Asking for sugestions for my first build

[fadwryy]

Budget (including currency): 600-700 USD (Tower Only)

Country: Indonesia

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

• Games: MInecraft (with light shaders), Subnautica and other light games
• Programs: Unity 3D (mostly for 2d), Premiere, After Effect (motion graphics, no heavy 3D compositing), VS Code

Other details: Plan to have 2 monitors.

 

Hello, Hello!

I'm planning to build my first PC and I was hoping to get some suggestions on my build plans. Maybe there's some essential parts that I forgot to add, things I could cheap out on, or something that's better with similar price. My laptop is about to enter a coma if I continue with my workload lol (minus Unity and AE) so your help will be greatly appreciated!

 

For the case preferences, I'd like to have a small boi, micro ATX or something similar in size. Personally I'd like to have a sleek white build, but color isn't on top of my priority so as long as it's not jarring it's all good. What is important though is the ease of build. I've disassemble and reassemble my laptop (Lenovo U41) quite a few times before so I'm not a complete rookie on this. I just don't want this to be a Grandmaster level origami project, it will be my first build after all lol.

 

Finally, I don't really understand much about the fans in a PC build so I hope someone would be willing to educate me on this. I don't know if I need to buy a cpu cooler or those fans that go on the side of the case. Also some decent budget monitor and keyboard suggestions would be nice. Thank you.

[jaslion]

Switch the case for a phanteks p300a or p360a (better airflow around the same price) and try to get cl16 3600mhz memory to really get the most out of that system. For the board I recommend the pro-a, mortar or tomahawk over the regular pro of msi. Ssd I'd swap out for a kingston a2000 as it's same price normally but a better drive.

[joshfrog]

Do you plan on getting a graphics card?

If so i think you should look at 650w  PSUor larger, 750w would be a good option if you wanted to do 80 or 90 class GPU 

Depending on the graphics card u could get if you choose to later the 550w PSU may not be enough and you would need to replace it.

If you are doing Unity and AE work are you planning on having a 2nd drive ether a sata SSD or hard drive to work off?

[joshfrog]

You asked about fans, The case seems to only come with 1 fan pre-installed in the rear of the case if you could get another 2 fans to mount in the front of the case it would push air into your case so the motherboard components such as VRMs have more air moving over them and it will help keep your CPU cooler.

You could look at getting a better CPU cooler such as the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo it looks like it should just fit. having a better cooler will help keep your CPU cooler during long renders. I dont know if it gets got in Indonesia but i live in Australia and at times it gets very hot here, using the stock cooler could mean you would lose performance from your CPU on hot days and long renders.

You can upgrade the cooler later if you are on a very tight budget the stock cooler would let you build it and get it up and running no problem,

Just keep in mind a better cooler will give you better cooling performance.
You may want to consider a different motherboard one that will have 4 memory slots for your work load being able to have 32gb of memory could help you and i dont know if 16gb would be enough with AE and Premiere, Depending on the size of the projects you work on that is.

[fadwryy]

32 minutes ago, joshfrog said:

Do you plan on getting a graphics card?

If so i think you should look at 650w  PSUor larger, 750w would be a good option if you wanted to do 80 or 90 class GPU 

I would like to upgrade to a GPU when the prices are back to at least somewhat normal and I have more budget but that's still very uncertain at the moment.

33 minutes ago, joshfrog said:

If you are doing Unity and AE work are you planning on having a 2nd drive ether a sata SSD or hard drive to work off?

16 minutes ago, joshfrog said:

You may want to consider a different motherboard one that will have 4 memory slots for your work load being able to have 32gb of memory could help you and i dont know if 16gb would be enough with AE and Premiere, Depending on the size of the projects you work on that is.

Do you think I should up my budget a bit for a bigger power supply or is it fine if I buy a new graphics card alongside a new power supply instead?

As for AE and Unity, I'm not using them as a hobbyist and not in any professional capacity yet so I haven't really consider it.

[fadwryy]

54 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Switch the case for a phanteks p300a or p360a (better airflow around the same price) and try to get cl16 3600mhz memory to really get the most out of that system. For the board I recommend the pro-a, mortar or tomahawk over the regular pro of msi. Ssd I'd swap out for a kingston a2000 as it's same price normally but a better drive.

What's the difference between the regular board and your recommendations? Is it worth the slight increase in budget?

Do you have any alternatives for the ssd? The 500 GB kingston one is twice the price of the WD one in my local pricing.

[fadwryy]

Are there any cheaper case alternatives?

[Jonathan Lee]

These are okay looking "cheap" case:

 

Cougar MX330-G

Deepcool MATREXX 55 MESH

Cougar MX330-G Air

 

I tend to recommend going with better quality cases cause they are typically easier to build in. These are a bit more pricey, but I think are worth the cost:

Cooler Master MasterBox NR600 (w/o ODD)

Corsair 275R Airflow

Metallic Gear Neo Air

[jaslion]

On 2/12/2022 at 6:58 AM, fadwryy said:

Are there any cheaper case alternatives?

@Jonathan Lee made some good recommendations but the phanteks p300a or p360a also are good.

 

As for why those boards? Well they are around the same price but can handle up to a 5950x and are far higher quality. Since I don't know your local pricing it's hard tor ecommend a ssd.