UK Pricing

[TechnicallyAnIdiot]

Budget (including currency): £800 inc VAT. ish (not including peripherals)

Country: UK

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Lighting Design (Vectorworks, WYSIWYG) and some gaming. I'd like to be able to get past 'min specs' and into 'optimal specs' for some games for the first time in my life.

Other details I've come up with 2 builds I think are roughly comparable and similar in price and performance. Would appreciate any thoughts. I'm hoping that this will be a sensible system in 8ish years time. (Slightly better than what an NVIDIA 950, 2GB RAM, i3 Core is today, which is my current system.)

 

OS is Widows 10 on both.

I've customised both from what was in the original link.

 

Build 1: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/view/Aero-Master/

£803 inc VAT

 

Tower: AeroCool Bolt RGB Mid Tower Case

CPU: Intel Core i5 Six Core i5-9400F (2.9GHz)

Motherboard: ASUS H310-PLUS R2.0 ATX, DDR4, LGA1151, USB 3.1, SATA 6GBs

RAM: 16GB Corsair DDR4 2666MHz (2x 8GB)

Graphics Card: 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super

 

HDD: 1TB Seagate Barracude 3.5", 6GB/s, 7200RPM

M.2 SSD: 256GB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (1900 MB/R, 1100 MB/W)

Power Supply: Corsair 550W CV-550

Processor Cooling: Standard CPU Cooler

 

I'm unsure if I need to get extra cooling?

I'm aware the M.2 SSD won't reach it's full potential on this Motherboard. I'm fine with that bcus the SSD is cheap.

There's currently a 1 month wait time on the 1660 Super here. I'm not in a massive rush and can wait. I'd rather have it cheaper in a month than expensive now.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Build 2: https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-mb520-argb-intel-10400f-nvidia-gtx-1660-super-desktop-pc-for-gaming.html

£809.92 inc VAT.

 

Tower: Coolermaster MB520 ARGB

CPU: Intel Core i5 Six Core i5-10400F (4.3GHz)

Motherboard: MSI H410M Pro

RAM:16GB Crucial 2666MHz DDR4 2666MHz (2x 8GB)  (Note: They only sell in 1 stick on the site but I'm just gonna ask for a 2nd stick for £25)

Graphics Card: 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Super OC

 

HDD: WD 1TB Blue

M.2 SSD: WD 240GB SSD

Power Supply: Coolermaster 500W 80 Plus MWE

Processor Cooling: Arctic Freezer 12

 

They appear to have all parts in stock today.

 

Do these feel like sensible prices for what I'm getting? Will I feel like I have to upgrade in 5 years time? I'd appreciate all and any thoughts on this.

 

[camieabz]

Unless you have some specific need for HDD, I'd swap them for SSDs in both builds. The pricing of 1TB SSDs isn't terrible these days. I've thrown together your two storage options, with another Seagate (Pro with double the cache), and three SSDs. An extra £40-£50 over eight years isn't too bad:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Storage	Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	£89.99 @ Scan.co.uk
Storage	Western Digital Blue 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	£82.98 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Seagate BarraCuda 120 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	£90.20 @ CCL Computers
Storage	Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£34.06 @ BT Shop
Storage	Seagate BarraCuda 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£33.87 @ Currys PC World Business
Storage	Seagate BarraCuda Pro Compute 1 TB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£46.93 @ Box Limited
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£378.03
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-19 23:35 GMT+0000

 

[TechnicallyAnIdiot]

9 minutes ago, camieabz said:

Unless you have some specific need for HDD, I'd swap them for SSDs in both builds. The pricing of 1TB SSDs isn't terrible these days. I've thrown together your two storage options, with another Seagate (Pro with double the cache), and three SSDs. An extra £40-£50 over eight years isn't too bad:

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Storage	Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	£89.99 @ Scan.co.uk
Storage	Western Digital Blue 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	£82.98 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Seagate BarraCuda 120 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	£90.20 @ CCL Computers
Storage	Western Digital Caviar Blue 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£34.06 @ BT Shop
Storage	Seagate BarraCuda 1 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£33.87 @ Currys PC World Business
Storage	Seagate BarraCuda Pro Compute 1 TB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£46.93 @ Box Limited
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£378.03
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-19 23:35 GMT+0000

 

It's a fair point. One the 1 hand I feel that I want to try and save every £40-£50 I can. If I let myself go it's just £40 for every part I'd double the cost. TBH I'd probably get rid of the 2nd SSD and just go for a single 1TB SSD, so it's more like only £30 saved. I imagine myself working with rather alot of files which I may not open for a year+ tbh, which is why I instinctively went for the HDD.

[camieabz]

Yeah I know what you mean. I tend to archive to zip, and also backup to external USB drive for those lesser used files. At least with a single drive, you can always add more storage later if inclined.

[mariushm]

The premade configuration kinda sucks.  The motherboard for example is not great, the chipset h310 is barebone office stuff, the motherboard sounds like it's cheapest possible as well... and 2666 mhz memory ... yeah, the chipset limits you to 2666 but if you'll ever want to upgrade it would suck to be stuck at 2666 mhz (also poor resale value, nobody's gonna want to be buy them from you at a reasonable price)

 

See build below, and add your own video card. Get some used video card like an old RX 470 / RX 570 / RX 580 or a GTX 1050 / 1060 until prices go down.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	£180.00 @ Currys PC World
Motherboard	Gigabyte B450M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	£60.67 @ CCL Computers
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	£68.94 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Western Digital Blue SN550 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	£35.98 @ Ebuyer
Storage	Toshiba P300 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£55.78 @ Amazon UK
Case	Fractal Design Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case	£43.98 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply	SeaSonic S12III 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	£45.46 @ Scan.co.uk
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£490.81
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-20 00:10 GMT+0000

 

 

[TechnicallyAnIdiot]

38 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The premade configuration kinda sucks.  The motherboard for example is not great, the chipset h310 is barebone office stuff, the motherboard sounds like it's cheapest possible as well... and 2666 mhz memory ... yeah, the chipset limits you to 2666 but if you'll ever want to upgrade it would suck to be stuck at 2666 mhz (also poor resale value, nobody's gonna want to be buy them from you at a reasonable price)

 

See build below, and add your own video card. Get some used video card like an old RX 470 / RX 570 / RX 580 or a GTX 1050 / 1060 until prices go down.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor	£180.00 @ Currys PC World
Motherboard	Gigabyte B450M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard	£60.67 @ CCL Computers
Memory	Crucial Ballistix 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory	£68.94 @ Amazon UK
Storage	Western Digital Blue SN550 250 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	£35.98 @ Ebuyer
Storage	Toshiba P300 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	£55.78 @ Amazon UK
Case	Fractal Design Focus G Mini MicroATX Mini Tower Case	£43.98 @ Amazon UK
Power Supply	SeaSonic S12III 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply	£45.46 @ Scan.co.uk
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£490.81
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-02-20 00:10 GMT+0000

 

 

I'm not sure I understand. Your suggesting I get a graphics card worse than the one I already have?

One of the reasons I'm buying a full PC at once here is that it's a way for me to get a decent graphics card at a sensible price.

 

Also when you say the premade configuration, are you only talking about the first build? It strikes me the 2nd build solves all the problems you mention.

 

I'm also not massively invested in selling or upgrading these parts. I'm buying them and I'm gonna keep them for a long time.