Need Help Building My First PC for gaming and streaming

[slekyr]

Budget (including currency): $1,500.00 US

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: OBS Studio plus a mix of all types of games ranging from Minecraft to Fornite to Halo Infinite

Aim: I'm primarily a console gamer but I want to get into PC gaming and streaming.  My goal is to get a PC capable of 1080p gaming at frame rates at or above 120fps whilst streaming at 720p 30fps

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/23vHy4

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  ($289.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($104.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($88.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($92.61 @ Amazon)

Video Card: NVIDIA RTX 3070 WHEN THEY ARE IN STOCK
Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case  ($94.99 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($124.99 @ Best Buy)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit  ($139.88 @ Other World Computing)

Monitor: 24" 1080p 144Hz
Total: $936.44
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-07-07 13:58 EDT-0400

 

As I said in my "Aim", I want to build my first custom PC and get into PC gaming.  I am only interested in gaming at 1080p 120+fps while streaming at 720p 30fps. My total right now is a little less than $1,000.00 because I would like to get an RTX 3070 for $500 whenever they get in stock which would make my total build $1,500.

 

I have a few peripherals already, like mouse and keyboard, but will need to eventually get two 24" monitors down the road but that price is not included in my budget.  Is 144Hz good enough?

 

I'm curious if I were to buy something like a GTX 1660 Super or an RTX 2070 used on eBay if I would be able to reach my desired gaming and streaming quality.

 

Any help and feedback is greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, slekyr said:

I'm curious if I were to buy something like a GTX 1660 Super or an RTX 2070 used on eBay if I would be able to reach my desired gaming and streaming quality.

You'd be surprised. My girlfriend recently got into streaming and she is only packing a Ryzen 3 2200G. With hardware encoding enabled in OBS, she can manage 1080p 60fps in a few of her favorite games, like GTA V (granted it's on low details)

 

Encoding quality is decent with 3000Mbs, so the end result is not poorly compressed on twitch. With a Ryzen 7 CPU and a high end Nvidia graphics card, you wouldn't be struggling to get good stream quality and gaming performance, whether you choose to use X264 or NVENC

[Downkey]

If you are willing to fully wait for stock, a 5600x with a 3080 is doable in the budget.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($299.00 @ B&H)
Motherboard: MSI MPG B550 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($144.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Turbine RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($82.97 @ Amazon)
Storage: Kingston A2000 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($61.49 @ Amazon)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB Founders Edition Video Card  ($700.00)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P360A ATX Mid Tower Case  ($74.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: MSI 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1483.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-07-07 14:22 EDT-0400

[slekyr]

7 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

You'd be surprised. My girlfriend recently got into streaming and she is only packing a Ryzen 3 2200G. With hardware encoding enabled in OBS, she can manage 1080p 60fps in a few of her favorite games, like GTA V (granted it's on low details)

 

Encoding quality is decent with 3000Mbs, so the end result is not poorly compressed on twitch. With a Ryzen 7 CPU and a high end Nvidia graphics card, you wouldn't be struggling to get good stream quality and gaming performance, whether you choose to use X264 or NVENC

Wow, I never would have thought that you could get 60fps in GTAV just using integrated graphics. I definitely plan on using NVENC which is why I wanted to get a RTX 3070 and also why I was curious if a GTX 1660 Super or a RTX 2070 would be good enough.

7 minutes ago, Downkey said:

If you are willing to fully wait for stock, a 5600x with a 3080 is doable in the budget.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($299.00 @ B&H)
Motherboard: MSI MPG B550 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($144.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Silicon Power XPOWER Turbine RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($82.97 @ Amazon)
Storage: Kingston A2000 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($61.49 @ Amazon)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10 GB Founders Edition Video Card  ($700.00)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P360A ATX Mid Tower Case  ($74.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: MSI 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($119.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1483.42
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-07-07 14:22 EDT-0400

If I am only gaming at 1080p and streaming at 720p would the RTX 3080 really be necessary?  Also, is the 5600X better than the 3700X?  I know it is a newer processor but the 3700X has more cores.  Is newer better than more cores?

[Downkey]

1 minute ago, slekyr said:

Wow, I never would have thought that you could get 60fps in GTAV just using integrated graphics. I definitely plan on using NVENC which is why I wanted to get a RTX 3070 and also why I was curious if a GTX 1660 Super or a RTX 2070 would be good enough.

If I am only gaming at 1080p and streaming at 720p would the RTX 3080 really be necessary?  Also, is the 5600X better than the 3700X?  I know it is a newer processor but the 3700X has more cores.  Is newer better than more cores?

the 3080 is still a good card and you can fit it in the budget, but it isn't entirely necessary. For 1080p and 720p, the 5600x is significantly better than the 3700x for gaming and streaming. the IPC is significantly better and gaming and streaming won't utilize the slower 8 cores of the 3700x.

[Fasauceome]

12 minutes ago, slekyr said:

Wow, I never would have thought that you could get 60fps in GTAV just using integrated graphics. I definitely plan on using NVENC which is why I wanted to get a RTX 3070 and also why I was curious if a GTX 1660 Super or a RTX 2070 would be good enough.

The Turing encoder was a pretty decent step up from the pascal encoder, if I recall correctly the GTX 1070 and up had 2 encoding units so if you are targeting GTX 1070/1660 super and up, you are sitting pretty. (They got rid of the dual encoding units for the 16/20 series but that's hardly an issue)

[slekyr]

3 minutes ago, Downkey said:

the 3080 is still a good card and you can fit it in the budget, but it isn't entirely necessary. For 1080p and 720p, the 5600x is significantly better than the 3700x for gaming and streaming. the IPC is significantly better and gaming and streaming won't utilize the slower 8 cores of the 3700x.

If higher core speed is more important for gaming and streaming would it be better to go with something like the Intel Core i5-10600K that also has 6 cores but has a base clock of 4.1GHz? It's also cheaper as well which would make it easier to fit the RTX 3080 into my budget.

[Downkey]

1 minute ago, slekyr said:

If higher core speed is more important for gaming and streaming would it be better to go with something like the Intel Core i5-10600K that also has 6 cores but has a base clock of 4.1GHz? It's also cheaper as well which would make it easier to fit the RTX 3080 into my budget.

I'm not talking about the core speed, im talking about the IPC of the CPU. the 10600K is also a decent option, just know that it has a higher TDP and motherboards are alot more expensive.

[slekyr]

3 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

The Turing encoder was a pretty decent step up from the pascal encoder, if I recall correctly the GTX 1070 and up had 2 encoding units so if you are targeting GTX 1070/1660 super and up, you are sitting pretty. (They got rid of the dual encoding units for the 16/20 series but that's hardly an issue)

If I don't want to wait for the RTX 3000 series GPUs to become in stock and wanted to get something used on eBay would you recommend the GTX 1070 over the 1660 Super because of the lack of the dual encoding?

[slekyr]

1 minute ago, Downkey said:

I'm not talking about the core speed, im talking about the IPC of the CPU. the 10600K is also a decent option, just know that it has a higher TDP and motherboards are alot more expensive.

Oh, I'm sorry.  All of this computer stuff is relatively new to me.  I googled IPC and misunderstood it as the core speed. I did notice that mother boards for Intel chips were more expensive.

[Fasauceome]

31 minutes ago, slekyr said:

If I don't want to wait for the RTX 3000 series GPUs to become in stock and wanted to get something used on eBay would you recommend the GTX 1070 over the 1660 Super because of the lack of the dual encoding?

It's 2 pascal encoders vs one turing encoder so you wouldn't see a big performance difference one way or the other.

[slekyr]

13 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

It's 2 pascal encoders vs one turing encoder so you wouldn't see a big performance difference one way or the other.

Oh, ok. Thank you

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

1 hour ago, Fasauceome said:

You'd be surprised. My girlfriend recently got into streaming and she is only packing a Ryzen 3 2200G. With hardware encoding enabled in OBS, she can manage 1080p 60fps in a few of her favorite games, like GTA V (granted it's on low details)

 

Encoding quality is decent with 3000Mbs, so the end result is not poorly compressed on twitch. With a Ryzen 7 CPU and a high end Nvidia graphics card, you wouldn't be struggling to get good stream quality and gaming performance, whether you choose to use X264 or NVENC

Hell, you can stream on Intel IGP in some games and have the quality be alright

[slekyr]

1 hour ago, Downkey said:

I'm not talking about the core speed, im talking about the IPC of the CPU. the 10600K is also a decent option, just know that it has a higher TDP and motherboards are alot more expensive.

So on a whim I checked Best Buy and they had the 5600X in stock so I just pulled the trigger.  I have a Best Buy card so I ended up getting all my other components there as well.  I also went with your mother board choice. I plan on using the stock AMD cooler but do you think it would be worth getting something like the Noctua NH-D15? Also, I found a buddy who has an old Alienware Dell GTX 1070 he wasn't using and is going to let me borrow until I can get my hands on a RTX 3000 series card.

 

I just wanted to thank you for your help.  If you are curious, I ended up with the following:

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dCNfbh

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($299.00 @ Best Buy)
Motherboard: MSI MPG B550 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($144.99 @ Best Buy)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($94.99 @ Best Buy)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($159.90 @ Best Buy)
Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case  ($94.99 @ Best Buy)
Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($124.99 @ Best Buy)
Total: $918.95
Total Plus Tax: $980.98