Upgrading from Gaming Laptop

[RedSyven]

Budget (including currency): $700-$800 USD, preferably on the lower end

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Minecraft, Helldivers, VR, Unreal Engine 5 dev work

Other details (Monitor and peripherals are taken care of. CPU and GPU are already bought - spent about $320 on both, used from ebay)

 

 

Starting to feel the limits of my old gaming laptop. Learning how to build a PC - I'm confident on the CPU and GPU, not so much the rest. Here's what I'm thinking:

CPU:

• Ryzen 5 5600x
  • already bought, used

GPU:

• PNY RTX3070 XLR8 
  • already bought, used

CPU Cooler:

• Thermalright
  • cheapest one should be more than enough, PA or PS

RAM:

• GSkill Ripkaws V (2x16)GB DDR4-3600 CL16
  • I heard 3600/CL18 is suitable for Ryzen CPUs, but this has less latency? (10 ns vs 8 ns)

Power Supply:

• ADATA XPG Core Reactor II VE 750W 80+ Gold Fully Modular ATX
  • Cheapest A tier PSU

Storage: 

• Western Digital Blue SN580 1 TB SSD
• Western Digital Caviar 1 TB HDD
  • I want a separate HDD drive for photo/file storage. Unsure if I should do a separate drive for windows and games/programs as well.

Motherboard

• No idea how to choose a motherboard. Maybe the MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 ??

Case

• Also not sure how to choose a case, but I hear the Montech AIR 903 is a good budget option.
• I like how the White Fractal North looks, but >$100 seems too much for a case.

 

[Why_Me]

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550-EAGLE-WIFI6  

 

https://www.montechpc.com/air-903-base 

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/montech-air-903-base/

 

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU Cooler: *ID-COOLING FROZN A410 SE 55.2 CFM CPU Cooler  ($22.49 @ Amazon) 
Motherboard: *Gigabyte B550 EAGLE WIFI6 ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($129.99 @ Amazon) 
Case: *Montech AIR 903 BASE ATX Mid Tower Case  ($65.00 @ Newegg) 
Total: $217.48
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-05-28 15:01 EDT-0400

[AndrewAsd]

You might need/want a motherboard that can do bios flashing without a cpu in case the motherboards bios isn't up to date and doesn't support the 5600 out of the box. Bare minimum at the cheapest end I'd get the MSI B550-A Pro at around 115$, it's pretty well featured and cheap-ish. 

For the storage, if you're going to opt for a hard drive, I'd recommend getting a larger one. The price difference isn't that large and you can get much better value for your money and gives you more space to store photos, recordings, files, even older games will run perfectly fine off a hard drive. For reference a 1TB WD Blue is about 40$, a 3TB 60$ and 4TB 70$. The 4TB is one of the best price hard drive when it comes to price/Gb. You might want more SSD storage at a future point for games but that can be added in later fairly easily. 1TB should be enough for now. 

As for cases, arguably, it's up to your preference it's fairly hard to make a bad choice. 

[RedSyven]

Appreciate the feedback. Should I do 2 SSDs (in addition to the HDD)? I've seen people isolate windows+system files to its own SSD, and put games on the second. Or should I do a larger SSD for both?

[Why_Me]

1 hour ago, RedSyven said:

Appreciate the feedback. Should I do 2 SSDs (in addition to the HDD)? I've seen people isolate windows+system files to its own SSD, and put games on the second. Or should I do a larger SSD for both?

A single SSD will suffice just fine.