Entry level gaming PC spec

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Neil123123

Active member
Any advice on this spec would be greatly appreciated. I am looking to attain 1080p / 60 fps on games like Witcher 3 and Dishonored 2 without having to set the graphics options really low. Looking around £900-£1000 cost ideally. Already have a monitor.

For some reason the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X was only a few pounds more than the AMD Ryzen 5 3600, so I selected it - otherwise would have gone with 3600. Also with the CORSAIR 550W versus 450W.

Thanks.

Case
FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600X Six Core CPU (3.8GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B450-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB INTEL® 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 1800MB/sR | 1800MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W CV SERIES™ CV-550 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence

Price: £937.00 including VAT and Delivery
 
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Neil123123

Active member
Thanks very much for that.

I can see you have put in the higher spec motherboard and power supply. You are ok with the cooling as is, I'm assuming.

Do you mind if I ask about the reason of changing the 1TB SSD to a 512 GB SSD and 1TB HDD? Is it for getting more total storage? My thoughts were that a 1TB SSD would just let me put everything on the SSD and not have to worry about it. My only experience of dual drive systems is from work, were the second drives are used only for data (so OS, applications, temp files, etc, all go on primary drive). I don't plan to have any significant data on this machine.
 
T

Tom_P

Bronze Level Poster
Hi Neil,

I'm no expert, (there are others much better informed than I am), but I recently ordered something very similar (3300X, GTX 1660S). From researching benchmarks myself, it sounds like that build will be fine for 1080p 60Hz/fps max or almost max settings for most current titles. Couple of thoughts:

- Do you need the 3600X? How does that compare cost-wise to the 3300X, which gives very similar performance at this level of graphics card and framerate?

- How concerned are you with future upgrade options? I understand that AMD are probably dropping support in the next CPU generation for the 450-series motherboards - if you're hoping to be able to upgrade the CPU in future to a newer generation in a few years, a B550 motherboard will probably give you extra flexibility for this - although planning for future redundancy is always a bit of a gamble.

- Extra case fans might be worthwhile - the case comes with two intakes, but cooling's one of those things you can never have too much of (unless you're sensitive to noise). I think it's only a few £ to add extra ones.

There's a lot of benchmark data knocking around online, include recordings of benchmark tests for various games on Youtube comparing graphics cards options etc. side-by-side, I've found those to be really helpful when speccing.
 
N

Neil123123

Active member
Tom_P said:
- Do you need the 3600X? How does that compare cost-wise to the 3300X, which gives very similar performance at this level of graphics card and framerate?
Click to expand...

I don't think I need the 3600X over the 3600, just the price difference was so small. As for picking the 3600 over the 3300, I didn't have a clear reason beyond the 3600 seeming a popular choice these days. I do also like 4X games, so was thinking that the 3600 would be beneficial there over the 3300 series, but that isn't based on any hard evidence. I guess I could consider saving a bit of cash and going got the 3300, if it isn't essential though.

- How concerned are you with future upgrade options? I understand that AMD are probably dropping support in the next CPU generation for the 450-series motherboards - if you're hoping to be able to upgrade the CPU in future to a newer generation in a few years, a B550 motherboard will probably give you extra flexibility for this - although planning for future redundancy is always a bit of a gamble.
Click to expand...

Yes, it seems the B550 is a better choice.

Good to hear you research indicates it will achieve the performance I am after :).

Thanks for the advice!
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
3300X is also out of stock.

I would have no qualms whatsoever going for the 3300X but as the budget allows, the 3600X would be my preference out of the 2 of them.
 
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