gaming Planning to buy parts for a PC throughout this year, need opinions on the hardware

AHybridWolf · February 17, 2018

Planning to buy parts for a PC throughout this year, need opinions on the hardware

Okay so, I'm planning on getting parts for a fully-fledged computer for myself, I will be purchasing all the parts hopefully this year.

PCPartPicker Link : https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/HTM9TB

I am going to explain why I chose all these parts, and if any of them seem questionable to you, please let me know.

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Budget : Set on £700. Thats the max i'm willing to go.

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CPU : Ryzen 3 1200

I chose this processor because of it's budget-oriented line-up. It doesn't bottleneck up any further than the 1060, and it has 4 Logical cores, which is perfect for me since I do photo editing and drawing with my Wacom Intuos Draw. I also do light video editing. Also, the 1200 overclocks pretty damm good, I will aim for 4 Ghz stable unless I get unlucky.

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CPU Cooler :

First off, I understand that the stock Ryzen coolers are pretty good, but I decided to go with the Cryorig C7 because of how small and aesthetically pleasing it looks. It is quiet at full load and is a fantastic cooler. ( I will get the AM4 Bracket to go along with it from their website )
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Motherboard : MSI B350 PC Mate ( AM4 Socket of course )

This motherboard pairs up with the 1200 Perfectly, it doesn't hold back in terms of overclocking, and I feel like it would be a suitable canditate for such a good processor.

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Memory : Crucial 2x4 Gb DDR4 2400 Memory

Now I really wanted a full black build, but getting 2x4 Kingston ram was too much for my budget, I will very likely switch to another ram whenever I have the oppurtunity.

But for now, this memory is well, memory. It goes dual-channel which is good for me atleast and it will do me good, it's ram, what else can you really say?

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Storage : Kingston 120 Gb 2.5" SSD & Seagate Barracuda 3.5" 7200 RPM Hard Drive

I originally went with a 2 Tb SSHD, but I quickly learned that they...arent very "good" according to multiple other strangers on the internet...

Anyways, the 120 Gb SSD Is going to be holding my OS And most of my games, probably about 3 Gb will directly be taken up because of osu!.

I don't have many games at all, I only have Mark Of The Ninja, Dishonored and Osu! but I will likely get some more games in the future.

The Hard Drive will hold maybe...more games? I will probably end up putting my recording software and drivers and stuff there, also I will put in all my drawing stuff. ( Since I have a Wacom Intuos Draw )

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GPU : Zotac GTX 1050 Ti Mini

This Graphics Card, it just looks good, is small and compact and it performs well. What else can you really say?

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Power Supply : Be Quiet! Pure Power 10 400W 80+ Silver and Semi-Modular

This power supply outputs 400 Watts of continous power, which will be more than enough for overclocking everything, CPU, GPU and possibly the ram also.

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Case : NZXT S340

It's a fabulous case, what else to say?

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Monitor : AOC G2260VWQ6 21.5" 1920x1080 75hz Monitor

I chose to get a new monitor because my current 1366x768 monitor only has VGA and DVI Connectors, and I don't want to buy a converter.

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And that's it for my build, if you have any questions or issues regarding the build, please reply so that I can make this build even better in terms of efficiency and so on.

Many thanks,
- Wolf

iRileyx · February 17, 2018

For your use case(photo editing, light video editing) spend the extra £10 or whatever it is on a 1300 so you've got 4 cores & 8 threads, it'll make a difference.

AHybridWolf · February 17, 2018

Well, the current PC I'm using right now has a Pentium G850 and it can handle light video editing and photoshop relatively well, sure it might take a while to load up Photoshop, but I don't think that extra cores/threads over an Ryzen 3 1200 would be necessary.

Energycore · February 17, 2018

2 minutes ago, RKRiley said:

For your use case(photo editing, light video editing) spend the extra £10 or whatever it is on a 1300 so you've got 4 cores & 8 threads, it'll make a difference.

You mean the 1500X/1400? The Ryzen 3 1300 has 4C/4T.

1 minute ago, AHybridWolf said:

Well, the current PC I'm using right now has a Pentium G850 and it can handle light video editing and photoshop relatively well, sure it might take a while to load up Photoshop, but I don't think that extra cores/threads over an Ryzen 3 1200 would be necessary.

You'll like the additional cores. They make for snappier editing as you course through footage, and faster encoding afterwards.

My opinion on most parts is that you should wait and blow your load (teehee) in one week. I say this because the market is grim right now, with high GPU and RAM prices, and at the time you buy we might have newer technology available (specifically nvidia's 2000 series which could be worth looking at).

The slowness in loading the video editng software is in part due to CPU, in part due to storage. I definitely recommend an SSD for your build, as I do for pretty much every price point above $350.

There are better cases than the S340 that look similar but perform better, so maybe you want to look at one of those. I really like how the Corsair 400C looks.

10 minutes ago, AHybridWolf said:

Monitor : AOC G2260VWQ6 21.5" 1920x1080 75hz Monitor

I chose to get a new monitor because my current 1366x768 monitor only has VGA and DVI Connectors, and I don't want to buy a converter.

As an onwer of this monitor, it doesn't come with a DisplayPort or HDMI cable, only a VGA, which doesn't allow freesync, so you'll have to buy one of those anyway if you want the adaptive sync. Otherwise I suppose you could run it on VGA.

11 minutes ago, AHybridWolf said:

Memory : Crucial 2x4 Gb DDR4 2400 Memory

Now I really wanted a full black build, but getting 2x4 Kingston ram was too much for my budget, I will very likely switch to another ram whenever I have the oppurtunity.

But for now, this memory is well, memory. It goes dual-channel which is good for me atleast and it will do me good, it's ram, what else can you really say?

Some cheap Crucial or Mushkin RAM is black PCB with no heatspreader, you could look to get one of those.

12 minutes ago, AHybridWolf said:

Storage : Kingston 120 Gb 2.5" SSD & Seagate Barracuda 3.5" 7200 RPM Hard Drive

No Kingston SSD to this date is any good at all. Grab an alternative at a low price point. There's the Crucial MX300/MX500, Hynix SL308, SanDisk Ultra II/Ultra 3D, WD Blue 3D, or Samsung 850/860 EVO.

13 minutes ago, AHybridWolf said:

GPU : Zotac GTX 1050 Ti Mini

This is where i'd wait. The cryptocurrency market is still overbought right now even after the dump and I'm expecting a correction. Whether it's significant enough to stop miners from grabbing all the cards is unclear, but you should definitely wait as long as you can to hope for a better outlook in the graphics card department. By then the 2000 series may be available with something you can grab, or its release may motivate miners to sell their current cards used to grab the newest thing and flood the used market with Pascal and Polaris cards.

15 minutes ago, AHybridWolf said:

Power Supply : Be Quiet! Pure Power 10 400W 80+ Silver and Semi-Modular

This power supply outputs 400 Watts of continous power, which will be more than enough for overclocking everything, CPU, GPU and possibly the ram also.

Good choice. I commend you on it.

iRileyx · February 17, 2018

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

You mean the 1500X/1400? The Ryzen 3 1300 has 4C/4T.

Oh I was thinking only 1(the 1200) of the R3's was a 4c/4t. In that case I did mean a 1400

Energycore · February 17, 2018

Just now, RKRiley said:

Oh I was thinking only 1(the 1200) of the R3's was a 4c/4t. In that case I did mean a 1400

If OP's going up to 1400, might as well go up to 1500X since the latter has more L3 cache and that's relevant in a few workloads (2MB/core compared to 4MB/core).

brob · February 18, 2018

Save the money and wait until the entire system can be acquired. A number of reasons, but one is particular is the suggestion by Intel that they expect to have cpu that address the current Spectre/Meltdown issues in the second part of the year.

VEXICUS · February 18, 2018

For ur case... u'll use ur PC fr light video editing nd gaming....so u must go fr ryzen 5 2400g....it has 4c/8t which will help u out in editing

Here's a build I've made fr u

[PCPartPicker part list]

(https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/8m7ttg) / [Price breakdown by merchant](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/8m7ttg/by_merchant/)

**CPU** | [AMD - Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/FGPKHx/amd-ryzen-5-2400g-36ghz-quad-core-processor-yd2400c5fbbox) | £131.94 @ Aria PC

**Motherboard** | [Gigabyte - GA-AB350-GAMING 3 ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/2pnG3C/gigabyte-ga-ab350-gaming-3-atx-am4-motherboard-ga-ab350-gaming-3) | £85.96 @ Aria PC

**Memory** | [Corsair - Vengeance LPX 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4-3000 Memory](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/BYH48d/corsair-memory-cmk8gx4m2b3000c15) | £94.79 @ Aria PC

**Storage** | [Seagate - FireCuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/n28H99/seagate-firecuda-1tb-35-7200rpm-hybrid-internal-hard-drive-st1000dx002) | £57.49 @ Aria PC

**Video Card** | [Asus - GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Phoenix Video Card](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/6hKhP6/asus-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-4gb-phoenix-video-card-ph-gtx1050ti-4g) | £158.54 @ BT Shop

**Case** | [BitFenix - Nova ATX Mid Tower Case](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/HDqbt6/bitfenix-case-bfxnov100wwxkkrp) | £25.80 @ Aria PC

**Power Supply** | [Cooler Master - MasterWatt 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/B6XnTW/cooler-master-masterwatt-550w-80-bronze-certified-semi-modular-atx-power-supply-mpx-5501-amaab-us) | £51.86 @ Box Limited

Reason fr my part selection

Ryzen 5 2400g has 4c/8t which is still better than ur ryzen 3 1200 which has 4c/4t

Also I HV got 8gb ddr4 3000 ram...as ryzen CPU love ram nd they tend to run faster with a fast dual channel ram kit.

I mostly don't prefer MSI motherboard because of their low quality capacitors nd VRMs. They r bad fr overclockng.

Got in a better PSU nd a better monitor for £10 less than ur budget...so enjoy

I cheaped out on storage though

I ditched the SSD nd suggested an SSHD

that Seagate barracuda is an hybrid of SSD nd HDD....so it performs better than traditional HDDs ..it's performance is close to that of an SSD.

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

4 hours ago, vexicus365 said:

AMD - Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor

You do realise that the Ryzen 3 2200G and the Ryzen 5 2400G are APU's? They can run at gt 1030 speeds as far as I know, spending more on a video card would be useless. My video editing isn't huge whatsoever, my current Pentium G850 can run camtasia relatively well, the only reason why i chose the 1200 is because I want to record myself and edit better quality videos.

4 hours ago, vexicus365 said:

Seagate - FireCuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Hybrid Internal Hard Drive

Also, the Seagate Firecuda SSHD, I don't want it. Multiple people say that it takes 5 or more times to get close to an ssd's performance, and running the same campain level 5 times doesnt seem likely to me.

And also, the "ssd" portion of the sshd is only around 32 Gb whereas I can store 4x the amount of games/information on one ssd.

The other 2 terabytes of the barracuda drive ( it's an hdd not an sshd btw ) will hold video's, photoshop drawings, drivers and probably more stuff.

Also, the memory supported by the motherboard doesn't include DDR4-3000 Mhz ram.

4 hours ago, vexicus365 said:

Cooler Master - MasterWatt 550W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

The extra wattage won't do much for this build, at most it'll only hit 350-ish watts while on max overclock.

And choosing a 400 Watt PSU With 80+ Silver will run more efficiently at 20% idle than it does at say 5% Idle, so getting the 550 Watt PSU Would just be wasting power.

Other than all that, the ram seems good, but I already have the ram I currently need.

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

12 hours ago, Energycore said:

The cryptocurrency market is still overbought right now even after the dump and I'm expecting a correction. Whether it's significant enough to stop miners from grabbing all the cards is unclear, but you should definitely wait as long as you can to hope for a better outlook in the graphics card department.

Sure, the cryptominers stole all the AMD Cards they could get, and they also snatched up some 1080's, the market for GPU's is ridiculous currently, i'll try and wait about 6 months, the prices for GPU's are already going down this year.

12 hours ago, Energycore said:

No Kingston SSD to this date is any good at all. Grab an alternative at a low price point. There's the Crucial MX300/MX500, Hynix SL308, SanDisk Ultra II/Ultra 3D, WD Blue 3D, or Samsung 850/860 EVO.

Thanks, nice point to have. I always thought that SSD's were the same no matter where you bought them from, and this one was grey/black. even if they are basically invisible in the case its self.

12 hours ago, Energycore said:

Some cheap Crucial or Mushkin RAM is black PCB with no heatspreader, you could look to get one of those.

Never heard of them, i'll be on the lookout!

12 hours ago, Energycore said:

As an onwer of this monitor, it doesn't come with a DisplayPort or HDMI cable, only a VGA, which doesn't allow freesync, so you'll have to buy one of those anyway if you want the adaptive sync. Otherwise I suppose you could run it on VGA.

As far as I know, Freesync isn't what i'm going for, the ugly green accents on the G-Sync version aren't my type. And there arent any AMD GPU's available for good prices either.

VGA Is perfectly fine for me, The current monitor i'm using has VGA, So i'll have a backup just in case if the "freebie" one breaks down on me.

Yeah i'm more of an aethetic person along with performance, green on a full black-white build would look stupid haha

Many thanks,

- Wolf

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

12 hours ago, Energycore said:

I really like how the Corsair 400C looks.

Sure, it's a nice case, although I do prefer the S340, sorry.

Energycore · February 18, 2018

2 hours ago, AHybridWolf said:

As far as I know, Freesync isn't what i'm going for, the ugly green accents on the G-Sync version aren't my type. And there arent any AMD GPU's available for good prices either.

VGA Is perfectly fine for me, The current monitor i'm using has VGA, So i'll have a backup just in case if the "freebie" one breaks down on me.

Yeah i'm more of an aethetic person along with performance, green on a full black-white build would look stupid haha

I can't remember super well, but I feel like the VGA connection will not let you run it at 75Hz. I might be wrong.

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

May be, I am planning on running HDMI, i'll probably get a cable off a store near me to hit that 75 Hz at 1080p unless that isn't possible, not sure.

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

Also, i'm interested in overclocking the monitor to go at a higher refresh rate? I heard that was a thing.

85 Hz!?!

Edited February 18, 2018 by AHybridWolf
typo

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

4 hours ago, Energycore said:

I can't remember super well, but I feel like the VGA connection will not let you run it at 75Hz. I might be wrong.

Yeah, pretty sure you're right.

Energycore · February 18, 2018

3 hours ago, AHybridWolf said:

Also, i'm interested in overclocking the monitor to go at a higher refresh rate? I heard that was a thing.

85 Hz!?!

Nah this monitor goes into error mode as soon as you dial in anything over 75Hz. Trust me I tried everything I could

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

2 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Nah this monitor goes into error mode as soon as you dial in anything over 75Hz. Trust me I tried everything I could

Oh, well that's interesting. I guess I could just buy a 120 Hz monitor for that little extra, i can use my current monitor until I have enough to save up for a 120hz 1080p monitor.

I'm pretty serious whenever it comes to fps/refresh rate because I need to utilise my 160ms Reaction time on a better monitor haha

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

Oh and here is my current build, hopefully this would be better.

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

Energycore · February 18, 2018

Just now, AHybridWolf said:

Oh, well that's interesting. I guess I could just buy a 120 Hz monitor for that little extra, i can use my current monitor until I have enough to save up for a 120hz 1080p monitor.

I'm pretty serious whenever it comes to fps/refresh rate because I need to utilise my 160ms Reaction time on a better monitor haha

Dayum that's a good reaction time.

Just now, AHybridWolf said:

Oh and here is my current build, hopefully this would be better.

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

Don't go the C7 it's pretty low performance, as sexy as it looks. Go this https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/93Crxr/cryorig-cpu-cooler-h7

You don't need the 400W Pure Power 10, you're actually just fine on the 300W. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/T7Jkcf/be-quiet-pure-power-10-300w-80-bronze-certified-atx-power-supply-bn270

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

Just realised I didn't include the monitor, oh well, £625 for this "Gaming PC" in my opinion, is a very good build.

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

Dayum that's a good reaction time.

Don't go the C7 it's pretty low performance, as sexy as it looks. Go this https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/93Crxr/cryorig-cpu-cooler-h7

You don't need the 400W Pure Power 10, you're actually just fine on the 300W. https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/T7Jkcf/be-quiet-pure-power-10-300w-80-bronze-certified-atx-power-supply-bn270

I'd prefer to keep the 400W Variant because I'm going to be planning to overclocking everything...

CPU

GPU

Probably not ram but k

Energycore · February 18, 2018

Just now, AHybridWolf said:

I'd prefer to keep the 400W Variant because I'm going to be planning to overclocking everything...

CPU

GPU

Probably not ram but k

Ok keep the 400W.

I just learned 2 minutes ago that the 300 and 350W Pure Power 10 are on an older platform, so more reason to get the 400W.

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

Ok keep the 400W.

I just learned 2 minutes ago that the 300 and 350W Pure Power 10 are on an older platform, so more reason to get the 400W.

Ah, thats a positive to have.

I decided to dump the monitor completely for now, will buy it in a year to hopefully save money if i bought one now.

So, with the extra £100 ( because i ditched the other ssd ), I instead got a much faster and more reliable SSD.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/7XtMnH

Can you please verify if that M.2 ssd will be compatible with the motherboard? I'm not so familliar with M.2 Just yet...

Energycore · February 18, 2018

Just now, AHybridWolf said:

Ah, thats a positive to have.

I decided to dump the monitor completely for now, will buy it in a year to hopefully save money if i bought one now.

So, with the extra £100 ( because i ditched the other ssd ), I instead got a much faster and more reliable SSD.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/7XtMnH

Can you please verify if that M.2 ssd will be compatible with the motherboard? I'm not so familliar with M.2 Just yet...

Don't go for NVMe, go for capacity. The performance difference will not be felt unless you work on 4K footage.

Grab this https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/FrH48d/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam

Or this https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/ft8j4D/crucial-mx500-500gb-25-solid-state-drive-ct500mx500ssd1

They're basically the same performance, top of the line for SATA SSDs.

AHybridWolf · February 18, 2018

4 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Don't go for NVMe, go for capacity. The performance difference will not be felt unless you work on 4K footage.

Grab this https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/FrH48d/samsung-internal-hard-drive-mz75e500bam

Or this https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/ft8j4D/crucial-mx500-500gb-25-solid-state-drive-ct500mx500ssd1

They're basically the same performance, top of the line for SATA SSDs.

Ah right, thanks for the suggestion.

I had about £30 Leftover so I decided to go get myself some DDR4-2400 Mhz Black ram from Kingston. Awh yeah!!

So now this build is basically perfect? I'll choose you as the best answer because you helped me out the most.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/3mZhP3

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gaming Planning to buy parts for a PC throughout this year, need opinions on the hardware

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