I've had this plan drafted for a while now, what do you all think? How did I do?

[SomeSnowLeopard]

Budget (including currency): 1250 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

Games: Minecraft; Hotdogs, Horseshoes & Handgrenades (VR)*; VRChat; Fallout 4; Skyrim; Portal 1&2; Blade & Sorcery (VR)*; and probably more

Programs/workloads: Fusion 360; Unity; Substance Painter; light video editing; possible Twitch streaming

*When I aquire a VR headset (most likely a Quest 2, or possibly a Quest 3 if/when that comes out), will probably take me a few more months to get to that point.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

Current idea/plan:

1. R5 5600X
2. MSI MPG B550 Gaming Plus
3. 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 Crucial Ballistix RGB 3600, CL16
4. Any 3060 ti that's around 470 USD w/ tax (I'm currently chilling in a Discord to try and score one using their stock alert bots)
5. Lian Li Lancool 215 (already bought for $80 because it was on sale)
6. EVGA 700 BQ, 80+ BRONZE 700W (already bought for $70 because it was on sale)
7. Team Group PM33 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD

https://newegg.io/a9e11270**

**The GPU, Case, and PSU from this build are just placeholders so I can keep a running total

 

I'm planning on using a 2k/1440p @120hz monitor for this set up, and have been given a $300 budget (seperate from the $1250) for one, so recommendations for that would be nice as well.

I don't need to worry about a mouse, keyboard, headset, etc, for I already have those components.

I'm "upgrading" from my father's old PC that's now become the family PC when he upgraded about a year back. That's rocking an Athlon II x3, Gtx 460, 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3(?) and a couple of unknown drives, one SSD and one HDD.

I've saved up about $1110 of my $1250 budget, so I'm looking to buy within the next few months. (I know that now isn't the best time to try, but I've been dying to get my own PC for a while now.)

 

Also, sort of an unrelated question, does Newegg not have sales tax? When I bought the case and PSU I was charged the exact listed price, which confused me.

(This answer might sway where I'm going to buy from for most of the rest of the parts.)

[tishous]

In general Intel are more budget friendly nowadays. Their new 11400(f) chips perform pretty close to the 5600x, but at more than $100 less. However, you might want to get a decent aftermarket cooler if you go with Intel since the power draw is significantly higher than their AMD counterparts. B560 would be a good chipset to look at and you can usually find them priced pretty closely to B550 boards.

 

Except for that, it seems like a good build. Good luck with getting a 3060ti. Out of the released Nvidia GPUs, they're the one with the least stock, so it may take you a while.

15 minutes ago, SomeSnowLeopard said:

I'm planning on using a 2k/1440p @120hz monitor for this set up, and have been given a $300 budget (seperate from the $1250) for one, so recommendations for that would be nice as well.

Look at some of Hardware Unboxed reviews of 1440p high refresh rate monitors, they're in-depth and talk about everything you may want/need.

[SomeSnowLeopard]

1 minute ago, tishous said:

In general Intel are more budget friendly nowadays. Their new 11400(f) chips perform pretty close to the 5600x, but at more than $100 less. However, you might want to get a decent aftermarket cooler if you go with Intel since the power draw is significantly higher than their AMD counterparts. B560 would be a good chipset to look at and you can usually find them priced pretty closely to B550 boards.

I know that Intel are more budget friendly at the moment. The only thing is that I'd want to tinker with overclocks and things like that, so that would require me to get the 11600K/KF and probably a better board chipset, knowing Intel, and then the cooler on top of that, which eats into the savings a bit. Additionally, I'd say the extra 40-50 bucks is worth the nearly doubled power efficiency and in-box cooler.

 

Also, I'm just not too thrilled and/or impressed with Intel in general. They, at least for the moment, give me the vibe of a stagnant, content, mega corp.

Although, I am curious about their upcoming GPU line...

[tishous]

1 minute ago, SomeSnowLeopard said:

I know that Intel are more budget friendly at the moment. The only thing is that I'd want to tinker with overclocks and things like that, so that would require me to get the 11600K/KF and probably a better board chipset, knowing Intel, and then the cooler on top of that, which eats into the savings a bit. Additionally, I'd say the extra 40-50 bucks is worth the nearly doubled power efficiency and in-box cooler.

 

Also, I'm just not too thrilled and/or impressed with Intel in general. They, at least for the moment, give me the vibe of a stagnant, content, mega corp.

Although, I am curious about their upcoming GPU line...

Yeah that is true. The ability to overclock on lower end chipsets is a big advantage for AMD right now, and it is a bit embarassing that Intel still hasn't unlocked CPU overclocking on B560 boards. 

 

Though I would say, overclocking the Ryzen 5000 series doesn't really give much benefit except for in multi-threaded workloads, so if your main goal is performance in games, I wouldn't expect much improvement. In fact, their boosting algorithm is so good that you may even get worse gaming performance. 

[SomeSnowLeopard]

1 minute ago, tishous said:

Though I would say, overclocking the Ryzen 5000 series doesn't really give much benefit except for in multi-threaded workloads, so if your main goal is performance in games, I wouldn't expect much improvement. In fact, their boosting algorithm is so good that you may even get worse gaming performance. 

When I say overclocking, I should probably say granular memory/controller tuning (fclock, mclock, timing tightening, that sort of thing), because that's more what I mean

At least, until I can upgrade from the stock cooler, that is.

And from what I can tell, Intel doesn't let you play with that stuff..? I know of the new gear1/gear2 mechanic, but I don't think I've heard of, like, being able to mess with the memory controller clocks and stuff like that

[tishous]

18 minutes ago, SomeSnowLeopard said:

When I say overclocking, I should probably say granular memory/controller tuning (fclock, mclock, timing tightening, that sort of thing), because that's more what I mean

At least, until I can upgrade from the stock cooler, that is.

And from what I can tell, Intel doesn't let you play with that stuff..? I know of the new gear1/gear2 mechanic, but I don't think I've heard of, like, being able to mess with the memory controller clocks and stuff like that

Maybe B560 allows that? I know they unlocked memory "overclocking" but I'm not sure if that's just speeds higher than 2666mhz or actually being able to tighten sub timings etc. Either way, Ryzen is definitely better for that. In that case, it is probably better going AMD then. Memory overclocking can gain pretty big improvements on Ryzen, especially in comparison to CPU overclocking.

 

Anyway, good luck on your build.

[SomeSnowLeopard]

1 hour ago, tishous said:

Maybe B560 allows that? I know they unlocked memory "overclocking" but I'm not sure if that's just speeds higher than 2666mhz or actually being able to tighten sub timings etc. Either way, Ryzen is definitely better for that. In that case, it is probably better going AMD then. Memory overclocking can gain pretty big improvements on Ryzen, especially in comparison to CPU overclocking.

 

Anyway, good luck on your build.

I'm fairly sure that's basically just "Hey, you can XMP now, isn't that nice? See? We're competitive, right?" or, that's kinda the vibe I get from that move from them.

But that might just be my anti-intel bias talking...

 

Anyway, thanks for the input and thanks for wishing me luck.

:3