Advice for new computer

[Lief Siddhe]

So I think the time has come to upgrade my bucket - which probably means getting a completely new one since currently I have

Intel i5-4670
16 GB RAM
GeForce 1050 Ti
all Frankensteined with time on a over 7 year old motherboard

So, since I've been out of the hardware loop for a loooong time and I will be building this PC on a limited budget and it will be used for gaming, what's the current "best buy" processor/graphics card combo I should be checking out if I want to build a computer that might last another couple of years?

I'm not a high-end gamer, am perfectly happy with medium settings etc etc

[Cosmin]

What is your budget and resolution your monitor works at natively? I would think a 5800x with some DDR4 RAM, a decent motherboard and a used 30x0 series GPU should sort you out pretty allright with a moderate investment.

[Spartan Dax]

I'm using

Ryzen 5600
16 Gb 3200 RAM
Radeon 6700 XT.

It's good for everything at 1440p without any particular sacrifices. Think I'll pick up a new 32GB pair of faster memory during a Black Friday deal just because I plan to keep it around for a couple of years.

[Equium Duo]

Now is the time to buy everything but the gfx card tbh, the deals are incredible.

Ryzen 5000 series, get a 5600 or if budget can allow a 5800x3d (no need for better than this)

16Gb of RAM is ok, however there are some great deals out there on 32Gb.

Mobo wise, I'd go b550 and get something with good VRMs, I have an asus-rog gaming, but the asus-prime series are decent too. Dont go asrock i dont think they are as good as they once were. Also nvme gen 4s are on some great deals, but the performance boost is not as noticable.

GFX card is your biggest hurdle, they are really not priced very good anymore. (better than during covid tho)

[Mashie Saldana]

This is my setup, should last me a decade unless there is a hardware failure:

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4
ASUS STRIX B550-A Gaming
128GB (4x32GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black, PC4-25600 (3200), CMK128GX4M4E3200C16
PNY GeForce RTX 3080 12GB
Samsung 980 1TB NVMe
WD Black 1TB NVMe
Corsair AX1200

2560x1600 gaming is very smooth.

The CPU + RAM can handle any virtual machines thrown at it and asking for more. If it wasn't for this use case 32GB RAM had been plenty.

[Itiken]

Now is the time to buy everything but the gfx card tbh, the deals are incredible.

Ryzen 5000 series, get a 5600 or if budget can allow a 5800x3d (no need for better than this)

16Gb of RAM is ok, however there are some great deals out there on 32Gb.

Mobo wise, I'd go b550 and get something with good VRMs, I have an asus-rog gaming, but the asus-prime series are decent too. Dont go asrock i dont think they are as good as they once were. Also nvme gen 4s are on some great deals, but the performance boost is not as noticable.

GFX card is your biggest hurdle, they are really not priced very good anymore. (better than during covid tho)

QFT 100%

[Nordstern]

With Black Friday deals coming out, consider an AM4 build, as retailers will want to clear out that stock.

[Lief Siddhe]

It's now painfully obvious how long I've been out of the loop cause I don't even know what half of those abbreviations mean

my resolution is 1920*1080
if I could, i'd try to spend under 700 Euro total - is this even doable for a whole gaming bucket?

[Mashie Saldana]

It's now painfully obvious how long I've been out of the loop cause I don't even know what half of those abbreviations mean

my resolution is 1920*1080
if I could, i'd try to spend under 700 Euro total - is this even doable for a whole gaming bucket?

Not really, unless you get something second hand.

[Lief Siddhe]

Fucking miners/covid/traderoute disrupts/Ukraine/insertpartytoblamehere

[Mashie Saldana]

Fucking miners/covid/traderoute disrupts/Ukraine/insertpartytoblamehere

It might be doable, this isn't extremely far off your budget but most of the bits are black friday prices over at Scan.co.uk:

MSI B550 Gaming GEN3, AMD B550, S AM4, DDR4, SATA3, PCIe 3.0, 1x M.2, CrossFire, GbE, USB 3.2 Gen2, ATX £109.99
ZOTAC GAMING GeForce RTX 3060 TWIN EDGE 12GB GDDR6 Ray-Tracing Graphics Card, 3584 Core, 1320MHz, 1777MHz £359.99
16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black, PC4-25600 (3200), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 16-18-18-36, Offer £49.98
1TB Samsung 980 M.2 (2280) PCIe 3.0 (x4), NVMe SSD, MLC V-NAND, 3500MB/s Read, 3000MB/s Write, 480k/500K IOPS £71.98
AMD Ryzen™ 5 5500, AM4, Zen 3, 6 Core, 12 Thread, 3.6GHz, 4.2GHz Turbo, 19MB Cache, PCIe 3.0, 65W, CPU £99.98

Total (including VAT)
£703.42

Edit, if you could stretch the budget another £100 or so then you have a much better selection of GPU's within reach such as the AMD 6750 XT.

[Lief Siddhe]

cheers for the pointers guys, I'll take a look around what's available here in Croatia nowadays

edit: so, I'm definitely NOT gonna be able to get a configuration like the abovementioned for less than a thousand Euros or probably even more which is a bit out of my price range heh. A 3060 graphics card itself is around 500ish Euros.

Roughly speaking, for 900ish Euros around here I can get a bucket that has

Ryzen 5 5600G
GeForce GTX1660S 6GB
16GB RAM
512GB SSD hard disk

Example: https://www.links.hr/hr/racunalo-hp-...T038WkOkr7bYTo

I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be ordering components for delivery from other countries and by the time I paid taxes and shit I'd maybe save 5% or so I'll try checking out prices in Austria since I got a cousin there who'll be coming over soon, it seems that once again I'm gonna be frankensteining components from all over the place in the coming months

[Nordstern]

Assuming your PSU isn't ancient and can handle the newer sleep states of the Haswell, you could consider upgrading rather than replacing.

Intel i7-4790K (4 cores, HT. Slightly faster, but still toasty.): 71 euro on ebay.de
Crucial MX500 250GB SSD: 40 euro (boot drive)
Crucial MX500 1TB SSD: 93 euro (game drive)
Western Digital 2TB hard drive: 68 euro (game drive alternative)
EVGA KO ULTRA GAMING GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB: 323 euro

Pros: Very affordable option, less e-waste, quick boot times with the SSD, leaves enough money left over to get a new case or PSU.
Cons: Doesn't fix the fact that your system is old, still vulnerable to Intel CPU exploits, still limited to 4 cores, Haswell runs hot, if your GPU is good enough it will be throttled by your CPU.

A better option is to go:
Ryzen 5 3600
B450/B550 mobo
GTX 2060

Pros: Speaking from experience, the Ryzen 3600 can handle pretty much everything you throw at it. I ran Horizon Zero Dawn at max settings on a 1080p UW screen and consistently got 75 fps. You said you're happy with medium settings, but get a 3600 and crank everything to high. There are some newer games that tax the 3600's capabilities, but you would need a high-end GPU and high-refresh monitor to notice (101 vs 119 fps with a 5800X for example).
Cons: It's the older AM4 socket, but this generation is no slouch. Will require a new PSU.

I don't know why you're opting for a 5600G over a 5600 when you're buying a discrete GPU at the same time.

Micro Center is running a Black Friday special where you can buy a Ryzen 3600 for $130 and get a free B450M motherboard. See if retailers in Europe offer a similar deal.

[Cosmin]

cheers for the pointers guys, I'll take a look around what's available here in Croatia nowadays

edit: so, I'm definitely NOT gonna be able to get a configuration like the abovementioned for less than a thousand Euros or probably even more which is a bit out of my price range heh. A 3060 graphics card itself is around 500ish Euros.

Roughly speaking, for 900ish Euros around here I can get a bucket that has

Ryzen 5 5600G
GeForce GTX1660S 6GB
16GB RAM
512GB SSD hard disk

Example: https://www.links.hr/hr/racunalo-hp-...T038WkOkr7bYTo

I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be ordering components for delivery from other countries and by the time I paid taxes and shit I'd maybe save 5% or so I'll try checking out prices in Austria since I got a cousin there who'll be coming over soon, it seems that once again I'm gonna be frankensteining components from all over the place in the coming months

Isn't Croatia in the EU though? So your "taxes" won't amount to anything. Have a look at Amazon.de (you can set it up in English) and check out some of the hardware listed itt, you may have nice surprises. Ensure it's at least shipped by Amazon (better yet, sold and shipped by Amazon) and you should be golden.

I'd look at a 5600G or a 5800G and forgo the discrete GPU for the moment, focus on getting a good platform (i.e. CPU, motherboard, RAM, PSU and maybe a good modern case) and use your previous discrete GPU if needed. Then maybe save for a used 30x0 GPU, you should be able to get a 3060Ti for 250 EUR maybe? Idk. Hope you sort it out. Also salvage as much as you can from your current PC (meaning storage, mainly).

[Lief Siddhe]

Yeah, from within EU no VAT, but 25% on anything ordered from outside of EU, so UK and USA and other orders are outtta the question.

So to make it as simple as possible:

From the current offer of processors and GPUs, what would be the consensus of "best bang for your buck" or "don't go below this":

1) Processors - Ryzen 5 3600 and above?
2) GPU - GTX 2060 and above?

[Spartan Dax]

Avoid "G" versions of the Ryzens. That's with the integrated graphics which you don't need. They also come with half the L3 cache which will affect gaming performance.

The only Ryzens for budget gaming that I would look at is:
´
1. The Ryzen 5 3600. This is cheap as chips and you'll be able to pick one up second hand for next to nothing.

2. The Ryzen 5 5600. Pricier but also faster. I've had both, there is a difference but I would still be happy with the performance of the 3600 tbh.

Avoid 5500's, 4500's, pretty much all chips that where the second number is 5 or less. They're repurposed mobile chips and for a gaming rig you're better off with more L3 cache almost always.


Graphic card prices are still fucked I've noticed. Try the second hand market for a Radeon 5700(xt). They were incredibly popular among miners and are being flogged off cheaply. Buyer beware obviously.


Relative performance among GPU's can be found here
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/p...ighter/31.html

[Lief Siddhe]

Ahaa that's what the G stands for. Back in my days integrated graphics were on motherboards, not in processors *shakesfistatwhippersnappers*

Thanks guys, this is the perfect type of short explanation/advice that I need to figure out what's what nowadays

[Cosmin]

Avoid "G" versions of the Ryzens. That's with the integrated graphics which you don't need. They also come with half the L3 cache which will affect gaming performance.

I disagree with this, seeing the prices of GPUs nowadays and that Lief is not made of money I'd strongly recommend getting a G CPU, using his current discrete GPU at the most and having a backup to fall back to just in case his current GPU kicks the bucket.

I agree with the cache bit, especially since this is 1080p gaming, then again it's imho better to have a fall back GPU just in case.

[VARRAKK]

Shopping from Germany is good, as they only got 18% VAT.

I would buy what you selected without the GPU.
Use what you have for now and save up for a better. 1650 is waste of money.
2060 or 3060 what you should aim for if you want a decent lifespan out of it.

[Lief Siddhe]

It wasn't what I 'selected', it was just a generic example of what type of configurations go for 900 euro prices around here - prices of components in general are probably quite (15-20%) higher here than what you guys have available on various black friday sales.

So general consensus would be Ryzen 5 3600 (or better) and nVidia 2060 (or better)

Now I got a general idea what's the baseline. Thanks guise!