MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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I'm toying with the idea of getting my dad a new PC so he can play Flight Sim 2020 and Elite: Dangerous. He's been retired for a few years now and while he's reasonable active he's been spending A LOT of time in the house as a result of Covid and being in the "at risk" category. He plays a lot of Flight Sim 2004, has all the flight controllers, throttles, etc. but his PC is a Pentium II so I doubt it'll even run Windows 10, never mind any game from the last 15 years. I think something that will comfortably run FS2020 will make the coming months a bit nicer for him. Doesn't have to be a ridiculous hyper gaming PC, 1080p, 30fps+ is all I'm after. Budget somewhere between £500-800 I guess.
I'm thinking:
Ryzen 3 3300x CPU, GTX 1660 Super GPU, 16GB RAM, some kind of SSD for the OS and a SATA 1TB for games & storage.
Am I overestimating the capabilities of that CPU/GPU combo? And what motherboard should I be looking at? Any tips at all, as I've never built a PC before.
The 1660 Super looks like it will cope with FS @ 1080p at over 30FPS on medium settings. Below shows some comparison results, though it's with a much more capable CPU.
That said, I can't see the 3300X being a bottleneck at those sorts of framerates so would expect it would be a good budget combo.
For the mobo, you'll probably be fine with an A520 chipset, but perhaps a B550 would offer up more features depending on what you need.
Tip would be to use PC PartPicker to check compatibility of all the components and find the best prices across a number of stores. They also have some recommended set builds at different price ranges so are a great starting point for specifying your own build.
Finally, AMD are launching there newest CPU series in a week or so and that may impact prices of the 3300X although they are not replacing that level of model at the moment. They are also launching a new GPU series but again not expected to be at the budget end but could still affect prices. Hopefully both will see prices for what you are looking at drop so it may be worth waiting a few weeks.
I seem to remember reading FS2020 runs better on 6+ cores, so I'd aim for a Ryzen 3600 (£170) over the 3300X. I use a MSI Mortar Max B450 (£80) mobo for one of my Ryzen PC's. Ticks all the boxes for a smallish MATX build as long as you don't want WiFi. Ram is cheap at the moment, aim for 2x 8GB 3200mhz C16 sticks (£55ish). Don't skim on the PSU, I always aim for something gold rated from decent brands. 500W+ is fine.
Another vote for the Ryzen 5 3600 - just slotted on into my daughter's build and it's quick for the cash.
Cheers. I guess I can up the budget for a Ryzen 5. What's the difference between a £80 B450 motherboard and a £100 B550 motherboard?
I needed more than 16gb of ram to run at the highest graphic settings, but with 32gb I run it fine on my quite old graphics card.
Slight hijack but ive been offered some pc parts after a friends upgrade. They are:
Intel i5 4690k
MoBo Gigabyte z97x gaming 3
Overclocking 4.3Ghz
8gb corsair 2133mhz ram
Will this be fun to play games on? Or will be a waste of time and money and i should get something more contemporary?
Thanks
Ian
How many RAM slots are there available on the motherboard, I'm assuming it's DDR 3?
If you can get it up to 16GB of RAM and put in a cheapish graphics card (like a 1060) it'll be fine for 1080P gaming.
But there are other bits you'll need, like a SSD/HDD, power supply, case...
I built a basic 1080p gaming PC for a mates wife for lockdown with an i5 of that generation, 16GB of ram and a GTX 1060 3GB graphics card and it'll run stuff like IL2 Sturmovik Great battles fine at 1080p.
Cheers. I guess I can up the budget for a Ryzen 5. What’s the difference between a £80 B450 motherboard and a £100 B550 motherboard?
Naff all, I would say. look at the feature list, one particular brand/model may have built in wifi or a better audio chip or something you like.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3582-amd-chipset-differences-b550-vs-x570-b450-x470-zen-3
I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to choosing Motherboards..
Do I want to overclock? if no, get the cheapest big name brand board you can find for your chosen CPU.
Reasons for getting a more expensive one? does it have usefull features to justify the additional price?
I tend to favour gigabyte these days as they have a UK return/repair center.
It make me cringe when I see people buying £150+ boards for standard builds.
B550 supports PCIE-4, but that shouldn't make a difference for your planned use (PCIE-4 SSDs are more expensive and won't show much benefit in normal usage).
Also not all B450 boards will support the new 5000 series processors, but again only an issue if upgrading will be looked at in the next few years.
Basically, I'd save the £20 and spend it on a bigger SSD. If you can get Flight Sim on the SSD rather than HDD then I would imagine (I've not checked) it will load a heck of a lot quicker for a better experience.
Sweet, so B450 and a 1TB SSD rather than SSD and SATA. I'm assuming I can partition the SSD like a normal drive?
Yeah you can but not sure there is a need.
If you knew my dad you'd understand 😅
If I can tell him "don't touch C: drive" my life will be easier
Yeh I'd get an SSD/M.2 big enough for windows and normal apps, plus flight sim, which comes in a quite a heft 150gb.
Decent internet is also a consideration as I belive the game relies quite a lot on downloading things whilst you are playing, real time weather and things like that.
A normal M2 (fits in slot on motherboard) or SATA (traditional data cable + power) SSD is fine btw. There is very little performance increase using a more expensive NVME drive for normal and gaming use.
A normal M2 (fits in slot on motherboard) or SATA (traditional data cable + power) SSD is fine btw. There is very little performance increase using a more expensive NVME drive for normal and gaming use.
Yup - this video is quite enlightening, although new gen4 pcie SSDs can theoretically load games and big open world maps a lot faster for (a bunch of techinical reasons), it relies on tech thats either not out yet, or very expensive and games that are optimised to use it, so it's all 'in theory, maybe in future'. Basically it's a concern for when you upgrade in a few years, not now.
@breninbeener that will play stuff no bother but you will still need a graphics card. Worth it for a cheap upgrade though.
My post was below your original one, but I didn't use the @ function 😉
"How many RAM slots are there available on the motherboard, I’m assuming it’s DDR 3?
If you can get it up to 16GB of RAM and put in a cheapish graphics card (like a 1060) it’ll be fine for 1080P gaming.
But there are other bits you’ll need, like a SSD/HDD, power supply, case…
I built a basic 1080p gaming PC for a mates wife for lockdown with an i5 of that generation, 16GB of ram and a GTX 1060 3GB graphics card and it’ll run stuff like IL2 Sturmovik Great battles fine at 1080p."
Well I'm running a QX6850, 8gb ram and a 2gb HD7850, that's letting me run most games on lower settings. If you paired that with a 6gb 1060 that would probably be good enough and cheap enough. No idea what that kit is actually worth but it was the go to at the time, yesterdays Ryzen 5 if you like.
So I've figured out a build, Ryzen 5 3600, GTX1660S etc. and managed to come in at around £680 delivered. That's pretty much the max I could get away with spending so my next question is should I just buy now or is the 3600 CPU likely to be significantly cheaper after the new 5000 series CPUs are released?
Can't be sure but it's unlikely to come down until a 5 series equivalent is released which won't be this year.
The lowest 5 series is the 5600X and it's RRP is a fair bit above (~£90) what the 3600 is currently selling for.
No probs. I've actually just seen a steal of a deal and got the CPU and motherboard for £239. Between that and then finding out I had a random £314 PayPal balance that I'd forgotten about the whole thing has actually cost me about £350. Bonus!
All being well it'll be built up over the weekend of 7-8 November and my dad will be flying himself to the Maldives or dive-bombing Ladybower or whatever else he does soon after.
Thanks for the advice all.