First Time Gaming Build - Advice Needed

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  Brouw3r on 18/06/2018 - 17:20

  What games are you trying to play? Seems overkill to run a 1080p 60Hz monitor.

  Other things to consider, windows ($25 for dodgy copy, ~$100 for genuine) and wireless if needed ($19 2.4Ghz, $50 for 2.4/5Ghz)

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  HighAndDry on 18/06/2018 - 17:21

  +1

  What's your budget and what are your priorities (value, performance, future-proof) and what games do you usually play (FPS, RTS, MOBAs, Battle royales, etc)?

  Your build generally looks fairly solid - the fact that you've done your research definitely shows. A few general suggestions:

  1. Motherboard is hugely overkill; you can save about $100 on a motherboard there and see no difference at all to gaming performance pretty much at all; you don't really need the X470 chipset - at the very least go down to a X370 chipset, but I'd honestly go with a B350 chipset because, again, you're not going to see a difference with the set up you've got here. The X470 is for multi-GPU set-ups, CAD/server setups, or extreme overclocking.

  2. RAM: You will see benefits from having additional RAM, and Ryzen chips definitely can use/need the higher speed RAM (but even the X479 chipset doesn't officially support faster than 2933MHz so…) but RAM is very expensive right now and easily upgraded, so I'd go with (a) 8GB of RAM to start with and upgrade later, (b) possibly consider slower RAM (but still more than 2667MHz), and (c) go with cheaper RAM - if the capacity and speed are the same, there's very little benefit from going with more expensive, fancier RAM (with faster stepping etc) unless you're considering doing fairly extreme overclocking.

  3. If you're staying with your single 1080p resolution monitor, you're not going to see much benefit from a GTX1080 graphics card over a GTX1070Ti. I'd even go with a non-Ti GTX1070 because a 1080p monitor just doesn't have that many pixels that need drawing every frame. BUT if you're thinking of upgrading to a bigger monitor - 1440p or a 4K one in the near future, then the GTX1080 would be more suitable. "Near future" is key though - if it's going to be a while off, then upgrade to a better graphics card then, either a GTX1080 after the GTX1180 are out (so it'll be cheaper) or a GTX1180 (because it'll be newer).

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  tomochin1991 on 18/06/2018 - 17:35

  Hard to say tbh. Really depends on what kind of gaming you want to do on this PC. Is 60fps enough for you or you want 100+ fps. You're running a 1080p monitor so a gtx1060 would be good enough to run Most games at the moment on high setting graphics at around 60fps. Gtx1070 would prob be good to run everything on best settings imo at 1080p. 1070Ti isnt worth it, just go gtx1080 if you want really good fps on 1080p screen. It all comes down to the amount of fps you want, you could try google the games you would likely play on PC and their respective fps on each graphics card and make your decision based on that.

  The Motherboard seems a bit overkill for just a ryzen 5 2600. You could always consider something slightly cheaper for the motherboard imo unless you are into the whole gaming aesthetics and such.

  Ram could be cheaper too unless your into aesthetics lol

  I dont use Antec PSU, I usually get Corsair or EVGA but thats personal preference aswell. I'd consider going for a modular PSU so you don't have a load of extra cables just hanging there at the back. Modular PSU are usually a bit more expensive so thats really up to you i guess.

  All this being said, I'm not an AMD user so I can't really refer you to another motherboard but $279 for a motherboard on a ryzen 5 seems overkill lol. Probably can get something around Sub $200 unless you really need those extra features on this motherboard.

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  MBix on 18/06/2018 - 17:43

  Cheers guys,

  As far as games go it'll probably come down to things like Overwatch, PUBG and similar. I honestly don't see myself upgrading the monitor at this stage given most my single player games will probably be going to the XB1X on my main 4k TV. I think at this stage 60FPS would be more than enough for me coming from console gaming

  Definitely will step down the motherboard in this case as I have no real idea behind overclocking etc etc, so will definitely save money there. I did read though that dropping back to a B350 may mean I need to update the BIOS in order for it to be compatible with other things I've listed. Is this the case? As far as me listing the X470 it was really just due to the fact it popped up in the PCPartPicker suggested build guide, so I really wouldn't need it as the extra features etc won't really be of a concern.

  With the RAM I might definitely take that on board and go for 8GB first and then down the line upgrade from there, would anyone have any recommendations, aesthetics I could care less about haha, happy to stay at 16gb as well if needed but cheaper options

  Would there be any other negative in changing the Samsung SSD to something like the Kingston A400??

  Going for just the GTX1070 will definitely save me some cash also so some pretty great recommendations here without seeming like I will drop performance too much.

  The last thing I failed to mention is I will also want to do some light editing of graphics via Photoshop, would a machine like this be okay to handle it? I currently do it on my Microsoft Surface Pro 4 without any issues.

  Thanks again guys.

  • 

    HighAndDry on 18/06/2018 - 17:59

    With those games, and a 1080p 60Hz monitor, definitely don't go above a GTX1070 (non-Ti), it'll be basically wasted, future-proofing notwithstanding. Future-proofing when it comes to PC parts is generally a losing proposition though.

    Flashing a motherboard Bios isn't that hard if you're even moderately tech-literate, or see if the seller is willing to flash it for you before the ship it out.

    As to the SSD: Be very careful because there are so many things to consider for SSDs. I'd stick with the Samsung one just because it's a solid SSD that's (iirc) NVMe, PCIe SSD that has gotten consistently great reviews and has great performance. The Kingston is a SATAII (not PCIe) and has read and write speeds of 500MB/s and 450MB/s compared to the Samsung's read/write of 3,400MB/s and 2,300 MB/s. (Yeah, SSDs vary wildly in performance).

    The last thing I failed to mention is I will also want to do some light editing of graphics via Photoshop, would a machine like this be okay to handle it?

    Will be able to handle that no problems.

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  Tech5 on 18/06/2018 - 17:54

  The monitor you have is 60hz, so you may not need 16gb ram. When I was using that exact same monitor, I had no difference between 8gb or 16gb. However, when I upgraded to a 144hz 1440p, there was a difference of roughly 20-30fps (and it was a lot more stable too), when playing games like Deus Ex.

  I'd get a 8gb to start with, and you can add another stick if it is not enough

  The 3200hz is probably overkill too

  In terms of recommendations,

  https://www.pccasegear.com/products/36280/kingston-valueram-…

  Even that is more than enough for now if you dont care about looks

  • 

    MBix on 18/06/2018 - 17:56

    Cheers mate!

  • 

    HighAndDry on 18/06/2018 - 18:03

    It's really the resolution of the monitor and the Graphics VRAM that's related. Computer RAM will depend on if OP is doing a lot of multitasking (like having a billion Chrome tabs open like I tend to), or play open-world games (like…. Cyberpunk 2077? More fuzzy on this). Makes sense for Deus Ex though - from memory it had fairly large levels and so hitting the page file is going to give you stutter while you're moving through the level.

    Also - I'd go with at least 2800Mhz+ RAM just because the Ryzen CPUs have been shown to benefit a LOT from having faster memory, and the price difference between 2400Mhz and 2800Mhz RAM isn't big enough to be worth saving those few dollars.

    • 

      Tech5 on 18/06/2018 - 18:05

      Yep, it is the page file that is the problem for games like Deus Ex, GTA etc. Graphics VRAM seems to affect average FPS more, but RAM appears to affect FPS drops more (when it has to grab more info from disk).

      In terms of the monitor, im more so saying that with 60hz monitor, you only need 60FPS stable. With 144hz, you can go up to 144FPS stable.

      Interesting about the CPU. I use intel so would not know

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  Illian on 18/06/2018 - 18:18

  Agree with a lot of these other recommendations, definitely only need a normal 1070 for that monitor no matter the game.