Heyo everyone,
I have been looking into some from-scratch builds budgeting at around $2.6k including a monitor and keyboard. I already have a Intel Core i7 9700k CPU. Apart from that, my preferences are pretty minimal. Would be great to hear a couple better opinions.
Cheers
Last week would've been a good time to get parts
wait 360 days for the next black Friday sale!
invest and they u can spend 2.61k next year
Hardest part is getting a decent motherboard that fits the old 9700k, it's old and stores don't stock the Z390 required.
https://i.ibb.co/sRqvrbY/Mwave.png - Case, Ram PSU, CPU Cooler, 1TB NVME, 27" 240hz 1080p monitor.
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/313368794132
or
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/223608713235
For the motherboard
https://techfast.com.au/products/Gigabyte-Gaming-OC-RTX-3070…
GPU
https://www.amazon.com.au/MOTOSPEED-Portable-Mechanical-Keyb…
Keyboard
Total not including any delivery fees is $2643
I recommend straight up sell the 9700k to someone else for maybe $250~300 range. It is proofed that smaller cache CPU have slightly lower performance It is also kinda old to find good mobo to pair with.
Though currently there isn't a good CPU deal around, 12600kf is a bit out of budget, 5600x with $450 price tag is also not so good. With current PC market you want to save a bit on all other parts to get a half-decent GPU, so expensive CPU isn't particularly ideal…
My suggestion would be
$350 AMD R5 5600G (a bit worse than 5600x but can somewhat catch up if you throw a decent memory OC)
$140 AsRock B550m Steel Legend (cheap board with good power delivery, good audio, plenty RGB, and AsRock memory trace design is among the better ones) proof from umart
$30 Deepcool Gammax 400 (cheapest big brand cooler with 4 heat pipe and 120mm fan) from Amazon
$120~$250 8Gx2 or 16Gx2 of any brand of ram that's 3600c17 or better. (formular: Frequency / cas latency > 210 is what you want, which guarantee at least a fair bit of memory OC headroom) Exception: Crucial Ballistix, as long as it's over 3000mhz you can buy those.
$130-$150 Kingston A2000 1TB, WD SN550 1TB, Kingston KC2500 1TB, Samsung 980 1TB, any of those, SSD speed doesn't really matter that much for framerate and those I listed are all good enough(not the best though, for cost saving without hurting performance)
$130 Any computer case with mesh panel on the front and come with at least 2 fans, example: Phantek P400A, Silverstone Fara R1, Corsair 4000d Airflow, Corsair 220t)
$130 any good brand 650w+ PSU. list here
$140 Windows 10 OEM (or grey market key?)
$60 Any Intel AX200 based WiFi adapter, any adapter marked with AX3000 speed should be it.
and throw whatever the rest of your budget all towards GPU, should have enough to get you a low end 3060ti or rx6700xt. (low end ones should be fine as they performance the same except being slightly louder, check reviews from Gamers Nexus/Hardware Unboxed if you are concerned)
this should cost ballpark $1000 without Windows OS and GPU, 3060ti or 6700xt goes for about $1200~$1400, if you find a deal here and there you should have enough for a 24" 144hz monitor like AOC 24G2, Xiaomi or whatever.
and get any of this keyboard, I had a friend who bought one of those for his secondary PC and we were both expecting to have a crap mechanical board, but it turns out almost matching logitech g815 feel.
Thanks so much for this response, everything you said made a lot of sense and its hugely appreciated.
It does seem that using the 9700k causes more harm than good. Although in selling it, I would have thought that it would be more justifiable to just buy a pre-built pc. I would love to have the fun in building a pc but pricing concerns are my ultimate priority. Is this opinion wrong or is pre-built pcs the cheaper option with the current inflated GPU prices. If pre-built pcs are the right option, I would love to hear of good options in Australia for a budget of $2k (ignoring the aforementioned extras like keyboard).
Cheers :)
edit: I have looked into purchasing pre-built from companies like NZXT, BPC and techfast and was also wondering whether I should be concerned with the lower build quality associated with cheaper products like BPC and techfast. Specifically, I am looking at the build linked below:
https://www.bpctech.com.au/product/kp-fenrirgaming-kraken-po…
As I have been working in PC stores(a big store) before, my opinion with pre-build is:
the "discounted" price is from charge little to no labour for assembly, and (maybe) take one or two part to purchase price than retail price.
if the store could sell those part at full retail price, why would they make it as a pre-build and sell it cheaper? Ultimately by doing this, they use parts they want to get rid of, use parts they bought by bulk for cheaper purchase price, or some small store might use returned good—— think about it, if the store isn't big enough and have channels with manufacturers/supplier/service center, where else can they get rid of all those returned good?
Most certainly you will end up with a few part that's not the most suitable ones, for example: cheap mobo(like the a520 in your link), ram with single channel(again, your link), ram in dog shit xmp profiles, cache less sata SSD, QLC ssd(again, your link), tiny graphic card, gigabyte psu, case with no airflow ———- basically worst case you will receive a reasonable CPU and GPU but crap everything else.
occasionally you will spot a good pre-build here and there, but my suggestion is since right now although GPU is expensive but it is not hard to get(every big store seems to have a few of almost each model), I would do some deal-hunting, enjoy your building experience(if you didn't screw up that-is), and get every part somewhat optimal.
What I can help is I almost log on OzB everyday, I can provide you some insight(sometime may not be the best, but should be above average) on certain part selections, just shoot me PM if you need.
If you really are building a house from scratch then you may need to increase your budget