Build Advice New gaming PC build tips

[Teabo]

Hello,

I'm planning to buy a new PC soon, mainly for gaming purposes. I'm looking for some tips on how to optimize the setup and where I could potentially save some money. Here's the setup I'm considering to buy now:

Sapphire PULSE RX 7800 XT Gaming 16 Gb 566,99€
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 178.99€
Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 50.99€
Kingston FURY Beast DDR4 3200 MHz CL16 16 Gb 38,99€
Kingston FURY Beast DDR4 3200 MHz CL16 16 Gb 38,99€
Asus PRIME B550M-A WIFI II AM4 micro-ATX 136,99€
WD Black SN770 1 Gb M.2 NVMe SSD 89.99€
Corsair CX750 ATX, 750 W 79.99€
Phanteks XT Pro Ultra Mid Tower 79.99€

For a total of: 1261.91€

The price is quite steep for me already, especially since it doesn't even include the operating system. At the very least I can't really go higher than this. I've been hearing that the RX 6800 XT would be a good option for 1440P gaming, but I live in Finland and I've been unable to find a new one for sale anymore. Basically I'm just looking for some feedback on how to potentially optimize the setup some more, potential issues with this setup and how to possibly save some more money. Thank you for your time.

 

[Lafong]

If you want 32 gb of RAM, the better move is to get a single kit of 2 matched sticks of 16 gb each. NOT 2 separately purchased 16 gb sticks.

That case will accept coolers up to 184 mm tall. I'm wondering why you chose a low profile Noctua.

Noctuas are generally excellent, but the low profile (L) models are typically used in narrow cases that won't accept a standard full height tower cooler. Like a U9 or U12 or D12L or D15. Your case has plenty of width to accept any Noctua.

You might be urged to move up a step or two on power supply quality. Watt level is OK, but I think the CX is near the bottom of Corsair's line.

 

[Teabo]

Thank you for the reply. The reason why I chose that CPU cooler was because of the price. I modified the above setup to take your feedback into account. I also had to swap the GPU for a more expensive one, as I noticed the one I chose earlier is no longer available:

Asus AMD Radeon TUF-RX7800XT-O16G-GAMING 599.00€
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 178.99€
Noctua NH-U12S-SE-AM4 82.99€
Kingston FURY Renegade DDR4 3200 MHz CL16 32 Gb 75.99€
Asus PRIME B550M-A WIFI II AM4 micro-ATX 136,99€
WD Black SN770 1 Gb M.2 NVMe SSD 89.99€
Cooler Master MWE GOLD V2 750 109.99€
Phanteks XT Pro Ultra Mid Tower 79.99€

Total: 1353.93€

With these changes the price went up quite significantly. What would be some good CPU and GPU options if I were to downgrade them a notch to make the price a bit more reasonable for me?

 

[Why_Me]

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: *AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor (€109.80 @ Multitronic.fi)
CPU Cooler: *Deepcool AG400 75.89 CFM CPU Cooler (€27.90 @ Datatronic)
Motherboard: *Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard (€131.90 @ Datatronic)
Memory: *G.Skill Aegis 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (€63.90 @ Datatronic)
Storage: *TEAMGROUP MP44L 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€71.90 @ Datatronic)
Video Card: *Gigabyte GAMING OC Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB Video Card (€538.80 @ Multitronic.fi)
Case: *Montech AIR 903 BASE ATX Mid Tower Case (€68.90 @ Datatronic)
Power Supply: *Gigabyte UD750GM 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€89.90 @ Jimm's)
Total: €1103.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-09-15 13:09 EEST+0300

 

[Why_Me]

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: *Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor (€124.80 @ Multitronic.fi)
CPU Cooler: *Deepcool AG400 75.89 CFM CPU Cooler (€27.90 @ Datatronic)
Motherboard: *MSI PRO B760-P DDR4 II ATX LGA1700 Motherboard (€128.90 @ Proshop)
Memory: *G.Skill Aegis 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory (€63.90 @ Datatronic)
Storage: *TEAMGROUP MP44L 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€71.90 @ Datatronic)
Video Card: *Gigabyte GAMING OC Radeon RX 7800 XT 16 GB Video Card (€538.80 @ Multitronic.fi)
Case: *Montech AIR 903 BASE ATX Mid Tower Case (€68.90 @ Datatronic)
Power Supply: *Gigabyte UD750GM 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€89.90 @ Jimm's)
Total: €1115.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-09-15 13:34 EEST+0300

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

Noctua NH-U12S-SE

for a few dollars more you could move on to the
be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5

Asus PRIME B550M-A WIFI II AM4 micro-ATX

you can also get a better board for this setup for just a bit more:
ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING

i would never recommend using an mATX board unless absolutely necessary due to size restrictions.

Phanteks XT Pro Ultra

and, for the same price you can get a better case:
be quiet! Shadow Base 800

 

[geofelt]

I approve of the suggestion to buy a 2 stick ram kit.
Ram is sold in kits for a reason.
Matching is necessary for the ram to operate at stated speeds.

Noctua makes some very good air coolers and your case is a good one for air cooling.
But such a low profile cooler like the NH-L9a-AM4 is marginal at best.
https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/AMD-Ryzen-7-5800X-1046

If you have the funds, Noctua is the best quality and easiest to install.
NH-D15s is my favorite.
But, there are other alternatives for the budget minded.
Thermalright makes a good twin tower cooler with a 140mm fan, the FC140.

I have no problem with a MATX motherboard .
It has 4 expansion slots vs. 7 for ATX,
How many do you plan to use?
For most, it is exactly one for the graphics card.

What kind of gaming do you do?
Fast action games or higher resolutions want good graphics.
Cpu centric games like sims, strategy and MMO want fast processors, particularly high in single thread performance.
Tom's gpu hierarchy chart will give you the relative capabilities of various graphics cards.

Budget is always an issue, and I think the CX750 is a marginal pick, but a decent budget choice.

1) 750w does not leave much headroom for a gpu upgrade in the future. 850w may not cost much more.

2) it only has a 5 year warranty, to insure quality. look for at least a 7 year warranty.
A good psu is a long term investment and can insure against strange problems.

Ryzen is dependent on fast ram for performance. 3600 speed is supposedly the sweet spot.
Verify that whatever ram kit you buy is on the motherboard ram qvl support list, or is otherwise supported by the ram vendor.

All this looks like it will exceed your budget.

As an alternative, have you considered Intel?
I do not know euro pricing.
Because of the 13/14th gen degradation issuses discovered last summer, there is some panic selling of intel processors.
Such issues have by now been addressed,


I5-13400 is comparable to a R7-5800X and comes with an adequate cooler.
It includes integrated graphics(the F suffix versions are cheaper w/o graphics)

 

[Teabo]

Thank you for all the replies and suggestions. I've been taking the feedback and comparing prices. Some of the suggested components have been either very expensive, or alternatively unavailable on closer inspection, but I did try to put together another similar setup at a different retailer, including some of the suggestions above. Here's what I was able to put together:

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X 159.90€
Gigabyte 750W UD750GM 89,90 €
Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE V2 151,90 €
G.Skill 32GB (2 x 16GB) Ripjaws V 67,90 €
Western Digital 1TB WD_BLACK SN770 83,90 €
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 80,90 €
Sapphire Radeon RX 7800 XT PULSE 554,90 €
Phanteks Eclipse G360A 99,90 €

Total: 1 289,20 €

Does this setup look any better?

Regarding what type of games I like to play, I play mostly mmo's and strategy games. Would it be better to downgrade the GPU a notch and invest into a better CPU instead? Thanks again for all the suggestions.

 

[Lafong]

The Noctua U12 is a good cooler. I have one myself, but if you are in a budget jam, I'd think you can save a bit with other brands with similar performance. That might peel off 20 or 30 euros you could spend elsewhere.

Can you get G Skill Flare with about the same specs and price as that G Skill Ripjaws?

 

[Teabo]

I swapped out the Noctua U12 for a Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB. It's half the price of the Noctua and seems to have pretty great reviews. Unfortunately the G Skill Flares are unavailable at this retailer, and when I checked the price at another one it was 111,99€, so the price difference is too big. Would you suggest to swap to another brand of memory instead? Is there something wrong with the G Skill Ripjaws?

I've also been considering to try some Thermal Grizzly Kryosheets instead of thermal paste for the CPU. Do you have any experience with it and what size would be sufficient for the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X?

 

[geofelt]

On paste,
Do not get much bothered unless you are a competitive overclocker. The paste that comes with any cooler will work fine.
5800X is not a particularly hot chip, particular when gaming and not all of the cores will be heavily used.

On ram, buy an explicitly supported kit for your motherboard/cpu combo.
Look at the motherboard ram qvi list for kits that have been tested.
Or, go to a ram web site such as G.skil and check their support app for compatibility.
Ryzen depends on fast ram for performance. 3600 speed seems to be he sweet spot.

I don't know the difference between the flare and ripjaws series if the specs are identical.
Perhaps just marketing.

 

[Teabo]

Thanks for the tips. Is thermal paste always included with any cooler? There's no mention of it in the product description. Regarding the ram, I've been reading that 3200 MHz is the maximum clock speed supported by the 5700X, is that false?

 

[logainofhades]

Thermal paste will either be preinstalled on the cooler, or will have a tube of some kind included to apply yourself. The 5700x can run faster than 3200. In general, 3600 CL16 is considered the sweet spot, for price/performance.

 

[geofelt]

Thanks for the tips. Is thermal paste always included with any cooler? There's no mention of it in the product description. Regarding the ram, I've been reading that 3200 MHz is the maximum clock speed supported by the 5700X, is that false?

Not false. That 3200 is the speed at which the processor can boot into the bios where you can apply settings to make it go faster.
Look at the photos from newegg for the cooler. It will include a tube of tf7 paste:
https://www.newegg.com/p/0VE-01P6-0...&ranSiteID=kXQk6.ivFEQ-F4vwOUKyvUaUKYEMR36ybw
You are good.

 

[helper800]

My recommendation would be something like this. This build is slightly more expensive than your initial build but have several optimizations. The 5700X3D is the best CPU in your price range. CPU cooler I linked is the best cooler for the money. The motherboard has everything that you will need to facilitate this build and some storage expansion later if you want. 32gb of 3600mghz cl18 RAM is the best you can get without over spending and not getting much for it. The 1tb Crucial P3 Plus is a fast and cheap drive and gets the job done, though it is DRAMless drive. the 7900 GRE graphics card is the most powerful card I could cram into the budget and is great for 1440p. The fractal design Focus 2 is a high quality budget case that only lacks a rear exhaust fan. The 750w RMe PSU from Corsair is great for the price:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D 3 GHz 8-Core Processor (€208.80 @ Multitronic.fi)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler (€41.90 @ Jimm's)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 GAMING X V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard (€107.90 @ Datatronic)
Memory: TEAMGROUP T-Force Vulcan Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (€69.90 @ Datatronic)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (€72.90 @ Datatronic)
Video Card: PowerColor Fighter OC Radeon RX 7900 GRE 16 GB Video Card (€589.90 @ Jimm's)
Case: Fractal Design Focus 2 ATX Mid Tower Case (€70.90 @ Datatronic)
Power Supply: Corsair RM750e (2023) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (€111.90 @ Jimm's)
Total: €1274.10
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-09-18 02:39 EEST+0300

 

[Teabo]

Thanks for the clarification regarding the ram, and good to know that the thermal paste is included as well.
Maybe I will upgrade the ram to 3600 in that case.

I didn't even realize that the RX 7900 GRE is only marginally more expensive than the RX 7800 XT. Is the 5700X not powerful enough to be paired up with that card? My main concern is that the 5700X3D is a fairly large bump in price compared to the 159,90€ for the 5700X.

 

[geofelt]

At one time, the rule of thumb was to budget 2x the cost of the cpu for the graphics card.
Just because you have an amd cpu, there is no advantage to an amd gpu.
Look at something like a RTX4060-ti.
It is slightly slower but in the same performance class as the 7800XT pulse.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu-hierarchy,4388.html

 

[logainofhades]

Thanks for the clarification regarding the ram, and good to know that the thermal paste is included as well.
Maybe I will upgrade the ram to 3600 in that case.

I didn't even realize that the RX 7900 GRE is only marginally more expensive than the RX 7800 XT. Is the 5700X not powerful enough to be paired up with that card? My main concern is that the 5700X3D is a fairly large bump in price compared to the 159,90€ for the 5700X.

It really depends on titles. Some really love the 3d cache, which will help with your 1% lows, which helps with preventing stutter. Some are more GPU dependent and the cache makes little difference. For my use case, being a WoW player, if I were building right now, it would be with an x3d chip, as the game responds very well to it, as it's a very CPU heavy title, with subpar multicore support. Another game like FFXIV, though, the 3d cache does nothing to improve performance.

 

[Teabo]

Good point, I might be going a bit overboard on the GPU compared to the CPU. I think I will stick with AMD at least for the GPU though, as the RX 7800 TX seems to get a lot of praise. I might also be interpreting the chart incorrectly, but it looks like the 4060Ti is lagging quite far behind the RX 7800 TX for 1440P gaming? I will still try to put together an intel based setup for comparison though, possibly pairing up the 13400F and RX 7800 TX. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the info regarding the 5700x3d. It's good to know that the performance boost of the x3d depends heavily on the title. I do play some WoW periodically, but I've never played FFXIV. Not yet anyway. Here are some other games I like in no particular order: Civilization 6, Stellaris, Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile, Eve Online, Black Desert, Fallout series, Elder scrolls series and Overwatch. I would also really like to play Baldur's Gate 3 with the new PC, as my old one wouldn't be able to run it.

 

[logainofhades]

There is no such thing as going overboard on a GPU, as long as you have a CPU that can keep up, and a PSU that can handle it. FYI Baulder's Gate 3 likes x3d chips too. I personally would not buy any 13th or 14th gen Intel chip at this time, given the problems they are having right now with instability and degredation. Hence why my rig is still using a 12700k.

 

[Teabo]

I hadn't heard about the problems with the 13th and 14th generation intel CPU's. I guess that make the decision easier. Here's the setup now:

Datatronic.fi
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D 207,90€
Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE V2 135,90€
Team Group T-FORCE VULCAN Z 2x16 GB DDR4 3600 69,90€
Team Group MP44L 1TB 67,90€

Total 481,60€

Jimms.fi
PowerColor Radeon RX 7900 GRE Fighter 589,90€
Corsair RM750e 111,90€ (Swapped the PSU)
Phanteks XT Pro Ultra 85,90€
Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 41,90€

Total 829,60€

Grand total: 1311,2€

It's a bit over my original budget, especially considering that the price doesn't include the operating system and shipping. Still, I'm pretty happy with it overall. Thanks for all the tips everyone.

 

[helper800]

I hadn't heard about the problems with the 13th and 14th generation intel CPU's. I guess that make the decision easier. Here's the setup now:

Datatronic.fi
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D 207,90€
Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE V2 135,90€
Team Group T-FORCE VULCAN Z 2x16 GB DDR4 3600 69,90€
Team Group MP44L 1TB 67,90€

Total 481,60€

Jimms.fi
PowerColor Radeon RX 7900 GRE Fighter 589,90€
Gigabyte 750W UD750GM 95,90€
Phanteks XT Pro Ultra 85,90€
Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 SE 41,90€

Total 813,60€

Grand total: 1295,2€

It's a bit over my original budget, especially considering that the price doesn't include the operating system and shipping. Still, I'm pretty happy with it overall. Thanks for all the tips everyone.

Please dont get that PSU, its junk.

 

[Syntaximus]

5700X3D over the 5800X is a good move, and so is a 2x16GB kit of DDR4 as suggested.
If possible get a 3600MHz kit rated @ CAS 16 or lower as well.

As for cooling you can't go wrong with a Thermalright PA-120, they can be had for ~$32.
It's one of the best price/performance coolers on the market, period.

 

[Teabo]

Please dont get that PSU, its junk.

Thanks, I fixed it. 😀