slmckay73

Gotcha, gotcha. I'll keep that in consideration while I'm waiting on that bonus check. As you point out, it probably wouldn't be that much more expensive. Much appreciated!

Thanks for the feedback! I went with AMD for this reason. The Z690 boards seem to be more expensive for the same features, and the performance didn't seem wildly different. There's also the Ryzen refresh supposedly coming early next year which might put performance on par with the 12600K, so I might end up getting a CPU from that line roughly equivalent to the 5600X. That's in the realm of speculation though.

Budget (including currency): $2000 USD Country: United States Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Halo Infinite, Skyrim, Back 4 Blood. Other details Hey y'all! I'm building my 2nd system, the last being several years ago (Skylake i3, RX470, 8GB RAM). It can't handle newer games even at low settings, so I'm looking to upgrade to something much beefier. I want to hit 60+ FPS at 1440p and high/ultra settings. The few games listed above are a few I plan to play, but I want this system to be able to handle most anything at these settings. I plan to buy around March, when I get a bonus at work. Hope that's not so far out as to make this parts list irrelevant. I know the GPU market is nuts, so I've just put an optimistic placeholder value in here to get an idea of the total cost should I be so lucky as to find one close-ish to MSRP. Let me know what you think! If you have any alternate part suggestions, I'm trying to stay with a grayscale theme if at all possible. PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/cjZgDc CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor ($294.00 @ Newegg) CPU Cooler: Scythe FUMA 2 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler ($59.99 @ Amazon) Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 AORUS ELITE AX V2 ATX AM4 Motherboard ($186.99 @ Amazon) Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($79.99 @ Newegg) Storage: ADATA XPG SPECTRIX S20G 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($109.99 @ Amazon) Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8 GB Founders Edition Video Card ($500.00) Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case ($94.18 @ Newegg) Power Supply: Corsair CXF 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($74.99 @ Corsair) Case Fan: Deepcool RF120M 56.5 CFM 120 mm Fans 5-Pack ($49.99 @ Amazon) Monitor: Gigabyte M27Q 27.0" 2560x1440 170 Hz Monitor ($299.99 @ Best Buy) Total: $1750.11 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-12-01 14:38 EST-0500

I actually have that board so that I can upgrade to an unlocked CPU down the road, and the Digital Foundry article showed several games consistently benefitting from the faster memory.

Thanks, all. Probably going with the 380.

I would go cheaper on the motherboard, but I'm building for upgradeability so that I won't have to replace it if I wanted to upgrade to an unlocked processor down the road. I also want to keep the RAM, since that DF article/video showed a noteworthy performance increase even from 2133 to 2666. I'm not really familiar with those NVIDIA features; could you do like a brief rundown on what they are?

Alrighty, here's my list. If I'm correct, the GPU should bottleneck before the processor ever does, and a Digital Foundry article found that faster RAM increases performance when performance is cpu-bound, thus the 2666 memory. How's it look? PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3zvTK8 Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/3zvTK8/by_merchant/ CPU: Intel Core i3-6100 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor ($123.99 @ SuperBiiz) Motherboard: MSI Z170A PC MATE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($109.99 @ SuperBiiz) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($59.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Seagate 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive ($66.98 @ Amazon) Video Card: MSI Radeon R9 380 4GB Video Card ($215.99 @ NCIX US) Case: Phanteks Enthoo Pro M ATX Mid Tower Case ($75.98 @ Newegg) Power Supply: SeaSonic S12II 520W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($55.99 @ SuperBiiz) Wireless Network Adapter: Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I 802.11a/b/g/n/ac PCI-Express x1 Wi-Fi Adapter ($29.99 @ SuperBiiz) Total: $738.90

I'm putting together a list for my first build, and I was originally going with the 960. But, from what I've read on the forums here the 380 pretty soundly outperforms it. There was also something about the 4GB versions of the 960 not being able to utilize all 4 gigs of vRAM... could someone clarify? Anyway, my main question is whether there are any additional features the 960 has by virtue of being newer hardware than the 380 (which is apparently made from an older gpu?) that would make it worth considering over the 380. p.s. I'm new to the site; is there a place here to have the community look over my build?