Budget build (sort of) in need of improvement

[Garlic]

A friend of mine wants me to help him build his first ever desktop, as he have been doing all of his computing from laptops until now. He has a maximum of 1500 euro to use for the system in total, and due to the human malware situation we are mostly limited to shopping parts at Alternate, a German online store that will also deliver goods to us here in Denmark.

 

The PC will need to:

- Be somewhat portable, preferably with a handle on the case.

- Offer a super snappy Windows user experience.

- Be upgradeable. He´ll be using this system for a long time, and I want it to be able to catch a second wind at a low price in a couple of years.

- Be able to run Fortnite and any JRPG title that people play these days at 1080p high at 60hz or better. Medium might do, and he never specified the details, he just want these titles to run 'well'.

 

Here is a link to the pcpartpicker list.

 

Of the money we have left over, I´ll try to find a Win10 license with Office 2019 for 50ish euros, and have him pick out a nice mouse for the remainder of the budget. I have a spare keyboard that will do for now.

 

So, can you come up with a way to make this build better and/or nicer without increasing cost?

[ErA.l]

If you want an upgrade path, I'd look at at least a 650w PSU

[Garlic]

That is a very good point. I've replaced the PSU with a 700w version of the System Power 9.

[ErA.l]

Also I'd change the HDD to a 7200rpm unit

 

https://www.alternate.de/html/product/1307667

 

Other than that it looks pretty good

[boggy77]

nah, 500-600 w are enough for any consumer grade pc. people are running overclocked 9900ks with 2080tis on 550w psus.

 

as for the build, it's good, i'd get a 5700 instead of the 2060.

Asus Radeon RX 5700 8 GB DUAL EVO OC Video Card

[Garlic]

I should have mentioned that he also wants to play retro games, and I have always thought of Nvidia as having better compatibility with older titles. Am I mistaken here?

[Juular]

- Smaller motherboard with integrated wireless

- Somewhat faster RAM for a bit more

- Cheaper SSD, very good and you wouldn't notice the difference with NVMe in general usage

- MUCH smaller case

- Better PSU, 400W would be enough for pretty much any mid-end build, you don't plan to put i9 9900KS + RTX2080Ti there eventually do you ?

Unfortunately offerings at Alternate are quite limited and if you really want high-wattage PSU (in case you really want to put aforementioned hardware there evenrually) the cheapest i can recommend are FD ION+ 660W for ~120 EUR, but it's a very good PSU so why not.

- Not sure about display but if you have some spare cache i'd probably recommend to go for 144Hz VA\IPS display

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor  (€174.90 @ Alternate)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450 I AORUS PRO WIFI Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard  (€139.89 @ Alternate)
Memory: Patriot Viper 4 Blackout 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory  (€91.89 @ Alternate)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  (€131.89 @ Alternate)
Storage: Western Digital Blue 6 TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (€171.89 @ Alternate)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 6 GB OC Video Card  (€350.99 @ Alternate)
Case: Silverstone SG13 Mini ITX Tower Case  (€55.48 @ Alternate)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 400 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  (€65.89 @ Alternate)
Monitor: AOC 24V2Q 23.8" 1920x1080 75 Hz Monitor  (€141.89 @ Alternate)
Speakers: Logitech Z200 0 nW 2.0 Channel Speakers  (€32.98 @ Alternate)
Total: €1357.69
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-03-28 20:21 CET+0100

[ErA.l]

5700xt will be faster than a 2060, 

 

I think the main issue was with AMD drivers, but apparently that's been fixed in the latest version.

[Juular]

20 minutes ago, ErA.l said:

If you want an upgrade path, I'd look at at least a 650w PSU

That's not how it works. They didn't mention anything related to heavy workloads so i assume this is simple browsing \ spreadsheets \ gaming desktop so it'll be fine with 550W PSU with ANY CPU and GPU, and 400W would be enough for most builds too, except for very high-end stuff.

[ErA.l]

4 minutes ago, Juular said:

That's not how it works. They didn't mention anything related to heavy workloads so i assume this is simple browsing \ spreadsheets \ gaming desktop so it'll be fine with 550W PSU with ANY CPU and GPU, and 400W would be enough for most builds too, except for very high-end stuff.

He had a 500w listed and wanted an upgrade path. A 3950x with a 2080ti can pull rather more than 500w. So I'd go with a 600w minimum for efficiency headroom.

But that's just me.

[Juular]

3 minutes ago, ErA.l said:

He had a 500w listed and wanted an upgrade path. A 3950x with a 2080ti can pull rather more than 500w. So I'd go with a 600w minimum for efficiency headroom.

But that's just me.

They're moving from laptop to desktop rn, you really think they need all this power ? Even with high-end CPU and RTX2080Ti power draw in games would be no higher than 400-450W. The only reason why they would need more power are workloads with high simultaneous load on CPU and GPU, like rendering, then 650\750W PSU would be a better pick.

[Garlic]

I´ll present him with the ITX option as well, and leave it to him which case he likes best. That said, do you use an SG13 yourself? Will a PowerColor Red Dragon fit height wise?

[ErA.l]

47 minutes ago, ErA.l said:

Also I'd change the HDD to a 7200rpm unit

 

https://www.alternate.de/html/product/1307667

 

Other than that it looks pretty good

Sorry, that's a 2tb drive,

 

https://www.alternate.de/Toshiba/N300-6-TB-Festplatte/html/product/1341862?

[Juular]

25 minutes ago, Garlic said:

I´ll present him with the ITX option as well, and leave it to him which case he likes best. That said, do you use an SG13 yourself? Will a PowerColor Red Dragon fit height wise?

No, i haven't used this case myself, but you can look other users builds at PCPP. GPU height shouldn't be the problem, but this case are limited to about 280mm long GPUs with some mods to front panel or 266mm stock. And RX5700XT Powercolor Red Dragon should fit, it's not very long GPU. In fact i'm more concerned about stock CPU cooler but if you'll go for ITX build you should probably get a better CPU anyway as i can imagine that it may get a bit hot in a tight space. Cryorig C7 or Noctua NH-L9A-AM4 would be good picks.