Recommendations for first PC build

[tuckerteaman]

Budget (including currency): 1600 CAD

 

Country: Canada

 

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: several uses such as browsing the internet, watching youtube videos, coding and university work but mainly for gaming. i've only owned a laptop before this, so i'd like to try games that i couldn't run before like valorant, cs:go, r6, gta 5, doom eternal, monster hunter, minecraft, etc.

 

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): i'm not sure what monitor to get, so feel free to drop some recommendations! i think i'll be buying the parts on black friday or boxing day.

 

hey guys!

 

hope everyone's having a good day so far. i'm relatively new to the community and i've been planning on building my first pc for some time now, so i'd like to get some feedback and what you would personally do to improve my pc part picker list.

 

here's the pc part picker list: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/pYjjfP

 

[transgxrl_j4yde]

That seems like a really solid build. I would like to recommend taking a look at AMD processor and motherboards. I recently purchase a Ryzen 5 3600x processor with a b450-a pro max board for about ~$400 US (sorry, I don't know the conversion to CAD). I'm not saying to go with the 3600x as I did, but I feel that AMD has better performance for the price than Intel (at the moment).

 

RAM wise, you might want to look into 3200 MHz instead of the 3600 MHz. The 3200 speed is a bit cheaper but still performs great under loads, and you won't even notice much of a difference between the two while gaming.

 

Other than that, everything else will be more than enough to handle the games that you intend to look into. I'm also looking into the GTX 1660 SUPER, along with a GTX 1060 SSC, for my personal rig that I just built the other day, but I know the 1660 is a solid choice because that's what my roommate is running in her gaming rig.

[Quackers101]

market is kinda horrible for that, and not a great GPU with older generation if you want to get started.

also the 1660 super might be less to none in the market, you could find used GPUs... but... it can be complicated and price.

(also some issues around SSDs, since you have a western SSD NVME there, but nice on sale)

when the budget is around 1200 dollars. I guess you want some lasting parts, as with an beefy cooler.

 

since you have been into laptops I guess you want a decently sized or a bit smaller tower PC.

if going by your current GPU selection, nothing more than 1080p.

[tuckerteaman]

7 minutes ago, transgxrl_j4yde said:

That seems like a really solid build. I would like to recommend taking a look at AMD processor and motherboards. I recently purchase a Ryzen 5 3600x processor with a b450-a pro max board for about ~$400 US (sorry, I don't know the conversion to CAD). I'm not saying to go with the 3600x as I did, but I feel that AMD has better performance for the price than Intel. 

 

RAM wise, you might want to look into 3200 MHz instead of the 3600 MHz. The 3200 speed is a bit cheaper but still performs great under loads, and you won't even notice much of a difference between the two while gaming.

 

Other than that, everything else will be more than enough to handle the games that you intend to look into. I'm also looking into the GTX 1660 SUPER, along with a GTX 1060 SSC, for my personal rig that I just built the other day, but I know the 1660 is a solid choice because that's what my roommate is running in her gaming rig.

thanks for the feedback! ill look more into amd processors and mobos and reconsider the memory speed.

[Stabwhisk]

Considering your parts list states you have already purchased your CPU I agree with all your parts you spec'd minus the CPU cooler. An 11400F isn't going to need a NH-D15S to cool it efficiently. You could absolutely get away with an NH-U12S if you still want the Noctua fan on the cooler but save yourself some money for your peripherals. If you're not sensitive to noise and you want a cooler that's even cheaper and will also work you can grab a Hyper 212 Black Edition.   

[tuckerteaman]

4 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

market is kinda horrible for that, and not a great GPU with older generation if you want to get started.

also the 1660 super might be less to none in the market, you could find used GPUs... but... it can be complicated and price.

when the budget is around 1200 dollars. I guess you want some lasting parts, as with an beefy cooler.

 

since you have been into laptops I guess you want a decently sized or a bit smaller tower PC.

if going by your current GPU selection, nothing more than 1080p.

i see. would there be a gpu that you would recommend that i hunt for instead of the 1660 super? and what would be your opinion on buying used gpus?

[transgxrl_j4yde]

Just now, tuckerteaman said:

thanks for the feedback! ill look more into amd processors and mobos and reconsider the memory speed.

You're welcome. Hopefully you can find something that you like that could possibly be cheaper. Money saved is money to spend on GPU. LoL

[tuckerteaman]

1 minute ago, Stabwhisk said:

Considering your parts list states you have already purchased your CPU I agree with all your parts you spec'd minus the CPU cooler. An 11400F isn't going to need a NH-15S to cool it efficiently. You could absolutely get away with an NH-U12S if you still want the Noctua fan on the cooler but save yourself some money for your peripherals. If you're not sensitive to noise and you want a cooler that's even cheaper and will also work you can grab a Hyper 212 Black Edition.   

ahh okay. i've heard that noctua is a really great brand for cpu coolers so i think i'll change the cooler to the one that you suggested. thank you!

[Quackers101]

24 minutes ago, tuckerteaman said:

i see. would there be a gpu that you would recommend that i hunt for instead of the 1660 super? and what would be your opinion on buying used gpus?

as you can see in the link, the prices are horrible. Were you could get an 3060 for the price of an 1660 super were the 3060 is so much better.

While the 1660 can have a lot of GB memory its not going to use it all. but if you just need an GPU, then it might be good for LESS PRICE, sadly you could get an 3060 ti or 3070 for some of these prices.

 

Also for Nvidia cards, they have a lot more features and the features (DLSS, raytracing) being on the RTX cards which is not the GTX 1660 and the 1660 will not last long with newer titles (depends on you what you want). But AMD has released some that helps everyone (fidelityFX super res).

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#sort=price&c=450,436,446,425,447,427,448,499,497,509,501,495

20 minutes ago, tuckerteaman said:

ahh okay. i've heard that noctua is a really great brand for cpu coolers so i think i'll change the cooler to the one that you suggested. thank you!

noctua has other coolers, but I was just wondering if you wanted that cooler for future upgrades. As some bigger chips if wanting more multi-tasking, although still quite one of the bigger coolers out there. they have the version that is kinda half the size and other types that are very similar.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Quackers101

[tuckerteaman]

28 minutes ago, Quackers101 said:

as you can see in the link, the prices are horrible. Were you could get an 3060 for the price of an 1660 super were the 3060 is so much better.

While the 1660 can have a lot of GB memory, it's a bit well... slow.

 

Also for Nvidia cards, they have a lot more features and the features (DLSS, raytracing) being on the RTX cards which is not the GTX 1660 and the 1660 will not last long with newer titles (depends on you what you want). But AMD has released some that helps everyone (fidelityFX super res).

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/products/video-card/#sort=price&c=450,436,446,425,447,427,448,499,497,509,501,495

noctua has other coolers, but I was just wondering if you wanted that cooler for future upgrades. As some bigger chips if wanting more multi-tasking, although still quite one of the bigger coolers out there. they have the version that is kinda half the size and other types that are very similar.

hey quackers,

 

sorry about the late response.

 

from the link you shared the prices on the 1660 super do look horrendous. i was hoping to hunt for a 1660 super at msrp from my local memory express store but that's probably unrealistic. ill definitely keep the 3060 in mind, but in this market i have no idea if i'll be able to snag one at a reasonable price haha. also, thank you for bringing amd gpus to my attention since i completely forgot that they existed lol.

 

in regards to the cpu cooler, i was thinking sometime in the future i would upgrade to an i5-11600 or i7-11700F. when i picked out a cpu cooler, my main concern was when playing games or doing more intensive tasks the clock speed would boost up to 4.4GHz and i wasn't sure if something cheaper would adequately be able to cool the cpu. with that said i just went with the beefiest one that would allow the ram to clear but as Stabwhisk mentioned if I can get away with using a nh-u12s to save on something else on the build that would be pretty awesome.