Anyone Else Building a PC at "The Worst Possible Time"?

ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 18:27
Last edited 26/05/2020 - 18:30

I just ordered the last part for my "Covid-19" build. With stock on lots of PC components running low and prices relatively high (due to worldwide lockdown gaming and virus-related supply-chain problems in Asia) AND the rest of Intel's full series 10 CPU line-up releasing any day, AND the next-gen Ryzens and Nvidia GPUs only 4 or 5 months away, it's not the best time to buy.

But I promised the kids, so I got back into obsessive research mode and specced out a build. With maybe even a few minor bargains.

I thought I'd post this, maybe start a support group for those of us desperate/silly enough to be doing this right now.

My Gaming Build: "La Corona"

Here's my supposed-to-be-budget-but-the-old-pc-lasted-10-years-so-probably-worth-creeping-up-a-little gaming build:

Part Which Price (inc shp)
GPU Galax RTX 2060 Super 8GB 490
CPU Ryzen 3 3300x 220
Motherboard . MSI B450M Mortar Max AM4 195
RAM G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2x8) 4000mhz CL18 140
SSD (boot) Samsung 970 Evo plus 250GB 120
PSU Corsair CXM 450W 80+ Bronze Semi-modular . 98
Case Deepcool Matrexx 55 90
Extra SSD 120GB (spare I had) 0

Total inc delivery: $1353

Why

For those who are new to this, here's why I chose these parts:

  • Why so much on the GPU? It's a gaming build, so this is the most important part for game performance.

  • Why go with Ryzen 3 3300x? It's as fast or faster than both the $300 Ryzen 5 3600 and the $260 i5-9400f in gaming benchmarks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALQ1YuBaxLs https://youtu.be/ymxUhUH-BgE?t=734

  • But why get a 4-core 8-thread, not a 6-core 12-thread? The ones around this price range (like the 1600AF) are slower in actual game performance, and the ones that aren't are quite a bit more expensive (3600x etc).

  • But everyone online says get at least 6c/12t! The 3300x benchmarks changed our tune a bit. They conclusively show that 4c/8t isn't significantly slowing down game performance yet, even in those few games that can use more than 4 threads at once. Major games that max 8 threads (and then actually slow down significantly) might be available in a few more years - or they might not. (Note that everyone predicting "you'll need more cores next year for games" was wrong every single year for the last 15 years or so. The eventual games that used 4, and then 6, cores, came out years later than we all predicted. I hope that losing streak is gradually ending, as that means better games, but I'm not betting hundreds of dollars on it. I've got a cheap upgrade path anyway).

  • Why go with a $200 motherboard on a "budget" build? The cheaper $120-$190 B450s are selling fast, and all the good ones were out of stock (B450s are in a sweet spot, and AMD just reversed an earlier announcement, so good B450 motherboards have an upgrade path for next gen ryzens coming in Q4 2020). Plus I wanted to use my 4000mhz RAM (older boards don't support 4000mhz well). Plus this one has USB BIOS update (some AM4 motherboards won't work with newer CPUs until you - or the shop - updates the BIOS!)

  • But why 4000mhz RAM? RAM overclocking actually gets significant gains in games these days. I got it in this OzBargain deal: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/539684 . Just keep in mind that 4000mhz is only a tiny bit faster than 3600mhz and even 3200mhz. I bought it because with that deal, it was around the same price.

  • Why only 250GB SSD? It's true, the 500GB is better value, twice the space for much less than twice the price. But I have plenty of storage (a NAS and a spare SSD) so I just need the OS and the 1 or 2 games I'm playing the most right now. Made sense to spend the money on getting more speed, instead, if it lasts for a decade like my current Samsung SSD has.

  • Why $100 power supply on a "budget" build? Covid has been especially brutal on power supplies. That was the cheapest 80+ bronze CPU left in stock on any vendor on pcpartpicker. I might actually post it as a bargain. If you want a PSU in the next week or two, I wouldn't hesitate too long. I had a different $87 PSU in my cart yesterday, this morning it was sold out.

  • Why that case? Full glass side, looks cool, easy assembly, roomy. This is partly a project for my kids: to build and enjoy a gaming PC under my supervision. (If you like it, just be aware, from specs, it may not include a case fan. If you don't have a spare lying around, might want to confirm and/or order one).

  • How did you get an RTX 2060 Super for under $500 in the current market!? This OzBargain deal: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/538830 . They actually honoured the price error! Thank you Umart!

  • Did you buy your Motherboard and CPU from Umart? Yeah in the above deal comments, I promised I'd get my motherboard and CPU from them if they honoured the $480 GPU deal. They did! But they had no 3300x in stock! So I bought the motherboard and case there instead. Neither was a bad deal in the current market. I reckon I still owe Umart a couple more purchases in future.

A few things I learned along the way:

  • Use PcPartpicker. Choose "Australia" and you can plan out what parts you want. It'll tell you prices from Aussie sellers and warn about incompatibilities

  • Check staticeice.com.au too. Sometimes good deals don't appear on pcpartpicker for whatever reason. At least check them just before you buy (unless stock is too low and you need to act fast).

  • Use reddit.com/r/buildapc etc. Reading discussions of people's builds will teach you a lot.

  • Watch youtube guides Nowadays a lot of the best benchmarks, assembly how-tos, etc are on youtube, as they can make better sponsorship/ad money.

  • Watch stock levels. Many parts are running low right now.

  • Beware of fanboys and sports-teaming. Lots of people online are excited that AMD is finally beating Intel in gaming performance per dollar in many scenarios! (Me too! I got one!) But it's become a problem on some places online - you'll get downvoted and accused of shilling for suggesting an Intel CPU even when it's the best part for the price and the OP's needs. Intel still wins in a few scenarios, e.g.: some very-high-end and very-low-end gaming-only builds. (And may in a couple more, if they ever release those budget series 10 CPUs and budget motherboards for them in the next few weeks). Anyway, do your homework, look at actual numbers in benchmarks for the games you play.

Over to you

What did I get wrong? Questions? Anything to add? Things you learned doing a build? Post your build?

Computing

Comments

  • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 18:32
    +5

    Just wanted to add: Thanks to OzBargainers for saving me like $200 on this build.

  • blergmonkeys on 26/05/2020 - 18:43
    +3

    450W bronze PSU seems a bit of an odd choice, to be honest.

    I'd be going at least 550W with those components, especially considering you mention wanting future upgrade paths.

    Edit: check https://seasonic.com/wattage-calculator

    You're cutting it close with about 400W usage

    • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 18:54

      Good catch. I used an online PSU calculator; load came out about 350W, and it recommended 450W, and there was a deal on one, so I just got it. I actually have a 550W corsair in another PC I can swap if I have any trouble.

      • blergmonkeys on 26/05/2020 - 19:08

        The problem is the bronze rating. You really want a gold if you're gonna go so close to max load.

    • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 20:16

      You're right, I tried the calculator you linked and got:

      Load Wattage: 346 W

      Recommended PSU Wattage: 396 W

      Recommended Power Supply:
      Seasonic Power Supply Seasonic S12II 620W BRONZE Power Supply - Available at Amazon

      I think we can ignore the recommended PSU, I think that's just the only one they have in stock with the current craziness.

      But yeah I'm cutting it a bit close with around 350W load and 400W max on a 450W Bronze PSU.

      I'll look at PSU stock again, I might even consider cancelling and get something stronger if it's not too costly.

      Otherwise I'll manage; if I do upgrade in 5 years I'll just have to watch the wattage and possibly replace the PSU.

      • blergmonkeys on 27/05/2020 - 09:04
        +1

        I have a 750w cheapo psu you can have if you want? Just need to pay shipping. Better it be put to use than sit around.

        • ItsMeAgro on 27/05/2020 - 09:28

          Thanks man! That's generous gesture and I appreciate it. But I've decided to just stick with the 450W for now.

          • blergmonkeys on 27/05/2020 - 09:39
            +1

            @ItsMeAgro: No worries, good luck with the build and enjoy the fun times with the kids! I am looking forward to nerding out with my son when he's older.

        • dcep on 28/05/2020 - 00:21
          +1

          Happy to grab it off you, if you're in Brisbane.

          • blergmonkeys on 28/05/2020 - 22:32

            @dcep: I'm in FNQ, sorry.

            I was only offering it to OP to help out someone doing something nice for their kids.

  • Nutrino on 26/05/2020 - 18:44

    Where's the tldr?….

    • Hybroid on 26/05/2020 - 18:45
      +1

      TL;DR It's a budget mid-range gaming PC build. End.

    • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 18:56
      +1

      Sorry, I thought I'd add some info for anyone else doing a similar build or wanting to do one, and got carried away.

      TLDR: There are still some OK deals to be found, and OzBargainers will help you out.

  • dcep on 26/05/2020 - 18:44
    +1

    at least the cpu/gpu/ram are bargain prices

    don't worry about the PSU , they're fine as is even if you upgrade to ryzen 4600

  • Hans678 on 26/05/2020 - 18:45
    +1

    Very nice budget build

  • slowtypist on 26/05/2020 - 18:45
    +1

    Great post mate. I share your sentiments and thoughts regarding stock disappearing - I am in the process of doing an almost identical build to you (got the Galax RTX 2060 S as well). I should really just pull the trigger on all the parts now…

  • tsunamisurfer on 26/05/2020 - 18:55

    Don't you want some more storage?

    • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 18:58

      I have a 4TB NAS and another PC for storing stuff, so I just spent my money on a faster, smaller boot SSD. I only play 2 or 3 games at a time anyway.

  • crentist on 26/05/2020 - 18:56
    +1

    Why only 250GB SSD?

    Games are massive these days, anything new will fill that up almost instantly. I say almost because you'll spend a week downloading it. Get 1tb ssd/hdd so you only have to do it once.
    A smaller drive was working for me overseas with 500mbps internet, which makes deleting and redownloading large games on a whim pretty easy. Before coming back I got something bigger just so I wouldn't have to download anything big on cruddy Aus internet.

    To show you what I mean, here are the biggest ones I'm sitting on. I don't play much, but at least it's an option.

    Hitman 2 - 150gb
    RDR2 - 115gb
    BF1 - 82gb
    Fortnite -75gb

    • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 19:18

      Yeah good point. Gears of War 4 was like 110GB too I think.

      I'd recommend most people go for the bigger sizes, it's a bit more money for a lot more space.

      But in my case I have that spare 120GB SSD, so 360GB total. And I have a NAS, and good cable NBN (Aussie Broadband, unlimited 100MBps), other PCs for storage, and I really only play a couple of games at a time.

  • dny on 26/05/2020 - 19:30

    If it was supposed to be a budget build why not go for one of the techfast deals?

    • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 20:05
      +2

      Good point. The Techfast deals are good value considering the CPU and GPU they have (the most important components for gaming performance).

      But to keep prices so low, they have to compromise on the rest of the build. Things like the speed/quality of the: motherboard, SSD, RAM, Power supply, etc.

      I didn't want to compromise on those, or have to replace any parts and sell the old ones.

      Also I had some unique circumstances: a case my kids can easily build with, no storage except that one fast boot drive (as I already have spare SSDs and hard drives).

      If you really don't want to build, they are a good option. But building your own will almost always get a better result (and is more fun for people like me!)

  • hugamuga on 26/05/2020 - 20:30
    +1

    looks good most of the things I would change come down to personal preference

    CPU: I probably would still go the 1600AF and save the $30-40, on a 2060S the framerate difference in benchmarks is close to nothing and you have planned for an upgrade later anyway.
    PSU: 450W is fine for the build but I would try and go for gold seeing as you are paying close to $100 anyway, Antec Neo Eco 500w gold seem to be pretty widely avaliable for not much over $100 atm.
    Case: obviously this is personal preference, but seeing as you chose an mATX MB I would go a smaller case to match.
    SSD: the samsung 970 is a great drive but it is incredibly difficult to notice any differences in ssd speeds, I would go a cheaper 500gb drive (like a crucial p1) at that price, its just more convenient (or just save the money).

    • ItsMeAgro on 26/05/2020 - 22:18

      These are all good points.

      I liked the 1600 AF but 3300x had significantly better single-core performance. That matters to me not just for "normal" games, but emulation too. All PC games will be playable on pretty much any CPU, from 1600AF or i3-9100f and up, for years. But Switch/WiiU/PS3/360 games? Some are unplayable on all but the fastest-per-core CPUs. Modern console emulation is even more reliant on very fast single-core performance than PC games are.

      And for family-friendly games, the very best ones are Nintendo. There's no PC games like Breath of the Wild or Mario Odyssey (though a PC like this is now the best way to play both of them).

    • seabombs on 28/05/2020 - 13:03
      +1

      I had a bad experience with the crucial P1 as a boot drive due to the way it's cache works. The 500GB has only 5GB cache when near full. Downloading games from steam in particular is a painful experience.

      https://www.anandtech.com/show/13512/the-crucial-p1-1tb-ssd-…

  • Diji1 on 26/05/2020 - 20:43

    The motherboard manual usually shows you how to put a PC together.

  • paw on 27/05/2020 - 04:08
    +1

    This is awesome, thank you very much for doing this—I got a bit of sanity back after finding out that I'm not the only one who "has" to do this during "the worst possible time".

  • tonyjzx on 27/05/2020 - 18:54

    Look at the front page. Certain components are cheap. Like cpus and memory and sometimes, ssds. So strike when the iron is hot. Buy that stuff for future use.

    I admit I often buy stuff I dont need and it tends to pile up, granted I'm in the business and can tax deduct stuff.

    Some stuff cant be easily bought on sale… eg, I dont see motherboards psus cases etc. so you need to buy judiciously. You cant win them all, sometimes you're going to buy some components at full cost.

  • azngamer on 27/05/2020 - 19:27
    +1

    Yup, building my first desktop because missus laptop is dying out of the blue.

    Wasnt too happy with the price and I am waiting for a good deal on a gpu later this year to upgrade to for my games. Ended up getting a friend's second hand gpu.

    Got the ryzen B450 starter bundle from PLE at $577. Heard good reviews with the ryzen 5 3600 and the ASRock B450 Pro4. Ram that came with it was meh.

    Samsung 860 evo 500gb SSD. I wanted a reliable SSD so was willing to pay more than a WD blue. No HDD since I do clear my data pretty well into an external when required and I hate HDD.

    Got a Silverstone ET700 700W 80plus Gold. Fully modular which I thought was cool.

    Silverstone Fara R1 in white because the misus wanted a white case. Would personally go for a black and red but white is okay in my books.

    HD 7970 for GPU. And got a wireless card. Total was $1051.

    My friends picked most of my parts since I was pretty out of touch with PC parts so I can't really provide much justification. They knew I wanted a PC could later be turned into a gaming one down the line and something valued for money. HDD was a hard no from me too.

    • azngamer on 27/05/2020 - 19:39
      +1

      I missed out on the RTX 2060 super deal for 490 by a few seconds. Was trying to calculate 1.5% with PayPal since I wasn't sure how trustworthy the shop was.

      Waa initially going to get PLE to put my parts together but was convinced to put it together myself.

      Overall, I don't think I got these at a "deal" but no regrets since I am pretty happy with the parts my friends put together and very excited to put it together.

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