Question New build Advice

[Aaron_12]

Hello! I built my current computer at least 6-7 years ago and was thinking it's about time I built a new one since some of the games are running a little slow. I'm not well versed in anything tech related and got a lot of information from forums and 'how to' guides when I made my first. I would greatly appreciate any information or pointers on what parts I can look to for my new build!

Approximate Purchase Date: Within the next 3-6 weeks

Budget Range: All up, maybe $1200? Ideally less if possible

System Usage from Most to Least Important: Video games (although I don't need cutting edge graphics, just high graphic settings and running well is fine for me), watching movies, home office work, file storage

Are you buying a monitor: No

Parts to Upgrade: Honestly I have no idea. I'm not sure my current build is.
Mother board- Gigabyte H170-HD3-CF
Processor- i5 -6500 3.2 Ghz
RAM- Cossair Vengenance- 16Gb DDR4 (Bought it new so ideally if I could use it again?)
Graphics card- Radeon AMD R9380
PSU- Seasonic G550 PSU (seems ok? can possibly use again?)
Case- Phanteks Enthoo Pro Glass (could also use again?)

Do you need to buy OS: Yes
Please note that if you're using an OEM license of Windows, you will need a new one when buying a new motherboard.

Preferred Website(s) for Parts: I live in Australia so I have used MSY before for my parts

Location: Melbourne, Victoria

Parts Preferences: No prefernce, whatever is cost effective but gives good bang for buck

Overclocking: Don't know how to so probably no

SLI or Crossfire: Not sure again so which ever option works bes?

Your Monitor Resolution: 1920 x 1080- (no immediate need to upgrade up perhaps have the capacity to at a later date)

Additional Comments: Prefer a system that runs quietly. Doesn't need to be fancy or branded. Just reliable, and can handle games at a high level with graphics. I don't play online so doesn't need to be suited for that purpose. Also would be good to have storage space with an SSD if possible.

And Most Importantly, Why Are You Upgrading: Current computer is doing the job however would like to upgrade for gaming purposes.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Aaron

 

[turtletarget111]

You'll have to decide for yourself if you want to jump to a modern platform with new tech like PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory. I would personally pay a few hundred dollars more to be on the current generation, but if you are looking to save some money, you by no means need to. You can still have a monster of a rig by staying on last generation hardware. You'll also need to decide if you want to go with AMD or Intel for the foundation of your system. I personally prefer AMD, because their chips generally draw way less power with equal performance compared to Intel, but both have great offerings. For this list I went with the assumption that you will go with the next generation, on the AMD side. We can always make adjustments later.

Let's start with the CPU. I would recommend you got with the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. It is a six core, twelve thread processor, which means it will handily take on any game you throw at it, and will have plenty of headroom for running other programs in the background. The Ryzen 5 is an outstanding bang for buck CPU. I would go with the 7600X over the base 7600, because it is only about 15 bucks more, and you will be getting higher clock speeds out of the box. Definitely worth the couple extra dollars. ($235.00)

For cooling, I would stick with an air cooler. AIO water coolers are great, but they are expensive and not nearly as durable as a good old fashioned air cooler. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin is an outstanding cooler for the money and runs whisper quiet. ($35.00)

For motherboards, the MSI Pro B650M-A is a decent mid-tier AM5 board. It won't have things like USB-C ports, but like all B650 boards it still has WiFi 6E and 2.5G Ethernet. For 160 dollars it is fairly feature backed and will be more than enough for gaming. ($160.00)

For RAM, you can't get much better than this kit of G.Skill Trident Z5. It's a 2x16 kit, with 6400 CL32 speeds. It only has a First Word latency of 10 ns, which is perfect for Ryzen systems. ($110.00)

Samsung has always been the King of SSD's, and while brands like Sabrent have some excellent options as well, the 970 Evo Plus is a great SSD for the money. The particular one I chose was the 1TB variant for your Windows installation, as well as a 50 dollar 2TB hard drive for games from Seagate. If you are willing to spend a little more, you could jump on the Seagate Firecuda 4TB drive. It is technically over budget by about thirty dollars, but this is a faster drive and has double the capacity for more games and recordings. ($50.00 + $50.00)

For the graphics card, the Radeon RX 6800 is a monster of a card, especially for the price. You can find this card for around $400.00. It will frequently outperform cards like the RTX 4060 Ti, which is priced similarly. The RX 6800 has more video memory, meaning it will play nicer with newer titles as it ages. If you really care about technologies like DLSS, frame generation, or ray tracing you should go with the 4060 Ti. But if all you are after is rasterized gaming at 1080p, the 6800 will shred. If you are willing to shell out a little more, you could step up to the 6800XT or the 6950XT, all of which will generally perform better than the similarly priced counterparts from Nvidia. ($430.00)

Your case is sufficient enough, so I would not worry about needing to buy a new one. If you like the design and it fits your needs, there is no reason to get rid of it.

I would buy a new power supply. 550 watts won't take you very far with modern hardware, so I would recommend upgrading to the Corsair RM850e. It's an extremely quality 850 watt unit with 80+ Gold certification, meaning under certain loads it will be more efficient than a power supply without a certification rating. This should help reduce your electricity bill. ($120.00)

Total for new system comes to 1180.00. Like I said earlier, it isn't much more expensive to build a new system on current generation platforms like AM5, so if you are going to the trouble of making a new system, you might as well have it up to date, even if that means buying all new parts.

MSY doesn't seem to have many of the parts listed here, and if it does, they are quite a bit more expensive. Both Newegg and Amazon can be good places to get parts. I also made this list assuming your 1200 dollar budget was in USD, not AUD. We can make adjustments if you meant 1200 AUD. If you have any further questions don't hesitate to reach out.

To answer some of your questions and concerns, as far as SLI or Crossfire, those are technologies from Nvidia and AMD respectively that simply allow you to run two video cards in the same machine, theoretically allowing you to double your performance in games. Few games supported SLI or Crossfire when it was new, and even fewer games support the technology nowadays. Nvidia has killed it outright, and AMD multi GPU support is pretty hit or miss depending on the program. Even at its peak it's something few people did becuase the results were too unpredictable to justify buying two cards. Some games would actually run slower with multiple video cards. Hope this list helped, take care.

 

[Lutfij]

RAM- Cossair Vengenance- 16Gb DDR4 (Bought it new so ideally if I could use it again?)
Got a link to the ram kit you've got right now? Depending on that, you might loose performance on your new upgrade or claw back what you're not spending on.

You can retain the case but the PSU after about 7 years would warrant a replacement. As for the GPU, I have my reservations with sticking to 1080p though you might need to up your budget;
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor ($345.00 @ BPC Technology)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 GAMING X AX ATX AM5 Motherboard ($319.00 @ Centre Com)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory ($165.00 @ Scorptec)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($37.00 @ Centre Com)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($149.00 @ Amazon Australia)
Total: $1015.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-02 15:58 AEST+1000

 

[Why_Me]

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: *AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($196.00 @ BPC Technology)
Motherboard: *ASRock B550M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($145.00 @ PLE Computers)
Memory: *G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($92.00 @ I-Tech)
Storage: *ADATA Legend 800 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($59.00 @ MSY Technology)
Video Card: *ASRock Challenger OC Radeon RX 7600 8 GB Video Card ($399.00 @ Centre Com)
Power Supply: *MSI MPG A750GF 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($139.00 @ Centre Com)
Total: $1030.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-02 16:10 AEST+1000

 

[Aaron_12]

RAM- Cossair Vengenance- 16Gb DDR4 (Bought it new so ideally if I could use it again?)
Got a link to the ram kit you've got right now? Depending on that, you might loose performance on your new upgrade or claw back what you're not spending on.

You can retain the case but the PSU after about 7 years would warrant a replacement. As for the GPU, I have my reservations with sticking to 1080p though you might need to up your budget;
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor ($345.00 @ BPC Technology)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 GAMING X AX ATX AM5 Motherboard ($319.00 @ Centre Com)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory ($165.00 @ Scorptec)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($37.00 @ Centre Com)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($149.00 @ Amazon Australia)
Total: $1015.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-02 15:58 AEST+1000

https://www.centrecom.com.au/corsair-vengeance-lpx-3200mhz-ddr4-ram-cmk16gx4m2b3200c16 - This is the RAM that I bought just recently, however learning that DDR5 available, perhaps I need to look to that.

I'm not fixed on staying at 1080p, but I imagine that would require me to upgrade my monitor? Could I buy and install a stronger GPU and then upgrade the monitor later? I appreciate your suggestions .

 

[Aaron_12]

You'll have to decide for yourself if you want to jump to a modern platform with new tech like PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory. I would personally pay a few hundred dollars more to be on the current generation, but if you are looking to save some money, you by no means need to. You can still have a monster of a rig by staying on last generation hardware. You'll also need to decide if you want to go with AMD or Intel for the foundation of your system. I personally prefer AMD, because their chips generally draw way less power with equal performance compared to Intel, but both have great offerings. For this list I went with the assumption that you will go with the next generation, on the AMD side. We can always make adjustments later.

Let's start with the CPU. I would recommend you got with the AMD Ryzen 5 7600X. It is a six core, twelve thread processor, which means it will handily take on any game you throw at it, and will have plenty of headroom for running other programs in the background. The Ryzen 5 is an outstanding bang for buck CPU. I would go with the 7600X over the base 7600, because it is only about 15 bucks more, and you will be getting higher clock speeds out of the box. Definitely worth the couple extra dollars. ($235.00)

For cooling, I would stick with an air cooler. AIO water coolers are great, but they are expensive and not nearly as durable as a good old fashioned air cooler. The Thermalright Peerless Assassin is an outstanding cooler for the money and runs whisper quiet. ($35.00)

For motherboards, the MSI Pro B650M-A is a decent mid-tier AM5 board. It won't have things like USB-C ports, but like all B650 boards it still has WiFi 6E and 2.5G Ethernet. For 160 dollars it is fairly feature backed and will be more than enough for gaming. ($160.00)

For RAM, you can't get much better than this kit of G.Skill Trident Z5. It's a 2x16 kit, with 6400 CL32 speeds. It only has a First Word latency of 10 ns, which is perfect for Ryzen systems. ($110.00)

Samsung has always been the King of SSD's, and while brands like Sabrent have some excellent options as well, the 970 Evo Plus is a great SSD for the money. The particular one I chose was the 1TB variant for your Windows installation, as well as a 50 dollar 2TB hard drive for games from Seagate. If you are willing to spend a little more, you could jump on the Seagate Firecuda 4TB drive. It is technically over budget by about thirty dollars, but this is a faster drive and has double the capacity for more games and recordings. ($50.00 + $50.00)

For the graphics card, the Radeon RX 6800 is a monster of a card, especially for the price. You can find this card for around $400.00. It will frequently outperform cards like the RTX 4060 Ti, which is priced similarly. The RX 6800 has more video memory, meaning it will play nicer with newer titles as it ages. If you really care about technologies like DLSS, frame generation, or ray tracing you should go with the 4060 Ti. But if all you are after is rasterized gaming at 1080p, the 6800 will shred. If you are willing to shell out a little more, you could step up to the 6800XT or the 6950XT, all of which will generally perform better than the similarly priced counterparts from Nvidia. ($430.00)

Your case is sufficient enough, so I would not worry about needing to buy a new one. If you like the design and it fits your needs, there is no reason to get rid of it.

I would buy a new power supply. 550 watts won't take you very far with modern hardware, so I would recommend upgrading to the Corsair RM850e. It's an extremely quality 850 watt unit with 80+ Gold certification, meaning under certain loads it will be more efficient than a power supply without a certification rating. This should help reduce your electricity bill. ($120.00)

Total for new system comes to 1180.00. Like I said earlier, it isn't much more expensive to build a new system on current generation platforms like AM5, so if you are going to the trouble of making a new system, you might as well have it up to date, even if that means buying all new parts.

MSY doesn't seem to have many of the parts listed here, and if it does, they are quite a bit more expensive. Both Newegg and Amazon can be good places to get parts. I also made this list assuming your 1200 dollar budget was in USD, not AUD. We can make adjustments if you meant 1200 AUD. If you have any further questions don't hesitate to reach out.

To answer some of your questions and concerns, as far as SLI or Crossfire, those are technologies from Nvidia and AMD respectively that simply allow you to run two video cards in the same machine, theoretically allowing you to double your performance in games. Few games supported SLI or Crossfire when it was new, and even fewer games support the technology nowadays. Nvidia has killed it outright, and AMD multi GPU support is pretty hit or miss depending on the program. Even at its peak it's something few people did becuase the results were too unpredictable to justify buying two cards. Some games would actually run slower with multiple video cards. Hope this list helped, take care.

Incredible! Thank you for your advice and teaching me about the parts! Greatly appreciate it! As for the cost, I'm restricted to AUD so it might be a little tricky but I could wait for a few pay cycles and start purchasing.

 

[turtletarget111]

https://www.centrecom.com.au/corsair-vengeance-lpx-3200mhz-ddr4-ram-cmk16gx4m2b3200c16 - This is the RAM that I bought just recently, however learning that DDR5 available, perhaps I need to look to that.

I'm not fixed on staying at 1080p, but I imagine that would require me to upgrade my monitor? Could I buy and install a stronger GPU and then upgrade the monitor later? I appreciate your suggestions .

You can always upgrade the monitor later if you want something higher than 1080p. I would not go higher than 4K, however. 4K gaming is expensive, and even with an unlimited budget it is hard to justify. Kneecapping frame rates for slightly better clarity (that you are not likely to notice in fast-paced gaming anyhow) is never a good tradeoff. 1440p is an excellent medium between high FPS and clarity. I personally have the Acer Predator XB3. It is an incredible gaming monitor with 165Hz, 1440p, and low input lag with fast response time. I have bought two of these and am not disappointed. I haven't even mentioned they are available for only 200 dollars, assuming you are conformable buying refurbished. This monitor released at 600 USD new, so getting it for a fraction of the price is a steal.

 

[Aaron_12]

RAM- Cossair Vengenance- 16Gb DDR4 (Bought it new so ideally if I could use it again?)
Got a link to the ram kit you've got right now? Depending on that, you might loose performance on your new upgrade or claw back what you're not spending on.

You can retain the case but the PSU after about 7 years would warrant a replacement. As for the GPU, I have my reservations with sticking to 1080p though you might need to up your budget;
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor ($345.00 @ BPC Technology)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 GAMING X AX ATX AM5 Motherboard ($319.00 @ Centre Com)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6400 CL32 Memory ($165.00 @ Scorptec)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($37.00 @ Centre Com)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($149.00 @ Amazon Australia)
Total: $1015.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-09-02 15:58 AEST+1000

I can definitely look to upgrade the GPU and the PSU. What GPU and PSU would you recommend with this build? I had a look at some of the RX6800 and also looked at some of the PSU and it would mean that my budget is probably going to need to be about $1700 AUD. Just means buy parts over a few pay cycles