First ever PC build

morty192 · 2 Oct 2020 at 17:27

Hi guys,

I am soon to be in the market for a new custom build PC. I will be coming from a 2011 iMac which has just died. Having given some consideration for what I want the machine to do I would like it to play games at a comparable level to a PS5 or Xbox Series X (or slightly better) while also acting as my go to machine for daily work use (mostly word processing with some very very light photo/video editing).

The idea is then to hook up a PS5 to the monitor as well later down the line (to enjoy the console exclusives) so that will be a consideration as well. I don't need the PC to be an absolute powerhouse that would run Cyberpunk 2077 at 4k 120fps+ on ultra settings but would like to get performance similar to or slightly above a next gen game console. I am thinking a 27 monitor is what I want as that is what I had in my iMac well but eagerly await your advice with regards to this.

My budget would be around the £700-£800 mark starting from essentially scratch is this doable? (I don't mind holding off until the new year if prices are expected to drop).

bagel · 3 Oct 2020 at 00:45

Similar performance to next gen consoles is likely going to be difficult at that budget (and that’s assuming monitor isn’t included). Worth waiting to see what AMDs new GPUs are offering when they’re announced at the end of the month but probably will be hard to get hold of them for a while

EsaT · 3 Oct 2020 at 08:45

Release of Zen3 architecture Ryzens in 8th day should start clear drop in prices of current Zen2, if budget is tight.
Though with apparently nice boost coming to single core performance 6 core might perform same as current 8 core.

On graphics card side it will be time before console equal GPUs are available for that budget.
Lot depends of performance of RDNA2 cards.

morty192 · 3 Oct 2020 at 09:50

Thanks for the advice guys, so on that sort of budget what sort of level of gaming am I looking at? Would it be better than PS4 Pro/One X or worse than that?

EsaT · 3 Oct 2020 at 11:26

Those old low end hardware already as new consoles are easy to beat.
Next-gen consoles are entirely different beasts.

morty192 · 3 Oct 2020 at 12:41

Thanks I am just trying to get some idea of what I can expect, performance wise, for that sort of budget?

bagel · 3 Oct 2020 at 14:21

Right now this is around what you can expect:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

1 x MSI B450M Mortar MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 mATX Motherboard= £84.98
1 x Team Group Dark T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black/Grey (TDGED4= £59.99
1 x Corsair TX550M 550W 80 Plus Gold Semi Modular Power Supply (CP-9020133-UK)= £74.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £218.99
1 x Zalman T7 Mid-Tower ATX Case - Black Window= £29.99
1 x TeamGroup 512GB Vulcan G SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps 3D NAND Solid State Drive= £44.99
1 x Palit GeForce RTX 2060 StormX 6144MB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £269.99

Total: £796.22 (includes shipping: £12.30)

Comfortably better than current consoles but will be a fair bit behind next gen.

Terrible time to buy though, the ryzen 3600 is about £70 more than it was a couple months back and new lower end GPUs should hopefully bring a lot more power for the same sort of price.

So yeah, would definitely wait for new ryzen CPUs and AMD GPUs to release before buying. NVidias 3060 may be announced soon too

morty192 · 3 Oct 2020 at 15:24

Thank-you very much. Is it reasonable to assume prices and what I can get for my money might improve a lot come March/April?

bagel · 3 Oct 2020 at 16:45

morty192 said:
Thank-you very much. Is it reasonable to assume prices and what I can get for my money might improve a lot come March/April?

Providing brexit doesn't send prices flying - yes absolutely

morty192 · 3 Oct 2020 at 21:23

Thanks very much! I will be sure to keep my eye on it and update this thread as I narrow things down