£1200 gaming/streaming PC for GF

[Atham]

Hi,


My girlfriend wants to get a gaming PC of her own. She wil be mostly using it for gaming, some photoshop/lightroom, and streaming. She wants to be able to play most games well enough



The budget is 1200 pounds but that includes monitor, keyboard, and wifi card.


For the monitor, 24" would suffice. So either 1080p or 1440p.


If the budget permits, I am open to overclocking the computer. She has a dog, and it can get quite dusty from him, therefore a case with good filters would be a priority.


I have been out of the hardware game for a while, so I am not sure which graphics cards are currently the best for the price. She has seen the minecraft RTX and was quite adamant on an RTX card, but if there are other ones from AMD or even nVidia (e.g. 1070/1080) then she would go for that.


Thanks,


Atham

 

[grec]

There's probably better options people can give for the case but something like that might be a good starting point. The monitor is IPS and FreeSync capable so seems like a good balance of image quality and smoothness for the price.
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PDdzdm
Could save ~£100 on the GPU without losing much traditional performance with a 5700XT if RTX wasn't necessary.

 

[Dark NighT]

Actually the Nvenc encoder save's a lot of hassle for the cpu to do, i'd say you put a decent system together for that. I'd consider a tower cpu cooler so the cpu can boost longer but you wouldnt need to overclock a ryzen anyway, it does fine on its own.

 

[grec]

Actually the Nvenc encoder save's a lot of hassle for the cpu to do, i'd say you put a decent system together for that. I'd consider a tower cpu cooler so the cpu can boost longer but you wouldnt need to overclock a ryzen anyway, it does fine on its own.

This is true, though for balance I'll just add AMD also has an equivalent encoder for streaming.

 

[Dark NighT]

Oh i was not aware, thanks for updating me

 

[Atham]

I have been thinking that these cards (rtx 2070 and 5700 xt) both may be overkill for 1080p gaming at 60Hz. I have been looking at other monitors.



Regarding the motherboard, does the ASRock B450M work out of the box, or will I need to flash it? I am looking at the MSI boards, mainly the Tomahawk MAX. I will also still be needing a wifi card in that case.

 

[grec]

I think your pcpartpicker list is still on private, you do have a point about it being overkill though.

Yep the ASRock B450M will work out the box, I've had friends who've bought it just for Ryzen3000 and it came with the updates BIOS for it. WiFi cards aren't too expensive but it may be worth considering a board with WiFi anyway if you wanted things a little neater.

ASRock have a version of that board with WiFi called the B450M/Ac but it's very hard/expensive to find in the UK right now, even the mITX equivalent that my friend has is far cheaper atm(This one if you were also considering mITX).

 

[Atham]

I made the list public.

I was showing her some cases, and she likes the 110Q and 270R mid-towers from Corsair. I like them because they won't let dust and dog hair in.


Let me know what you think.


For the wifi cards, I know that MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON AC did not support gen 3 right off the bat. Does it still not support it?

 

[RobM]

About what I would get on that budget.
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/ghnrsk

 

[grec]

I made the list public.

I was showing her some cases, and she likes the 110Q and 270R mid-towers from Corsair. I like them because they won't let dust and dog hair in.


Let me know what you think.


For the wifi cards, I know that MSI B450 GAMING PRO CARBON AC did not support gen 3 right off the bat. Does it still not support it?

I think any B450M board you buy from a retailer today will have Ryzen3000 BIOS' pre-installed and definitely available online unless explicitly stated otherwise. The Ryzen3000 BIOS' came for most motherboards around April 2019. But you can also check any boards CPU support list or BIOS updates online for additional comfort: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B450-GAMING-PRO-CARBON-AC#support-cpu

Everything looks good to me though, and as Rob points out if you strictly needed it under £1200 there are also the quad core options, though it's probably worth waiting for the Ryzen 3 3300X or 3100's launch in a couple of weeks or something ish apparently if you did want that route.

 

[cooperman]

Well if it was me this is what i'd buy....if she is going to be streaming ditch the wifi.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/k73Pdm

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700 3.2 GHz 8-Core Processor (£166.40 @ Alza)
CPU Cooler: Deepcool GAMMAXX 400 74.34 CFM CPU Cooler (£30.46 @ Scan.co.uk)
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£105.00 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory (£75.48 @ Ebuyer)
Storage: Samsung PM961 128 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£44.20 @ Technextday)
Storage: ADATA SU630 960 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£93.76 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC Video Card (£395.99 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q500L ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12III 650 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£59.99 @ Amazon UK)
Wireless Network Adapter: D-Link DWA-582 PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter (£28.61 @ Amazon UK)
Monitor: BenQ GL2480 24.0" 1920x1080 75 Hz Monitor (£88.00 @ Amazon UK)
Keyboard: ADATA XPG INFAREX K20 Wired Gaming Keyboard (£29.50 @ Amazon UK)
Mouse: ADATA XPG INFAREX M10 Wired Optical Mouse (£16.10 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1183.48

 

[AlienALX]

I wouldn't buy a 6gb GPU now. Not with the new consoles having far more. In a year or so it will end up like 1060 3gb, pretty much useless. And £400? LOL.

I'd get a 5700 or wait.

 

[cooperman]

I wouldn't buy a 6gb GPU now. Not with the new consoles having far more. In a year or so it will end up like 1060 3gb, pretty much useless. And £400? LOL.

I'd get a 5700 or wait.

You cant play rtx minecraft on a 5700 ,but it is true i think the 2060 super is overpriced
you can get a 1070 around the same price but then its a slower gpu.
If the op wasnt going to be playing raytraced minecaft i'd get a 5700/xt myself (well i did found mine for £299!)

 

[AlienALX]

I gather you mean the 2070? it has more VRAM. Doesn't matter how fast a card is if it runs out of VRAM you have had it. Performance absolutely tanks.

I learned this very quickly with my Fury X cards. Once you run out of VRAM it goes to your paging file on your hard drive and performance drops by 90%. That is why the 780, even at 1080p, and other 3gb cards are theoretically useless.

Nvidia are not stupid. They know the market, and they know where it is heading. They don't dish out bargains, so the cheap cards always come hobbled with just enough VRAM. Give it two years? it's not enough any more. That is how they keep people coming back.

If we were talking about a £200 card here? fine. But seriously £400 for an entry mid level GPU that will be useless within a couple of years? yeah I couldn't do it. Not when I paid £30 more for a 2070 Super before this all began, and £360 for a 2070.

 

[cooperman]

Yep pricing is crazy at the moment but still the op wants 1080p gameing/streaming 6gbs is fine and 2 years is about when i upgrade a gpu anyway maybe waiting antill this covid crap has goneaway is a better idea but who knows when thats going to be.

 

[Avet]

I'd get a 5700 or wait.

AMD cards are hopeless for streaming. The NVENC (new) encoder on RTX cards is out of this world good. If you wanna do any kind of streaming RTX card is practically a must. AMD shot themselves in the head (not the foot) buy completely ignoring the streaming market.

 

[grec]

The 2060 Super is an 8GB card guys. Same memory config (But not chips) as an RTX 2080.

AMD cards are hopeless for streaming. The NVENC (new) encoder on RTX cards is out of this world good. If you wanna do any kind of streaming RTX card is practically a must. AMD shot themselves in the head (not the foot) buy completely ignoring the streaming market.

AMD's encoder isn't *that* bad, lots of people stream fine with Polaris' encoder, it's only like an 8% max perf. hit and presumably less for Navi. I don't stream myself but I've heard lots of good things about how easy it is to setup with the AMD drivers having built in one-click no-hit Twitch streaming and such.

I've heard NVidia's has better image quality but I thought you need to have like "Partner status" on Twitch to have exceptionally good encoding anyway.

 

[AlienALX]

Yeah that's nonsense about Nvidia being a must have. You can set up a perfectly good streaming rig on a 570.

I do stand corrected about the VRAM though. I didn't realise they were 8gb.

 

[Avet]

The 2060 Super is an 8GB card guys. Same memory config (But not chips) as an RTX 2080.


AMD's encoder isn't *that* bad, lots of people stream fine with Polaris' encoder, it's only like an 8% max perf. hit and presumably less for Navi. I don't stream myself but I've heard lots of good things about how easy it is to setup with the AMD drivers having built in one-click no-hit Twitch streaming and such.

I've heard NVidia's has better image quality but I thought you need to have like "Partner status" on Twitch to have exceptionally good encoding anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccoOGfX9qxg

 

[looz]

This is true, though for balance I'll just add AMD also has an equivalent encoder for streaming.

I wouldn't say equivalent, to the extent that in fact I wouldn't use AMD VCE at streaming bitrates. It's fine for getting raw footage for editing, though. Avet's video above says everything, for a quick conclusion go to 17:45.

In terms of a suitable graphics card I'd probably go with 1660 Super at 1080p. But 1440p monitors are becoming affordable, even at higher frame rates, so would strongly consider that route and 2060 Super for instance. Going higher has pretty harsh diminishing returns. I would avoid Navi for a streamer rig and in general due to their more unstable driver stack, black screen issues are still around.
CPU wise 3600 is the king, as Z490 motherboard prices are elevated due to bone-headed decision of including PCI-E 4.0. Otherwise 10600K could be a worthy upgrade.

What comes to RTX, the tech is barely usable with a 2080 Super and somewhat nice with 2080 Ti. Both clearly out of your budget, maybe with next generation ray tracing becomes actually viable.