Do not buy a pre-built system

[remo233]

So back in January 2021, during the height of the GPU shortage, my son was looking to build a new PC. As GPU prices were crazy, we decided to go for a pre-built, seemed a reasonable price for a ryzen 3700x and rtx 3070 for £1250. My son plays a lot of warzone at 1080p and was looking for high frame rates. Well with this CPU, high frame rates were not possible. A year later, I bought him a ryzen 5900x, finally he could now get the fps he wanted and all was good. This was fine until summer came around his pc became a heater,  CPU was going over 90 degrees and causing stuttering. The motherboard was one of the cheapest B550 motherboaards with poor VRM's and the case airflow was not good, the pc case was incredibly hot. So now I bought a new case, 4000d airflow, a new motherboard- Asus Strix B550 gaming f and an artic freezer AIO. All resolved now but if I had just built the pc then or gone for a custom build, would have not had all of these issues and would have saved money.

 

Thought I would share this experience in the hope that others out there would not make the same mistake.

[PDifolco]

7 minutes ago, remo233 said:

So back in January 2021, during the height of the GPU shortage, my son was looking to build a new PC. As GPU prices were crazy, we decided to go for a pre-built, seemed a reasonable price for a ryzen 3700x and rtx 3070 for £1250. My son plays a lot of warzone at 1080p and was looking for high frame rates. Well with this CPU, high frame rates were not possible. A year later, I bought him a ryzen 5900x, finally he could now get the fps he wanted and all was good. This was fine until summer came around his pc became a heater,  CPU was going over 90 degrees and causing stuttering. The motherboard was one of the cheapest B550 motherboaards with poor VRM's and the case airflow was not good, the pc case was incredibly hot. So now I bought a new case, 4000d airflow, a new motherboard- Asus Strix B550 gaming f and an artic freezer AIO. All resolved now but if I had just built the pc then or gone for a custom build, would have not had all of these issues and would have saved money.

 

Thought I would share this experience in the hope that others out there would not make the same mistake.

Your prebuilt was actually not bad, it's partly your fault, you put a 150W 12 cores 5900X on a low end board not meant for that much powaaaa !!

You could have gotten a 5600X, it games 95% as well as a 5900X for half the price, and the board will have been good enough 

And what's your cooler ?? If you used the AMD stock cooler from the 3700X on a 5900X no wonder it was a furnace !!!

[Dedayog]

21 minutes ago, remo233 said:

So back in January 2021, during the height of the GPU shortage, my son was looking to build a new PC. As GPU prices were crazy, we decided to go for a pre-built, seemed a reasonable price for a ryzen 3700x and rtx 3070 for £1250. My son plays a lot of warzone at 1080p and was looking for high frame rates. Well with this CPU, high frame rates were not possible. A year later, I bought him a ryzen 5900x, finally he could now get the fps he wanted and all was good. This was fine until summer came around his pc became a heater,  CPU was going over 90 degrees and causing stuttering. The motherboard was one of the cheapest B550 motherboaards with poor VRM's and the case airflow was not good, the pc case was incredibly hot. So now I bought a new case, 4000d airflow, a new motherboard- Asus Strix B550 gaming f and an artic freezer AIO. All resolved now but if I had just built the pc then or gone for a custom build, would have not had all of these issues and would have saved money.

 

Thought I would share this experience in the hope that others out there would not make the same mistake.

You bought a prebuilt that was good for what it was.

 

The mistake was upgrading it, or at the very least not checking to see what could be successfully upgraded when you bought it.

 

So yes, don't buy a prebuilt (without checking to see what it can handle later, if you are even thinking of upgrading it in the future).

 

 

[emosun]

So you stuffed a bigger cpu into a prebuilt without making sure the machine had proper cooling and are somehow blaming the computer itself...

 

And then in turn claim EVERY prebuilt that exists on earth is a mistake based on your botched upgrade. Amazing. The forums never fails to provide the most ironic jems

[venomtail]

A tale as old as time. Also you put a V6 in a VW Up!.

 

It's well known many ebay prebuilts come with the bare minimum of parts but also just throwing money at the problem isn't the way to go. Sure 5900X is better at gaming than a 3700X but 99% a 5800X3D would have been a better pick. Cheaper and gives better performance in games. Sure more case does equal more better I guess but there's more to it, like fans, positive/negative pressure, airflow direction and so on. 

 

Glad you're coming out of the other end but a big brush of "all prebuilds" bad is a misjudgment. I've even often recommend them to be a first choice to some people.

[thevictor390]

I would generally not recommend a "9" class CPU to anyone non-professional. Usually overkill for gaming and useless excess heat and power.

[Tetras]

Overheating/underpowered VRMs is a common problem with pre-builds, no doubt about that (they always try to save money on the non-visible/less marketable parts), but you can also end up with the same problems with a custom build.

 

I think once you get into midrange/upper midrange gaming (or higher), then the mass market prebuilds always tend to struggle, because they still build them for 65 watt TDP CPUs and 100-150 watt graphics, even if they fit a K SKU and 300 watt graphics card.

[remo233]

Hey, hold on there. Let me explain a bit more. The 5900x was chosen instead of the 5800x3d because my son uses two monitors and streams game, so he needs more cores. The pre built had an evo 212 black cooler. I saved 200 with going with the 3700x instead of the 5600x which was a big mistake. At the end of the day, it was my mistake. Should have researched more the various parts. This was an alphasync system.

[RabbidEwok]

1 hour ago, remo233 said:

Hey, hold on there. Let me explain a bit more. The 5900x was chosen instead of the 5800x3d because my son uses two monitors and streams game, so he needs more cores. The pre built had an evo 212 black cooler. I saved 200 with going with the 3700x instead of the 5600x which was a big mistake. At the end of the day, it was my mistake. Should have researched more the various parts. This was an alphasync system.

You’re fine with a 5800X3D, games don’t load up all the cores and multi monitor is a GPU load. 
 

Yeah a 212 isn’t near enough for a 5900X, it’s pushing it for a 5800X3D. You could also upgrade the cooler if you wanted. 

[Dedayog]

2 hours ago, remo233 said:

Hey, hold on there. Let me explain a bit more. The 5900x was chosen instead of the 5800x3d because my son uses two monitors and streams game, so he needs more cores. The pre built had an evo 212 black cooler. I saved 200 with going with the 3700x instead of the 5600x which was a big mistake. At the end of the day, it was my mistake. Should have researched more the various parts. This was an alphasync system.

You have a misunderstanding about requirements for gaming., streaming, core count, workloads, etc.  It's very common and not always straightforward, so not a big deal at all.

 

Your reasoning even turns back on itself, as you say you made a mistake going with the 3700x over the 5600x, but the 3700x has more cores so it's logical you went with it.  But as you now see that logic is incorrect.

 

 The 3700x games, streams and does everything you need it to without issue.  Good friends run 3700x + 3080 machines and they perform very  well in everything thrown at them.

 

So... in a nutshell, your biggest mistake here is listening to your son and trying to give him what he wants.   He wants more more frames and you wanted to give them to him.  He is getting fine performance with his 3700x, he just wants more.   They always do

 

Good parent, didn't understand a few things, went out and bought the 5900x big dog, and it didn't work perfectly.  I for one applaud you splurging on the kid.   Kid's got a better machine than 99% of the world.

 

 

[Kisai]

13 hours ago, thevictor390 said:

I would generally not recommend a "9" class CPU to anyone non-professional. Usually overkill for gaming and useless excess heat and power.

 

Here's the thing. Your average 1080p game doesn't need a i7/i9 nvidia 3080/90, or equal Radeon/Ryzen

 

The highest end parts are often for bragging rights. Play games at 4Kp120... good luck. 

 

Competitive gaming doesn't really give you an advantage with better hardware, since you can just set your game settings to low and get a better "frame rate" than the person with the high end computer. 

 

Historically, you want the CPU with the highest single-core performance because games are designed that way. The reality is that, it depends on the game engine. I don't think there is a single off-the-shelf game engine out there that actually makes use of multi-threading in a useful way.

 

So for that reason, the number of cores is immaterial, so you are better off picking the CPU with the highest single thread performance. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

 

At least, if you only care about gaming.

 

You are always better off spending more on the GPU.

 

Which comes to the problem with some pre-builts. If you are building a high end system, you should be aiming for the largest computer tower you can reasonably have a use for, this is because big GPU's do not fit in small chasis.

 

Subsequently, you can fit far more cooling fans.

[remo233]

11 hours ago, Dedayog said:

You have a misunderstanding about requirements for gaming., streaming, core count, workloads, etc.  It's very common and not always straightforward, so not a big deal at all.

 

Your reasoning even turns back on itself, as you say you made a mistake going with the 3700x over the 5600x, but the 3700x has more cores so it's logical you went with it.  But as you now see that logic is incorrect.

 

 The 3700x games, streams and does everything you need it to without issue.  Good friends run 3700x + 3080 machines and they perform very  well in everything thrown at them.

 

So... in a nutshell, your biggest mistake here is listening to your son and trying to give him what he wants.   He wants more more frames and you wanted to give them to him.  He is getting fine performance with his 3700x, he just wants more.   They always do

 

Good parent, didn't understand a few things, went out and bought the 5900x big dog, and it didn't work perfectly.  I for one applaud you splurging on the kid.   Kid's got a better machine than 99% of the world.

 

 

As I said, it depends on how you play, your friends will be fine at 4k, problem was when you are a competitive player, looking for highers frames at 1080p. I also have a system with an I9 9900 and rtx 3060ti. Warzone 1, on the smaller map, the fps was 160 on this system, my sons system with the Ryzen 3700x and rtx 3070, it was 100. The Ryzen 3700x is garbage for competitive gaming. 

[Mark Kaine]

*Urge to buy a prebuilt rises*

 

 

also whole story doesn't add up, i played Warzone with a 3600/3070 combo and got ~200fps fairly easy... so how *high* does framerates have to be to cut it?

 

 

personally this was too much for me and i locked it to 120fps instead,  still plenty but with a more silent system and less ( basically none ) fluctuations in framerate. 

 

 

[LogicalDrm]

-> Moved to Laptops and Pre-Build Systems

 

While some of your points are reasons why not to buy pre-built, you should have returned it from start if it wasn't performing satisfactory. Main con of pre-builts is hard upgradatibility. Main pro being "it just works", and having single warranty is nice bonus. The rest seem like your upgrades causing issues over the machine itself being bad.

[remo233]

On 10/17/2023 at 11:16 AM, Mark Kaine said:

*Urge to buy a prebuilt rises*

 

 

also whole story doesn't add up, i played Warzone with a 3600/3070 combo and got ~200fps fairly easy... so how *high* does framerates have to be to cut it?

 

 

personally this was too much for me and i locked it to 120fps instead,  still plenty but with a more silent system and less ( basically none ) fluctuations in framerate.