I am in the process of putting together a build to last a couple of years, with plans to upgrade where possible in future. I am wanting to play WoW BFA/Shadowlands fairly smoothly with 60+ FPS consistently as well as being able to Max out the particle effects (Divine storm, AoE’s. a favourite part of the game is how good the spells/abilities look). I am not obsessed with Ultra High settings, I just want it to run smoothly and look better than it does on my partners HP Pavilion g6.
I do already own the below that I have incorporated into my ‘planned build’
Already owned;
PSU - CM MasterWatt 650W 80+ Bronze
Windows 10 Home-64bit
SSD: Adata 256GB
HHD: 1TB Seagate Barracuda
MoBo: MSI Z370-A Pro (I do not believe this will be compatible with the parts I wish to get)
The remaining components to buy:
CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6
CPU Cooler - CM Hyper 212 Evo
MoBo - MSI B450 Tomahawk max ATX AM4
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8)
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB OC
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid
The SSD & HHD will be replaced eventually but for now I want to get the rest of the items to complete the rig. Ideally I do not want to be spending more than £650/700 as the argument is I will get a PC instead of the new xbox.
Sorry for the essay, not great at condensing content, any help/feedback is greatly appreciated.
I would suggest getting a bigger and better one, since 256GB is really not enough these days. WoW is already 80GB, Shadowlands will be even bigger.
Then windows and some apps and your done, as you should always have a certain percentage of free space on a SSD for performance reasons.
So i would suggest getting a 500GB Samsung 970 Evo NVMe or at least something more reliable than Adata
That’s a solid choice.
But you should get a B550 to avoid having the stability issues with newer BIOS versions and WoW.
There are some threads here in the forums explaining the exact problem.
Just read some comments and people are complaing that the montage is very difficult with this one.
I can recommend the Be Quiet! Dark Rock 4 series.
16GB is the minimum today. Might consider getting 32 now or upgrade later.
Important, get at least 3200Mhz RAM, better 3600 with CL16 if possible.
Ryzen scales well with RAM up to a certain point.
Not sure if 32 GB is really needed now or in close future for gaming. In mid/long term we will have DDR5 or at worse case DDR4 above 4000 MHz in the affordable segment.
B550 would also be upgrade-proof where as B450 doesn’t have day-one guaranteed support for next gen. Also note: some X570 can get a random discount to similar price-point.
It’s good. Alternative would be to pick 3300X and to later on upgrade to Zen 3 if needed. There is also more and more leaks on desktop APUs and it seems they will have noticeable improvements over existing Zen 2 CPUs so paradoxically upcoming APUs could perform better (and depends on price).
So usual problem - the more you wait the better parts you will be able to get.
GTX 1660 Super is good for that 1080+ gaming, especially WoW but IMHO prices will likely start changing as we move to Navi 2 and Ampere. Also Shadowlands will have those optional raytraced Shadows. RTX 2060 Super on a discount or RTX 3060, Navi 2 card with good pricing could be the winner… the more you wait the more you get…
Note - still using HDD for a bit till I can get an NVME drive
I notice your budget was around £700 - this cost me £695 but I repurposed the case, PSU and HDD - just don’t get an Empire Gaming case, they are cheap and pretty good but cable management is bloody awful
Thank you for the feedback and advice guys. Being brutal the budget has since dropped to about 550 due to the sudden decision to move property.
I have plans to buy/build the below rig and upgrade to a more powerful/current gen MoBo & CPU in 2021 to AMD/Ryzen which will still support my GPU, RAM, SSD & PSU
CPU i3-9100f 3.6
MoBo MSI Z390-A Pro
RAM - 2x8 3200 Corsair Vengeance LPX
GPU: Gigabyte GeForce GTXX 1660 Super
Sorry for basically going back on what I have said, all feedback has been duly noted.
Do NOT buy a CPU cooler. The Ryzen CPUs come with their own VERY GOOD cooler. They do NOT need an after market cooler so don’t waste your money. Feel free to google reviews if you don’t believe me. I am shocked nobody here has told you.
They’re good, but they’re by no means the best - one thing they are likely to be is noisy.
I’m using a 3600 & currently contemplating upgrading a be quiet! Pure Rock to either a Noctua NH-U12S or a be quiet! Dark Rock 4… but not 'til I’ve at least swapped my Antec P280 for a Meshify C (better airflow) I got a cpl. weeks ago.
3200mhz is usually the recommended speed for ram for 3000 Ryzen’s.
Gets a bit iffy if you’re using four sticks for getting up to rated speed, Ryzen’s do well with just 2 sticks of ram if you’re going to attempt to run at that speed or 3600mhz.
Unless that was fixed from the 2000 series as I’ve had all sorts of trouble getting ram up to 29xx mhz speed with four dimms.
32gb is recommended if you’re going to use more than just the game like Discord, Telegram or other programs, especially if going to stream later on.
16gb is becoming the new minimal standard pretty much.
500gb SSD is way to go though, can’t recommed anything lower than that for OS and WoW as the MMO keeps on growing in size. So you want some space left on the drive, even if for over provisioning the SSD to lengthen the lifespan.
Need a good case for airflow if using a airflow heatsink and fan though. If using AMD’s stock, wouldn’t recommend trying to overclock the processor. Watercooling way to go for that.
But don’t think there will be an issue much as the Ryzen 5 is 65w so not much heat is produced from those than the R7 and R9’s anyways.
