I’m looking to buy a new pc as mine is 7 years old now (with no changes to the initial build!). I’m not competent enough to replace components, would rather just buy a new rig.
Would this be adequate? Whilst I’d ideally like to get into streaming the big thing for me is to be able to handle anything a big raid/bg can throw at me on ultra graphics settings! WOW is the only game I really play - the occasional skyrim, Batman games etc.
I’ve created the below using pcspecialist in the UK but am open to any other UK suppliers as long as they’re decent and have a good warranty! My monitor is a standard 24 inch HD.
Thanks!
Case
LIAN LI LANCOOL II GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
You can check for RTX 2060 Super options or RX 5700/5600XT.
2666 MHz RAM is slow and Ryzen likes fast ram, check for 3200-3600 MHz options
Aside of that it looks good. X570 motherboard is nice, although not needed right now. You can pick a cheaper one from previous compatible chipsets and get a stronger GPU or whatnot (although if you plan upgrading to 4000 Ryzens then it’s uncertain which chipsets will be compatible).
Which RTX features? Ray tracing is supported but it’s a Windows API which other cards can accelerate too and 2060 RT capabilities will be likely to low to have any use of it. It’s likely going to be Navi 2 and Ampere that will provide playable raytracing and on most if not all of the models.
But it’s not specific to them. Pascal and some AMD cards can do RT via the same API, just as they don’t have dedicated support for it the performance is close to zero. AMD even didn’t pushed that as a supported feature. Wherever Intel or AMD launches a GPU with RT dedicated support (this year) it will just work, same with consoles but that’s a different OS and API.
Fulll raytracing is killing the framerate so it would have to be next-gen cards to have 1080p 60 with full raytracing lights. Using RT for some extra effects like many games do IMHO won’t make a difference to be worth it - and if you check the technical support forum - people have problems without it And IMHO limiting to 1080p instead of ultrawide or bigger resolutions for WoW isn’t worth it. This game really plays nicely with ultrawide and in general large displays if you like the immersion.
IMHO 2060 RT capabilities shouldn’t be treated as the feature when deciding to purchase. 3060 maybe. We will have to see how this will evolve this year - what level of RT consoles will offer and how it will be used in 2021 games. On PC Cyberpunk 2077 will be the flagship RT product which likely for best effects will need 2080 Ti or next gen.
The performance of RTX enabled games is not nearly as bad as you make it out to be.
Most games perform pretty well on a 2070 / S already, depending on the settings of course.
Metro Exodus and Control are two very good examples where the difference is striking compared to the normal version without RT.
Yeah, only get a X570 motherboard if you really need to use PCI-E 4.0 spec as in faster m.2 drives. 4.0 won’t help you with graphic cards as they won’t even be able to use much of that new bandwidth at all yet for a few more years.
I would say that go for the Asus Strix X470-F Gaming to save some money and use it instead to get faster ram. The motherboard is capable with the 3000 series of Ryzen processors. You just won’t have access to the PCI-E 4.0 stuff.
It’s a spec I picked (to be built by pcspecialist - I don’t want to build it myself) - what would you improve? Sorry I’m totally clueless so assumed going for the best clock speed CPU (as I have read WOW is very CPU intensive) and most expensive GPU I could afford made sense (along with the fastest 16GB RAM I could afford and an SSD). Any advice would be really welcome as I’m feeling a bit lost I don’t want to spend much more money.
@Eighjan: Not sure what you mean by headroom - sorry! I’m such a noob when it comes to this stuff. I just don’t want to waste money by buying components that don’t play well together/bottleneck another component.
Not sure if I should have mentioned this at the start but my 24 inch monitor is 1920x1080 HD with a 60HZ refresh rate… not sure if I’d need to improve that too.
Thanks folks for all your help so far - still a bit lost and now wondering if I should just buy a prebuilt one given that I don’t know what I’m doing but they all seem to fall down on one of the above areas (e.g. no SSD, or they pair a fast CPU with a 2080 and that makes it v. expensive… etc.)
Right now in terms performance in each price range AMD Ryzen wins almost always with exceptions like Intel 9900K for the very high end. And the game isn’t that crazy with CPUs.
9700K isn’t bad, just that it has to be cheap enough to be worth it. In terms of performance it’s similar to Ryzen 7 3700X and usually bit below R9 3900X so compare your local prices. You can also pick Ryzen 5 3600 as a more value option (yet with good performance, depends on your budget).
The motherboard is to expensive for what you need. To much GAMING all over the place.
Storage: you can go with decent 1TB SATA SSD at a low price and never look at HDD storage. And you can add SATA/NVMe driver later on.
CPU cooler: water AiO isn’t necessary. Good air tower cooler will be much less maintenance with similar if not better performance.
Thank you! I would quite like having two hard drives so I can save my movies and big files on the other disc and run WOW and Windows from the SSD. Would that be ok? Is the build below better than the ones I posted above? Am I getting any closer? I really appreciate all your help.
Case
PCS SR-628B RGB GAMING CASE Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4) Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B450-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s) - RGB Ready! Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (2 x 8GB) Graphics Card
8GB ASUS ROG STRIX GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - 2 x HDMI, 2 x DP 1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE 1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB INTEL® 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (upto 1500MB/sR | 1000MB/sW) Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W VS SERIES™ VS-650 POWER SUPPLY Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead) Processor Cooling
Noctua NH-U14S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND LED Lighting
50cm RGB LED Strip Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
For like rarely moved/long term storage/backup/safe storage HDD can be good options. For more often swapped - SSD better.
Intel 660p series is their very budget line, it degrades in performance as the SSD gets close to full. If you want a good NVMe drive then like ADATA XPG SX8200 PRO line would be really good value.
I’m using a similar one with a Threadripper and that’s a more power hungry part It’s very good. 3600 MHz RAM it’s pretty much top of the line.
Seems to have very good reviews. (when picking SSD you google it name + “review” and see on summary if and what problems it has - like performance degradation with use, problems with random read/write etc.)
And IMHO limiting to 1080p instead of ultrawide or bigger resolutions for WoW isn’t worth it. This game really plays nicely with ultrawide and in general large displays if you like the immersion.
I don’t want to spend much more money.
I really appreciate all your help.