80 everywhere), Lian-Li Lancool II (85), NZXT H510, or H510i (build in RGB lighting)
CASE Fans - Noctua NF-A12x25 (4 no, don't skimp on good fans). If you choose to ignore my advise on the fans, then get these: Arctic P12 PWM (can be purchased individually, or as a 5 pack for around £25). Nearly as good as the Noctua.
MOBO - MSI B550 Pro-VDH WiFi @ £120 (CCL)
RAM - Adata XPG Gammix D10 2x8Gb 3200 CL16 kit @ 63 (CCL)
GPU - To be confirmed, new options are really limited in your price range (£400-500) in terms of good options. I'd be inclined to get a 1660 Super, and buy in to the GTX 3060 / RX 5700 range in a couple of months, than sell on the 1660 Super for a small loss.
SSD - 1Tb NVME VIPER VPN100 @ £69 (OCUK)
PSU - Aerocool Cylon 600W @ £29 (Amazon) (rated for 540W on 12V rail, with ribbon style all black cables). Go more expensive if you have a GPU pulling more than 200W.

Allowing £25 to cover some delivery charges, this leaves you with £488 to spend on a GPU, I've assumed the Corsiar 4000D Airflow case, Arctic P12 fans. You might wish to go with the Phanteks P300A and a better PSU in the £50-60 price range. It's adjustable, but this would give you a good system as a base, and you can always upgrade to a 5600X or better CPU when prices have stabilised.

Just to note, I have specified a B550 mATX motherboard in an ATX case, which while it will work it not the best for tidy cables. Consider B550 ATX options. Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro is a good option for around £150

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is what I would look at getting:

MSI B550 Mag Mortar and Ryzen 5 3600 ~ £304

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/msi-mag-b55...ocket-am4.html

KLEVV Bolt 3200MHZ 16GB RAM ~£60

https://www.amazon.co.uk/KLEVV-DDR4-...rs&sr=1-3&th=1

These are the retail brand of Hynix - they are probably Hynix DJR. There might be some other kits which are Hynix CJR. The Adata kit cptwhite_uk is usually Hynix CJR,but sometimes Micron E-die. I have the 32GB version of it and its Hynix CJR.

Antec EAG 550W semi-modular Gold PSU ~£60

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

WD SN550 1TB ~£90

https://www.cclonline.com/product/30...Drive/SSD1124/

WRT,to the case fans,I also agree those Arctic P12 fans are decent for the money - just make sure you get the PWM versions.

Case~£60

https://www.cclonline.com/product/32...Glass/CAS4091/

Something along those lines looks OK. It should come to around £600 in total once you include postage. You will also need to include a copy of Windows 10.

If I had to get a GPU now an RTX3060TI,as long as it is not more than £420 seems an OK deal. If not I would also second the suggestion of a cheaper GPU.

[DanceswithUnix]

The OP says including peripherals remember guys, and has their eye on a £160 monitor (which seems a stretch at this budget to me).

Cut those corners, and cut them hard

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The OP says including peripherals remember guys, and has their eye on a £160 monitor (which seems a stretch at this budget to me).

Cut those corners, and cut them hard

Easy one is the GPU then. The components I suggested come to around £600. An RX570 8GB is £170:
https://www.cclonline.com/product/29...MING-/VGA5679/

That leaves enough money for a monitor and other peripherals.

Edit!!

Just read they already spent £520 on the GPU and monitor??

At this point,any CPU under a Core i5 10400F is pointless,and the build is going to be CPU bottlenecked.

They could shave another £80 off the CPU and motherboard,by getting a Core i5 10400F and a B460 motherboard:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/inte...12mb-cache-65w
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/nda-...gen1-micro-atx

Save another £40 on a 500GB NVME SSD instead of a 1TB one:
https://www.cclonline.com/category/7...80.00-1600.00/

So that drops down the base unit closer to £480.

[ddr4000]

Pc hardware is so expensive now. A 3060ti is being lauded as a budget oriented GPU when that on its own is almost the cost of a new next gen console, and it's slower. But with a £1000 budget if he can get lucky enough to buy a 3060ti FE at retail price then maybe you can fit it all in. Depending on the games and resolution he wants to play, an older CPU like a ryzen 5 2600 or 2700x could do instead of the latest AMD offerings.

[yippyUK]

If you aren't already aware, PCPartPicker is a great tool. You can select your components and it will find the cheapest price for it and it totals everything up. It also checks for compatibility issues which is quite useful.

[retsil]

Given the prices at the moment and lack of stock, grab a Xbox Series X and spend the £500 on a great set of peripherals.