Planning a new build, need some inputs on 6700XT

[Ddave]

Hey y'all, after 'bout 3 years, I decided to look at building a new PC.

Came up with this list. I'll reuse my NVME SSD and 3.5" HDD so no worries there.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HtMPhk

 

I was initially looking at a ASUS TUF 3060TI for about 500USD, but saw a 6700XT on sale for 400.

All this will cost me around 1070USD, converting from local currency.

 

Just wanted to get some inputs if 400USD is a good price for 6700XT these days. Also I remember talks of driver issues on release, I do hope drivers are stable now.

 

Another thing, there are the warnings in PCPartpicker regarding the bios update and the case clearance with the hard drive.
How would I know if I need to update the BIOS? Is there a way to check the BIOS version before I buy the motherboard?
Looking at the case, there's a 3.5" HDD bay under the PSU shroud, so that shouldn't be an issue.

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

2 minutes ago, Ddave said:

Hey y'all, after 'bout 3 years, I decided to look at building a new PC.

Came up with this list. I'll reuse my NVME SSD and 3.5" HDD so no worries there.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HtMPhk

 

I was initially looking at a ASUS TUF 3060TI for about 500USD, but saw a 6700XT on sale for 400.

All this will cost me around 1070USD, converting from local currency.

 

Just wanted to get some inputs if 400USD is a good price for 6700XT these days. Also I remember talks of driver issues on release, I do hope drivers are stable now.

 

Another thing, there are the warnings in PCPartpicker regarding the bios update and the case clearance with the hard drive.
How would I know if I need to update the BIOS? Is there a way to check the BIOS version before I buy the motherboard?
Looking at the case, there's a 3.5" HDD bay under the PSU shroud, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Decent list. The 6700xt is fine. Driver issues are overblown. $400 usd is okay but I've seen a bit lower. I'd definitely get the 6700xt over the 3060ti if it's significantly cheaper.

 

Bad CPU choice though. Raptor Lake comes out next week. Grab a 13400 (which is a 12600k essentially) and a B660 board

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

4 minutes ago, Ddave said:

Hey y'all, after 'bout 3 years, I decided to look at building a new PC.

Came up with this list. I'll reuse my NVME SSD and 3.5" HDD so no worries there.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HtMPhk

 

I was initially looking at a ASUS TUF 3060TI for about 500USD, but saw a 6700XT on sale for 400.

All this will cost me around 1070USD, converting from local currency.

 

Just wanted to get some inputs if 400USD is a good price for 6700XT these days. Also I remember talks of driver issues on release, I do hope drivers are stable now.

 

Another thing, there are the warnings in PCPartpicker regarding the bios update and the case clearance with the hard drive.
How would I know if I need to update the BIOS? Is there a way to check the BIOS version before I buy the motherboard?
Looking at the case, there's a 3.5" HDD bay under the PSU shroud, so that shouldn't be an issue.

Also, that ram is needlessly expensive. You can get good 32gb Cl18 for like 75 bucks nowadays 

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Ddave said:

Just wanted to get some inputs if 400USD is a good price for 6700XT these days.

It does depend on your area specifically whether or not it's a good deal or not, $400 is about what you can get one for in the US and is a fairly good option at the moment if you want a new GPU. 

 

4 minutes ago, Ddave said:

How would I know if I need to update the BIOS? Is there a way to check the BIOS version before I buy the motherboard?

You won't, that warning is broken, every BIOS version for that board supports the 12400. 

[RONOTHAN##]

2 minutes ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

Grab a 13400 (which is a 12600k essentially) and a B660 board

13400F won't be out till mid January though, so unless you are planning on delaying the list for 2-3 months you might as well just keep the 12400.

 

Either that or price out a 5600 build instead. 

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

Just now, RONOTHAN## said:

13400F won't be out till mid January though, so unless you are planning on delaying the list for 2-3 months you might as well just keep the 12400.

 

Either that or price out a 5600 build instead. 

Yeah that's true. The 5600 might be better honestly if OP is building now. The 5600 is dirt cheap nowadays and goes on sale for $100 sometimes

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

Yeah that's true. The 5600 might be better honestly if OP is building now. The 5600 is dirt cheap nowadays and goes on sale for $100 sometimes

Though they aren't US based (at least I'd assume from the "converting from local currency" comment), so for all I know the 12400 and B660 board are the cheaper option right now. It's most of the reason I didn't comment on anything in this system that wouldn't be a liability, since for all I know it's the best deal by him, even if it's not the best deal on PCPP. 

[Morgan MLGman]

Drivers are fine, I'd say just as good as Nvidia's unless you play some very specific games or do content creation (I run both "teams" daily). The 6700 XT is a decent card that outperforms a 3060Ti in general and has more VRAM. It's noticeably worse in ray tracing though, but I personally still don't consider cards of that tier RT-capable so it's not an issue to me...

With the BIOS, I believe that there should be no issues. 12400 has been on the market for long-enough that motherboards sold now should be manufactured later than its release.

As for the drive bay warning - it's not a problem unless you plan on having a lot of 3.5" HDDs. And even for that, you'd have to buy the drive brackets separately if you intend on using more than two 3.5" drives, so this case would've been a bad choice from the start for that.
 

17 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

It's most of the reason I didn't comment on anything in this system that wouldn't be a liability, since for all I know it's the best deal by him, even if it's not the best deal on PCPP. 

Yes, but keep in mind that when someone comes to the forum for help, he might not even be aware that there is a good alternative to the 12400. Especially that Ryzen as a whole has not been around for that long relatively to the Intel Core series. I believe it's worth mentioning that there's another option that may even be cheaper OP's country.

[Ddave]

15 minutes ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

Yeah that's true. The 5600 might be better honestly if OP is building now. The 5600 is dirt cheap nowadays and goes on sale for $100 sometimes

 

8 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Though they aren't US based (at least I'd assume from the "converting from local currency" comment), so for all I know the 12400 and B660 board are the cheaper option right now. It's most of the reason I didn't comment on anything in this system that wouldn't be a liability, since for all I know it's the best deal by him, even if it's not the best deal on PCPP. 

 

Not US based yeah sorry. I found a 5600G that's about $60 cheaper than the 12400.

This new list is around $1000 total.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Hd8hd9

 

Can't really find a cheaper 32GB set of RAM though, either out of stock or pretty much the same price.

Is it safe to assume that similar to the B660, I don't need to worry about BIOS versions for B550 boards?

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

2 minutes ago, Ddave said:

 

 

Not US based yeah sorry. I found a 5600G that's about $60 cheaper than the 12400.

This new list is around $1000 total.

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Hd8hd9

 

Can't really find a cheaper 32GB set of RAM though, either out of stock or pretty much the same price.

Is it safe to assume that similar to the B660, I don't need to worry about BIOS versions for B550 boards?

The 5600g is significantly slower than the 5600. I would get a 12400f over the 5600g

[RONOTHAN##]

1 minute ago, Ddave said:

I found a 5600G that's about $60 cheaper than the 12400.

The 5600G though is a significant amount worse than the 5600 or 12400 though, so realistically if you can afford the extra $60 you should go for those instead. 

 

2 minutes ago, Ddave said:

Is it safe to assume that similar to the B660, I don't need to worry about BIOS versions for B550 boards?

Not as safe an assumption, it's not like the B660 boards where there's no possible way of that happening. It's still not super likely, the 5600 has been out for long enough that any board you buy new should have an updated BIOS, but it's not guaranteed and you should be looking for a board with BIOS flashback if you're getting one. 

[Ddave]

2 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

The 5600G though is a significant amount worse than the 5600 or 12400 though, so realistically if you can afford the extra $60 you should go for those instead. 

 

Not as safe an assumption, it's not like the B660 boards where there's no possible way of that happening. It's still not super likely, the 5600 has been out for long enough that any board you buy new should have an updated BIOS, but it's not guaranteed and you should be looking for a board with BIOS flashback if you're getting one. 

Gotcha, I thought the only difference was the integrated graphics lol. Been running with integrated graphics since 2019 cause my card died, wanted to ensure I have a backup in case it happens again down the line.

 

I think there are 5600 that are still cheaper than 12400, so I'll probably go with that if I can confirm the stock.

Would there be a way to confirm the BIOS version before I buy the board? I'm not that confident with BIOS updates, don't really want to do it if I can avoid it.

[Furhart]

If you can allocate around $500 for the Gpu, and since you're fine going AMD, I recommend looking into the rx 6800 xt. It's way more powerful than an RX 6700 xt and prices have been steadily going down for a while. One Asrock model goes for $559 on Newegg, and if you're up to it, used 6800 xts go anywhere between $480 to $550.

 

I personally got mine off of Ebay for $544(incl. tax and shipping). The seller claims he bought it in November 2021 and it sure runs and looks like it. I'm also not based in the US, so I regularly use forwarding companies that receive items in the US and ship them to my country. You might have similar options where you live. It's an added cost but it's still waaay cheaper compared to how much these things go for over here.

[RONOTHAN##]

Just now, Ddave said:

Would there be a way to confirm the BIOS version before I buy the board? I'm not that confident with BIOS updates, don't really want to do it if I can avoid it.

You can usually ask the retailer to check that the BIOS is the latest revision, but that said BIOS flashback is relatively easy to use if you do need to use it, I'd at least watch a video tutorial on how to do it before making up your mind on it. 

 

3 minutes ago, Ddave said:

Gotcha, I thought the only difference was the integrated graphics lol.

You'd think, but no. AMD in their infinite wisdom made the 5600G and 5600 two completely different pieces of silicon with completely different cache and core layouts, resulting in significant performance differences. The 5600G is the same piece of silicon as the 5500 and has more similar performance to the last gen R5 3600. 

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

3 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

You can usually ask the retailer to check that the BIOS is the latest revision, but that said BIOS flashback is relatively easy to use if you do need to use it, I'd at least watch a video tutorial on how to do it before making up your mind on it. 

 

You'd think, but no. AMD in their infinite wisdom made the 5600G and 5600 two completely different pieces of silicon with completely different cache and core layouts, resulting in significant performance differences. The 5600G is the same piece of silicon as the 5500 and has more similar performance to the last gen R5 3600. 

Yeah the 5600g is pretty rough. It's not like intel with the "F" skus where all you are losing is the integrated graphics

[Deadpool2onBlu-Ray]

10 minutes ago, Ddave said:

Gotcha, I thought the only difference was the integrated graphics lol. Been running with integrated graphics since 2019 cause my card died, wanted to ensure I have a backup in case it happens again down the line.

 

I think there are 5600 that are still cheaper than 12400, so I'll probably go with that if I can confirm the stock.

Would there be a way to confirm the BIOS version before I buy the board? I'm not that confident with BIOS updates, don't really want to do it if I can avoid it.

Yeah a trained chimp could do bios flashback. Most decent B550 boards should have the feature anyway

[Ddave]

19 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

You can usually ask the retailer to check that the BIOS is the latest revision, but that said BIOS flashback is relatively easy to use if you do need to use it, I'd at least watch a video tutorial on how to do it before making up your mind on it.

 

14 minutes ago, CHICKSLAYA said:

Yeah a trained chimp could do bios flashback. Most decent B550 boards should have the feature anyway

 

Aight, noted.

I'll look around a bit more to see what's the cheaper CPU and motherboard combo between 5600 and 12400 (or 12400F), and pick that then.

 

Thanks for the inputs y'all.