First PC Build Advice

[Mcrawford]

Budget (including currency): preferably lower, but currently looking at a max of £700.

Country: Northern Ireland/United Kingdom

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming including Minecraft, Genshin Impact, Terraria, PS1 and 2, and Xbox/Xbox 360 emulation, Blender, Unity.

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): I am currently using a Acer Swift SF314-43 Laptop but it is no longer powerful enough for my software development course at uni, and most games run very slowly. Will be buying the parts for Christmas as well as asking family to contribute instead of usual gifts. I would like to be able to game at 1440p but 1080p would be ok, my monitor refresh rate is 144 Hz. This is the part list I have so far, more experienced opinions and advice would be great: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Mcrawford745/saved/ZCyGkL 

I am also looking for a good value headset, as currently I'm using cheap wireless earbuds, but I don't know what to look for in a gaming headset.

 

[PDifolco]

50 minutes ago, Mcrawford said:

Budget (including currency): preferably lower, but currently looking at a max of £700.

Country: Northern Ireland/United Kingdom

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Gaming including Minecraft, Genshin Impact, Terraria, PS1 and 2, and Xbox/Xbox 360 emulation, Blender, Unity.

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): I am currently using a Acer Swift SF314-43 Laptop but it is no longer powerful enough for my software development course at uni, and most games run very slowly. Will be buying the parts for Christmas as well as asking family to contribute instead of usual gifts. I would like to be able to game at 1440p but 1080p would be ok, my monitor refresh rate is 144 Hz. This is the part list I have so far, more experienced opinions and advice would be great: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Mcrawford745/saved/ZCyGkL 

I am also looking for a good value headset, as currently I'm using cheap wireless earbuds, but I don't know what to look for in a gaming headset.

 

Swapped the 5600G for a 5600, faster and PCie4 (for your Gen4 SSD), and you don't need an APU

Also replaced the crap PSU with a decent Corsair one (Tier C)

Don't expect much at 1440p except in low demanding games

As for headset what's your budget ? For 50£ you can get a Corsair HS55

 

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor  (£117.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£89.00 @ Computer Orbit) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£41.48 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Kingston NV2 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£95.57 @ Box Limited) 
Video Card: ASRock Challenger D Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card  (£190.00 @ Computer Orbit) 
Case: *Montech X3 Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case  (£76.97 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: Corsair CV650 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£63.99 @ Corsair UK) 
Speakers: Creative Labs Pebble 2.0 4.4 W Speakers  (£19.98 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £693.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-10-21 15:05 BST+0100

 

 

[SorryBella]

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor  (£117.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: MSI B550 GAMING GEN3 ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£94.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Kingston FURY Beast 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£58.48 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£89.97 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: ASRock Challenger D OC Radeon RX 6650 XT 8 GB Video Card  (£221.99 @ MoreCoCo) 
Case: MSI MAG FORGE 100R ATX Mid Tower Case  (£54.97 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: MSI MAG A650BN 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£59.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £697.39
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-10-21 15:16 BST+0100

 

MILES better in reliability, GPU (although considering that you do Blender and presumably Godot/Unreal in the future because noone wanna work with Unity devs anymore, you want to try to get an Nvidia RTX series on the used market instead, something like RTX 3060 12GB should be findable in this price range) and also sustainability by not supporting e-waste purchase with ditching the pebble. Get a proper desk speaker, at least combi mono ones like older gen Harman Kardon Onyx Studios. Those always go at bargain price.

[Mcrawford]

49 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

Swapped the 5600G for a 5600, faster and PCie4 (for your Gen4 SSD), and you don't need an APU

Also replaced the crap PSU with a decent Corsair one (Tier C)

Don't expect much at 1440p except in low demanding games

As for headset what's your budget ? For 50£ you can get a Corsair HS5.

 

 

Thanks! had no idea what to look for in PSU so that's really helpful. The corsair headset looks good, I'll add it to my list. 

[Mcrawford]

54 minutes ago, SorryBella said:

MILES better in reliability, GPU (although considering that you do Blender and presumably Godot/Unreal in the future because noone wanna work with Unity devs anymore, you want to try to get an Nvidia RTX series on the used market instead, something like RTX 3060 12GB should be findable in this price range) and also sustainability by not supporting e-waste purchase with ditching the pebble. Get a proper desk speaker, at least combi mono ones like older gen Harman Kardon Onyx Studios. Those always go at bargain price.

Thank you! I'll definitely ditch the speaker in that case. Question - The change in motherboard means it doesn't have in built wifi and bluetooth, right? Is buying separate adapters a better idea than the previous motherboard I had? I have no way to wire internet in my room atm, so wifi is a must, and I'd still like to be able to connect to my bluetooth headphones.

Edited October 21, 2023 by Mcrawford

[SorryBella]

1 hour ago, Mcrawford said:

Thank you! I'll definitely ditch the speaker in that case. Question - The change in motherboard means it doesn't have in built wifi and bluetooth, right? Is buying separate adapters a better idea than the previous motherboard I had? I have no way to wire internet in my room atm, so wifi is a must, and I'd still like to be able to connect to my bluetooth headphones.

For bluetooth built in is frankly the only way but not every WIFI board comes with bluetooth. In that case the best pick would be either the B550-M Pro VC WIFI by MSI or TUF B550 Plus II by Asus.

[PDifolco]

5 hours ago, SorryBella said:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor  (£117.00 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: MSI B550 GAMING GEN3 ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£94.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Kingston FURY Beast 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£58.48 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Western Digital Black SN770 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£89.97 @ Amazon UK) 
Video Card: ASRock Challenger D OC Radeon RX 6650 XT 8 GB Video Card  (£221.99 @ MoreCoCo) 
Case: MSI MAG FORGE 100R ATX Mid Tower Case  (£54.97 @ Amazon UK) 
Power Supply: MSI MAG A650BN 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£59.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £697.39
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-10-21 15:16 BST+0100

 

MILES better in reliability, GPU (although considering that you do Blender and presumably Godot/Unreal in the future because noone wanna work with Unity devs anymore, you want to try to get an Nvidia RTX series on the used market instead, something like RTX 3060 12GB should be findable in this price range) and also sustainability by not supporting e-waste purchase with ditching the pebble. Get a proper desk speaker, at least combi mono ones like older gen Harman Kardon Onyx Studios. Those always go at bargain price.

Nice !

Didn't realize the 6650XT was so close in price to the 6600 now, a few months ago they were like 40% more expensive... Last stock discount maybe

 

[SorryBella]

4 hours ago, PDifolco said:

Nice !

Didn't realize the 6650XT was so close in price to the 6600 now, a few months ago they were like 40% more expensive... Last stock discount maybe

 

Both of the 50 refresh were a flop and pretty much near instant dropped to 6600XT and 6700XT price. But not every market does that, so cross check.