upgrading the potatooooo

[bat]

This is coming from someone who recommended a $500 GPU with a $150 CPU. B450 is also only compatible if you have a previous gen chip to update the firmware.

 

For gaming, CPU upgrades are the part with the biggest impact of a budget. 6c/12t is fine for gaming at 144hz and light multitasking. The difference between a $200 and $300 cpu (at least for gaming) is negligible. Also, MSI's MAX motherboards come updated to support ryzen 3000 out of the box.

[Wawa]

I'm only going to answer your air vs liquid cooling question because of my experience with both. I've used both and prefer both, but for different situations. If you plan on overclocking your cpu and/or gpu and have confidence that your chip can be pushed to greater limits with the right cooling, then liquid cooling is the way to go. If you plan on overclocking, but lack the confidence of having a chip that can reach clock speeds beyond what typical overclocks can achieve for that chip, then air is the only way. Go with air if you aren't overclocking at all. Go with liquid if you want your rig to look bad ass, even if you don't overclock.

[Vy]

What parts do you currently have and why do you want to switch to another build?

 

What are you going to do with your build? Is it going to be used for gaming exclusively? (Not counting the ordinary tasks you would expect to do on your computer)

 

What kind of peripherals do you currently have? What is your current internet speed? (And what can you likely get in the next 3-4 years)

 

What is your requirements for storage?

 

Intel or AMD?

[Black Rain]

What parts do you currently have and why do you want to switch to another build?

 

My current tower is years old and I would have to upgrade pretty much every single part with the exception of the HDD I think. I just prefer to build one from scratch.

 

What are you going to do with your build? Is it going to be used for gaming exclusively? (Not counting the ordinary tasks you would expect to do on your computer)

 

Definitely would like to try AAA titles since I've been missing out on them for a while now. Besides that I do a lot of video editing. I pretty much use Vegas on a weekly basis for a personal project I'm working on. Would also like to try streaming too because why not xd

 

What kind of peripherals do you currently have? What is your current internet speed? (And what can you likely get in the next 3-4 years)

 

DeathAdder Elite, G413 Carbon, HyperX Cloud Stinger.. all the gaming peripherals that I need I already have. Internet Speed: 400 up/down package.

 

What is your requirements for storage?

Pretty much for games and all the videos I record and edit. I keep all my documents and school work on my laptop while I keep all my pictures and phone backups on a portable hard drive. I'm not worried too much about space other than newer titles eating like 50+ GB nowadays lol.

 

Intel or AMD?

 

I've always stuck to Intel but after seeing AMD's Ryzen line-up for a while now I'm convinced to go with an AMD cpu over Intel based on performance comparisons.

 

I've thought about it for a while and figured if I was gonna build something new then I'd go for a white build as a fun project. I'm sold on going with a Lian Li PC-O11 in white as my case. The reason I asked opinions about liquid vs air was mainly because I do like liquid for the aesthetics but wasn't sure if was worth the hassle or not. I'd probably just stick to air and get some extra RGB case fans to make up for the aesthetics. The one thing that's holding me back is the GPU. I would like a 2070S but I'm not feeling the $500 price that comes with it. I know NVIDIA is having a keynote on the 14th of this month and they may announce the 3000 Series. I've been considering going with a 1660S as a temporary GPU to save some money and wait to see if any of the 2000 Series drop in price when the 3000 Series release.

[Dreamz]

I use air cooling because I can't sleep at night knowing there might be liquids leaking onto my PC parts.

 

Exactly the same reason I use air cooling lmao.

[Tyymunk]

Here

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/LGBbDx

 

There seems to be a possible problem with the BIOS not being updated for some b450 boards but I looked up if the problem occurred on this tomahawk and I can’t find anything about that one...

 

I’d recommend going for a 5700XT, I have it and can play almost any title at 1440p 144fps on high-ultra settings. Honestly much better than the 2060 super and the 2070 super isn’t much better for 100 dollars more...

 

Also did you want a new copy of windows to load onto an SSD for faster loading time?

[SoulKeeper]

This is coming from someone who recommended a $500 GPU with a $150 CPU. B450 is also only compatible if you have a previous gen chip to update the firmware.

You just throw it on a USB and flash the motherboard. You don't need to build a PC, update it, then tear it down and do it all over again. Also... $150 CPU and $500 GPU? That's...not bad. It seems like you don't know what you're talking about, considering you didn't know how to flash a MOBO, so I'd be wary of offering advice and criticizing someone next time.

 

Ryzen 5 2600 + RX 5700 ($150, $500) is a very common and very good pairing. I'd recommend dropping $50 more and getting an R5 3600 just so you'd have the option of upgrading the GPU at a later date but...that's still $200, and that's future proofing it.

https://pc-builds.com/calculator/Ryzen_5_2600/Radeon_RX_5700/0Qj14f28/ (2600 w/ RX 5700)

 

For gaming, CPU upgrades are the part with the biggest impact of a budget. 6c/12t is fine for gaming at 144hz and light multitasking. The difference between a $200 and $300 cpu (at least for gaming) is negligible. Also, MSI's MAX motherboards come updated to support ryzen 3000 out of the box.

Incorrect, the GPU has the most significant impact. An R5 2600 is $160, an RX 5700 is $500. The golden rule used to be a CPU should be 1/4 the cost of your GPU.

 

Also did you want a new copy of windows to load onto an SSD for faster loading time?

You can buy a windows 10 key off ebay for $3.

 

[s]I haven't seen it in this thread, but you could save $150-200 by going with a microATX board. 

1. Make sure it has a good VRM heatsink for reliable OC
2. These can hold 32GB of RAM, I don't see that being outdated anytime soon; but if you want to drop over $200 for 64GB of ram, you do you. 
3. Since everyones recommending mid-tower cases, a microATX would make sense.

I assume you're only going to rock a wireless card and a GPU at most, so the extra PCI-e slots from a regular ATX are redundant. Don't pay for extras you don't plan on using.[/s]

Don't spend $300 on a MOBO as said before, but disregard microATX stuff and get: https://www.newegg.com/msi-b450-tomahawk-max/p/N82E16813144267?Item=N82E16813144267

 

$200 motherboard with a 212evo and 1660

???? B450 boards support Zen 2 and B550 is right around the corner.

212evo/deepcool air coolers are perfectly fine and you'll save $100 from not getting an AIO. I rocked a $100 microATX, 212evo and a 1660 equivalent for many years. I switched over to AMD and I'm using a $30 deepcool and it's serving me very well. My only gripe is that my 212evo was old enough that I didn't have an AM4 bracket so I had to get a new after market cooler.

 

Only problem is the 1660 is getting dated, drop the AIO and save $100. With that $100 you can go from the 1660 to an RX 5700, and get a ~20% improvement. For $100, that's good; as a 20% improvement over the RX 5700 would be a 2070S - a $300 upgrade.

 

Be careful buying parts right now, some people have recommending $300 MOBOs that are normally $100. A lot of people spent their coronavirus stimulus money on PC upgrades and stocks are low, prices are skewed and being upsold.

[bat]

Incorrect, the GPU has the most significant impact. An R5 2600 is $160, an RX 5700 is $500. The golden rule used to be a CPU should be 1/4 the cost of your GPU.

 

Sorry, should've been more specific. This is the part that people tend to overspend on the most. People buy R7 or i7+ when they would've been fine with a lower tier chip or buy an X/K series when they don't plan on overclocking. It's really where you can save the most money, but for beginners it's easy to be drawn in by the high core count/clock speeds.

 

212evo/deepcool air coolers are perfectly fine and you'll save $100 from not getting an AIO. I rocked a $100 microATX, 212evo and a 1660 equivalent for many years. I switched over to AMD and I'm using a $30 deepcool and it's serving me very well. My only gripe is that my 212evo was old enough that I didn't have an AM4 bracket so I had to get a new after market cooler.

 

Ryzen comes with a perfectly adequate stock cooler, and you can even OC with it.

 

[video=youtube_share;0JRY0Ri2VoM]

[Gentoo]

You just throw it on a USB and flash the motherboard. You don't need to build a PC, update it, then tear it down and do it all over again. Also... $150 CPU and $500 GPU? That's...not bad. It seems like you don't know what you're talking about, considering you didn't know how to flash a MOBO, so I'd be wary of offering advice and criticizing someone next time.

 

Sorry I was speaking from experience here as someone who uses a B450 and had to purchase a 2600 to flash the BIOS. Since the dawn of time motherboards would not post without a CPU, which means you wouldn't be able to get into BIOS to flash it with just a USB. You are right here though, the specific motherboard he mentioned does have flashback+ which allows you to post without a CPU.

 

Ryzen 5 2600 + RX 5700 ($150, $500) is a very common and very good pairing. I'd recommend dropping $50 more and getting an R5 3600 just so you'd have the option of upgrading the GPU at a later date but...that's still $200, and that's future proofing it.

https://pc-builds.com/calculator/Ryzen_5_2600/Radeon_RX_5700/0Qj14f28/ (2600 w/ RX 5700)

 

You're right, this is a very common and good pairing, but this is not a $500 card. The 5700 is not the same as the 5700XT, it's around $100 cheaper, making this a 150/350 ratio, a lot closer to a 1:2 than a 1:4 ratio.

 

 

Incorrect, the GPU has the most significant impact. An R5 2600 is $160, an RX 5700 is $500. The golden rule used to be a CPU should be 1/4 the cost of your GPU.

 

As someone who has fallen for this meme 3 times when building a computer, I would not recommend. If you are someone who only cares about pushing the maximum possible performance for the least money, go for it, but from my experience, the user experience suffers heavily. A lot of tech channels that you may see featuring builds like this will put it up on a test bench, open a game or benchmark with nothing else, then close the program and shut down. This isn't how people use their computers, they run Discord, chrome, Spotify or whatever in the background. When you're pushing your CPU to the limits, something as simple as tabbing out is enough to cripple your computer to a crawl, sometimes even causing freezing. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or multitasking harder than most others do, but from the one Intel and two AMD builds I've used with this rule, I've had impressive performance but a hairpulling user experience.

[SoulKeeper]

You're right, this is a very common and good pairing, but this is not a $500 card. The 5700 is not the same as the 5700XT, it's around $100 cheaper, making this a 150/350 ratio, a lot closer to a 1:2 than a 1:4 ratio.

It's hard for me to talk about American prices, but here in Canada the RTX and RTX XT are the same prices. In fact, some XT's are cheaper than the regular so I refer to these prices interchangeably.

 

As someone who has fallen for this meme 3 times when building a computer, I would not recommend. If you are someone who only cares about pushing the maximum possible performance for the least money, go for it, but from my experience, the user experience suffers heavily. A lot of tech channels that you may see featuring builds like this will put it up on a test bench, open a game or benchmark with nothing else, then close the program and shut down. This isn't how people use their computers, they run Discord, chrome, Spotify or whatever in the background. When you're pushing your CPU to the limits, something as simple as tabbing out is enough to cripple your computer to a crawl, sometimes even causing freezing. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or multitasking harder than most others do, but from the one Intel and two AMD builds I've used with this rule, I've had impressive performance but a hairpulling user experience.

I've never experienced this. I've streamed Half-Life: Alyx on Discord without issue; and virtual desktop worked butter smooth while in game. I always have chrome, discord, spotify, and occasionally visual studio open on my second monitor while gaming. Keeping in mind, I'm on a 2600- if you spent $50 and got a 3600 you'd be in a very, very good position.

 

If you're struggling with discord and spotify while gaming on an AMD machine my only guess would be you have a ton of malware. AMD is built with more cores/threads specifically for multitasking.

 

Ryzen comes with a perfectly adequate stock cooler, and you can even OC with it.

The R5 stock coolers look/function surprisingly good. If you have a shitty MOBO they even contribute to VRM cooling, whereas a tower cooler wouldn't. I'm just a boomer for aftermarket CPU coolers though, which is why I can't hate too much on people who love AIOs.