Gaming Desktop Advice

Hi all,

Need some advice on the spec I'm looking at, mostly for gaming, budget for the system around £1600. I'm also looking at buying a 1440p 144hz monitor - looking at the Samsung CHG70 (£464). I had my eye on the Aorus AD27QD (£534), but I think it's just a bit too expensive and I'm not really patient enough to try the whole lottery thing with these (not that I won't have to with the Samsung, but it does save me over £70). Will we ever get the LG GL850? If it was easy to find that'd be the one.

Case
Send In Your Own Case - Looking to get the Cooler Master H500 (no suffix)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor i7-9700K (3.6GHz) 12MB Cache
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!

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Get Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with select NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPUs!
1st Storage Drive
3TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB ADATA SX6000 Pro PCIe M.2 2280 (2100 MB/R, 1500 MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster Hyper 212X (120mm) Fan CPU Cooler Black Edition
Thermal Paste
COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days
Price: £1,582.00 including VAT and Delivery

Couple of things: Do PCS no longer sell the WD Black M2 SSDDs? I could swear it was an option awhile ago. Was also thinking of getting 2 ADATA M2 drives, which actually comes out cheaper than 1 Samsung 970 drive. Would you say that as a good idea? I'm sure I can manage my drives well enough, but I could double my m2 drive space. Is the 970 that much better/more noticeable performance?

Lastly - I was looking at sourcing my own GPU - I would prefer something like a Gigabyte or EVGA 2070 Super. Is that a good idea, as I guess I'm not a fan of the Palit/Zotac brands but also find the ASUS Strix stuff too overpriced. Is there a real benefit to getting the "branded" stuff? Or would I just lose out on better warranty for a slight performance gain, if any?
 

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
They took off the WD Black from the menu a few days back. I think there was a pricing issue. 2 ADATA M2 drives are a bargain to be honest. I would recommend just fitting one in this system though as the 8200 Pro is out for an absolute steal. You could fit it yourself (Similar performance to the 970)

EVGA have amazing warranties so you wouldn't need to worry there as long as you didn't damage anything the warranty would be fine. I would personally fit your own card but it's up to you at the end of the day.

The build above looks pretty good. I'm not a fan of the H500 case though, any specific reason why the options available are no good? I think the 460x is stunning.

I would opt for a better cooler. There's a 240mm AIO water cooler on there for a bargain (There's also a RGB one if you want to go down that route). The Corsair options are a little more premium, if you fancy that.

I would also have a look at an AMD 3000 build. They often come in cheaper with a similar performance..... such as the 3600 chip. Definitely worth a check IMO.
 
Thanks for the reply!

That's interesting about the SSD - According to Amazon I can actually get the 8200 Pro for a bit cheaper than the 6000. Since I'll be installing my own OS, should I just buy and fit them myself? Or does PCS need 1 to get my rig set up? If that's the case I may get a slightly better SSD and get an 8200 a bit later on then.

I just personally really like the look of the H500 actually, it's got a bit of an old school look to it. I'm not a fan of a lot of rbg anyway so I'll have my fan lights turned off haha. And I from the reviews I've seen it's done pretty well with airflow.

Speaking of airflow, do you think I would need water cooling? I've never had any experience with it nor do I know anything about it, no idea about maintenance or whatever either. Also trying to keep the costs down where I can, although I have heard that the 212X fan does pretty well, but open to suggestions if it really is that much better.

As for the AMD build -- Wouldn't the chip comparable to the 9700k be the 3700x? I did try a build with the 3700x and there was a £70 difference in the price, and although I know the AMD chips are doing very well and stuff I've just always gone with Intel, a bit of brand preference I guess. To be fair from benchmarks and comparisons I've seen the 9700k seems to do better in games overall but the the actual performance differences are marginal in most cases, likely not £70 worth of gains.

Which motherboard would you recommend if I did go the AMD route? At the time I chose the ASUS TUF X570 - All I know about AMD boards is that the B450s are the older boards, and the X570s are the newer, quite expensive ones.

Here's the AMD spec that I made:

Case
Send In Your Own Case
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF X570-PLUS GAMING (USB 3.2 Gen 2, PCIe 4.0, CrossFireX) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2070 SUPER - HDMI, 3x DP GeForce - RTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
3TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB ADATA SX6000 Pro PCIe M.2 2280 (2100 MB/R, 1500 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
Noctua NH-U14S Ultra Quiet Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Price: £1,511.00 including VAT and Delivery

Thanks for the help!
 

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
That's interesting about the SSD - According to Amazon I can actually get the 8200 Pro for a bit cheaper than the 6000. Since I'll be installing my own OS, should I just buy and fit them myself? Or does PCS need 1 to get my rig set up? If that's the case I may get a slightly better SSD and get an 8200 a bit later on then.

It's a tricky place to be to be honest. The difference is a numbers game really. You won't notice any real world difference as they are THAT fast to begin with. I have a 500GB 970 and a newly fitted 1TB 8200 Pro in my desktop now. Amazing seeing the stats be equal. You could get a 1TB SX6000 for the price of that 500GB 970, double the storage without any of the real downfall. As you are installing your own OS, in your shoes, I would select whatever conventional storage you wanted on the PCS build and buy a 8200 Pro elsewhere. Fit it once received and install the OS on that.

I just personally really like the look of the H500 actually, it's got a bit of an old school look to it. I'm not a fan of a lot of rbg anyway so I'll have my fan lights turned off haha. And I from the reviews I've seen it's done pretty well with airflow.

I don't think there's anything wrong with it, don't get me wrong, it'll do the job. I just would never pick it in that lineup.

Speaking of airflow, do you think I would need water cooling? I've never had any experience with it nor do I know anything about it, no idea about maintenance or whatever either. Also trying to keep the costs down where I can, although I have heard that the 212X fan does pretty well, but open to suggestions if it really is that much better.

"Water" cooling has come such a long way. It's pretty much the go-to for high end systems nowadays. There's no maintenance required, they are sealed units, and they don't even have conductive fluid in them so there's no worry of damage etc. The warranties with the Corsair units are fantastic, I can't speak of other brands as I've never had one. The Coolermaster 240 gets really good reviews for the price. It's a 240mm radiator with a decent cooling plate on it. No air cooler will ever match such a water cooler.

As for the AMD build -- Wouldn't the chip comparable to the 9700k be the 3700x? I did try a build with the 3700x and there was a £70 difference in the price, and although I know the AMD chips are doing very well and stuff I've just always gone with Intel, a bit of brand preference I guess. To be fair from benchmarks and comparisons I've seen the 9700k seems to do better in games overall but the the actual performance differences are marginal in most cases, likely not £70 worth of gains.

For gaming it makes no real odds whatsoever. Benchmarking you may get a couple of FPS but nothing you're ever going to notice. This goes through all the high end Intel and AMD options. The go-to gaming chip is the 3600. Most games are single thread optimised so they would only use one core. When the other cores are used it's often sparingly. The 3600 has 2 less cores than the 9700 but it has 4 more threads so its sort of even. I personally wouldn't bother with the 3700X for gaming. It's only when you're looking towards productivity core count & thread count REALLY matter. Anything greater than 4 cores nowadays is going to have gaming covered. My money, in your shoes, would be buying a 3600 AMD and pocket the savings.

Which motherboard would you recommend if I did go the AMD route? At the time I chose the ASUS TUF X570 - All I know about AMD boards is that the B450s are the older boards, and the X570s are the newer, quite expensive ones.

The B450 does everything most people would look for. The only reason to consider the X570 is if you really want the features on board. As you can see, they come at a premium. The X570 DOES come with PCIe4.0 which is twice the speed of 3.0 but you are a generation or 2 away from that making any real odds with GPUs. The 2080Ti doesn't max out 3.0 yet. There are slight differences in FPS but they are marginal. One benefit you can reap just now would be the M2 drive speed. You can get a 5Gb Corsair M2 drive from the menu when you select a X570 board. You need to add up the worth of this yourself though. Personally, I would pocket the savings. Between the board and the CPU you would have a good few £100 to put towards a 202x system and be absolutely no worse off right now than with spending the money.
 
Thanks for all the recommendations! I'm now really debating an AMD build as well.

Funnily enough, the more I think about what I want, the less winds up on the configurator as I want to source parts from elsewhere. I was actually heavily debating trying to just buy all the components and building it myself, however my issue is although I feel fairly confident about being able to put it all together, troubleshooting in case of problems is where I'd be stumped, and also different warranties from different places is also a bit too much hassle for me to deal with. I'm not quite committed enough in that regard to build my own, as of now. That said, I think I still will source my own GPU and SSD and just install them myself.

Keeping within this line of thinking, what do you think about me getting the cheapest PSU they sell, and putting in a fully modular one that I'll source on my own? It's a shame for me that they don't carry lower wattage PSUs that are fully modular like they used to. My old PC still has a fully modular Corsair 650W Gold PSU which I can pop in myself, or I could get a new one that's just 550W if it saves me some money if I decide I want to keep my old PC intact.

Would it be difficult to replace a standard PSU with a fully modular one? Like, is that a lot of things to disconnect and stuff? I don't know if it's worth the effort, especially if I'd have to buy a PSU with my current build anyway.
 
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Okay after looking at what it would take to replace the PSU after it already being built, I feel like it's a hassle that's not quite worth the effort. It would be nice to get my own fully modular 550W PSU, but having to pretty much undo all the cable management and attempt to redo it would be a bit too much effort, and my time would rather be spent enjoying my new rig rather than rebuilding it. Maybe in time I'll move over to the self-build side, but for now I don't quite have the time for it.

So I am looking at buying separately:
Case: Cooler Master H500 (Don't know what it is about it but I personally love the look of it, especially with the RGB fans turned off)
GPU: EVGA Black (£479.99 on Scan) or Gigabyte Gaming OC (£469.99 Overclockers) or MSI Gaming X (£499.99 Overclockers) - Don't really know about these ones, anyone with experience with these brands?
M2 SSD: SX8200 Pro 1TB (£99.96 on Amazon), and probably a 2nd one in time
Monitor: Gigabyte Aorus AD27QD (£430, which is £100 less than it normally was but for Black Friday deals it seems on most online retailers like Overclockers/Amazon although it has sold out on Amazon on the first day of the price drop haha)

I'm assuming the GPU and SSD should be fairly easy to self install. I'm really looking forward to getting all these now, hopefully I'll be able to sort it all out in the next week or 2.

Below are my 2 options of Intel or AMD builds. I've gone with the Cooler Master 240 AIO's as you suggested. Do I really have absolutely 0 things I need to do with it as the years go by? Complete zero maintenance? Further, would you recommend going even further into the Corsair ones if you were spending the money?

AMD:
Case
Send In Your Own Case
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X Eight Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.4GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
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The Outer Worlds -OR- Borderlands 3 w/ select AMD Ryzen CPUs
Motherboard
Gigabyte B450 AORUS ELITE: DDR4, USB 3.1 - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st Storage Drive
3TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Lite 240 High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days
Price: £825.00 including VAT and Delivery

Intel:
Case
Send In Your Own Case
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor i7-9700K (3.6GHz) 12MB Cache
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO: ATX, LG1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs - RGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB PRO DDR4 3200MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NONE, I ALREADY HAVE A GRAPHICS CARD
1st Storage Drive
3TB SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Processor Cooling
CoolerMaster MasterLiquid Lite 240 High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 7 to 9 working days
Price: £965.00 including VAT and Delivery

Total Rig price:
AMD: £1874.95
Intel: £2014.95

Over £100 difference on the Intel build however I believe the Aorus Pro motherboard is responsible for the difference in price, which I've heard good things about. If I went for the basic Z board the price difference comes down to around £50-60ish, however I really do like the Aorus Pro so I'll likely keep it if going with the Intel build.

Seems a bit hard to justify the Intel build outside of brand preference. It does seem to consistently perform better in gaming (marginally), however as I will be using my PC for a bit more than just gaming (some Photoshop/video editing/light 3D animation) the hyperthreading on the AMD will likely be more beneficial to me.

Any final thoughts before I start trying to finalise everything?
 
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Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
The 3700X can't be compared to the 9700k really, it's more standing up towards the 9900k so the 3700X is actually a higher spec, as far as the family goes.

The AMD platform keeps the door open for future upgrades, the 9700k doesn't. However, in order to make the most of it you would need to go for a x570 motherboard to get the best features (PCIe-4).

It's all swings and roundabouts really. Honestly, once built and playing you won't be able to tell the difference.

The Corsair AIO coolers are the best. The H100i RGB platinum would be a good fit with the 9700k build. It would be WAY over the cooling requirements for the 3700X but more cooling doesn't hurt anything other than your wallet. If you select a corsair, don't select the upgraded compound as the Corsair units have great paste and it's uniformly spread already.
 
Thanks for all the advice! I was so close to pulling the trigger but I've come across a new case that I'm actually going to wait for now, hopefully coming start of December from what I've heard, the Lian-Li Lancool II. I will be waiting for more thermal reviews however early reviews I've seen seem promising, although they don't really go into the thermals the way say, Gamers Nexus do.

Lian-Li-Lancool-II-White-and-Black.jpg
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Thanks for all the advice! I was so close to pulling the trigger but I've come across a new case that I'm actually going to wait for now, hopefully coming start of December from what I've heard, the Lian-Li Lancool II. I will be waiting for more thermal reviews however early reviews I've seen seem promising, although they don't really go into the thermals the way say, Gamers Nexus do.

View attachment 14449
It's been widely rated case of the year.

I can't recommend Lian Li enough, they're simply better than most manufacturers, cost a bit extra, often a lot extra but the designs are incredible.


 
It definitely looks good, good enough to wait for. I'm hoping for a couple of other things to become available as well anyway (seeing if the GL83A comes out, apparently performs very similar to the GL850, but cheaper if I saw it correctly), probably won't be able to get my order before Christmas though haha.
 
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