[SOLVED] Help and thoughts on a potential new system

[Dusty Six String]

Hello, my son has saved up enough money to buy himself a new system for around the £750-£800 mark, upgrading from a 5-6-year-old Dell Inspiron17 laptop.

What are your thoughts on the below ready-built machines, which come with a 2 year warranty?

Scan Gamer, Intel Core i5 9400F "Coffee Lake", 8GB DDR4, 4GB EVGA GTX 1650 SUPER, 240GB, 1TB, Win 10
Scan Gamer, AMD Ryzen 5 3600, 8GB DDR4, 4GB EVGA GTX 1650 SUPER, 240GB SSD, 1TB, Win 10

I have limited knowledge of building our own, having built one around 9 years ago which is still running till this day, so that route is not entirely out of the question, if really is worth doing?.

 

[kevinburrow]

I'm sure anyone here will tell you it would be much better to build your own, you'll get a lot better value. Especially at that pricepoint. The listings your provide are a good example of why pre-builts are often not good - they don't tell you the RAM, motheboard, the PSU or the Hard Drive. Do you already have a copy of Windows? I'm going to show you what you can get for that price by buiding yourself, and am assuming you won't be needing Windows (but if you do you can get it for about £15-£20) as a key.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor | £153.00 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard | £105.00 @ CCL Computers
Memory | Patriot Viper 4 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory | £65.19 @ Ebuyer
Storage | Crucial MX500 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive | £108.89 @ CCL Computers
Video Card | XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB THICC II Pro Video Card | £261.00 @ Amazon UK
Case | Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case | £46.99 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply | Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | £69.98 @ Currys PC World Business
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £810.05
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-26 17:25 BST+0100 |

This is much better than either system you posted, for slightly over budget. If budget is super tight you can swap out the 5600XT for the 1660 Super.

 

[Dusty Six String]

I'm sure anyone here will tell you it would be much better to build your own, you'll get a lot better value. Especially at that pricepoint. The listings your provide are a good example of why pre-builts are often not good - they don't tell you the RAM, motheboard, the PSU or the Hard Drive. Do you already have a copy of Windows? I'm going to show you what you can get for that price by buiding yourself, and am assuming you won't be needing Windows (but if you do you can get it for about £15-£20) as a key.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor | £153.00 @ Amazon UK
Motherboard | MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard | £105.00 @ CCL Computers
Memory | Patriot Viper 4 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory | £65.19 @ Ebuyer
Storage | Crucial MX500 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive | £108.89 @ CCL Computers
Video Card | XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT 6 GB THICC II Pro Video Card | £261.00 @ Amazon UK
Case | Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case | £46.99 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply | Corsair TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | £69.98 @ Currys PC World Business
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | £810.05
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-26 17:25 BST+0100 |

This is much better than either system you posted, for slightly over budget. If budget is super tight you can swap out the 5600XT for the 1660 Super.

Hi Kevin,

that's exactly the kind of answer I was looking for, thanks for the list of parts this will help immensely.

Regarding windows, yes we would need to source a copy of windows, but we can shop around for that.

Thanks again.