Dont buy a pre=made computer. Its a waste of money.
Know how to play lego and snap things together? You obviously know how to read. Combine the two and save. Get better hardware instead of paying others to build your machine via the lego method. This way you will also learn a lot.
Follow simple procedures to mitigate electrostatic discharge by grounding yourself to the case a lot. Just touch the metal case before you touch stuff. It is not rocket science difficult.
Christopher Barnatt is a youtuber who publishes the “Explaining Computers” channel.
He has a few clips on how to build computers. Chris is liked by his followers. He is published and teaches at nottingham i believe.
I follow him and have for years. I hold IT certs on the windows platform and hold a comptia A+ certification so i am qualified to repair/build/diagnose computers locally and remotely.
Trust me. You can do this and get far better value for yourself.
Study current tech. Forget Intel. They are history now that AMD surpasses them finally. I waited nearly 30 years for that.
So AMD platform is what i suggest. Intel is now a has been.
AM5 is the most up to date socket but great deals can be had on the now 9 year old AM4 CPU socket that to this day is still receiving brand new CPU’s from AMD. Unheard of that. Brand new CPU’s being released on a last gen 9 year old CPU socket.
I would go AM5. It will cost you more, but i cant recommend a last gen system to build even if you can get great deals. AM4 is now a dead end platform.
Here is what i would do cos the AM5 stuff is not cheap.
Look for a “capable” AMD Zen 5 CPU that i can upgrade in a year or two that does not cost an arm and a leg.
That will give you some time to save for the better CPU. A CPU you can use today that will not break the bank yet let you play games on, does exist. Most likely in the Ryzen 5 category of the 9000 series chips. 9600x. While 229 pounds for a CPU may sound expensive., it is not But this CPU may even be good enough for longer than a year or two.
The 9600x has 6 cores. I bought a 4 core system for years on my gaming machine. So you get 6. 3.9 Ghz base and boosts up to 5.4 which for a while was looking like that frequency is not even possible. It is as we can see. Burst only though. So not not a constant 5.4Ghz. Only bursts of it.
AMD unlike their intel counterparts have a built in memory controller. No north bridge/south bridge needed. So DDR 5 memory is needed. The chip will do 5500 to 6500 DDR5. Costly stuff but then again you are not building a last gen system are you?
65 watt. A cool chip that is. Coolers for that thing will not cost you a lot. Some of the best coolers today in the air cooled variety cost 50 pounds. Thermal take make sgreat ones for 50 pounds. Like the Peerless Assassins series. Just make sure the cooler you buy is for the AM5 socket or whatever platform you buy.
The 9600x is an entry level AM5 chip. The bottom so you have room to grow later and are not spending huge sums right away. But done be fooled. This is better than all stuff on the AM4 platform. It is a totally new architecture.
The 9000 series also perfected the placement of the cache on top of the core complex die as well so no more over heating like we has with the 5800X3D or the 7800x3D wher ethe cache was put under the cheat where the heat had nowhere to go but up onto the chipe. Thereby limiting the OC capability. That is now solved in the 9000 series AMD CPU’s.
Get the memory maker and speed of your choice and what you want to spend. I would read the motherboard specs to see what memory the board will run. They release the specs and names of the memory modules they have tested and will run on the motherboard. Follow that list unless you want to waste money on memory chips that spec wise will seem to run but are not capatible and will not run on that motherboard. Chances are small but this does happen. So they release lists of tested hardware that works.
Motherboard…look for one that has the AM5 socket obviously.
Axxx clas motherboards, such as the A620 are the basic models with semi limited PCIe lanes. Good enough for a M2 NVMe SSD. The 2280 variety. And good enough for one 16 lane, that wont get used fully though, GPU.
It might have another 1x slot PCIe slot for something else. such as a network card or audioo card The Axxx class is your basic “cheap” model. Something you might buy your little kid who plays minecraft only and does not need to tax the system too hard.
B650 based motherbaord. This is the chipset class that i normally buy. Its the middle. More PCIe lanes available due to the use of B650. So you can mount more M2 SSD since it has way more PCIe lanes available to use. This system is also semi future proof.
They also tend to have more USB ports of the “better” variety. More USB 3 and 3.2 slots. As well as additional USB headers on the motherboard itself that you can use. It is not uncommon now to see 8 or 10 USB slots on the back panel.
In 2017 i bought the b350 MSI gaming motherboard for the first gen Ryzen CPU. I bought a 1500x. I upgraded the CPU for that AM4 platform motherboard 3 times total. So if you give yourself room to grow you save money down the road.
I went from a Ryzen 1500x to a Ryzen 5 5500x to a Ryzen 7 5800x. All on the same AM4 CPU socket motherboartd. The AM4 platform that is now 9 years old.
The motherboard is the one thing i would spend money on. 150 to 200 pounds today will get you a fine motherboard with lots of features. More SSD slots. Better auidio chios that are shielded. Better voltage regulators and mosfets. Better cooling. Most of the time in that range it is very common to see integrade in/out shields for the back instead of the metal shields we used in the past. You dont have to worry about misplacing the metal shield anymore and losing it like we did in the past.
Can you use your old computer case? That will save you at least 50 squid.
OR buy a good solid metal case. Trends are glass side panel or even fishbowl these days.
A case does not have to cost a fortune. I refuse to spend more than 75 on a case and that is asking a bit much even today. I spent 60 on mine last xmas. MSI M100R case. Came with 2 front panel 120 fans already installed and had a built in RGB controller for the LED’s.
Mid tower case. Plenty of room for water cooling if you want. I dont recommend wantercooling at all. You can use water if you want. Just dont come crying to me when it leaks. And leak they all do eventually. And what do you expext from a sub 100 pound fish tank pump? For it not to leak? Do yourself a favor and stay with air cooling. For the CPU i recommended up there air is more than enough.
If you can use your old case you most likely can use some of the old cables and drives.
The DVD drive for example. Save money there. Buy a better GPU.
You can buy Nvidia this time around with the 5000 series but i would not. I am buying AMD 9000 series time time. I am not falling for the fake nvidia frame generation via AI spiel.
Once i have a good case i only upgrade the MOBO, memory and GPU, if i can afford a new GPU. Otherwise i just reuse what i have in old system.
dont be afraid of putting this thing together on your own.
If you are hesitant to do this go to your local computer repair store and ask for old broken hardware that you can use to practice on building a computer of your own. Or ask people for old broken computer hardware that you can use to practice on
It really is simple and not as hard as you think it is. Even the operating system is easy these days. With computer on open disk tray and slide in disk or plug the media loaded USB stick in. Restart the computer and you will be asked what you want to do.
It really is easy and the money you save is significant. It is. You have no idea how much you can get for 2000 pounds. That is almost too much money for a computer unless you are doing graphic design or need a workstation. That is almost over kill for games. It really is.
New AMD 9060XT GPY are just around 350. That will do for games unless you are running 2k resolution and not many are doing that nor have the screen.
Most used screen size on steam STILL is 1080p. I run 1080p and have a 12 GB 3060 from 2021.
So that GPU is roughly 350
150 to 200 on the motherboard
not sure on the DDR5 prices nowadays but lets say 100 for 32GB …hopefully you can get that much ram as 16 is showing its age now
65 for the case.
100 at the most of the gen 4 or gen 5 PCIe NVMe SSD. Depends on what the mobodu will run. Most likely in the 2 TB range as the 2 TB are now hovering at the 100 pound mark.
100 pounds for a new power supply
2TB SSD us not huge but for games that is enough these days.
My DCS install by itself is like 600 gigs. If you are playing wow the install size is just over 100 gigs now. That leaves you roughly 1.8 TB of space for other crap.
865 pounds roughly for a very capable system so far. Lets say 900 and buy some new cables. New SATA cables for the SATA HDD since additional storage is cool to have.
When you get all your stuff together. Read the motherboard manual and follow the instructions. That will get you to install the motherboard into the case. Before you put and screw the motherboard into place using the screws, take a look and see how easy or difficult it would be to install the CPU cooler on top of the slot.
Place the motherboard carefully onto the standouts of the case while it is all laying on its side. Once the mobo in place, put the CPU cooler over the CPU slot and imagine screwing the thing in place.
Are the screws difficuly to get to?
If so then slot the CPU in its place, apply the termal paste and then attach the CPU cooler on top of the slot outside of the case. That will make things easier for you if the CPU and CPU cooler are already in place and read to go. Then just screw the motherbord into plac and the rest is really playing lego.
Alot DDR memory into slots according o how the motherboards wants it. If you only bought two sitcks then they ned to go into a specific slot on a 4 slot system. Find out which slots need to be populated and click them in place.
Attach the M2 SSD into its slot via small screw. Cover with heatsink if you have one.
Slot the GPU into the PCIe slot. Screw into place on the back panel.
Start attaching cables. 20 pin power cable onto mobo. SATA DVD drive into the SATA on MOBO. Audio if you have an older DVD rom drive.
USB slot headers on the mobo to front penl USB slots.
The the fiddly Front panel power connectors. These days it is simple and a standard is bieign pushed asi have seen several generations now use the same pin pattern.
You might have to look at the motherbaord manual as to what pin does what. But its not hard. There are normally 8 pins to attach. But two pins each and they are usualy side by side, are used for one function. The 8 pins serve 4 functions usually:
Power
Reset
LED
HDD LED
I say usually.
The two that will be present and all will be power and reset. Whether the hard disk drive LED will be there is not a given but your motherboard manual will tell you exactly where to place the pins. And the pins from the case to the motherboard will also be labeled so you cant screw this up as long as you match LED+ to the LED+ pin on the mobo. There will be a picture most likely in the motherboard manual. Hard to screw this up.
If on start up the system is still dead then this is the most likely place you need to go back to and check to make sure the pins are on the right one.
This is a alot of text but i have lots of years of experience and dont mind passing it on.
Especially to people who want to buy premade and buit computers.
You are paying them a lot of money for the labour when you can do this yourself.
Once you are up to speed on this you can have a system, a fast one, up and running within an hour from start to finish. It does not take long. Especialyl in a corporate enviroment where the sytems are all the same so you are just repeating yoruself over and over again.
Hope this helps
