I'm interested in buying my first gaming PC for FPS gaming, need advice

Tech Talk
1

So I’m Interested in buying my first gaming PC specifically for FPS gaming so I need advice.

I’m only interested in the PC brand/Case, specifications/gpu needed and a decent 144HZ monitor, but if a 144HZ monitor exceeds my budget I can settle with a good 120HZ monitor. The keyboard, Mouse and headphones are not an issue right now. My budget is £500 to £700 which is roughly $650 to $900.

Regarding the types of games I want to play I’d say Quake Champions, Apex Legend are at the top of my interests, so the specs should cover every other FPS out right now.

The other reason why I want to get into FPS gaming PC is because I’m being given a budget to start a gaming internet Cafe at the end of next year in another country, so I need an understanding of what to buy in bulk.

What would you guys recommend?

2

To be honest, $650 for a new PC and monitor is going to be tough.

3

How about $900 max?

4

That’s is doable.
$650 for just a Desktop is fine.

As for the internet cafe, I would avoid any liquid cooling like AIOs as they are more trouble than it’s worth in large numbers. Also look into “security screws” for PC cases .

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5

I thought I might need the water cooling for the Internet Cafe because the country I’m going to has a really hot climate. So its the heat being generated from the CPU/GPU that I should be worried about and not the additional external heat from the weather that shouldn’t effect it, right?

6

Your ambient room temperatures do more for you than the water cooling.

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7

It looks like getting all of the parts to build a P.C. seems almost doable on a $900 budget. The trick would be to skimp on the motherboard. M.S.I. 400 series motherrboards have a B.I.O.S. flashback button which allows you to update the firmware without needing an older processor, and they have firmware available to add Ryzen 300 support. This enables you to get older and cheaper B450 motherboards instead of the newest $160+ X570 motherboards.

These parts cost $693 altogether going mostly by Newegg’s shown M.S.R.P., and the C.P.U./G.P.U. combination runs at 145.2 F.P.S. average at 1080p on medium settings. You could scale back to a Ryzen 3 3200g, the entry level processor, which costs $100 and still exceed 120, but I do not see any low budget 120hz monitors and it bottlenecks the G.P.U. anyway.

The Sceptre C248B-144RN costs $150 and happens to be Amazon’s Choice for a 144hz monitor, but if you would rather not buy from the budget company, then I think Ben Q is pretty trusted and their Zowie XL2411P e-sports monitor only costs $200, which is a price that still keeps you within the $900 budget. Personally, I would prefer to go cheaper since I anticipate some big things happening with monitors in 2020, but then again who really knows what the future may bring?

Well, besides Black Friday next month. Yeah, that happens in Britain

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8

Thanks
I’ve decided to increase my budget to £1000 which is roughly $1250 for the case/gpu/ram. I don’t really want too many restrictions, would that make much of a diffrence from $900?

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9

a $350 difference in price is a lot when it comes to building a PC. I can link a Pcpartpicker list soonish that will probably be better than the parts you’ve already picked. In order to tailor the list towards what you’re looking for, I do want to ask a couple of things.

1.) What resolution are you targeting? Are you targeting 1920x1080 or 2560x1440?
2.) Are you wanting all peripherals as well, or just the case and components? By all peripherals, I’m talking about things like the monitor as well as any keyboards or mice.

Also, most motherboards sans current X570 ones will need a BIOS update to properly run Ryzen 3xxx series processors. You may luck out and get a B450 board already updated to work with them, but if you’re wanting it to work out of the box; I’d recommend a X570 motherboard.

My PCPP List:
PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/9qbJV7

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor ($194.79 @ OutletPC)
Motherboard: Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard ($189.39 @ OutletPC)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory ($84.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Toshiba X300 4 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($109.88 @ OutletPC)
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 8 GB RED DRAGON Video Card ($359.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair Carbide Series 275R ATX Mid Tower Case ($89.98 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Cooler Master MWE Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($89.99 @ B&H)
Total: $1179.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-20 20:15 EDT-0400

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1.) What resolution are you targeting? Are you targeting 1920x1080 or 2560x1440?
2.) Are you wanting all peripherals as well, or just the case and components? By all peripherals, I’m talking about things like the monitor as well as any keyboards or mice.

1.) A second hand monitor with a resolution of 2560x1440
2.) $1250 for just the case and components, I’ll probably buy all the peripherals second hand.

11

That is much better than what I originally suggested, but under a very different set of parameters. I went by M.S.R.P. since I am not sure what offers are available in Britain, and I anticipate prices being tighter there due to differences in how taxes are applied and had to put some aside for the monitor. However, if I had $1200 pre-tax (or tax-free) dollars to spend on just the computer right now, with discounts included, I might be considering something more like this.

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600X 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor $234~
  • ASRock X570 PHANTOM GAMING 4 WIFI ax ATX AM4 Motherboard $150~
  • Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2400 Memory $60~
  • ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $60~
  • Asus GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB STRIX GAMING OC Video Card $530~ base value -$100 Promo
  • Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case $75~ base, -$10 discount
  • Gigabyte 750 Watt 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply $70~

The total base price is about $1180, and there are $120 in discounts and rebates according to P.C. Part Picker. You might have to apply those savings towards a retail Windows 10 license though, come to think of it, unless you already have a retail version of Windows with activations left. The O.E.M. version is cheaper, but it is meant to be strictly for resellers, is tied to a single computer and lacks tech support from Microsoft.

Yeah, it is the same R.A.M. I suggested before, but do note that R.A.M. speeds do not significantly impact gaming performance. You basically want the cheapest matched R.A.M. that you can get from a reliable company, until you get to the point where you do not need any more, and faster R.A.M. is the only upgrade you can afford with your remaining budget. I would think that C.P.U. and G.P.U. upgrades should be more significant, which is why I focused the budget into upgrading those.

Regarding the A.M.D. RX 5700 Mikeohara recommended, it is a well performing card for the price, but something you might want to keep in mind when choosing between A.M.D. and Nvidia is Ray Tracing. Only a few over a dozen games support that right now, and the games Sexperienced specified are not among them, but there are a few noteworthy titles which do support that which you might be interested in playing, notably including Doom Eternal; Battlefield V; Wolfenstein Youngblood; Watchdog: Legions; Shadow of the Tombraider; Call of Duty: Modern Warfare; a planned update to Minecraft and a remaster of Quake II which has a free demo.

If you want to take advantage of the technology now, then you need a Nvidia card and preferably one from the RTX series which has dedicated cores for it. If you can wait for a future G.P.U. upgrade then the RX 5700 would probably be the best bang for the buck if you want to put aside some extra money.

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12

Ray Tracing isn’t worth it in its current form. Only a handful of games support it and it tanks frame rates. I would recommend waiting on it until it more widely adapted and optimized. Don’t future proof with 1st gen hardware.

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Well, that wasn’t the only thing I was considering: The 2070 is almost as as good as the A.M.D. RX 5700 XT (the next model up from the basic RX 5700), and that was an overclocked variation of the 2070.

Nevertheless, is fair enough advice. It is also a case against the X570 motherboards though, since the main feature of those, besides stock compatibility with Ryzen 3000 C.P.Us., is P.C.I. Expresss 4.0, but P.C.I. Express 4.0 is not useful for playing games at this point in time because current games do not even saturate the P.C.I. Express 3.0. bus, so it would be better to put the cash into use in the here and now. By the time we are looking at cards which can do that, we might want to upgrade the motherboard anyway. Also, that promo offer is over anyway and I doubt that card is worth the price since the newer RTX 2070 Super would probably be much better, so it is back to the drawing board.

I have been browsing United Kingdom based websites and I think I have a better sense of what we can actually bought there on this budget.

I would probably try my hand at the M.S.I. Flashback+ feature I mentioned earlier instead of going with the bundle for more significant savings, since it simplifies the process and eliminates the requisite of another processor, but that bundle is a considerable option if you are squeemish about performing the B.I.O.S. update yourself.

Before I begin, you may want to shop around for a good deal on a Windows license and use any savings you might find to consider other options, but for budgetary purposes I am going to assume full retail value which is £120 from Microsoft. I would advise getting the U.S.B. installation media if you do that, since it is free and saves you the trouble of making your own from the download.

The Build

Now it is time to start listing off components: Most of the good deals, including the Aforementioned Biostar motherboard seem to be at ebuyer. They do have a shipping charge, but it is only a small amount. The total shipping cost for this order is £3.49:

The prices at Amazon do also good. They have the better price Ryzen 5 3600x, and there are a some items of special interest:

The total cost of the system is £1002 based on present offers.

Thoughts and Alternatives:

So it is technically over budget; so sue me. I considered some concessions to try and fit the budget strictly, but none of them seemed too great. Giving the system a smaller case or a lesser P.S.U. would hamper the ability to expand later, and having just a 500 gigabyte S.SS.D. might seem a little cramped and these were the most affordably priced components for the given specifications I could find. The 3000 hz rated Patriot R.A.M. is also cheaper than the 2400hz Corsair LPX, which costs at least £60 and happens to be the next cheapest option.

The A.D.M.I. Motherboard/C.P.U. bundle solves the problem of not having the processor working straight out of the box, if that is of importance, since the B.I.O.S. is preloaded and the bundle is assembled and tested before you get it. It is a nice service, which admittedly costs more than the cost of the individual parts, but it still adds up to less than what an x570 motherboard with the same C.P.U. would cost separately. Most of the x570 motherboard prices I could find were £150 or higher, and the cheapest I could find is this £120 Biostar X570GT, but there are only a couple of those in stock and they still break the already broken budget.

For reference, the cosst of a Ryzen 3600x C.P.U. is £211 off of Amazon, so the savings are not very large if the Biostar board is available. Something to consider is dumping the H.D.D. if you do not anticipate filling up the 500gb S.S.D. very quickly. Then you could get the biostar motherboard and have a little cash leftover to buy some other components, and have about 27.50 to buy or upgrade some other components. This Ziyituod PCIe WiFi Card, Wireless 1730Mbps Bluetooth 5.0 PCI Express Network Adapter £27 fits nicely into that sort of budget if you need wireless connectivity, or you could buy the cheaper £17 model and add this £9 D.V.D. reader for instance. Yeah, it might seem anachronistic at this point but you never know when you might need to install something like an old game or the odd driver stuck on disc or boot up from a D.V.D.

A.D.M.I. also have an equivalently priced offer with a Gigabyte B450M-S2H motherboard. I am not sure which is better, so I listed the more popular model. Compare the specs for each board at their respective webpages: Gigabyte B450M-S2H and ASUS Prime B450M-K M-ATX

The slightly more pressing matter is that as Micro A.T.X. boards they are made to be smaller, so they can fit into smaller cases if need be and as such have fewer expansion slots 'n such when compared to regular sized boards, but I would imagine that the extra slots generally go unused, although it can be annoying when a double wide G.P.U. blocks one of them off.

Also, on a final note the AvP Storm case looks decent for the price, but if you can free £15–£35, you might want to look at cases in the 35–55 price range. Something like a BitFenix Nova, The Bitfenix Neos or the Corsair Carbide 200r. The case is the part which depreciates the least with regard to its functionality, so it is probably the part you are going to keep the longest so it is worth investing into something well designed that is easy to work with and aesthetically pleasing, since it is the part that will be seen the most often. Multi-colored but otherwise matching cases can also look nice in some settings

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14

The RX 5700 XT is a $100 less than a 2070. I don’t think the price difference makes the 2070 a good value when the performance is negligible between the two cards.

15

A few weeks ago, literally a day before I posted this thread someone recommended me the following, is it worth it? I’m just now comparing it to what you guys suggested I should get:

Cost £1110 ($1440)

New Alienware Aurora

Processor
9th Gen Intel® Core™ i5 9400 (6-Core, 9MB Cache, up to 4.1GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology)

Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64bit, English, Dutch, French, German, Italian

Video Card
AMD Radeon™ RX 560X with 4GB GDDR5

Memory
16GB Dual Channel HyperX™ FURY DDR4 XMP at 2666MHz

Hard Drive
256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)

Extended Service
1Y Collect and Return Service

Extended Service
1Y Premium Support and Onsite Service

Accidental Damage Support
1 year Accidental Damage Protection

Wireless
802.11ac 2x2 Wireless, WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1

Optical Drive
No Optical Drive

Keyboard
Multimedia Keyboard-KB216AW - UK (QWERTY)

Mouse
Optical Mouse MS116AW

Microsoft Application Software
Microsoft® Office 30 Day Trial - Excludes Office License

Protect your new PC
McAfee® LiveSafe™ 30-day trial

Base
Alienware Aurora R9

Chassis Options
Dark Side of the Moon chassis with Low-Profile Smart Cooling CPU Heatsink and 460W Power Supply

Driver
Wireless Driver for Dell 1810/1820

Cable
UK Power Cord

Documentation/Disks
English, French, German, Italian, Dutch Shipping Docs

Bundle
D00AWR901

Documentation
No Warranty Tech Sheet Required

Order Information
Dell Order Information

Retail Packing Label
Not Selected in this Configuration

Packaging
AW Aurora R9 Shipping Material including Placemat

FGA Module
Custom BTO Configuration

Optical Software
Optical Software Not Included

Retail Information
Not Selected in this Configuration

Processor Label
Intel® Core ™ i5 Processor Label

Non-Microsoft Application Software
Additional Software

Regulatory label
Regulatory Label for 460W

Operating System Resource Media
OS Media Kit Not Included

16

If your not willing to build a pc its not bad, if you are then no. Building a PC is easy to learn, you don’t need a degree just some understanding of technical terms and time to learn. On second hand parts alone you could spend £600 and have a gaming rig.

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17

I personally wouldn’t use Alienware for a pre-built. If you’re looking more towards pre-built systems, go with something like NZXT’s BLD service.

Reason I say that is I’ve worked for Dell in one of their troubleshooting departments back in the early 00s, and now they’re outsourcing everything to Bangalore or the Caribbean to handle Tier 1 support. I do also understand that the service is also primarily based in the US, but they handle everything in-house as far as warranties go.

Edit: I’m sure that @Darksakul will have more to add on this topic as well.

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18

Also I would not go with alienware as there better companies to go with for the value of your buck.

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19

Alienware thinks itself as a premium brand and will overprice their products. You can probably get a machine with similar specs for cheaper from a competitor

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20

Ok, I’ll avoid Alienware and build it myself.

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