Build Advice Seeking Suggestions For First Time Build ($600-$700)

[mbn2023]

Hello, I'm currently looking to build pc with a budget of $600-$700 USD with no access to a Mirco Center unfortunately. I hoping to take advantage of upcoming sales. I do not need any peripherals nor OS with this build and my current panel is a LG 27" at 1080p with connectivity options being VGA, DVI and HDMI. I'm not in favor of one brand from another in the way of parts but I know for me personally I'm not into constantly upgrading anything and plan to have said build for quite some time. I want a simple yet very cost to performance build as much as possible. Since I have a very limited interest in the ways of gaming being that The Sims franchise is my main choice so while I'll list other games that's where I really want my build to shine. That being said I realize that the foundation itself for TS4 has lot to be desired meaning there is only so much I can expect from it but what of I can expect I want the best of. My productivity list is mainly connected with my interest in TS4. While I don't have much knowledge on computers, I don't mind learning the reasons behind your choices so please feel free to share.

What I would like from my pc is:

Gaming

• The Sims 4 on ultra-high settings with most of the DLC, heavily modded plus tons of cc (50GB minimum) and with GShade presets
• Older time management games (i.e. Diner Dash franchise)
• Match 3 (Bejeweled, Supe Collapse etc.)
• Mystery/Investigation/Hidden Object (The Painscreek Killings, The Room (1-4), Sherlock Holmes etc.)
• Racing games (mostly the NFS franchise and Burnout)
• Crash Bandicoot
• Sonic
• Overcooked

Productivity

• Editing in Filmora
• Photoshop
• Blender (poses and animations for TS4)
• Want to try my hand at machinimas with TS4 using OBS as of now

As far as future gaming goes, I'll be mostly interested in The Sims 5, Paralives and Life By You whenever they are released. Thank you all who take the time to respond, I appreciate it.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

LG 27" at 1080p
Would help if you could parse the model of the panel to understand what sort of connectivity options you have access to...which leads into what GPU we recommend at the end.

Here's my entry;
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($149.00 @ Adorama)
Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($97.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Klevv BOLT X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($35.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Klevv CRAS C710 512 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($28.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Klevv CRAS C710 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($43.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT MECH 2X 8G OCV1 Radeon RX 6600 XT 8 GB Video Card ($249.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool MACUBE 110 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($56.27 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 - TT Premium Edition 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $756.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-10 12:37 EST-0500

The small capacity SSD is for your OS and app's/game launchers. The larger SSD is for your game library. You can add more 2.5 SSD's to your build down the road. As for what's mentioned in PCPP, about having a compatibility issue, the board has a BIOS Flash button, so you can flash the BIOS in case you can't get the system to POST.

 

[mbn2023]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

LG 27" at 1080p
Would help if you could parse the model of the panel to understand what sort of connectivity options you have access to...which leads into what GPU we recommend at the end.

Here's my entry;
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($149.00 @ Adorama)
Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($97.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Klevv BOLT X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($35.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Klevv CRAS C710 512 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($28.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Klevv CRAS C710 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($43.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT MECH 2X 8G OCV1 Radeon RX 6600 XT 8 GB Video Card ($249.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool MACUBE 110 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($56.27 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 - TT Premium Edition 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $756.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-10 12:37 EST-0500

The small capacity SSD is for your OS and app's/game launchers. The larger SSD is for your game library. You can add more 2.5 SSD's to your build down the road. As for the issue mentioned in PCPP, about having a compatibility issue, the board ha BIOS Flash button, so you can flash the BIOS in case you can't get the system to POST.

Thank you for the parts list and the welcome. Is the brand for the memory and storge pretty decent? I only ask as I've never heard of them before.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Also if you need to save money and are willing to look at used, not long ago I picked up a n rx 5600xt from eBay for 85 dollars shipped. Decent little card for 1080p. Might be able to grab an rtx 2060 for not a lot more as well. So if you need to cut the budget might be worth considering as a stop gap.

 

[ilukey77]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

LG 27" at 1080p
Would help if you could parse the model of the panel to understand what sort of connectivity options you have access to...which leads into what GPU we recommend at the end.

Here's my entry;
PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($149.00 @ Adorama)
Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($97.00 @ Amazon)
Memory: Klevv BOLT X 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($35.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Klevv CRAS C710 512 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($28.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Klevv CRAS C710 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($43.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI Radeon RX 6600 XT MECH 2X 8G OCV1 Radeon RX 6600 XT 8 GB Video Card ($249.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool MACUBE 110 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($56.27 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 - TT Premium Edition 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $756.22
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-10 12:37 EST-0500

The small capacity SSD is for your OS and app's/game launchers. The larger SSD is for your game library. You can add more 2.5 SSD's to your build down the road. As for the issue mentioned in PCPP, about having a compatibility issue, the board ha BIOS Flash button, so you can flash the BIOS in case you can't get the system to POST.

ARC 770 16gb may be another option for GPU if the price is right !!

 

[mbn2023]

Also if you need to save money and are willing to look at used, not long ago I picked up a n rx 5600xt from eBay for 85 dollars shipped. Decent little card for 1080p. Might be able to grab an rtx 2060 for not a lot more as well. So if you need to cut the budget might be worth considering as a stop gap.

Thank you I'll keep that in mind.

 

[mbn2023]

ARC 770 16gb may be another option for GPU if the price is right !!

What would you define as the right price for said GPU?

 

[punkncat]

That is a really tough price point. IMO, try to squeeze Ryzen 7xxx out of that. This leaves you with a nice upgrade path in the next gen AMD stuff on AM5. If you are going to stick to 1080P you can find a variety of new or used graphics cards that can do that quite well, especially if it is 60hz.

Out of your current system, is there anything that can be reused, even temporarily?

 

[ilukey77]

What would you define as the right price for said GPU?

hard to give a pricing im in Australia and i can get a 16gb ARC 770 for about $550 aud match that with a 6600xt for around $400 but the 16gb Vram of the 770 is the better option in my opinion over the 8gb 6600xt !!

 

[mbn2023]

That is a really tough price point. IMO, try to squeeze Ryzen 7xxx out of that. This leaves you with a nice upgrade path in the next gen AMD stuff on AM5. If you are going to stick to 1080P you can find a variety of new or used graphics cards that can do that quite well, especially if it is 60hz.

Out of your current system, is there anything that can be reused, even temporarily?

If you mean in the way of my RAM or GPU, that would be a definite no to the RAM. Not sure on the GPU but I have NVIDA GeForce GTX 1050Ti.

 

[mbn2023]

hard to give a pricing im in Australia and i can get a 16gb ARC 770 for about $550 aud match that with a 6600xt for around $400 but the 16gb Vram of the 770 is the better option in my opinion over the 8gb 6600xt !!

Makes sense on the pricing and thanks for mentioning Intel GPUS. I typically forget about them as I don't come across them that often in looking at builds.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

I’m assuming the op isn’t in Australia, but there’s a guy on YouTube that calls his channel tech yes city, he seems like he’s always coming up with neat stuff.

 

[ilukey77]

Makes sense on the pricing and thanks for mentioning Intel GPUS. I typically forget about them as I don't come across them that often in looking at builds.

ive got the ARC770 16gb ..

I had it paired with a 5600x in a build and honestly its a neat GPU in fact for a first gaming GPU for intel iam quite impressed ..

The card its self looks neat and somewhat elegant..
software is super simple and easy to OC and play around with the settings !
Above all Intel have been updating the drivers like crazy they have been getting better and better every time which shows me they are 100% invested in being a true 3rd player in the gpu market ..

If they can pull a monster card next gen in the realm of the 5070 / 5080 AMD and Nvidia will need to watch their backs !!

Iam planning a 13600k /Arc770 blue and black intel build .. got everything except the CPU was waiting for the 13600k to come down in price just because its a fun build not a needed build ..

looks less likely with the pathetic 14th gen refresh that the price will drop !!

 

[mbn2023]

ive got the ARC770 16gb ..

I had it paired with a 5600x in a build and honestly its a neat GPU in fact for a first gaming GPU for intel iam quite impressed ..

The card its self looks neat and somewhat elegant..
software is super simple and easy to OC and play around with the settings !
Above all Intel have been updating the drivers like crazy they have been getting better and better every time which shows me they are 100% invested in being a true 3rd player in the gpu market ..

If they can pull a monster card next gen in the realm of the 5070 / 5080 AMD and Nvidia will need to watch their backs !!

Iam planning a 13600k /Arc770 blue and black intel build .. got everything except the CPU was waiting for the 13600k to come down in price just because its a fun build not a needed build ..

looks less likely with the pathetic 14th gen refresh that the price will drop !!

I've come across that about Intel driver updates which sounds like a good thing to me. As someone who's just beginning to experience pc building, I can't say over clocking is on the top my list of things to try out, but I'll keep what you mentioned in mind. I didn't get the impression that Intel 14 gen was all that great not bad per say just ok, a 13th gen 2.0 if you will.

 

[ilukey77]

I've come across that about Intel driver updates which sounds like a good thing to me. As someone who's just beginning to experience pc building, I can't say over clocking is on the top my list of things to try out, but I'll keep what you mentioned in mind. I didn't get the impression that Intel 14 gen was all that great not bad per say just ok, a 13th gen 2.0 if you will.

over clocking isnt really my thing either unless i do a few runs in port royal or undervolt my 7900xtx red devil to reduce hot spot temps ..
and the Overclocking i do is only ever for tests then i set everything back to stock !!

My point about the ARC770 over clocking was more of simplistic approach to overclocking not as involved as AMD adrenalin or MSI afterburner..

My distaste for Intel really only stems from its bad socket life ..
In general i have no issues with the CPU's hot and somewhat power hungry but good none the less ..
BUT i just cant agree with 14th its like selling rubbish to idiot Intel fanboys who will just buy any junk they push out just because it new !!
with little to no uplift over 13th its exactly that sell rubbish to idiots and see if we can get away with it !!
Shame on Intel !!

 

[Eximo]

I'm running an A380 in my HTPC as a watchdog on Intel drivers.

Expectation for Battlemage is something like RTX 4070 Ti like performance. Doesn't look like they are going to try and compete with Nvidia or AMD on the high end just yet.

If they stick to a 256 bit bus as expected but increase Xe cores to 56 as rumored it will have an effective 7188 processing cores, (4070 Ti has 7680 (60 Cuda Cores)) Though the proposed die size is a nearly the size of a 4080 and would be on a similar TSMC node. But that could be more silicon dedicated to Intel's RT cores and the like. Hard to do a direct comparison. Especially if you toss AMDs lower stream processor counts into the mix, which this would be effectively a little bigger than the 7800 XT at also 60 CU...

Older games is where Intel really falls apart though, so I would not consider it much unless you only play games from the last few years that are DX12 or Vulkan. Even with the recent drivers there are still old games that just plain don't work right.

I would probably do something like this, with the expectation of dropping in a 14700 and a new GPU in a few years.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($144.97 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock B760M PG Lightning Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($115.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL32 Memory ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($48.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: ASRock Challenger D Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool MATREXX 40 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($50.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 - TT Premium 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $730.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-13 17:10 EST-0500

 

[thestryker]

Is the brand for the memory and storge pretty decent? I only ask as I've never heard of them before.

KLEVV is under the same corporate umbrella as SK Hynix and uses their NAND/DRAM for everything so yes they're good.

 

[mbn2023]

I’m assuming the op isn’t in Australia, but there’s a guy on YouTube that calls his channel tech yes city, he seems like he’s always coming up with neat stuff.

I've never heard of them. I'll have to check them out and seeing how I'm currently in learning mode I'll take anything help I can get.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Check out hardware unboxed as well. Another guy from Texas has a channel called tech deals. He seems to know his stuff also.

 

[mbn2023]

I'm running an A380 in my HTPC as a watchdog on Intel drivers.

Expectation for Battlemage is something like RTX 4070 Ti like performance. Doesn't look like they are going to try and compete with Nvidia or AMD on the high end just yet.

If they stick to a 256 bit bus as expected but increase Xe cores to 56 as rumored it will have an effective 7188 processing cores, (4070 Ti has 7680 (60 Cuda Cores)) Though the proposed die size is a nearly the size of a 4080 and would be on a similar TSMC node. But that could be more silicon dedicated to Intel's RT cores and the like. Hard to do a direct comparison. Especially if you toss AMDs lower stream processor counts into the mix, which this would be effectively a little bigger than the 7800 XT at also 60 CU...

Older games is where Intel really falls apart though, so I would not consider it much unless you only play games from the last few years that are DX12 or Vulkan. Even with the recent drivers there are still old games that just plain don't work right.

I would probably do something like this, with the expectation of dropping in a 14700 and a new GPU in a few years.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($144.97 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock B760M PG Lightning Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($115.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL32 Memory ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial P3 Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($48.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: ASRock Challenger D Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Case: Deepcool MATREXX 40 MicroATX Mini Tower Case ($50.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 - TT Premium 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($79.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $730.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-11-13 17:10 EST-0500

I think I recall that about older games or at least something similar about Intel gpus. And as you can gather from my list of games, I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be a good fit me personally. This 14700 you speak of are you referring to the i7? Sorry for the probably obvious answer just want to be sure and if so I assume said cpu would be fine with rx 6000 gpu? Thank you for the build list plus the little bit of Intel information.

 

[mbn2023]

Check out hardware unboxed as well. Another guy from Texas has a channel called tech deals. He seems to know his stuff also.

I've actually watched some of hardware unboxed stuff can't say the same for tech deals. I'll have to add him into my rotation and thanks for more recommendations.

 

[mbn2023]

KLEVV is under the same corporate umbrella as SK Hynix and uses their NAND/DRAM for everything so yes they're good.

So I can't say I've heard of SK Hynix either. I'm like super new into the inner workings of computers so there is still a lot I'm learning but thank you for the clarification. I'll keep both of those brands in mind in the future.

 

[thestryker]

So I can't say I've heard of SK Hynix either. I'm like super new into the inner workings of computers so there is still a lot I'm learning but thank you for the clarification. I'll keep both of those brands in mind in the future.

SK Hynix makes up around 30% of the DRAM market and fluctuates between 15-20% of the NAND market. They don't do much in the way of consumer facing products (mostly providing the memory component). They purchased Intel's SSD division and created Solidigm which is likely the brand their in house SSDs will be sold with going forward and I don't believe they directly sell DRAM. Their DDR5 ICs are the best on the market for clockspeeds currently.

 

[mbn2023]

over clocking isnt really my thing either unless i do a few runs in port royal or undervolt my 7900xtx red devil to reduce hot spot temps ..
and the Overclocking i do is only ever for tests then i set everything back to stock !!

My point about the ARC770 over clocking was more of simplistic approach to overclocking not as involved as AMD adrenalin or MSI afterburner..

My distaste for Intel really only stems from its bad socket life ..
In general i have no issues with the CPU's hot and somewhat power hungry but good none the less ..
BUT i just cant agree with 14th its like selling rubbish to idiot Intel fanboys who will just buy any junk they push out just because it new !!
with little to no uplift over 13th its exactly that sell rubbish to idiots and see if we can get away with it !!
Shame on Intel !!

Even with being new to pc parts I found it rather uh interesting about Intel's socket life. I don't understand the reasoning behind it but I haven't looked to see if there is one to begin with.

 

[ilukey77]

Even with being new to pc parts I found it rather uh interesting about Intel's socket life. I don't understand the reasoning behind it but I haven't looked to see if there is one to begin with.

i think and i could be wrong a bit of 2 reasons ..
1. hubris for a along time intel was the best of the best ( not unlike Nvidia's BS now ) so we can sell what we want when we want and people will pay !!
2. its not to nerf there performance moving forward so the 2 year socket life was so they can be designing better cpu's using the best of the best platforms for future gens..

Kinda backfired when AMD still beat them in some cases at there own game with AM4's old arse platform !!