PC Pc Gaming/building thread

hornetswce

Club Legend
Nov 14, 2014
2,158
1,421
Perth
AFL Club
West Coast
Much better idea. When I first built my current system it was with a 500gb SSD and that still filled up pretty fast. 250gb would have been excruciating. Since then as the prices have dropped I have added a second 500gb and a 1TB nvme m.2. Surely it's not long now until HDDs are completely phased out.
I've ended up grabbing a 500gb nvme and 240 gb sata SSD
 
Are those Wraith Spire coolers actually any good? Remind me of the old stock coolers that used to ship. Hyper 212 is only $50 and is vertical. Going by the spread sheet the cpu/cooler/mobo/ram come as a package so I assume the Wraith is an AMD brand thing.
A Spire will keep an all core 4.2ghz overclock running without problems. The Stealth does tend to struggle, you can see the aluminium heatsink is maybe half height. All of them are 120mm fans, much better that the 80mm Intel box cooler.
Pretty good for an included cooler and actually looks decent too.

Spending additional money will keep it a little cooler but that will not translate into additional frequency.

1557808517685.png
 
Last edited:
Goldy is more familar with the AMD stuff so he will be able to tell you for sure, but as far I know there is little difference between the 2600 and 2700. 2600 is more than fine. At least with a B450 board if you find the 2600 is holding you back you'll be able to upgrade to a Zen 3 in the future. 8gb RAM isn't the sweet spot for gaming anymore either imo, even at 1080p. Some games really love to memory whore these days so at least with 16gb you'll have so much extra head room that you won't have to worry about shutting down things like Chrome or other applications if you find a game is RAM hungry.

Keep some extra pennies for more storage too. I don't know why they're bundling these 'gaming' rigs with so little storage? 250gb after an OS install is like 3 games.
Nailed it, couldn't agree more.
In almost every gaming workload out there the 2600 6 core will keep pace with the 2700 8 core no problems.
Agree on ram at 16gb.
+1 bigger SSD, I'm finding my 480gb too small now.
 
So did a bit more research today and put together a couple of builds around the same price, only difference is the CPU bundle I used from either PLE or PC Case Gear.

The PLE has more ram but comes with the Ryzen 5 CPU rather than the 7. The both have the same motherboard.

Would love to get some thoughts before I start buying stuff on the weekend.View attachment 673108View attachment 673109
Love the spreadsheet.

If you are maxed out with a hard limit on spending I would say you'll get better value from the PLE combo with the 2600 and 16gb ram.

However, if you can stretch that budget out to increase the 2700 combo from PCCG from 8gb ram to 16gb it would be preferable for say $1270ish, that's only $40 extra for 33% more cpu cores!
They might not make much difference today but in 2 or 3 years you might say I'm glad I spent the extra as games become more multi threaded..

Which bundle you choose that SSD size has got to grow!


Edit: have noticed a few other differences in the 2 combos...
PLE.
2600 6 core. -
Wraith Stealth cooler, ok but marginal. -
Aorus PRO ATX (full size) motherboard. Bit blingier and more room for additional pcie cards. ++

PCCG
2700 8 core. ++
Wriath Spire cooler. +
Aorus M mATX (medium size) motherboard. A bit less bling, no heatspreader on VRM, less room for additional pcie cards. --

I'm so torn now on which combo is better.
Both will be good.
The 8 core cpu might gain you longevity but that's less important today as AMD will support the AM4 socket on the motherboard through to Zen 4 which is 3 releases away from now.

With considered deliberation I'm leaning towards the PLE combo purely for the motherboard which will outlast either of the 2 cpus.

If you're in Perth the PCCG postage might just finalise it for you versus pick up from PLE.
 
Last edited:

hornetswce

Club Legend
Nov 14, 2014
2,158
1,421
Perth
AFL Club
West Coast
Love the spreadsheet.

If you are maxed out with a hard limit on spending I would say you'll get better value from the PLE combo with the 2600 and 16gb ram.

However, if you can stretch that budget out to increase the 2700 combo from PCCG from 8gb ram to 16gb it would be preferable for say $1270ish, that's only $40 extra for 33% more cpu cores!
They might not make much difference today but in 2 or 3 years you might say I'm glad I spent the extra as games become more multi threaded..

Which bundle you choose that SSD size has got to grow!

Haha thanks mate, i love a good spreadsheet!

This is what i have decided to go with, the computer alliance sale was a godsend!

I will order all the parts from computer alliance tomorrow and will pick up the AMD 7 bundle or try find it cheaper separately in a few weeks

I used the PC part picker system builder and it mentioned that if i use a PCle SSD in the M2 slot it disables two of the SATA points which confused me, then i realised the motherboard has 6 of them so all good!

does anyone have a reliable seller for Windows 10 64 bit on eBay?
 

Attachments

  • PC Build.PNG
    PC Build.PNG
    28.7 KB · Views: 158
Jun 25, 2011
26,795
37,643
Victoria
AFL Club
Richmond
Haha thanks mate, i love a good spreadsheet!

This is what i have decided to go with, the computer alliance sale was a godsend!

I will order all the parts from computer alliance tomorrow and will pick up the AMD 7 bundle or try find it cheaper separately in a few weeks

I used the PC part picker system builder and it mentioned that if i use a PCle SSD in the M2 slot it disables two of the SATA points which confused me, then i realised the motherboard has 6 of them so all good!

does anyone have a reliable seller for Windows 10 64 bit on eBay?

You've probably already worked out the M2 thingy, but if not then without looking up the manual for that board what it means is that if the M2 is using the PCIe lanes it will disable your SATA ports 5 and 6. However if you set it to SATA then it will disable ports 1 and 2 (I think that's right, it was something like that with my board too). It will default to the PCIe lanes out of the box so you won't have to worry about it. As a FYI you can change this from BIOS. I already had SATA SSDs in ports 1 and 2 before adding my M2 and had no issues. I did have to find it and configure/reformat it in Windows though. Actually, don't be surprised if you have any drive issues when first booting it up and installing Windows. Just keep a phone on hand so you can Google whatever messages you get as it's pretty normal stuff and just needs configuration. For example your SSD that you are installing Windows to might be set to MBR out of the box but Windows doesn't like that and you'll have to switch it to GPT (I might have that arse about?). This can be fixed in about 30 seconds from a command prompt if you Google the error message.

No advice on any reliable Windows sellers from me sorry. They're cheap and most of the time you don't hear of anyone having any issues but I've always stuck to OEM versions. Good thing about OEM Windows now is it is more portable with the digital licensing they introduced a little while ago. Normally with an OEM if you got a new computer or changed any major parts (such as the motherboard) you had to get a new license. Now you can connect that Windows OEM key to your Microsoft account as a digital license, so if you get a new computer or upgrade you can activate your OEM license on that machine from your Microsoft account and it just disables the previous machine. While it's still a lot more expensive than a key you can find on eBay at least you can get more value out of them now.
 
Haha thanks mate, i love a good spreadsheet!

This is what i have decided to go with, the computer alliance sale was a godsend!

I will order all the parts from computer alliance tomorrow and will pick up the AMD 7 bundle or try find it cheaper separately in a few weeks

I used the PC part picker system builder and it mentioned that if i use a PCle SSD in the M2 slot it disables two of the SATA points which confused me, then i realised the motherboard has 6 of them so all good!

does anyone have a reliable seller for Windows 10 64 bit on eBay?
Nice man that is incredibly good value for money and will run pretty much everything at 60fps and 1080p Ultra settings.

Windows 10 sellers on Ebay tend to come and go for some reason. My particular sub $20 copy of Windows 10 pro 64 bit is absolutely fine nearing 3 years on....

Just remember that Ebay protects you.
Failing that PayPal protects you.
Failing that your credit card provider has the right to chargeback which protects you.
It's almost risk free.
 

hornetswce

Club Legend
Nov 14, 2014
2,158
1,421
Perth
AFL Club
West Coast
Yeah I looked into the eBay windows licenses and they are more legit than I first thought.

Been heaps of fun researching, have leaned heaps. My last concern is that my case is too big for the motherboard (Micro ATX) haha
 
Jun 25, 2011
26,795
37,643
Victoria
AFL Club
Richmond
Is the case a micro or a mid or full tower? Micro ATX boards aren't a lot cheaper than ATX, if you've saved a few dollars on the other stuff maybe checkout some regular ATX boards that will have more USB ports, probably better quality VRMs among other stuff and see if you prefer it. ATX will fit in mid towers. I think MSI start coming in at the $150-200 range as well as Asus Prime. ASRock have some great value in that range, otherwise Asus ROG start coming in around the $200 I think. For most people it doesn't matter what motherboard they get though. Just make sure it packs enough features such as USB ports and case headers. As you go up in cost in motherboards it's more for aesthetics or overclocking potential.
 

hornetswce

Club Legend
Nov 14, 2014
2,158
1,421
Perth
AFL Club
West Coast
Is the case a micro or a mid or full tower? Micro ATX boards aren't a lot cheaper than ATX, if you've saved a few dollars on the other stuff maybe checkout some regular ATX boards that will have more USB ports, probably better quality VRMs among other stuff and see if you prefer it. ATX will fit in mid towers. I think MSI start coming in at the $150-200 range as well as Asus Prime. ASRock have some great value in that range, otherwise Asus ROG start coming in around the $200 I think. For most people it doesn't matter what motherboard they get though. Just make sure it packs enough features such as USB ports and case headers. As you go up in cost in motherboards it's more for aesthetics or overclocking potential.
The case is a mid, it says it fits the micro ATX board so just have to trust it haha
 

hornetswce

Club Legend
Nov 14, 2014
2,158
1,421
Perth
AFL Club
West Coast
Was going to pick up either the motherboard or graphics card today but not much on in the way of sales. May have to hold out until something pops up.
 
Back