Cities skylines, Planet Coaster, FS2020 - does this spec match my needs?

Fizthornton

Member
Hello!

We’re looking at the PC below... or the premade Vortex XTS from this site...

We enjoy games like Cities Skylines, Planet Coaster, Sims 4 and my partner wants to play Flight Simulator X but looking at FS 2020 when it comes out. I will use Photoshop on it very lightly and only occasionally. We’re not hardened gamers, but not beginners either so we want a PC that can handle these games well at decent graphics settings, but we’re not fussed by being able to run them at absolute max quality. We are not interested in online FPS games either. We will be using a 1080p monitor. I’ve checked the recommended specs for the games we will be playing, so these two both seem like they will work, but I’d like to know which will suit our needs better.

The main differences between the build below and the prebuilt is an I5 vs I7 processor, bronze vs gold PSU and the difference in HDD space (as well a difference in cost and how quickly it’ll arrive)

Any insights from those who know more than me would be really useful!

Many thanks in advance for you help!



Custom build:

Case
PCS P209 RGB MID TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i5 Six Core Processor i5-9600K (3.7 GHz) 9 MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF Z390-PLUS GAMING: ATX, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2400MHz (1 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060 - HDMI, DP - VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
256GB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (500MB/R, 400MB/W)
2nd Storage Drive
2TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 256MB CACHE
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
PCS FrostFlow 80 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Extra Case Fans
2x 120mm Black Case Fan (configured to extract from rear/roof)
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
 

Grinty

Bronze Level Poster
So for reference I think this represents the system you've built above:

Could you confirm your budget and what refresh rate your 1080p monitor is?

Firstly, would you consider an AMD-based system? At the moment they are a much better prospect - similar single-threaded performance to Intel, much faster multi-threaded, and if you get a motherboard with an X570 chipset you'll be able to use it with the next CPU generation (Ryzen 4000) whereas with Intel you'll have to replace the motherboard as well if you want to upgrade in the future.

You could go for this, which is the "Excellent High-level 1080p" system from @Scott 's fantastic desktop building guide. It might not be quite the right fit for your purposes (I've heard FS2020 is quite demanding!), but would make a good starting point if you're willing to give AMD a try.

Secondly, I'd recommend changing your RAM. Two smaller sticks will be faster than one big one even at the same clock rate, although I'd also recommend choosing a faster clock rate!

Finally, consider swapping the SSD for an M.2 drive. They're slightly more expensive but significantly faster since they aren't bottlenecked by the SATA interface.
 

Fizthornton

Member
@Grinty Thank you so much for your detailed response!

The screen is 60hz - I honestly have no idea if this is any good and would be happy adding a monitor to the build if there’s one which would be better for me.

My budget is up to around £1200.

I’m not averse to an AMD, however I heard somewhere that AMD might not support all games? This could be old news or not relevant, so please excuse my lack on knowledge on this!

I‘m not too sure on upgradability in terms of whether we would upgrade the CPU in the future, but it would probably be good to have that flexibility if it was a byproduct of the other choices we make.

Finally thank you for the tip on the RAM and the SDD... will definitely make sure I choose those on my final spec. Also, do you have a ballpark clock rate that I should be looking for?

Thank you so much again,

Fiona
 

Fizthornton

Member
If I can also add to my questions... my husband has read that FS2020 would work well with a Ryzen 7... is this way too much for the rest of the specs or would it work well with the AMD build you kindly posted above?

Ignore me, the price didn’t update correctly when i chose that part, now it has, its definitely out of budget!

Thanks again!

Fiona
 
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Grinty

Bronze Level Poster
The screen is 60hz - I honestly have no idea if this is any good and would be happy adding a monitor to the build if there’s one which would be better for me.

My budget is up to around £1200.

Just for clarity, is that £1200 for the system, with the monitor being a bit extra, or £1200 for both system and monitor?

There's nothing wrong with 60Hz but it is low for gaming these days, and the graphics card in the build I linked to is almost certainly overkill for a 60Hz monitor. I'll wait for information on the budget before making any suggestions about what to do here.

I’m not averse to an AMD, however I heard somewhere that AMD might not support all games? This could be old news or not relevant, so please excuse my lack on knowledge on this!

I've never heard about anyone having problems with AMD CPUs. Sometimes there are rumours that their graphics cards have trouble but I've not seen evidence of it, and it's possible even if that's true that it's actually the game developers using tricks that only work on Nvidia cards.

Finally thank you for the tip on the RAM and the SDD... will definitely make sure I choose those on my final spec. Also, do you have a ballpark clock rate that I should be looking for?

Higher is pretty much always better, so go for the fastest that fits your budget.

If I can also add to my questions... my husband has read that FS2020 would work well with a Ryzen 7... is this way too much for the rest of the specs or would it work well with the AMD build you kindly posted above?

Going from the Ryzen 3 3300X to the Ryzen 7 3600X adds just under £200 to the cost (taking you to £1286 without a monitor). It might be possible to fit it in your budget by cutting back in other places, but if the CPU isn't the bottleneck in your system then it's not worthwhile and could actually hurt your gaming experience because you'll have less to spend where it counts. I'm not best placed to advise you here so I'll throw that out to the other forum posters.
 

Dan79

Bronze Level Poster
Do you have a seperate budget for a new monitor? (1440 144hz start around £350) This would have a significant impact on a build we suggest as you would need a much better GPU. Otherwise you could get a good 1080 spec to improve later down the road.
 

Fizthornton

Member
@Grinty...

I think in this case we would probably stick with the monitor we have for now, and make a better one the next thing to purchase once we‘ve ‘settled in‘ with the new PC. So we’ll be looking at £1200max for a system without a screen, but which would take a screen with a higher refresh rate (resolution wise, I’m not sure anything more than 1080 would benefit us).

Yes I also saw the price jump changing from the 3 to the 7... I think I’d rather have a machine that is balanced than specific parts that are probably too much for the vast majority of what we’re using the PC for!
 
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Fizthornton

Member
Do you have a seperate budget for a new monitor? (1440 144hz start around £350) This would have a significant impact on a build we suggest as you would need a much better GPU. Otherwise you could get a good 1080 spec to improve later down the road.

Thank you for your reply. A monitor with a better refresh is likely on the cards, but not at the moment. I’m not sure either me or my husband will benefit from anything more than 1080p to be honest, so a good 1080 spec sounds like a good idea to me.
 

Grinty

Bronze Level Poster
Thank you for your reply. A monitor with a better refresh is likely on the cards, but not at the moment. I’m not sure either me or my husband will benefit from anything more than 1080p to be honest, so a good 1080 spec sounds like a good idea to me.

I've made some tweaks to the earlier build to come up with this:
- The 3300X is showing as out of stock until mid-July, so to get to the "post to forum" button I had to switch to the 3600. It's about a £45 price bump, so you can decide if you want it or would prefer to wait for the 3300X to come back into stock
- The RAM is now the fastest available
- I've dropped the graphics card to the 1650S. This should still manage 1080p at 60Hz and you can put the £70 saved towards the "new graphics card/monitor" fund*
- I've sneaked in a 256GB M.2 drive for £42. With this setup I'd use the Firecuda for the operating system, the second M.2 drive for games and the HDD for data that you don't need fast access to (documents, photos, etc). It's a bit of a luxury so don't feel you have to keep it just because I've suggested it.
- The power supply is now way over-specified so that when you do buy a new graphics card you don't have to worry about running out of power. It's £20 spent now to avoid possible faff later.

I'd wait to see if anyone else has any suggestions for improvement. I've tried to give you something that will work well with the monitor you have at the moment while leaving the door open for a big upgrade somewhere down the line (FS2020's "ideal" system specs are pretty jaw-dropping), so there is some money spent on parts that are more than you need right now.

*EDIT TO ADD: I feel I should mention that you're best off buying the graphics card and monitor at the same time. Technology in both of these areas is advancing so fast that spending more now to "future-proof" just isn't worth it - the extra money will buy a lot more in a year's time.
 

Fizthornton

Member
I've made some tweaks to the earlier build to come up with this:
Wow!! Thank you so much once again! That is absolutely brilliant! I’m happy with all those specs, and I really like the extra suggestions you made. I’ve been in such a fog the past few weeks with so many options.. this really clarifies things... you’re a star!
*EDIT TO ADD: I feel I should mention that you're best off buying the graphics card and monitor at the same time. Technology in both of these areas is advancing so fast that spending more now to "future-proof" just isn't worth it - the extra money will buy a lot more in a year's time.

That is also really useful to know, thank you! That sounds like a good plan.
 
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