In point of fact, my TRUE advice would be to wait. The new Ryzen 5000 series CPUs will be coming very soon. By the end of the year if the hints from AMD are accurate. These will likely offer better performance, and also potentially drive down the price of current Gen Ryzen CPUs AND probably also Intel CPUs, on top of which I expect there to be DEEP discounts on SOME hardware come November and December because I really don't think people are going to spend as much on holiday shopping as they normally due for a couple of reasons.
One, a lot of people already spent a lot of money upgrading stuff during the last five months because, Covid-19.
Two, a lot of people might be hesitant to be quite as spend happy this year because the holidays themselves are likely not going to be the same as what we're normally used to AND a lot of people are not as well off or even employed or in stable situations because of Covid, fires, world events, election year and possibly alien invaders from deep space. Ok, I made that last part up, but everything else has happened this year so I wouldn't count it out just yet.
Anyhow, there might not only be some gains to be had for the same price on as current hardware, on new hardware, but also less expensive current hardware as well. Also, the Nvidia 30 series Ampere release IS driving down the cost of current Gen graphics cards PLUS at some point in the coming months there will be mainstream models coming in the 30 series which are supposed to offer significantly higher performance than same tier hardware from the current generation of Nvidia and AMD cards, for less money, but obviously we'll have to see about that.
As far as the Ryzen 2600 is concerned, no knock to Matt at all, because that IS a system that could work, but for me, I'm not willing to spend 1200 dollars on a platform that is already two years old. To me, it's like spending ten bucks on a week old sandwich. It just isn't going to taste right no matter how much musty you put on it. LOL.
If I am going Ryzen, and don't want to wait until November or December for 5000 series CPUs, then I'd personally look at this option which I think is a lot better myself, but again, there's really nothing wrong with that build either other than it's a little older and has a bit weaker performance than current Gen Ryzen or pretty much any Gen Intel since Skylake, when it comes to single core or equivalent core performance in gaming.
Also Matt, you didn't include any keyboard or mouse, but I like the choice of the Define S2 better than the Define C I picked. I didn't realize the price had come back down on those, because they were up around 150 bucks last time I checked.
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($204.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard ($104.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory ($78.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($69.98 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda Compute 2 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($54.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB SC ULTRA GAMING Video Card ($239.99 @ Walmart)
Case: Fractal Design Define S2 Blackout ATX Mid Tower Case ($109.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ B&H)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit ($108.78 @ Other World Computing)
Case Fan: Fractal Design Dynamic X2 GP-14 68.4 CFM 140 mm Fan ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Case Fan: Fractal Design Dynamic X2 GP-14 68.4 CFM 140 mm Fan ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Monitor: Samsung CF398 27.0" 1920x1080 60 Hz Monitor ($189.99 @ Adorama)
Keyboard: Corsair K55 + HARPOON RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard With Optical Mouse ($69.99 @ Corsair)
Total: $1352.64
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-09-26 05:09 EDT-0400
And this, you should watch three or four times, and then beyond that Youtube is your friend as far as finding installation instructions on a specific hardware basis, for things like the M.2 drive, case fans, or anything you get stumped on. Or, you can simply ask here, and one of us will point you to the appropriate video tutorial. There is very little these days not covered by video somewhere, for things like the CPU cooler or whatever you might get stumped on.
Watch all three of these.
When it comes time to install Windows, after the system has been assembled, I have you covered there with my installation tutorial found here:
If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...
forums.tomshardware.com
And any other questions you happen to come across or get tripped up with, myself or somebody else here will be happy to help you with it so long as you have a little patience, you'd be surprised how some don't, as obviously we're not always on here and it might take a little while before we happen to get back here to check for new posts.