Returning to the Hobby after 9 years, need help.

[RetroWehmut]

Budget (including currency): 1500 € for PC and Case only.

Country: Germany

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Mostly gaming, light Photoshop / Blender / editing on the side (definitely not the focus). Eldenring at 60/1440p?

Other details

 

Hi Guys,

 

I used to build my own PCs in the past, but that was back in 2013. The World has moved on since then, and what little knowledge I have retained from those days seems obsolete. Now I'm in need of a new Computer, and I've been thinking of getting back into PC building and I kinda just need some good reading material to be honest (or a good video).

Mostly back to basic stuff, like what CPU pairs with which Motherboard letter/number pairs with what RAM etc.. Also what are the CPU  / GPU Tiers now? Nvidia still seems straight forward, I don't understand with Intel any more and I was never an AMD guy.

I'm also open to part suggestion for a learning by doing approach if that's more the speed here.

 

TL,DR: Basically newbie trying to build a mid tier Gaming PC, please help.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

This is Intel's latest lineup including compatible chipsets. Organize it by core count and things will be more or less from high to low end with the chipsets at the bottom.

 

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/codename/147470/products-formerly-alder-lake.html#@Desktop

 

A quick guide to the nomenclature

 

"K" still means unlocked for CPUs, and "Z" for the chipset.

 

"F" means there is no iGPU.

 

"S" is a super version of the chip, higher clock speed but otherwise the same.

 

"T" is still the low power version.

[YoungBlade]

Here's a list:

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600KF 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor  (€276.90 @ Alza)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool AK620 68.99 CFM CPU Cooler  (€63.90 @ Alza)
Motherboard: MSI PRO B660M-A DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (€146.90 @ Alza)
Memory: TEAMGROUP T-FORCE VULCAN Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  (€115.89 @ Galaxus)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN750 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (€180.90 @ Alza)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB Fighter Video Card  (€507.99 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case  (€59.99 @ Galaxus)
Power Supply: Enermax Revolution D.F. 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€96.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case Fan: ARCTIC P12 56.3 CFM 120 mm Fan  (€4.72 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1454.18
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-06-14 19:39 CEST+0200

 

I went with the 12600KF because it's available for a good price. Yes, I did pick a B660 board rather than a Z690 board to save more money there, but overclocking doesn't really give much performance anymore these days, and B series boards now at least allow for memory overclocking. I decided to also put in a good dual-tower cooler for the CPU, as I don't believe there's a cooler included in the box, and it will allow you to get the most out of your CPU.

 

For storage, I went with a Gen 3 NVMe drive, because it looks like Gen 4 drives are still a fair bit more expensive in Germany, and you honestly won't notice a difference in speed. Plus, down the road, if you do upgrade to a Gen 4 drive, you have spare slots on the motherboard, and this Gen 3 drive can then be used for additional storage. This style of drive is very fast - way faster than a hard drive and even way faster than the SSDs on the market back in 2012. The one I picked can read and write at speeds up to 3 GB/s. You could also consider getting a HDD for bulk storage with the extra room in the budget.

 

For the RAM, I went with 32GB of DDR4 3600CL18 memory so you have plenty for light editing and future games. The 850W PSU is mainly because it was only a few dollars more than the 750W model, and this gives you plenty of headroom for a GPU or CPU upgrade in the future.

 

With the GPU, I was able to fit in an RX 6700XT. It seems to be the best value upper-mid range card - an RTX 3060 Ti would cost ~40€ more, but would be another option if you really want to go with Nvidia.

 

I think the case is the biggest place where you could change things up - I don't know what kind of style you want, so I went with the Focus G, as it's a fairly inexpensive option with decent enough airflow once you add in an exhaust fan. Case choice is often very personal, so I understand if you aren't happy with that choice.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

[Queen Chrysalis]

30 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

Here's a list:

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600KF 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor  (€276.90 @ Alza)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool AK620 68.99 CFM CPU Cooler  (€63.90 @ Alza)
Motherboard: MSI PRO B660M-A DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (€146.90 @ Alza)
Memory: TEAMGROUP T-FORCE VULCAN Z 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory  (€115.89 @ Galaxus)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN750 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  (€180.90 @ Alza)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB Fighter Video Card  (€507.99 @ Mindfactory)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case  (€59.99 @ Galaxus)
Power Supply: Enermax Revolution D.F. 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (€96.99 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Case Fan: ARCTIC P12 56.3 CFM 120 mm Fan  (€4.72 @ Amazon Deutschland)
Total: €1454.18
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-06-14 19:39 CEST+0200

 

I went with the 12600KF because it's available for a good price. Yes, I did pick a B660 board rather than a Z690 board to save more money there, but overclocking doesn't really give much performance anymore these days, and B series boards now at least allow for memory overclocking. I decided to also put in a good dual-tower cooler for the CPU, as I don't believe there's a cooler included in the box, and it will allow you to get the most out of your CPU.

 

For storage, I went with a Gen 3 NVMe drive, because it looks like Gen 4 drives are still a fair bit more expensive in Germany, and you honestly won't notice a difference in speed. Plus, down the road, if you do upgrade to a Gen 4 drive, you have spare slots on the motherboard, and this Gen 3 drive can then be used for additional storage. This style of drive is very fast - way faster than a hard drive and even way faster than the SSDs on the market back in 2012. The one I picked can read and write at speeds up to 3 GB/s. You could also consider getting a HDD for bulk storage with the extra room in the budget.

 

For the RAM, I went with 32GB of DDR4 3600CL18 memory so you have plenty for light editing and future games. The 850W PSU is mainly because it was only a few dollars more than the 750W model, and this gives you plenty of headroom for a GPU or CPU upgrade in the future.

 

With the GPU, I was able to fit in an RX 6700XT. It seems to be the best value upper-mid range card - an RTX 3060 Ti would cost ~40€ more, but would be another option if you really want to go with Nvidia.

 

I think the case is the biggest place where you could change things up - I don't know what kind of style you want, so I went with the Focus G, as it's a fairly inexpensive option with decent enough airflow once you add in an exhaust fan. Case choice is often very personal, so I understand if you aren't happy with that choice.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

As an owner of a fighter 6600, spend the money to get a better 6700xt.  The only reason I bought it is because I had a morpheus II cooler the vegas I sold and just went with the cheapest cooler because I took the cooler off and used my own.  The fighter cooler is TINY.  It has 3 heat pipes and maybe 20 fins.  It's not gonna get you the kind of performance you'd expect from a 6700xt.

[RetroWehmut]

Hey, thanks for the quick replies. Seeing the recommendations here, Intel is still the best for upper mid tier gaming-PCs?

[Queen Chrysalis]

1 minute ago, RetroWehmut said:

Hey, thanks for the quick replies. Seeing the recommendations here, Intel is still the best for upper mid tier gaming-PCs?

pick your poison.  CPUs are way faster than they need to be ATM, so a 6-core from ether isn;t gonna even come close to bottlenecking anything.  I would prefer a 12400 or 5600 (non-x) to save 100E over the 12600kf, but whatever those e-cores might come in handy some day.  I'd go with whichever has the cheapest CPU/mobo combo between a 5600+b450/b550 vs 12400+b660.  I'd also go with a motherboard that has onboard wifi/bt, as there's no benefit to copper connection for gaming anymore other than an ugly wire running through your house.  You can also take  cheaper mobo with am.2 wifi port, as those m.2 wifi chips are a lot cheaper than the pcie one.

[YoungBlade]

2 minutes ago, RetroWehmut said:

Hey, thanks for the quick replies. Seeing the recommendations here, Intel is still the best for upper mid tier gaming-PCs?

At the moment, Intel offers better value. You can get an i5 12600KF for cheaper than the Ryzen 7 5700X, and the two perform similarly in multicore workloads, while the 12600KF is a bit faster for gaming. At the lower mid-range, the i5 12400F and Ryzen 5 5600 are very similar in performance, but Intel offers a better upgrade path, as the current AMD socket is now at the end of its life, while Intel motherboards should support 13th gen releasing later this year.

 

Basically, if you already have an AMD AM4 motherboard, it is worth it to go AMD, but if you are building a new system from scratch, Intel offers better value and performance at most price tiers.

[Queen Chrysalis]

Just now, YoungBlade said:

At the moment, Intel offers better value. You can get an i5 12600KF for cheaper than the Ryzen 7 5700X, and the two perform similarly in multicore workloads, while the 12600KF is a bit faster for gaming. At the lower mid-range, the i5 12400F and Ryzen 5 5600 are very similar in performance, but Intel offers a better upgrade path, as the current AMD socket is now at the end of its life, while Intel motherboards should support 13th gen releasing later this year.

 

Basically, if you already have an AMD AM4 motherboard, it is worth it to go AMD, but if you are building a new system from scratch, Intel offers better value and performance at most price tiers.

upgrade path is a meme.  no one should be upgrading CPUs often enough to reuse a socket.  By the time a 5600 would  be too slow for gaming, LGA 1700 is gonna be gone on the intel side, too.  And performance identical.  We're talking a 1-2% differences at 1080p.  No one buys new systems for 1080p anymore, and at 1440p 5 year old CPUs are still fast enough. to put the bottleneck on the GPU.  Just go with the best value at the moment, they're both incredibly fast, so you're gonna want to have the most budget possible for a GPU, and NOT one with dinky ass cooler like the fighter.

[trevb0t]

21 minutes ago, RetroWehmut said:

Hey, thanks for the quick replies. Seeing the recommendations here, Intel is still the best for upper mid tier gaming-PCs?

The market is more open. Ryzen has dealt with many of the issues the old AMD CPUs had, and kinda kicked Intel into gear to step up their game around 10th/11th gen.

The GPU market is also competitive, but NVENC is -imo- still a significant reason to buy nVidia, but both have great units.

[RetroWehmut]

Ok, thanks again everyone for your contributions. I think this is a good starting point for me so I'll be offline for now. Maybe more stupid questions tomorrow.

[YoungBlade]

39 minutes ago, Queen Chrysalis said:

upgrade path is a meme.  no one should be upgrading CPUs often enough to reuse a socket.  By the time a 5600 would  be too slow for gaming, LGA 1700 is gonna be gone on the intel side, too.  And performance identical.  We're talking a 1-2% differences at 1080p.  No one buys new systems for 1080p anymore, and at 1440p 5 year old CPUs are still fast enough. to put the bottleneck on the GPU.  Just go with the best value at the moment, they're both incredibly fast, so you're gonna want to have the most budget possible for a GPU, and NOT one with dinky ass cooler like the fighter.

I disagree that a CPU upgrade is meaningless. Even within this generation, the 12700F has effectively double the multicore performance of the 12400F. Presumably, the 13700F will be even faster than the 12900K. Getting 2.5-3x the CPU performance compared to a modern 6c/12t CPU for around 330€ is nothing to sneeze at and certainly not a meme.

 

And no, a 7600K, which was the go-to upper mid-range gaming CPU 5 years ago, is not sufficient. In most modern games, it will have issues, even at 1440p. We have no guarantee that future games will not require more CPU horsepower than a 12400F or 5600 can provide - granted, we have no guarantee that even the 12600KF or 5700X would be enough, but given that the 12600KF is already 10-15% faster on average in CPU bound scenarios, and that it's 50% faster for multicore, it will certainly have a better chance.

 

You can point out that a 6700XT will not show that 10-15% difference in today's games, but you'll notice that I also put in an 850W PSU to offer a GPU upgrade path. So looking at a high-end GPU like a 3090 or 6900XT for a performance comparison is reasonable in that context.

 

Also, you are neglecting the other uses of the CPU as stated by the OP. This build is not exclusively for gaming. Blender and video editing will benefit from more multicore horsepower. The 12600KF is basically the price/performance champion for such applications at the moment. I almost recommended the 12600K to give it QuickSync, but the OP didn't specify which editing application, and said the usage would be light.

 

I don't have an issue with upgrading the GPU to one with a better cooler if the price is right, but to get a 3 fan design requires spending a fair bit more for possibly no performance gain. If the desire is to reduce noise levels, or just because the OP feels uncomfortable with 80C on the GPU, that's fine, but it's not going to give a meaningful performance difference outside of potential OC headroom, which is minimal today anyway. I don't think a < 5% boost is worth spending nearly 10% more money.

[Queen Chrysalis]

2 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

And no, a 7600K, which was the go-to upper mid-range gaming CPU 5 years ago.

I was referring to covfefe lake.  Most people were getting the 8700, and the 8400 is still fine.  The point was that CPUs always outlast sockets anyway, so planning on upgrading within a socket is silly.  Huge difference and I don't know anyone that bought kaby lake.  Most haswell users waited till covfefe lake or 10th-gen to upgrade, and most first-timers bought sky lake (there was a bit of a gaming PC rush in 2015).  Also, those sky/kaby lake cores are still fast enough for 1440p, SKUs were just well behind the clock at that time due to AMD being noncompetitive from athlon till zen.  Not to mention, when was the last time you saw a thread of someone with an 8400 actually buying a 9900k?  Chances are their motherboard didn't support it anyway, and they went with a 12400f.   By this logic, you'd also only ever want to buy a CPU the year a nwe socket came out, or it's on a dead platform.  In 2018, would I have been a moron to buy a 9400f because 10th gen was gonna use LGA 1200, so I'd be buying a dead socket?

2 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

Also, you are neglecting the other uses of the CPU as stated by the OP. This build is not exclusively for gaming. Blender and video editing will benefit from more multicore horsepower. The 12600KF is basically the price/performance champion for such applications at the moment. I almost recommended the 12600K to give it QuickSync, but the OP didn't specify which editing application, and said the usage would be light.

Anyone who's primary usage is gaming can do whatever kind of editing they are doing just fine with gaming oriented hardware.  Multicore really only makes a difference in the render phase, and it just makes it go faster.  The majority of time in editing is creative work, which multicore really has no effect on.  You could edit for 8 hours and render for 30 minutes, and going all out on a big multicore CPU might be a difference of 10 minutes.  Crocodile tears in the ocean, as most people just do something else while it renders anyway.  Especially for people who are just occasional editors.  Hell, there are professionals who are still doing the majority of their work on sky lake macbooks and surface pros, so someone who makes a YTP once a month isn't gonna notice a difference.  

2 hours ago, YoungBlade said:

I don't have an issue with upgrading the GPU to one with a better cooler if the price is right, but to get a 3 fan design requires spending a fair bit more for possibly no performance gain. If the desire is to reduce noise levels, or just because the OP feels uncomfortable with 80C on the GPU, that's fine, but it's not going to give a meaningful performance difference outside of potential OC headroom, which is minimal today anyway. I don't think a < 5% boost is worth spending nearly 10% more money.

It's more than a 5% boost, good OCs on a cooler with 8-12 heatpipes, interlaced fins, and 3 100mm fans are gonna be pretty significant, as opposed to one with tiny fins, 3 heatpipes, and two 80mm fans cooking at stock settings.