.

[DeletedUser]

.

 

[VenatoS]

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 750D FULL TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE: DDR4, USB 3.1 - RGB Ready - Slightly Better Mobo at 14£ increase
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB) - Higher Speed Ram
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060 - HDMI, DP - VR Ready! - A Better GPU for the "More Intense games"
1st Storage Drive
NOT REQUIRED
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB ADATA SX6000 Pro PCIe M.2 2280 (2100 MB/R, 1500 MB/W) - Since you only picked one storage, might as well get a faster one.
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET - Modular PSU with more power for Future Beefy GPU's
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Noctua NH-U14S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler - Much better Cooler for obvious reasons.
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour) - YOU SURE ABOUT THIS?
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Price: £1,252.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/sYbHebWXra/

 

[Oussebon]

Currently, it is a 32" HD ready LED television. Am considering replacing it but may not.

That's the exact model of your TV/monitor? Something that says "HD ready" would usually be 720p rather than 1080p and would have been a bit obsolete when I bought my PC over 7 years ago. For a build of this budget, you might easily be looking at 1440p and can get budget 1440p 32" monitors for just under £200 (e.g. the one in my sig)

his has served me very well for the last 6 years but has started to have minor issues

What minor issues?

 

[Scott]

This gets you 1440p gaming almost on budget (£14 over) **Edit: Removed RGB RAM and boom, inside budget!**. If you're happy with 1080p and feel that's the resolution you are happy gaming at then I would switch out the GPU for the 1660 Super and pocket the savings.

The M2 drive selected is extremely fast, you will notice it with the windows boot up, etc. I don't know of many SSD failings now so I wouldn't worry about the branding, I have an ADATA drive in my own system and it's fantastic. The warranty would cover any short-comings at the very worst case scenario (honest, don't worry about failure).

Case
CORSAIR OBSIDIAN SERIES™ 750D FULL TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE: DDR4, USB 3.1 - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB AMD RADEON™ RX 5700 - HDMI, DP - DX® 12

Get 3 Months of XBOX Game Pass for PC w/ select AMD Radeon Graphics

Ghost Recon: Breakpoint -OR- Borderlands 3 w/ select AMD Radeon GPUs
1st Storage Drive
NOT REQUIRED
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB ADATA SX6000 Pro PCIe M.2 2280 (2100 MB/R, 1500 MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Platinum Warranty (3 Year Collect & Return, 3 Year Parts, 3 Year labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Price: £1,199.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/U9zcUWBs02/

 

[Oussebon]

If there's nothing apparently wrong with the graphics card you could buy a new PC without one and install that.

Your cooler won't be a Noctua has they don't do AIOs, it may well be Corsair

If the TV has a 720p screen it won't upscale to 1080p. There are tricks that gaming PCs use where they upscale an image to (e.g.) 4k, then downsample it back to 1080p to try ti improve 1080p fidelity as a form of performance-expensive anti-aliasing. But it's still a 1080p picture on a 1080p screen. If your TV says HD Ready rather than Full HD it's almost certainly 720p only.

A 1440p monitor even at 32" (27" being the most common size) would have 4 times as many pixels per inch as your old TV, therefore.

Onto the PC itself:

The 750D is a very large and an expensive case. There are less expensive cases, or smaller, or both cases that for a mid-range system are just as good.
The Fractal R6 is smaller and excellent for airflow while mitigating noise very well (relevant for movie watching?)
The Fracal Gocus G is way cheaper, great for airflow, and a great fit for a budget or mid-range system like this

I'd stick with the B450 as it has USB 3.1 Gen 2 over the AORUS, which doesn't. The AORUS does have an extra M.2 slot. Either shortcoming can be addressed with a PCIe add in card I guess but in that case why pay £14 more.

For the GPU, if you're a casual gamer with modest expectations re: settings, a 1660 or 1660 Super would do for 1440p, even in many demanding titles. A 1660p Super is only a few quid more than a 1660, and is in my opinion the better buy.
If looking for a bit more punch at 1440p, the AMD RX 5700 (non-XT) is overall more powerful than even the RTX 2060, and comes bundled with a choice of 2 games (the Borderlands games are excellent)

If you wanted to optimise the build for quiet, e.g. you watch movies on speakers rather than headphones, the Fractal R6 case, the Noctua or stock AMD coolers (both being quiet), and the RMx PSU (semi passive cooling) would be the go-to choices. The Fractal is particularly good as it hides the front fans and optical drive behind a foam-lined front panel, which significantly dampens the noise, while the vents at the front sides are actually more than sufficient to feed even powerful systems with fresh air.

But if you've got cans on, that doesn't really matter and not much point spending the premiums.

The warranty may give you peace of mind, but you'd have to be pretty unlucky anyway to call on it at all, and if you did, the cost of the warranty is greater than the cost of just about every individual component. With Zen 3 CPUs on the horizon, you may well be able to buy even the CPU for ~£140 by the time the year is out... it's sub-£200 as it stands. Besides which, parts may have their own warranties direct from the manufacturer beyond that offered by PCS e.g. the TXm PSU I think carries a 7 year warranty with Corsair.

Graphics card wise, I do prefer AMD variation cards (my R9 serves me well) but I am concerned about the cooling on them, as the cards PCS uses seem to have little beyond the reference cards cooling

As above, you could just re-use your AMD GPU, and upgrade when/if you buy a new monitor / when you start playing more demanding games if you like. No point getting a powerful GPU today if you're not going to actually run demanding games until after even newer, cheaper, and more powerful GPUs have been released - because you might as well have waited and got one of those instead!

Also, especially at this end of the spectrum, the cooling on the GPUs isn't much of an issue. You'd want to avoid an RX 5700 with a blower cooler, but any old RX 5700 with a twin/tri fan, any old 2060, any old 1660/Super etc will do. As for the RX 5700, if you decide you want one for 1440p demanding games, just ask PCS what model they're using. If it's twin/tri fan, great, if it's a 'blower' model, buy and fit your own RX 5700 for £350.

 

[Oussebon]

Good build there

Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)

Extra savings if you go with the non-RGB RAM. Shaves £15 off making it £1199

 

[Scott]

Good build there

Extra savings if you go with the non-RGB RAM. Shaves £15 off making it £1199

You were too slow

Re the motherboard, from a personal stand point, I would always take dual M2 slots over USB 3.1 Gen2. I don't know anyone who has a specific need for Gen2 over Gen1. Sure, the bandwidth is increased but Gen1 is so fast to begin with that there won't be a lot of devices that can actually use it. I was hoping for VR to be coming through it but it's not happening.

A second M2 drive slot though.... oh yes please, every time. Loads of people like to increase their storage and it's so simple with the M2 interfaces.

 

[Oussebon]

USB 3.1 Gen 2 SSDs are starting to appear more though, and I wouldn't say no to faster backups than on HDD or even regular SSD. We're not quite 'there' yet with them ofc, but looking forward it's one consideration

 

[Scott]

USB 3.1 Gen 2 SSDs are starting to appear more though, and I wouldn't say no to faster backups than on HDD or even regular SSD. We're not quite 'there' yet with them ofc, but looking forward it's one consideration

I'm still not convinced. I do not believe that the convenience of a slightly faster backup outweighs the ability to easily add more on-board M2 storage, especially as SATA becomes more and more redundant (port count on boards is dropping significantly). Add in a couple of optical drives and you have significantly hampered your storage upgrade options. There are certainly cases where it would be a good shout, but to your average user I don't think there are many people that would even notice the difference of Gen1/Gen2 without a benchmark.

I know that there are caddies etc becoming available but as far as I am aware they are limited by the SATA bus speed (6Gb/s). This would only allow a 1Gb increase....... which the drives, to this day, have never hit anyway (generally 4.5Gb/s).

I get the shiny new aspect of wanting cutting edge..... but in the extra M2 storage slot vs slightly slower USB transfer speeds of a limited number of ports..... I'd take M2 every day of the week.

 

[Oussebon]

That's arguing a point to extremes for the sake of it tbh.

The B450-PLUS has 6 sata ports. If you need more than that, you are moving to network storage anyway. Most cases don't even support that many drives (edit: principally due to the lack of optical drive bays, just to be clear)

Most people won't notice the difference between a cheap M.2 SSD (or often an expensive one) and a mid-range Sata SSD anyway without a benchmark either.

And if we're talking about "your average user", they may not notice M.2 vs Sata, they may not notice how fast their data backs up to external drives, but they could notice the £14 on the price tag.

It's not about shiny new tech - M.2 was still shiny new tech a couple of years ago that still wasn't mainstream. USB 3.1 Gen 2 is still making its way in the world but that's no argument not to have it given the uses. Cheap M.2 SSDs still aren't always a better option versus a cheap sata one either, even for gaming...

You might take a 2nd M.2 slot any day of the week but it doesn't mean it's a slam-dunk for everyone Depends on the uses.

I'm rarely going to argue for the Pro...

 

[Scott]

I just feel that in most cases, the average user would make use of another storage option over a USB port that's simply a bit faster on paper (The drive connected needs to make use of the bandwidth, nothing does yet). Most people backup to conventional, external, 7200RPM Sata drives as they are cheaper. The USB3.0 ports would more than cover this. The 3.1 Gen1 would more than cover any SSD so the Gen2 is pointless. The Gen1/2 bandwidth were meant to be placeholders for extreme video data transmission..... like VR, which I was mighty excited about, it's just not happening yet.

 

[Oussebon]

I was looking for the maximum cooling while also being able to have the 5.25" bays.

The focus G has more than enough cooing. If the 2 x 3.5", 1 x 2.5" bay, and 2 x 5.25" bays it has are enough for you, then you may as well go for the Fractal Focus G and save the difference.

 

[Oussebon]

PCS sell the Focus G with a rear fan as well as the 2 front. If you click the picture it pops up a window saying:

2 x front 120mm LED case fan
1 x back 120mm case fan (not shown in pictures)

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/misc/case_images.php?view=11041

You're not the first person to have asked that today, which does rather suggest PCS could do with updating the picture.

 

[Scott]

I absolutely love the Focus G case, one of my favourites out of the bunch and the price is an absolute steal with all things considered. It's easy to skip over, given it's low price.

It's funny, I always get the impression that users looking for advice think we are skimping out on the case and think that spending "x" on an RGB shiny plastic box is a more prevalent choice.

 

[Oussebon]

It's funny, I always get the impression that users looking for advice think we are skimping out on the case and think that spending "x" on an RGB shiny plastic box is a more prevalent choice.

There's another subset of users who seem to go for the cheapest case with RGB. So there have been a lot of Spec Deltas lately (or as I call it, the plastic tomb for your PC) and with PCS releasing a whole load of cheap RGB cases in the ~£40 range, we can expect to see a lot of them.

The Fractal's one of the few really decent options in the price range :S Especially since we lost the Game Max Falcon.

 

[Scott]

You don't have anything that runs particularly hot on that system at all. All temperatures should be easily controllable with the system as you have it.

If you want an extra safeguard you could fit the Coolermaster 240 AIO water cooler. It's amazing bang for buck and it will aid with the airflow inside the case itself.

It's not by any stretch necessary, but these things are sometimes nice to have.

 

[VenatoS]

Thanks...I'll leave the cooling as is. Agreed with the cooler...I got a Coolermaster with my current system when it wasn't really necessary

The basic AMD cooler is a flop.
I'd get a Hyper212 or a Noctua if u want air cooler.
H100 if you want Watercooling.

And on that PSU.

 

[Oussebon]

The basic AMD cooler is a flop.

Must be talking about a different cooler:

With the Wraith Stealth installed the R5 3600 maintained a 4 GHz clock speed out of the box during our 1 hour long Blender stress test. This is an extreme stress test, so having it peaking at just 80 degrees is pretty good, especially given it was virtually silent.
https://www.techspot.com/review/1871-amd-ryzen-3600/

 

[Scott]

The basic AMD cooler is a flop.
I'd get a Hyper212 or a Noctua if u want air cooler.
H100 if you want Watercooling.

And on that PSU.

What on earth are you talking about? Do you have any stats or information to back up those statements?

The stock cooler is amazing for a supplied cooler. It's been raved about everywhere at how good it actually is. The only reason to chuck it out for another is for long term intensive use, by which point you would be looking at AIO as it's heat soak issues rather than actual cooling limitations.

The H100 is the go-to for HOT CPU's. The 3600 is by no stretch a hot CPU, so an AIO such as the Coolermaster 240 is more than enough (and as I said, great value).

The 550TXm is also a good PSU. Even the VS series from Corsair is better than most that can be bought from the shelf. 550W of Corsair juice is MORE than enough for that sort of system. It'll take a 2070 GPU without breaking sweat and would likely take a 2080 (although I would recommend a more powerful PSU by that point too).

 

[Oussebon]

Try running memtest on the pc, e.g. overnight

If it finds errors, remove all but 1 stick and memtest again. ( Remove and reseat that stick too)

Swap out each stick to see what gives errors.

If they all give errors, repeat with a different slot for the RAM.