Living Room Gaming PC for wife

Trokeasaur · December 20, 2021

Budget (including currency): $2,500 USD

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mostly games played off main living room TV. Cities Skylines 2, Tropico, with likely upgrades down the road to a racing seat for sims.

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:

Living Room PC for gaming for my wife who likes city builder games, and would likely shift to some sims down the road. Current living room TV is a decent Sony 1080p, but would plan for a 120hz 4K TV shortly, although no issues running the games in a lower resolution.

I’m trying to keep the case relatively compact to fit into the living room, but don’t want to go full mini. As well as have a little RGB, but the ability to tweak color, brightness, and even turn it off, and would prefer a relatively quiet build.

Looking for a double check and recommendations for anything I may want to tweak.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/gbmfK3

KhakiHat · December 20, 2021

Playing at 4k usually takes a beast of a rig, depending on the screen size, performance will vary. If you stick to just sims and city builders, it should be alright.

It also may not be a complete necessity that you buy thermal paste. Usually coolers come with a layer of it ready to be placed(pre-applied).

Trokeasaur · December 20, 2021

9 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

Playing at 4k usually takes a beast of a rig, depending on the screen size, performance will vary. If you stick to just sims and city builders, it should be alright.

It also may not be a complete necessity that you buy thermal paste. Usually coolers come with a layer of it ready to be placed(pre-applied).

That’s a good point on the screen, and I’ve edited the post to clarify that the TV would be upgraded, but wouldn’t have an issue running games in lower resolution depending on how demanding the game is.

Somerandomtechyboi · December 20, 2021

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Y923z7

Ditched all the inferior corsair crap and swapped rgb for extra storage, better cpu, better ram, better psu, etc.

12600k will trounce on an 11600k, you can upgrade to a 12700k for 2 more performance cores

Even through its lower speed its the ram die that matters and e die are really good overclockers since theyll do 4000+ easy, id reccomend 1.6v max w active cooling or 1.5v max w/o active cooling, ~1.6v should be full potential for the ram but it isnt that important other than some cpu performance gain for basically free cause ram oc doesnt shoot power bills through the roof like ocing cpu

2tb ssd so more storage for games

1000w psu cause its a good deal ¯\_ (ツ) _/¯

Get w10 off sites like scdkey for ~20$, for scdkey you can use promocode TYC for a discount