I have a Dell XPS with a GTX 1080 in it and it’s getting a bit dated. I would love to build a machine. I was thinking possibly amd, as it seems better value. I figured I’ll keep my 4tb nvme drive and maybe the ram but I should probably buy everything else new.
Any recommendations or should I just mess around on pcpartpicker?
Since you’ve said the use is gaming: It’ll depend on what your price point is. Here are my thoughts:
Start with a price point. Whatever it is. Make that, or a range around that, your limit. It’s very easy to succumb to “It’s only 50 more dollars” and suddenly find yourself 20% or more higher than you expected.
CPUs: Like others said, AMD is the generally recommended CPU brand these days. X3D chips are often highly recommended for gaming, but honestly of the AM5 series are good depending on your price point. 7700X, 9700X, 7800X3D, 9800X3D are all good.
Motherboards: Motherboards: Everyone has a horror story about motherboard [brand]. Recommend checking out reviews for a specific model. One thing your want to pay attention to is the number of VRMs it has, especially if you’re thinking of overclocking.
- ASUS: Fantastic boards, legendarily bad customer service.
- MSI, Gigabyte: Okay. Neither the best features per dollar, but individual boards are okay.
- ASRock: Well-priced, basic features, robust - but a bug that bricks X3D CPUs has tarnished their image.
RAM: 32GBs is the norm for higher-end gaming these days. 64 will keep you going for a long while. Do note that AMD AM5 CPUs work best with 2 sticks, even if the board has 4 sockets. RAM with a “6000 Mhz CL30” configuration is generally considered the “sweet spot”.
PSU: There’s a “tier list” of power supplies out there. Get something A or B tiered, with some overhead over your expected wattage consumption.
Thank you.
A first step is to figure out your primary use case. Things like CPU are less generic “buy fastest one” and are starting to get more specialized. If you are a gamer vs video production for example there are different chips that will be better for each of those.
AMD is the best bang for the buck lately and a good choice.
Might be ok keeping the nvme drive but if the pc is in the same age as that GPU then you’ll likely want to upgrade the ram to match the mobo you get. Good news is that ram is one of the cheaper parts.
If you’re new to AMD and decide to go that route bear in mind that most amd mobo don’t like more than 2 sticks of ram even if it has 4 slots. Also there will be a sweet spot” for the speed of ram based on the mobo and cpu combo so give that a search.
Newer cpu and gpu get hot af. So don’t skimp on good cooling options.
New gen cpu = new ram. You’re not getting around it.
GPUs do get warm and so do CPUs but most are cooler than their previous generations. It’s still good to go with a good cooling design for the system though.
Primary use case is for gaming.
What’s your budget? What kind (DDR3, DDR4, DDR5) and how much RAM do you have that you want to keep? Do you care about SFF (small form-factor) or not, RGB or not, etc.?
My budget is about 1500. I found some recommended builds but there are always people in the comments saying it’s not good for such and such reason.
I checked recommended builds in gaming magazines, compared them over two months, swapped parts until I was pretty sure it fit my needs. I posted it here for a last sanity check then, and swapped out the PSU after that. Everything else was fine.
Also read tests regularly, and more than once for the same parts. There are some great testing sites out there.
For me the time I took paid off, in the end the PC was perfectly tailored to my needs.
What are you getting bottlenecked by? If it’s the GPU (which is most likely) I would just start by replacing that alone. I wouldn’t go all new unless you have money to burn.
Excellent time to fuck around and find out.
Make a new post with what you come to with. Give it a day for people to respond.
