Originally Posted by
Time Bandit
Thank you both for these replies.
I looked at the other thread and am happy that B550/R5 5600X seems to be a reasonable way to go and the Scan offer on the MSI MAG B550M MORTAR looks like a good upgrade for no extra cost.
I have pretty much given up on finding a RTX 3060 Ti at sensible money and will have a look again at the 'backdoor offers' when my friends are closer to deciding on what they want to do (how on earth to people find out stuff like this!)
The 3 HDD solution is indeed a bit over the top, the family have lots of photos and videos so the HDD is necessary but I hadn't realised how much cheaper larger NVMe drives had got so losing the SATA SSD is indeed a bit of a no brainer.
I still find it incredibly frustrating navigating the pre-build sites - never seem to be able get quite the combination you want! I did have a go with the PC Specialist configurator and the closest to this (losing the SATA SSD) came in at £1,320. The mobo (Asus Prime B550-Plus) and the NVMe drive (Corsair MP400 2TB) are both a little more expensive, but the RX 6600 XT comes out at £392 which is a bit better.
It will be interesting to see what the local PC shop might charge to put a bunch of components together - that could be the deciding factor.