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Need an entry level build for gaming that is as power efficient as possible

cookiedragoneh
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1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

The build is for my girlfriends little brother who lives with high functioning autism and has a lot of trouble socialising so I have convinced his parents that a gaming PC might be the thing he needs to help in this regard as he will have full control over if and when he feels like socialising without having to wait for his friends to go home once his social battery has been exhausted, he also seems to like talking about his ideas for games and is constantly talking to me about the things he likes and dislikes about the games he plays so I want to try and encourage him to make youtube reviews on the games he likes as its difficult to find things he's interested in enough to stick to it .


To be absolutly clear here : I'm not a doctor or a specialist in autism. But, I'm myself "atypical mild autistic", which has been identify by specialists of high level, recognized at least nationaly in France. They're NOT complete clowns like psychoanalyst. 
I've been in contact with a lot of associations, structures, and other "heavier" cases of autism. 

As I encourage strongly your initiative, I've to give fair warnings. 
The internet can be a good starting point to work on his social skills. But he still needs to do it IRL regularly, still. It's completly different to socialise IG than IRL. And it's espacially true for autistic cases. As he get more confortable on the internet, which he probably will, he needs to not be completly closed off because of it. Which was and still is the case for me.
The internet can also be very brutal. It can help him as much as it can destroy him. I think he would be a good idea to put some protections on that pc and espacially on thoses youtube and twitch channel if he would like to make some streams and videos. Not saying that he shouldn't take critisim at all, but insults and brutal comments could affect him a lot, even when he doesn't talk about it. Which I think you probably know, but, just to make it clear.
 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Which processor would be best for this task? something in the 7000 series or should I go for an earlier generation? Is a G series processor my best bet or would that be insufficient on it's own for simultaneous gameplay and recording/streaming or does Intel have something better or will i need to get him a GPU?


Concerning hardware, a 5600G could be a good choice for now, as Zen 4 ( 7000 ) and AM5 plateforme as a whole, doesn't have APUs for now, and could be a good starting point for a relativly capable CPU for a more powerful disrcrete GPU down the line, as long as you don't pair it with something ridicoulous like a 4080, for exemple. Not even mentionning the fact DDR5 is still a bit pricy, even if it fairly calm down. 

 

The 5600G isn't a equivalent to the 5600 or 5600X, as it feature half of the cache of its bothers. Which does fairly impact performances. 
As I know how minecraft behave with hardware, I don't really know for sure Roblox, and I've no idea for Jurassic World.
Minecraft shouldn't be a problem, as long as RAM speed and timing is correct, which an APU relly on for VRAM of its IGP, and Ryzen CPUs are still scaling well with it anyway, because of infinity fabric. And minecraft tend to love single core performances, which RAM speed will help a fair bit.
 


Streaming will be probably a challenge still, as the CPU can probably handle it fairly well, but the IGP part might be his hold back here. As GPU's bandwidth is completly saturated, OBS will probably still drop frames, regardless if the CPU is encoding. Windows 10 and 11 is fairly progressing in that domain, executing OBS in admin will probably help, but I would still watch out for that.
 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Would getting him a higher end processor and under clocking it be better for power consumption in the long run or is that just stupid? 

 

Personnally I never recommand anything related to "futur proofing", unless it's pretty much DOA like the 9600k or the whole 11th gen series of intel for exemple. Like it's easy to tell it's not gonna end well. But most of time, "futur proofing" is a bunch of BS, and you should just go by what you need for X budget and X use case, so you have more budget either for mater the most to you, or left overs for much more agressives upgrades.
Agressive upgrade path, even on modest mid-range hardware, will pretty much always slap the crap out of anything high end lasting in an old pc mid to long term AND with a better consistancy on performances on newer games if not just straight up better. 
As I understand his use case isn't that intensive, I would still not recommand to go higher end for that "futur proofing", it just doesn't make sens.

 

I'm not sure about underclocking, it would waste performances, and you probably don't want that, since minecraft does strongly depends on single core performances, which underclocking will obviously impact. But you could undervolt it at stock clock speed ! Note that I strongly recommand to benchmark it at fully stock setting for a reference point and then try to undervolt it little step by little step. Further than pure stability, Ryzen can be "stable" but loose performances if you don't watch out for that.
 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Are there features on motherboards that might drain power unnecessarily other than the obvious RGB or is that negligible?


I would say negligible.

 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Do M.2s use more or less power than traditional SATA SSDs or is that negligible?


Same, negligible. Could have an impact on budget tho.

Posted

Budget (including currency): £600-£1000 GBP 

Country: England

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft, Roblox, Jurassic World

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): 

Due to the fact we live in the UK and the electric bill for December was £800 I need to find the optimal build for an entry level pc that won't have a massive impact on the already unbelievably ridiculous cost of energy plaguing the UK currently. I have built PCs before and I have a reasonable understanding of what it is I need but when it comes to being power efficient I'm at a bit of a disadvantage as its never really been a consideration before. The build is for my girlfriends little brother who lives with high functioning autism and has a lot of trouble socialising so I have convinced his parents that a gaming PC might be the thing he needs to help in this regard as he will have full control over if and when he feels like socialising without having to wait for his friends to go home once his social battery has been exhausted, he also seems to like talking about his ideas for games and is constantly talking to me about the things he likes and dislikes about the games he plays so I want to try and encourage him to make youtube reviews on the games he likes as its difficult to find things he's interested in enough to stick to it . Due to the fact that this is his first PC and we don't even know if it's going to get used much (if at all) I don't think going balls to the wall is a good idea and I would like to save his parents as much money as I can without compromising too much and something I can build on later if he gets into it.

 

My idea was to get him a mid range Ryzen processor with onboard graphics so the video encoding and the possibility of streaming is something he can get his teeth in to due to the higher core counts for the price that AMD offer and if later it seems it's something he will continue to use we can look at getting a discrete GPU and upgrade it.

 

The power supply will most definitely be an 80+ platinum for maximum efficiency even if the upfront cost is significantly more than a bronze because I know it will most certainly save money over the next few months if not weeks.

 

Its been a few years since I did all the comparisons between AMD and Intel but I remember at that time the zen 2 processors available had a much lower tdp than the 9000 series intel offerings that were just a terrible choice at the time for the price.

 

Which processor would be best for this task? something in the 7000 series or should I go for an earlier generation? Is a G series processor my best bet or would that be insufficient on it's own for simultaneous gameplay and recording/streaming or does Intel have something better or will i need to get him a GPU?

Would getting him a higher end processor and under clocking it be better for power consumption in the long run or is that just stupid? 

 

Are there features on motherboards that might drain power unnecessarily other than the obvious RGB or is that negligible?

 

Do M.2s use more or less power than traditional SATA SSDs or is that negligible?

 

Also regarding the games he plays, I do not or ever have played these titles and have absolutely no idea what they require for a decent experience that isn't worse than his Xbox One. I don't really need any info about peripherals but I want him to have a smooth experience at 1080p with headroom for the recording/streaming I spoke about before. Any feedback from the community would be very helpful

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1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

The build is for my girlfriends little brother who lives with high functioning autism and has a lot of trouble socialising so I have convinced his parents that a gaming PC might be the thing he needs to help in this regard as he will have full control over if and when he feels like socialising without having to wait for his friends to go home once his social battery has been exhausted, he also seems to like talking about his ideas for games and is constantly talking to me about the things he likes and dislikes about the games he plays so I want to try and encourage him to make youtube reviews on the games he likes as its difficult to find things he's interested in enough to stick to it .


To be absolutly clear here : I'm not a doctor or a specialist in autism. But, I'm myself "atypical mild autistic", which has been identify by specialists of high level, recognized at least nationaly in France. They're NOT complete clowns like psychoanalyst. 
I've been in contact with a lot of associations, structures, and other "heavier" cases of autism. 

As I encourage strongly your initiative, I've to give fair warnings. 
The internet can be a good starting point to work on his social skills. But he still needs to do it IRL regularly, still. It's completly different to socialise IG than IRL. And it's espacially true for autistic cases. As he get more confortable on the internet, which he probably will, he needs to not be completly closed off because of it. Which was and still is the case for me.
The internet can also be very brutal. It can help him as much as it can destroy him. I think he would be a good idea to put some protections on that pc and espacially on thoses youtube and twitch channel if he would like to make some streams and videos. Not saying that he shouldn't take critisim at all, but insults and brutal comments could affect him a lot, even when he doesn't talk about it. Which I think you probably know, but, just to make it clear.
 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Which processor would be best for this task? something in the 7000 series or should I go for an earlier generation? Is a G series processor my best bet or would that be insufficient on it's own for simultaneous gameplay and recording/streaming or does Intel have something better or will i need to get him a GPU?


Concerning hardware, a 5600G could be a good choice for now, as Zen 4 ( 7000 ) and AM5 plateforme as a whole, doesn't have APUs for now, and could be a good starting point for a relativly capable CPU for a more powerful disrcrete GPU down the line, as long as you don't pair it with something ridicoulous like a 4080, for exemple. Not even mentionning the fact DDR5 is still a bit pricy, even if it fairly calm down. 

 

The 5600G isn't a equivalent to the 5600 or 5600X, as it feature half of the cache of its bothers. Which does fairly impact performances. 
As I know how minecraft behave with hardware, I don't really know for sure Roblox, and I've no idea for Jurassic World.
Minecraft shouldn't be a problem, as long as RAM speed and timing is correct, which an APU relly on for VRAM of its IGP, and Ryzen CPUs are still scaling well with it anyway, because of infinity fabric. And minecraft tend to love single core performances, which RAM speed will help a fair bit.
 


Streaming will be probably a challenge still, as the CPU can probably handle it fairly well, but the IGP part might be his hold back here. As GPU's bandwidth is completly saturated, OBS will probably still drop frames, regardless if the CPU is encoding. Windows 10 and 11 is fairly progressing in that domain, executing OBS in admin will probably help, but I would still watch out for that.
 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Would getting him a higher end processor and under clocking it be better for power consumption in the long run or is that just stupid? 

 

Personnally I never recommand anything related to "futur proofing", unless it's pretty much DOA like the 9600k or the whole 11th gen series of intel for exemple. Like it's easy to tell it's not gonna end well. But most of time, "futur proofing" is a bunch of BS, and you should just go by what you need for X budget and X use case, so you have more budget either for mater the most to you, or left overs for much more agressives upgrades.
Agressive upgrade path, even on modest mid-range hardware, will pretty much always slap the crap out of anything high end lasting in an old pc mid to long term AND with a better consistancy on performances on newer games if not just straight up better. 
As I understand his use case isn't that intensive, I would still not recommand to go higher end for that "futur proofing", it just doesn't make sens.

 

I'm not sure about underclocking, it would waste performances, and you probably don't want that, since minecraft does strongly depends on single core performances, which underclocking will obviously impact. But you could undervolt it at stock clock speed ! Note that I strongly recommand to benchmark it at fully stock setting for a reference point and then try to undervolt it little step by little step. Further than pure stability, Ryzen can be "stable" but loose performances if you don't watch out for that.
 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Are there features on motherboards that might drain power unnecessarily other than the obvious RGB or is that negligible?


I would say negligible.

 

1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Do M.2s use more or less power than traditional SATA SSDs or is that negligible?


Same, negligible. Could have an impact on budget tho.

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As cheap as I could make it while still being decent for anything in1080p while streaming/recording.

Power efficient CPU and GPU while also great value.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zy6dQ6

CPU: Intel Core i3-12100 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£139.63 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B660M-A WIFI D4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£114.98 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£40.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£48.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card  (£256.83 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case  (£70.77 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: be quiet! System Power 9 500 CM 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (£73.43 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £745.61

 

Not an expert, just bored at work. Please quote me or mention me if you would like me to see your reply. **may edit my posts a few times after posting**

CPU: Intel i5-12400

GPU: Asus TUF RX 6800 XT OC

Mobo: Asus Prime B660M-A D4 WIFI

RAM: Team Delta TUF Alliance 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16

SSD: Team MP33 1TB

PSU: MSI MPG A850GF

Case: Phanteks Eclipse P360A

Cooler: ID-Cooling SE-234 ARGB

OS: Windows 11 Pro

Pcpartpicker: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wnxDfv
Displays: Samsung Odyssey G5 S32AG50 32" 1440p 165hz | AOC 27G2E 27" 1080p 144hz

Laptop: ROG Strix Scar III G531GU Intel i5-9300H GTX 1660Ti Mobile| OS: Windows 10 Home

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26 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

As cheap as I could make it while still being decent for anything in1080p while streaming/recording.

Power efficient CPU and GPU while also great value.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zy6dQ6

CPU: Intel Core i3-12100 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£139.63 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B660M-A WIFI D4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£114.98 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Silicon Power GAMING 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£40.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: KIOXIA EXCERIA G2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£48.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card  (£256.83 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case  (£70.77 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: be quiet! System Power 9 500 CM 500 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (£73.43 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £745.61

 

As the 12100 isn't doing bad in efficiency, it's not that impressive for a 4 cores / 8 threads compared to Zen 3's hexacores. ( Even if both IPC and single core is slower on Zen 3, for sure )

chrome_avOVFjdFYm.thumb.png.850214c07e9ec7934849fc0fedd90246.png

Also it will not exactly struggle if encoding a stream, but probably be on edge on certain titles. 
Not mentionning the fact that encoding a stream on RDNA 2 is basicly a suicide at this point. ( Not too much of a problem on videos, as he can just rise bitrate a sh#t ton. It will "just" impact video sizes. ) 

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1 hour ago, cookiedragoneh said:

Budget (including currency): £600-£1000 GBP 

Country: England

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft, Roblox, Jurassic World

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): 

Due to the fact we live in the UK and the electric bill for December was £800 I need to find the optimal build for an entry level pc that won't have a massive impact on the already unbelievably ridiculous cost of energy plaguing the UK currently. I have built PCs before and I have a reasonable understanding of what it is I need but when it comes to being power efficient I'm at a bit of a disadvantage as its never really been a consideration before. The build is for my girlfriends little brother who lives with high functioning autism and has a lot of trouble socialising so I have convinced his parents that a gaming PC might be the thing he needs to help in this regard as he will have full control over if and when he feels like socialising without having to wait for his friends to go home once his social battery has been exhausted, he also seems to like talking about his ideas for games and is constantly talking to me about the things he likes and dislikes about the games he plays so I want to try and encourage him to make youtube reviews on the games he likes as its difficult to find things he's interested in enough to stick to it . Due to the fact that this is his first PC and we don't even know if it's going to get used much (if at all) I don't think going balls to the wall is a good idea and I would like to save his parents as much money as I can without compromising too much and something I can build on later if he gets into it.

 

My idea was to get him a mid range Ryzen processor with onboard graphics so the video encoding and the possibility of streaming is something he can get his teeth in to due to the higher core counts for the price that AMD offer and if later it seems it's something he will continue to use we can look at getting a discrete GPU and upgrade it.

 

The power supply will most definitely be an 80+ platinum for maximum efficiency even if the upfront cost is significantly more than a bronze because I know it will most certainly save money over the next few months if not weeks.

 

Its been a few years since I did all the comparisons between AMD and Intel but I remember at that time the zen 2 processors available had a much lower tdp than the 9000 series intel offerings that were just a terrible choice at the time for the price.

 

Which processor would be best for this task? something in the 7000 series or should I go for an earlier generation? Is a G series processor my best bet or would that be insufficient on it's own for simultaneous gameplay and recording/streaming or does Intel have something better or will i need to get him a GPU?

Would getting him a higher end processor and under clocking it be better for power consumption in the long run or is that just stupid? 

 

Are there features on motherboards that might drain power unnecessarily other than the obvious RGB or is that negligible?

 

Do M.2s use more or less power than traditional SATA SSDs or is that negligible?

 

Also regarding the games he plays, I do not or ever have played these titles and have absolutely no idea what they require for a decent experience that isn't worse than his Xbox One. I don't really need any info about peripherals but I want him to have a smooth experience at 1080p with headroom for the recording/streaming I spoke about before. Any feedback from the community would be very helpful

Hello... Parts today are pretty power efficient unless you are going really high end. A Simple PC sounds like what you are looking for. Below I have 2 lists for you. One from AMD & One from Intel. Both are really good choices to make if you know which ones to pick. If you have any questions about them please ask.

 

AMD Build

 

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor  (£158.49 @ Technextday)
Motherboard: NZXT N7 B550 ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£171.42 @ Technextday)
Memory: Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory  (£88.73 @ MoreCoCo)
Storage: Kingston NV2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£50.95 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: ASRock Challenger D OC Radeon RX 6600 XT 8 GB Video Card  (£287.99 @ Newegg UK)
Case: Lian Li Lancool II Mesh C Performance ATX Mid Tower Case  (£109.95 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: be quiet! Straight Power 11 650 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (£122.38 @ Box Limited)
Total: £989.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

 

Intel Build

 

CPU: Intel Core i3-12100F 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£97.01 @ Technextday)
CPU Cooler: ID-COOLING SE-225-XT 76.16 CFM CPU Cooler  (£49.99 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  (£113.01 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Kingston FURY Renegade 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory  (£88.73 @ MoreCoCo)
Storage: Kingston NV2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£50.95 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Zotac GAMING Twin Edge OC GeForce RTX 3060 Ti LHR 8 GB Video Card  (£422.39 @ Newegg UK)
Case: Lian Li Lancool II Mesh C Performance ATX Mid Tower Case  (£109.95 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 600 600 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply  (£75.76 @ Technextday)
Total: £1007.79
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

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5 minutes ago, Neutraliz said:

As the 12100 isn't doing bad in efficiency, it's not that impressive for a 4 cores / 8 threads compared to Zen 3's hexacores. ( Even both IPC and single core is slower on Zen 3, for sure )

chrome_avOVFjdFYm.thumb.png.850214c07e9ec7934849fc0fedd90246.png

Also it will not exactly struggle if encoding a stream, but probably be on edge on certain titles. 
Not mentionning the fact that encoding a stream on RDNA 2 is basicly a suicide at this point. ( Not too much of a problem on videos, as he can just rise bitrate a sh#t ton. It will "just" impact video sizes. ) 

First, that is blender, in gaming it might not even reach 40W, my 12400 rarely reach 50W even on very demanding games.

As for recording, a lot of people have swore that AMD has improved a lot, and I'd rather have a slightly worse output than having to pay much more for a decent RTX GPU.

Not an expert, just bored at work. Please quote me or mention me if you would like me to see your reply. **may edit my posts a few times after posting**

CPU: Intel i5-12400

GPU: Asus TUF RX 6800 XT OC

Mobo: Asus Prime B660M-A D4 WIFI

RAM: Team Delta TUF Alliance 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16

SSD: Team MP33 1TB

PSU: MSI MPG A850GF

Case: Phanteks Eclipse P360A

Cooler: ID-Cooling SE-234 ARGB

OS: Windows 11 Pro

Pcpartpicker: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/wnxDfv
Displays: Samsung Odyssey G5 S32AG50 32" 1440p 165hz | AOC 27G2E 27" 1080p 144hz

Laptop: ROG Strix Scar III G531GU Intel i5-9300H GTX 1660Ti Mobile| OS: Windows 10 Home

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8 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

First, that is blender, in gaming it might not even reach 40W, my 12400 rarely reach 50W even on very demanding games.


Doesn't change much scaling between the 5600 and 12100 in that chart. And also the 5600 ( G, X whatever ) will adapt on workload too... So... ? 
Like I see your point, but it's not really relevent. The 12100 is still not that efficient for the performance you get in my opinion.
 

8 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

As for recording, a lot of people have swore that AMD has improved a lot, and I'd rather have a slightly worse output than having to pay much more for a decent RTX GPU.


It's a problem for streaming, as streaming is sensitive to quality to bitrate ratio. Not really local recording as I stated before. 
Doesn't change the fact it's massivly less efficient vs. the competition. 
Also having a 5600 or something of that effect will compensate for the less than ideal encoding of RDNA 2, on streaming. Could just use X264 then.

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Thanks for all the feed back here. Budget was never really the main concern as his parents have money but i just personally don't like to see wasted money where possible. But the few things i needed clarified have been and i thank you all for your time in responding to this post and feel much more confident going forward with the build now

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