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Just threw the parts into a basket on OCUK
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/wu0Rn08.png)
I winced a little at SSD prices, but overall, it's the same or very similar parts as the prebuilt, with far better memory (which is fairly cheap for what you get), and a much better PSU.
If your friend is willing to assemble the system, and/or order from more retailers, I'm sure the price can come down a bit. You can definitely save a good $60 between the PSU and RAM though, if you drop it to a bronze PSU, and some average 3200 CL16 RAM like this:
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/corsair-vengeance-lpx-16gb-2x8gb-ddr4-pc4-25600c16-3200mhz-dual-channel-kit-black-cmk16gx4m2b32-my-456-cs.html
As far as prebuilts though, your friend is getting a reasonable PC. They'll definitely cheap out on non-performance critical components such as the case, PSU and motherboard where they can, but it'd perform largely similarly to the one I tossed in the basket out of the box since it has the same cpu/gpu
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
b550 motherboards are releasing imminently(??) and will support next gen CPU's, it was just announced that b450 boards will not.
x570 supports next-gen if that's a problem and you wanted to buy today.
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Lalalaland34499 Posts
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I am a mac user and have always been able to play SC. But I want to start streaming. I have in the past streamed from my current mac, but the game stutters and the fan goes on full blast sounding like its about to overheat. Also, probably doesn't help that the comp is from 2012.
Would getting a mac from this year be enough to stream and play smoothly? I don't see alot of people streaming from a mac so I'm not sure what to look for. What are the absolute minimum requirements for streaming?
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Not sure on a lot of important details for mac streaming but you'd likely have to encode w/ CPU and apple CPU prices are insanity right now.
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Hi guys, I've had a few attempts at putting parts together based on reviews but they all seem to come out way over budget.
What is your budget
My budget is £1500 (or $1800)
What is your monitor's native resolution?
I plan on buying everything from scratch on this build so the monitor will be included.
What games do you intend to play on this computer? What settings?
I will be using it for primarily SC2 and total war games at the highest setting of graphics (if the PC can handle it smoothly)
What do you intend to use the computer for besides gaming?
Gaming will be the main focus but I do intend on using it as an everyday PC although it will be nothing too taxing.
Do you intend to overclock?
No
Do you intend to do SLI / Crossfire?
No
Do you need an operating system?
Yes
Do you need a monitor or any other peripherals and is this part of your budget?
Yes I need a monitor, I would like a larger than standard size one too. If this is an issue with the budget I can be convinced to spend a bit more. I also need speakers and a good gaming keyboard and mouse.
If you have any requirements or brand preferences, please specify.
I don't have any particular requirements. I would like a low maintenance and quiet PC ideally.
What country will you be buying your parts in?
UK
If you have any retailer preferences, please specify.
None.
This is the first PC I have built and so any help from you guys is greatly appreciated.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Hey Aristodemus!
Intel 10'th gen should be releasing soon (like this month or next?) they were announced a while ago and while the top end will be better, the prices will be knocked down on low end to midrange parts so that's probably worth waiting for.
I did a quick build just to show you roughly how i'd personally split the cost between components and stuff for that use case. A few parts are just thrown in without effective comparison against other options of a similar price and it's not all from one or two shops (i recommend amazon and OCUK) so please don't copy/paste buy this (:
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: Intel Core i5-9600KF 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor (£179.99 @ Amazon UK) - Just put this in the list as an example because the 10'th gens aren't on there yet. Could maybe spend a bit more here too.
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U14S 82.52 CFM CPU Cooler (£56.98 @ CCL Computers) - Great product at this price, very quiet and overkill. Could go with something around £30 but take care of the fan noise since smaller and cheaper coolers generally use cheaper fan components and ramp up fan speed to try to perform above their weight class.
Motherboard: MSI Z390-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard (£112.79 @ CCL Computers) - Put this on the list because no 10'th gen, again won't work with them. If you wanted to run 9'th gen this seems popular and highly rated but i haven't looked too closely.
Memory: Patriot Viper Steel 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-4000 Memory (£103.86 @ Ebuyer) - affordable 2x8GB b die memory (good) with an easy XMP to run 4000mhz which is key for starcraft and some other CPU heavy games.
Storage: Samsung 860 QVO 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£99.34 @ Box Limited) - solid 1TB ssd under £100!
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER 6 GB OC Video Card (£220.99 @ Amazon UK) - Not 100% sure on the price/perf across some different vendors and models at this performance level - and again, you might want to spend more here although it won't help SC2 and might not help total war since they're so heavy on the CPU.
Case: Corsair 275R Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case (£74.98 @ Amazon UK) - There's probably something better to buy at £75. Some options at £30-50 but they've always been a mess in my experience so it's probably worth spending £70-100, personally my case was £135 for a higher end setup.
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12III 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£59.99 @ Amazon UK) - 80+ bronze seasonic (top brand) with way more power capacity than this kind of system will ever be able to draw
Monitor: Asus VG278Q 27.0" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor (£258.95 @ Amazon UK) - seems like a good option for 1080p 27" 144hz - just keep in mind that it is 1080p and it is a TN. You may want to get an IPS or similar monitor especially with a large panel to avoid color shifting when you're not looking at it head-on, but they may cost more. Some people want more resolution (e.g. 1440p) but that's a fairly major step in in cost on both the monitor and graphics card to run well. 120hz+ is essential IMO.
Keyboard: Corsair K70 RGB MK.2 Wired Standard Keyboard (£136.87 @ Overclockers.co.uk) solid low-latency option
Mouse: Logitech PRO Wireless Wireless Optical Mouse (£99.82) - currently on amazon UK if you click western european version. Best mouse in the world, well worth the £100 IMO. I was going to put like a g203 or something on here at £20 but there didn't seem to be good deals. Up to you.
Total: £1404.56
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-05-16 10:39 BST+0100
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Hey Cyro,
Thanks so much for the help, if it is only a month or so I will wait for the price drop. Might even be able to upgrade the graphics card a bit if I can save by doing so (although SC2 and totalwar are my favourites I do play a few other random things so it will be useful). Much appreciated!
Edit: Just started with the mouse for now 
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
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Pretty good news.
It really helps only a small vocal subset of the community who purchased a 2/3000 series CPU and are planning on upgrading it with 4000.
Pretty good way to do it though, locking it behind the purchase of a zen 3 CPU.
I'm planning on getting Zen 3 at the end of this year, probably with a B550 board so it doesn't affect me at all. Good on them though.
Guaranteed new socket with Zen 4 though. Hopefully the socket becomes square, and removes the stupid retention bracket.that you have to remove with literally any new installation.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
It really helps only a small vocal subset of the community who purchased a 2/3000 series CPU and are planning on upgrading it with 4000.
It was an insane situation. AMD didn't release b550 with zen2, they still haven't released b550.
They explicitly positioned b450 as the zen2 board for the vast majority of people to buy. X570 is very expensive high end, so if you want to buy a zen2 CPU without spending $800 on your cpu and mobo then buy b450.
No chance they would get away with telling people repeatedly to buy a specific type of mobo - the only affordable one available for a year, 2/3'rds of the CPU gens lifespan - and then cutting future support so that it would only work with with the CPU that they were advised to buy the motherboard for. 1gen support without a much harder reason (like hard transitioning to AM5 on DDR5) would never fly, even without all of the marketing hype from AMD about supporting more consumer-friendly upgradeability than Intel.
The fact that it also supported zen+ is basically irrelevant because the vast majority of users weren't sold the boards by AMD and the board partners to run zen+, they were sold them brand new as the board to run zen2 CPU's after the zen2 release. If that wasn't the case then we wouldn't have such a fiasco on our hands. Zen2 sales were many times higher than zen+, for additional context.
I'm glad they backed out of making such a dumb mistake.
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Hopefully the socket becomes square, and removes the stupid retention bracket.that you have to remove with literally any new installation.
I don't remember removing anything from my board. It was much easier to work with than any of my prior intel boards because e.g. there was no need to install a backplate to mount the CPU cooler. Why does being square matter for you? :D
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On May 20 2020 06:38 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote +It really helps only a small vocal subset of the community who purchased a 2/3000 series CPU and are planning on upgrading it with 4000. It was an insane situation. AMD didn't release b550 with zen2, they still haven't released b550. They explicitly positioned b450 as the zen2 board for the vast majority of people to buy. X570 is very expensive high end, so if you want to buy a zen2 CPU without spending $800 on your cpu and mobo then buy b450. No chance they would get away with telling people repeatedly to buy a specific type of mobo - the only affordable one available for a year, 2/3'rds of the CPU gens lifespan - and then cutting future support so that it would only work with with the CPU that they were advised to buy the motherboard for. 1gen support without a much harder reason (like hard transitioning to AM5 on DDR5) would never fly, even without all of the marketing hype from AMD about supporting more consumer-friendly upgradeability than Intel. The fact that it also supported zen+ is basically irrelevant because the vast majority of users weren't sold the boards by AMD and the board partners to run zen+, they were sold them brand new as the board to run zen2 CPU's after the zen2 release. If that wasn't the case then we wouldn't have such a fiasco on our hands. Zen2 sales were many times higher than zen+, for additional context. I'm glad they backed out of making such a dumb mistake. ---- Show nested quote +Hopefully the socket becomes square, and removes the stupid retention bracket.that you have to remove with literally any new installation. I don't remember removing anything from my board. It was much easier to work with than any of my prior intel boards because e.g. there was no need to install a backplate to mount the CPU cooler. Why does being square matter for you? :D
The black plastic clips that the screws are attached to. The first thing for any install is to toss them since it's used with the antiquated steel retention clip mechanism.
![[image loading]](https://assets.rockpapershotgun.com/images//2018/04/AM4-motherboard-header-620x320.jpg/RPSS/thumbnail/1920x1080/format/jpg/quality/75)
I like the idea of a square hole since you can then orient coolers in any direction, instead of just front-back. In practical terms, it makes zero difference to me since I'm going to do front-back anyways.
Definitely agree that B450 was AMD shooting themselves in the foot by not releasing B550 at the same time. I still argue that the proportion of users on B450 who will get Ryzen 4000 is going to be fairly small, compared to the number of people who are just buying a mobo/cpu combo. I'm hoping that with the change, the quality of B550/X570 (maybe an X570 rev. B that sucks less power and skips the chipset fan?) with zen 3 isn't impacted. If I was on B450, I'd be fully expecting to be a second-class citizen, and getting zen 3 support probably 3-4 months after launch of zen 3 at best.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Yeah of course. It will be there, though. In 3 years you can be using a 4950x.
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Well, now that dust has settled a bit on 10th gen review launches, it looks like.
I need a computer -> Ryzen
I need a gaming computer -> Ryzen
I need a gaming computer for 1080p -> Ryzen, spend extra money on better GPU
I need a gaming computer for 1440p/4k -> Ryzen, spend extra money on better GPU
I need a gaming computer for for 240hz@1080/1440, and GPU has reached diminishing returns/cpu bottleneck -> Intel 10th gen.
The price premium for the motherboards, launch pricing and lack of availability makes it hard to recommend intel. It's +$75 for CPU, +$75 for mobo, +$100 for good cooler over the ryzen alternatives, for a very narrow niche.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Aristodemus's games are heavily CPU bottlenecked even on a lower end GPU, SC2 is the worst game bench for zen2 that i've ever seen and my 3900x isn't close to keeping frames faster than 16.67ms (60fps) on it.
Faster CPU helps performance very noticably even on a 60hz screen but i recommended a 120hz screen because they are worlds better for input delay, smoothness and such even when some of the frames are dipping a lot slower than one frame per refresh - and of course, for general computer usage. I view 60hz more as a relic of the early LCD age where panels regressed in performance from CRT's for a while before we made anything actually good.
My 8700k overperformed the max.oc 3900x (which has a lot more work put into it such as having memory subtimings set) by about 20 percent.
The 10600k is like an 8700k but the voltage/frequency curve is more favorable, it has a much better IMC and it runs like 30c cooler. There is the disadvantage of some core-to-core and L3 latency being increased but that's minor overall.
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The 10600k/kf is available for £250-280 right now which is between 3600 and 3700x pricing.
Claims that it's bad because it costs most than the 3600 is not valid as the performance is not even close, particularly in those games.
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+$100 for cooling is ridiculous as even if you were to use the stock cooler on the 3600 it would not cost that much for a 10600k cooler. Half of that is reasonable, and even then you'd have a higher quality product (less system noise under load etc)
The 10600k/kf is one of the coolest CPU's in a while even with a midrange air cooler because it's soldered with a reduced die height and extra (disabled) die area which soaks up heat, spreading it out and improving the thermal transfer efficiency.
Kitguru put it on their standard test config with a specific case and AIO and it was literally the coldest CPU on there - beating a ton of zen2's and last gen intel's - at 54c under 6c12t blender load.
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Mobo is more expensive on Intel, that's one valid point. It's a concern, but i still think it's probably worth running for this use case. If zen3 were close i'd probably be recommending that but it may not be widely available for more than half a year and any performance numbers for it are partially-informed speculation at best.
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That was more of a general statement about the reviews. Intel won pretty heavily in gaming, it was somewhere north of 10% overall at low res. Motherboards are definitely a lot more expensive for 10th gen though, with the early adopter tax.
SC2 is a special beast.
I haven't played it since the release of LotV but yeah, it's a straight Intel is better situation - Severely bottlenecked by single thread, and strongly favours skylake vs zen architectures.
For Aristodemus's situation, I think a 10900F/10700K if he can find it in-store are the best value to maximize the single thread performance ootb. The 10900K/KF is pretty poor value if you aren't overclocking all cores. No reviews yet though for non-K parts to see how much difference there is from die sanding, and what minimum cooling you need to get full benefit from turbo. It would be nice if a basic cooler like the 212 Evo @$30 could keep it cool enough to max it out but my guess on the floor is probably the noctua NH-U12S @$60
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
the K parts have a rather large list of changes that means it's not such a bad idea to buy K/KF even if you're not going to OC.
K:
Reduced die height
larger die area (10c on there - partially disabled, but spreads out and soaks up heat so it's easier to get it from the die to the cooler)
solder between die and IHS
increased power budget (125w) and higher + more consistent boosts to go with it
non-K:
full-height die, so worse heat transfer out of it
regular old 6-core die
no solder, hot without delid
small power budget to account for bad thermal transfer (65w) limiting max and sustained boost clocks
This feels like a chad 10600kf vs virgin 10600 meme LOL
I expect a cheap air cooler would do totally fine, it's one of the coolest running CPU's in a long time because the heat transfer is good and the wattage isn't high. Up to 125w is totally fine for any half decent cooler as long as the transfer efficiency to get it from silicon to the cooler fins isn't ass.
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I took a quick look for @Aristodemus
The 9000 series is definitely the way to go for the next month or two until stock appears. The 10 series is definitely better overall, but way too expensive right now. @Cyro's build above is probably the best balance around your budget.
@Pericles765
You aren't getting much of any upgrade for £500 for a new system.
The best performing replacement you can get is probably just a GPU around the 5700XT/2070 Super level like this or 5700XT
That will put you in a CPU bottleneck for essentially everything else you can run until you can upgrade the rest of the system.
$500 doesn't get you anything otherwise beyond a new CPU/motherboard/RAM which is the bare minimum you'll need for a system upgrade, in which case you'd have to grab a new GPU later on anyways.
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United Kingdom20322 Posts
Yeah you can't refresh the CPU and the GPU with that so you have to pick one - and a gtx970 will really struggle with newer games at 1440p. CPU/mobo/RAM upgrade will have to come later.
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EPT
