Comparing 2 builds for new pc

zenoo · April 25, 2021

Budget (including currency): $<2000 CAD

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 1080p Gaming and school work

Other details: I have a 144hz monitor, most likely going to get a 60/75hz secondary monitor if I end up building a pc. AIO isn't definitive, will decide later.

Currently using a Dell Inspiron 7559 laptop, and I'm looking to upgrade, as this laptop is getting pretty slow. I'm not as good with computer building and parts as my friend, so I asked him to build me a pc that gives the best bang for buck. Preferably, I'd like to keep it under $2000, but not too big of a deal if I go a bit over. I also asked my uncle for his opinion and a build as well, to which both links I've provided below. I'm definitely leaning towards my friends build a bit more, as I think my uncle's is a little overkill and unnecessary for me (I probably didn't specify enough my needs and he went off the top of his head from general comments). 99% will be doing university work and playing games (Valorant, Warzone, anything I couldn't play on my laptop.) Any recommendations and suggestions for both the builds?

Friends: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/hernandoh/saved/#view=6CDTYJ

Uncles: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/hernandoh/saved/#view=mNtRK8

ImAlsoRan · April 25, 2021

Will have to warn you, the 2nd build (labeled uncle's) is under budget since there's no price for that GPU, so it defaults to 0. When it goes back in stock, it'll be much higher than that.

Aside from that, the builds aren't very balanced. The cooler for the i5 is overkill (you don't need a 240mm AIO for that CPU, especially since it can't overclock), and the cooler for the i9 is underkill (you probably need more than a tower cooler if you want decent performance).

Aside from that, the "friend" motherboard is really a little too budget, and the "uncle" motherboard" is way overkill. Unless you plan on extreme overclocking, you won't even begin to take advantage of all of it's features, leading to it being a pretty unnecessary expense.

Aside from that, 16GB of RAM is pretty standard for the midrange PC but for a $2000 budget you really should be opting for 32GB of RAM. The "friend" build uses a NVMe drive which is great, but the "uncle" build uses a SATA SSD, which (avoiding getting too technical) will be a huge bottleneck, especially considering that your OS will be on it. I do recommend getting a beefy HDD for less-often played games since those 100s of gigabytes stack up quickly.

A 3060 Ti is fine but there's this unofficial rule of PC building that the majority of your budget should be on the GPU. I feel that, once they're in stock, a 3070 or even 3080 would be a far better option for your budget. The cases are both fine, nothing wrong there. I personally use an H510 and love it.

The 550W PSU is kind of underpowered considering you're throwing an Intel CPU and a Ampere GPU in it, and even for the 750W it's really stretching it's capability. They also didn't include Windows. Perhaps they have their own way of obtaining it, but to keep with the rules of this forum, I have to recommend to you that you purchase it and consider it in your budget.

Altogether, the friend's build is pretty balanced (aside from the overkill cooling and subpar motherboard) but honestly right now you shouldn't be building a PC. Unless you can get a GPU through the LTT verified actual gamer program, the sad truth is that everything is marked up 200-300% and you won't be getting much value for your money. Alongside that, Intel isn't a very good proposition, and that's in terms of performance and value for money. In 2021, you really should be looking at AMD. Their value is much higher and they produce less heat and require much less power, not to mention that every Ryzen CPU overclocks (and it's easy to do so with a button using Ryzen master).

Honestly, CAD$2000 is a little much for 1080p gaming, unless it's RTX. I had an i5-4460 and GTX 1060 6GB and it could play Warzone at 1080p fine. Do I recommend that specific config? Heck no! It was really stretching the hardware and the i5 was a total bottleneck, and I doubt the system would handle a game from 2022 with flying colors. However, 1080p gaming for these graphics-moderate games isn't really a huge expense right now (that's ignoring the ridiculous markup right now, of course). Built a R5-2600 GTX 1660 build for my brother in 2019 and his rig can handle most games at 1080p, and it only cost USD$800 with RGB goodness.

Let me know if you'd like help putting together a list that you can set aside for when the world finally returns to normal