[SOLVED] Ryzen 5 1600X build - Mobo/RAM suggestions?

grebgonebad

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Hi all,

My sister and her partner have asked me to build a PC for my nephew for Christmas this year. They've set a budget of around £400, with a little wiggle room if required, which considering this'll be the nippers first gaming PC isn't too bad budget wise if you ask me. Anyway, so far I've picked up a GPU, CPU and chassis, them being the EVGA GTX 970 SC, AMD Ryzen 5 1600X and the SaharaGaming P35 respectively.

The chassis cost £50 (Absolute bargain, picking one up for my own upgrade soon) on Amazon and comes with 4 120mm RGB fans along with a controller, so I'm pleased with that purchase.

The 1600X I found knocking about on Ebay for £100 including an Arctic Alpine 64 Pro, which I thought was reasonable. Originally I was going to opt for a 2600, which would have been around £125 and would obviously have included the stock cooler. But after finding the 1600X/Alpine 64 combo on Ebay I thought that the overall performance difference was pretty negligible considering the price difference. Plus for a first gaming PC I'm pretty certain the 1600X will be more than ample for years to come. I mean heck, I'm still using an FX 8350 for my daily driver, and while she's showing her age she's by no means slow. Ha ha.

The GPU is being taken from my boyfriends old rig and he only wants 70 quid for it, which going off current Ebay prices is about right. Again, while the 970 wouldn't be the first choice for a modern gaming rig, considering the price and the fact it'll be my nephews first rig I'd say it's more than adequate to get him going. Obviously I could have opted for a 1650 or something like that, but it would have cost much more and not really been any more powerful.

Any, on to the meat of the subject. In total that little lot comes to £220, over half of the original budget. So with that in mind here's what I've managed to come up with for the rest of the build:

Mobo: ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0 (£55)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8gb (£33)
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 1tb (£35)
SSD(Boot): Crucial BX500 240gb (£35)
PSU: Corsair VS450 (£40)

In total that lot comes to around £200, putting the final total at £420. Right on target. Now to address the issues some of you will undoubtedly point out.

I realise that Vengeance LPX is less than preferable for modern Ryzen, however after some amount of research online I've found no evidence to suggest using such memory will be terribly detrimental so a 1600X. If you have other views however please feel free to air them below? I'm more than willing to listen.

8gb is definitely not optimal for a gaming system these days, however given the budget (and yes, I will once again point out that this is my nephews first gaming rig) I'd say it's ample to get him going, plus I've already told my sister that they can always simply pick up another DIMM at some point in the future when they've got the money and throw it in, so I'd like to think this particular issue is only temporary.

A 450W PSU is right on the edge of what such a configuration needs, however I can't currently find any 500-550W PSU's going for the right kind of price at the moment. This may change in a couple months time when it comes round to buying these components, but for now that's what I'm stuck with it seems.

WiFi capability has been deliberately omitted as Ethernet will be being used.



So, what are your thoughts? As a first gaming rig would you be happy? Do you have any suggestions? I'm all ears. I thank you in advance for any replies!
 
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As far as speeds go the 1600X only supports up to 2666mhz, so that's the limit there I'm afraid.
Ryzen 1000-series processors like the 1600X generally support up to DDR4-3200, and B450 motherboards don't place any restriction on RAM speeds. 2666 is the standard speed for RAM running on that processor, but typically 3000-3200 RAM will run perfectly fine by enabling the XMP profile for that speed in the motherboard's BIOS settings, and will tend to get a bit better performance. Considering these speeds generally cost about the same as 2666, it probably makes sense to go with the faster RAM. If you look at Ryzen 1000 and 2000-series processor reviews, they are typically testing the processors with DDR4-3200 RAM.
On the RAM side of things, I would want to see two sticks in there. A single stick will not run in dual-channel mode, hurting performance. And what speed is that RAM? Ryzen tends to run best with faster RAM, and ideally DDR4-3200 would be best to go with that processor. Also, there could potentially be compatibility issues trying to add a second stick of RAM that's not sold together in a matched set in the future. It might be worth paying the extra $30 or so to get a 2x8GB kit in there now.
 
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grebgonebad

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On the RAM side of things, I would want to see two sticks in there. A single stick will not run in dual-channel mode, hurting performance. And what speed is that RAM? Ryzen tends to run best with faster RAM, and ideally DDR4-3200 would be best to go with that processor. Also, there could potentially be compatibility issues trying to add a second stick of RAM that's not sold together in a matched set in the future. It might be worth paying the extra $30 or so to get a 2x8GB kit in there now.
Sorry for the late reply.

Yeah I know that using one DIMM isn't ideal, but with the current config that I listed the budgets kind of maxed out. I have told them that if they can stretch to spending another 30 quid then that would be better, I'm still waiting to hear back and see what they say.

As far as speeds go the 1600X only supports up to 2666mhz, so that's the limit there I'm afraid.
 
As far as speeds go the 1600X only supports up to 2666mhz, so that's the limit there I'm afraid.
Ryzen 1000-series processors like the 1600X generally support up to DDR4-3200, and B450 motherboards don't place any restriction on RAM speeds. 2666 is the standard speed for RAM running on that processor, but typically 3000-3200 RAM will run perfectly fine by enabling the XMP profile for that speed in the motherboard's BIOS settings, and will tend to get a bit better performance. Considering these speeds generally cost about the same as 2666, it probably makes sense to go with the faster RAM. If you look at Ryzen 1000 and 2000-series processor reviews, they are typically testing the processors with DDR4-3200 RAM.
 
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grebgonebad

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Ryzen 1000-series processors like the 1600X generally support up to DDR4-3200, and B450 motherboards don't place any restriction on RAM speeds. 2666 is the standard speed for RAM running on that processor, but typically 3000-3200 RAM will run perfectly fine by enabling the XMP profile for that speed in the motherboard's BIOS settings, and will tend to get a bit better performance. Considering these speeds generally cost about the same as 2666, it probably makes sense to go with the faster RAM. If you look at Ryzen 1000 and 2000-series processor reviews, they are typically testing the processors with DDR4-3200 RAM.
I was under the impression that XMP was Intel specific and should be avoided with Ryzen?

Nevertheless, I'll probably be purchasing 3200mhz RAM anyway as if it's not supported then I'll just set it to run at a lower clock. Plus it means if my nephew wants to upgrade his CPU in the future he won't have to fork out for another set of DIMMs. Ha ha.