Self Build PC

facade

The PC I'm using came from Chillblast.

Not the cheapest but you can fully customise it and specify every component at order time. I bought it without an OS and saved a fair bit, then got a Windows Pro key from a PC pro offer for much less than I saved.

I could have saved more by building it myself, but they fit it together and burn it in so no wondering why it won't boot because a component is dead on arrival.

scaredofdebt

Thanks for the comments so far very helpful.

I don't have a specific budget, I want the best "bang for my buck" but obviously funds are not unlimited, I usually spend around £1k on a new PC every 3-4 years as I find that gives decent performance and longevity.  I can stretch a bit if it's worth it though.

I play games mainly, do a fair bit of video editing but I don't play "cutting edge" games so I don't need really top end performance, although that would be nice!

Thanks again!

Am-I-Paranoid

scaredofdebt said:

Thanks for the comments so far very helpful.

I don't have a specific budget, I want the best "bang for my buck" but obviously funds are not unlimited, I usually spend around £1k on a new PC every 3-4 years as I find that gives decent performance and longevity.  I can stretch a bit if it's worth it though.

I play games mainly, do a fair bit of video editing but I don't play "cutting edge" games so I don't need really top end performance, although that would be nice!

Thanks again!

What is your current spec?

It could well be worth dropping a new CPU in there, even for a 5 year old PC (e.g. Ryzen 5 2600 to Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a HUGE step up)... then that will save your budget for a top GPU.

Even if you just re-use the case and motherboard, that could easily save you £200, then f you buy carefully, that is the difference between a 1080P gaming card like a 8Gb RX7600 (£250) to a 4K-capable 2nd hand 12Gb RTX3080Ti (£450).

scaredofdebt

Am-I-Paranoid said:

What is your current spec?

It could well be worth dropping a new CPU in there, even for a 5 year old PC (e.g. Ryzen 5 2600 to Ryzen 7 5800X3D is a HUGE step up)... then that will save your budget for a top GPU.

Even if you just re-use the case and motherboard, that could easily save you £200, then f you buy carefully, that is the difference between a 1080P gaming card like a 8Gb RX7600 (£250) to a 4K-capable 2nd hand 12Gb RTX3080Ti (£450).

CPU - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700F CPU @ 2.90GHz   2.90 GHz
16 GB RAM - Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3000C15W Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3000 MHz 
Radeon Pro WX 3100
Mobo - AS Rock B460M Pro4


First time I've built a PC with a Radeon (AMD), had a few issues with this GFX card, usually get Nvidia and never had an issue with them.

Am-I-Paranoid

I had to look up that graphics card.... and now I know why: the most even AMD's own marketing could say for it was "redefining entry level" [for offices]. I can only imagine that you cannibalised a really old office PC? (in which case - no problem and I won't judge)

Radeon Pro WX 3100 spec sheet

AMD gaming GPU's are actually really decent, but any entry level office GPU from 6 years ago was never going to work well in ANY games - the gaming drivers would never have been built with that in mind.

To give you an idea of how that card stacks up: just in terms of hardware capacity (so ignoring the poor gaming drivers), the closest match is a GTX470 (midrange from 2010) or GTX750 (absolute entry level from 2014).... and compared to AMD gaming cards, I still have an old AMD Radeon HD4870 (from 2009) that is 10% faster and my HD7970 from 2011 would have been nearly double the speed of a WX3100.

For £100-£150 put something like a GTX1660Super in there and you'll get four TIMES the gaming performance and it will be well-matched for what is a reasonable CPU and RAM combo.... that 1660S card is pretty okay for 1440P gaming absolutely smashes 1080P gaming. Worth reserving £80-£100 for a 2Tb or at very least doing a re-install though!

If you really want to push the boat out, a RTX2070 for £180-£200 and you'll have a reasonable GPU for your next upgrade, so you don't have to upgrade that as urgently.

What monitor are you using?

I only ask as you could spend another £200-£250 or so on an entry level 1440P 120Hz+ gaming monitor from a few years ago (e.g. Gigabyte M27Q* - 1440P, 165Hz) and prepare to be amazed.

EDIT: *that is 2021 advice, but at least it's a great price.... I would advise looking for a 2022/2023 wrap-up from a YouTube channel like Monitors Unboxed - his individual monitor reviews are VERY detailed, but he does some really good wrap-up videos too, but you'll have to scroll past the "no-budget" options and he does have some at real-world, more reasonable budgets! Don't get sucked in with 4K unless you want to pay £1000 just for a GPU to drive it, far better to go for a well reviewed 1080P/1440P with at least 120Hz.

scaredofdebt

I was actually recommended that gfx card on a website might have been Overclockers, coming up for about 3 years ago now.  Was around 180 USD so not expensive but not exactly cheap either:

https://www.newegg.com/global/uk-en/amd-100-505999/p/N82E16814105072?Item=N82E16814105072

Yeah may look at a new card and monitor cheers.

Am-I-Paranoid

Ah, that makes some sense: 3 years ago it was utterly desperate times for graphics cards - you had to buy something that was truly low spec to avoid competing with Crypto-miners. You succeeded, but a GTX1050Ti was ~£150 and probably better for gaming.

Quite perversely, a year earlier was fine! In Dec 2019, I bought a GTX1660Super for £230 (Amazon retail price).... and that's the card that is 4x the performance of a WX3100.

I could have sold that card a year later (Dec 2020) for £500-£600 and it was complete "unobtainium" on retail.... I even managed to sell my HD7970 for £100 - a 9 year card at the time, but still double the spec of a WX3100.

Am-I-Paranoid

Random rant on various sites / recommendations.... I've been on Overclockers a bit, but not much recently - I seem to remember that it was okay, but as with all forums.... your mileage may vary (as with this one )....

I'd be very wary of Tomshardware - it was brilliant 25 years ago.... but they have a lot of commercial tie-ins and some very worrying bias, even from their senior writers: they seem to blindly recommend Intel+nVidia, even when it's not appropriate - their forums are often worse - just a complete echo-chamber.

Similar for Userbenchmark - a great comparison site in theory, but they weight their scores very perversely to meet their own bias.... more obvious when you look at the copy (text) that they put with some of the mini reviews -  indicates a deep lack of understanding on how computers work and what impacts performance.

I like Hardware Unboxed for decently unbiased reviews - they're like me.... absolutely zero brand loyalty Just stick to whatever makes the most sense for any given use case, focus on balancing performance vs value. Mostly just use their YouTube reviews - their Patreon Forums and Discord are all subscription only.

Showing my age a little here, but just to back up the statement above: if you look a my history going back on GPUs I've NOT been afraid to swap sides, when the tech was better elsewhere: nVidia (RTX3080Ti), nVidia (GTX1660S), nVidia (GTX780), AMD (HD7970), AMD (HD5870), AMD (HD4870), nVidia, AMD, ATI(X1800), ATI(X800XT), ATI(X800XL), AMD (Radeon 9700pro), nVidia(GeForce3 Ultra), nVidia(Geforce2), nVidia (GeForce256), nVidia (TNT in 1998!), Orchid Voodoo2 + Matrox (Millenium/G100), Orchid Voodoo2 + Tseng (ET6000), ATI (Mach32).

Similar for CPUs: AMD(R9-5900X@5Ghz), AMD(R7-2700X), Intel(i7-6700K), Intel(i7-3770K), Intel(QX6850), Intel(Q6600), AMD (Opteron165@2.7Ghz), AMD(X2), AMD (X64), Intel (dual P3 1Ghz) + AMD (Athlon MP), Intel (dual P3-600), Intel (dual-P2-333@400), Intel (P166MMX@250Mhz), Cyrix (6x86 166+), AMD K5, Intel P100, Intel (486DX4100), Cyrix (486DX266), Intel (386DX25).

Not an exhaustive list, but a fun walk back over about 30 years!

scaredofdebt

Am-I-Paranoid said:

Random rant on various sites / recommendations.... I've been on Overclockers a bit, but not much recently - I seem to remember that it was okay, but as with all forums.... your mileage may vary (as with this one )....

I'd be very wary of Tomshardware - it was brilliant 25 years ago.... but they have a lot of commercial tie-ins and some very worrying bias, even from their senior writers: they seem to blindly recommend Intel+nVidia, even when it's not appropriate - their forums are often worse - just a complete echo-chamber.

Similar for Userbenchmark - a great comparison site in theory, but they weight their scores very perversely to meet their own bias.... more obvious when you look at the copy (text) that they put with some of the mini reviews -  indicates a deep lack of understanding on how computers work and what impacts performance.

I like Hardware Unboxed for decently unbiased reviews - they're like me.... absolutely zero brand loyalty Just stick to whatever makes the most sense for any given use case, focus on balancing performance vs value. Mostly just use their YouTube reviews - their Patreon Forums and Discord are all subscription only.

Showing my age a little here, but just to back up the statement above: if you look a my history going back on GPUs I've NOT been afraid to swap sides, when the tech was better elsewhere: nVidia (RTX3080Ti), nVidia (GTX1660S), nVidia (GTX780), AMD (HD7970), AMD (HD5870), AMD (HD4870), nVidia, AMD, ATI(X1800), ATI(X800XT), ATI(X800XL), AMD (Radeon 9700pro), nVidia(GeForce3 Ultra), nVidia(Geforce2), nVidia (GeForce256), nVidia (TNT in 1998!), Orchid Voodoo2 + Matrox (Millenium/G100), Orchid Voodoo2 + Tseng (ET6000), ATI (Mach32).

Similar for CPUs: AMD(R9-5900X@5Ghz), AMD(R7-2700X), Intel(i7-6700K), Intel(i7-3770K), Intel(QX6850), Intel(Q6600), AMD (Opteron165@2.7Ghz), AMD(X2), AMD (X64), Intel (dual P3 1Ghz) + AMD (Athlon MP), Intel (dual P3-600), Intel (dual-P2-333@400), Intel (P166MMX@250Mhz), Cyrix (6x86 166+), AMD K5, Intel P100, Intel (486DX4100), Cyrix (486DX266), Intel (386DX25).

Not an exhaustive list, but a fun walk back over about 30 years!

Thanks, very interesting!

Yeah I've always been AMD for CPUs until recently, I started in the early 2000s building Shuttles!  Last 2 or 3 builds have been Intel.

Always been nVidia though until this last build, I'll remain open minded for the next one though!

HarryKane6354

As far as I know, Chillblast offers some awesome customization options.