New Gaming PC

[TheKeenestQuinoa]

This is my initial attempt at putting together a new desktop PC. I've got a budget of around £2,000-2,200 (although if there's good reason to spend more I can) and this build comes out at £2,062 inc. VAT. I'm particularly lost on the case choice, but one requirement I've got is a optical disk drive and that looks like it limits the options a fair bit (I'd like to avoid needing an external one).

What's the judgement on this build? Also, is there any value in having a separate SSD for the OS?

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® STRIX B550-F GAMING (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
10GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3080 - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st Storage Drive
2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler Black Edition
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
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
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]

 

[jamiephillips909]

What monitor will this system be paired with ? Could you also include the config

link

 

[TheKeenestQuinoa]

I haven't picked a monitor yet - I'm currently looking at 4k options.

The config is here: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/WP7P66zdRB/.

 

[Martinr36]

well this comes in at £2331 and is far superior to what you had specced

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-4.7GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF X570-PLUS GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
10GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3080 - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 670p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3500MB/sR | 2500MB/sW)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Lite 240 High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
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
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 19 working days
Price: £2,331.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/sCYjFTZgM!/

 

[Martinr36]

Or if you go 5600x which is still better than the 3700 you get this £2137

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.6GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
10GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3080 - HDMI, DP, LHR
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 670p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 3500MB/sR | 2500MB/sW)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Lite 240 High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
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
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 19 working days
Price: £2,137.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/Z2gSZVnDkK/

 

[TheKeenestQuinoa]

well this comes in at £2331 and is far superior to what you had specced

Thanks for the recommendation!

Out of curiosity, why do you recommend those 3 separate SSDs? I'm seeing inconsistent advices on M.2 vs SATA drives when I've been researching - how much would it hurt to take the second 1TB drive away and increase the size of the SATA drive (which would bring the price down to £2,234)?

EDIT: Just saw your second recommendation - thanks again!

 

[jamiephillips909]

Thanks for the recommendation!

Out of curiosity, why do you recommend those 3 separate SSDs? I'm seeing inconsistent advices on M.2 vs SATA drives when I've been researching - how much would it hurt to take the second 1TB drive away and increase the size of the SATA drive (which would bring the price down to £2,234)?

EDIT: Just saw your second recommendation - thanks again!

Normally its large sata storage for movies music photos etc

A fast m.2 drives for your os so any issues in future you can reinstall to that drives without losing anything that would of been stored there

A 2nd m.2 for gaming and productivity that benefit from from its quicker speeds loading into games installing etc

 

[TheKeenestQuinoa]

Normally its large sata storage for movies music photos etc

A fast m.2 drives for your os so any issues in future you can reinstall to that drives without losing anything that would of been stored there

A 2nd m.2 for gaming and productivity that benefit from from its quicker speeds loading into games installing etc

Ok, that makes sense, thanks.

 

[Martinr36]

normal sata ssd's are very much a piggy in the middle, the way we generally spec is a HDD for general storage, then a really fast M.2 for the OS and programs, then a slightly slower M.2 for games

 

[JUNI0R]

Looks like a solid build once again from @Martinr36 ! Although personally if I went for the more expensive one with the R7 5800X I’d be inclined to upgrade the cooler to one of the Corsair H115i (2x140mm) or H150i (3x120mm) ideally Capellix but if not PRO XT.

Also @TheKeenestQuinoa do you know the hz of the monitor you plan to get? If it’s 60hz, you’d be able to to swap to the 3070, save some time and money and not really lose out on the experience. Although that said, if it’s 60hz I’d recommend looking to 1440p 144Hz instead.

If it’s over 60hz, (100ish+) then the 3080 would be the correct card. Just wanting to make sure!

 

[Martinr36]

Looks like a solid build once again from @Martinr36 ! Although personally if I went for the more expensive one with the R7 5800X I’d be inclined to upgrade the cooler to one of the Corsair H115i (2x140mm) or H150i (3x120mm) ideally Capellix but if not PRO XT.

Also @TheKeenestQuinoa do you know the hz of the monitor you plan to get? If it’s 60hz, you’d be able to to swap to the 3070, save some time and money and not really lose out on the experience. Although that said, if it’s 60hz I’d recommend looking to 1440p 144Hz instead.

If it’s over 60hz, (100ish+) then the 3080 would be the correct card. Just wanting to make sure!

Good spot on the cooler, i know what i did there, started speccing the 5800 and thought i'd change to 5600 when i got to cooler..........

 

[TheKeenestQuinoa]

Looks like a solid build once again from @Martinr36 ! Although personally if I went for the more expensive one with the R7 5800X I’d be inclined to upgrade the cooler to one of the Corsair H115i (2x140mm) or H150i (3x120mm) ideally Capellix but if not PRO XT.

Also @TheKeenestQuinoa do you know the hz of the monitor you plan to get? If it’s 60hz, you’d be able to to swap to the 3070, save some time and money and not really lose out on the experience. Although that said, if it’s 60hz I’d recommend looking to 1440p 144Hz instead.

If it’s over 60hz, (100ish+) then the 3080 would be the correct card. Just wanting to make sure!

I'm likely looking at a 60hz/4k monitor for the moment; I'm more of a "stare at the pretty colours" gamer than one who worries too much about how quickly I see them (also 60hz monitors are seemingly a lot easier to find in stock right now). Sounds like I'm dropping to a 3070 then.

Is there much value to having an 850w power supply in that case? The configuration tool is suggesting 650w, but it also told me to go for a 750w option in the original recommendations, so I assume there was a reason to go higher. I'm likely going to go for the Ryzen 5 5600x option (as when I adjust the cooler for the 5800x the price difference is almost £300) if that makes any difference.

 

[JUNI0R]

I'm likely looking at a 60hz/4k monitor for the moment; I'm more of a "stare at the pretty colours" gamer than one who worries too much about how quickly I see them (also 60hz monitors are seemingly a lot easier to find in stock right now). Sounds like I'm dropping to a 3070 then.

I would regard myself as the same honestly, I'm not super into shooters so I don't need FPS and I'm definetly a lots of pretty and less frames kinda guy. That said- I recently went from 1080p 60hz to 1440p 144hz and honestly, I didn't know gaming could be so good. Even the swap from 60FPS to ~100FPS was smoother than butter you leave in the microwave for too long. I reckon it's probably the sweetspot for gaming right now and I'd highly encourage it over 4K 60hz.

Is there much value to having an 850w power supply in that case? The configuration tool is suggesting 650w, but it also told me to go for a 750w option in the original recommendations, so I assume there was a reason to go higher. I'm likely going to go for the Ryzen 5 5600x option (as when I adjust the cooler for the 5800x the price difference is almost £300) if that makes any difference.

Personally I'd say definitely. It'll allow the system to run more comfortably as it'll be at a better place in the efficency curve, plus, when you upgrade, you have that overhead to cover the extra wattage your new GPU requires and don't need to replace the PSU- effectively meaning you're buying one PSU instead of 2.

I've never been a huge fan of the PCS power calculator because despite saying you only need a 650W PSU to run it, most GPU brands recommend a 750W for a 3070.

And fair enough about the 5800X swap, the 5600X is still one fantastic CPU for gaming!

 

[TheKeenestQuinoa]

Sorry to resurrect this, but after a (upward!) budget revision and a birthday in which my wonderful wife decided to buy my monitor for me (ASUS ROG Strix XG27WQ 165hz), I've been repeatedly messing with the amend button on my order to upgrade a few things. I figure I'm reaching a point with the amend order button where someone at PCS is going to get upset with me, so is there anything wrong with what I've finished off with? The theoretical new budget is £2,500, if there's a £60 upgrade worth having somewhere.

This isn't my actual order, by the way (apparently you can't post amendments to the forum) so I think I've recreated it as a quote successfully.

Case
FRACTAL DEFINE 7 BLACK QUIET MID-TOWER CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Eight Core CPU (3.8GHz-4.7GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4) - Decided to go with the 5800x in the end; it has some work benefits for me too and anything above that didn't seem like it did anything useful.
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF X570-PLUS GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (4 x 8GB) - I read a lot about 4 ram sticks helping performance over two, and the upgrade to 3600MHz wasn't that significant price-wise.
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 Ti - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 6900MB/R, 5000MB/W)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 7000MB/R, 5000MB/W) - So this is where I just splurged because it fit the budget to be honest, but I figured that the Samsung SSD has double speeds compared to the Intel drive, so it's going to do something good to load times? Am I completely wasting money here? Faster load times are more valuable to me than drive space, as I don't really mind having to uninstall games if I'm not playing them.
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET - I already had the 850w in the order and it was barely anything to upgrade again so I figured on the off chance a future graphics card needs it or something, I won't have to replace this as quickly.
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
Corsair H115i ELITE CAPELLIX RGB Hydro Series High Performance CPU Cooler - The original suggested cooler was out of stock by the time I ordered, so I switched it to this largely based on the fact that it appears in so many other threads with a 5800x.
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
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
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 16 to 19 working days
Price: £2,440.00 including VAT and Delivery

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

 

[Scott]

I would switch out the motherboard to the Wifi version and drop the wifi card. Less is more

With the 2nd really fast M2 drive, if direct storage comes to a PC near us then it's going to be good for load times. Otherwise, there isn't really that much between a fast M2 drive and a really fast M2 drive when it comes to game loads.

The rest is on the button

 

[Scott]

Can't believe I got likes for the above.... I missed Bullguard! Kill it with fire!

You really don't want Bullguard on there, even as a trial. It just creates distraction. Windows Defender is more than adequate.

 

[TheKeenestQuinoa]

Can't believe I got likes for the above.... I missed Bullguard! Kill it with fire!

You really don't want Bullguard on there, even as a trial. It just creates distraction. Windows Defender is more than adequate.

Ah, I knew I'd missed a few things. Ignore everything between Windows 10 and the silver warranty - my actual order has no anti-virus trials and Chrome.

Thanks for the rest of the advice too