Hi everybody! I want to buy a new PC to play some games. I have a RX 460 right now and an intel 6100. My brother will help me with assembling it. I want to do gaming at 1080p at 60 fps with medium to high settings. I want to play Overwatch 2 but probably also a bunch of other games.
I only have around $550 to spend and I’ll be buying the parts here in Switzerland.
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total
$535
The prices in the table are the local prices I’m paying. The case and PSU and HDD are from my current PC so they are free. I think the PSU should be ok, right? My current PC has one 8 GB stick of Kingston DDR4-2133 Memory. Should i reuse that to safe some money?
For reference a RX 6600 is around $320 and a RX 6600xt or a RX 6650xt is $400 here, a GTX 1660 is $260.
Am I wasting money somewhere or is there some compatibility issues? Like i was told that i cannot just get a RX 6500XT and use it in my old PC due to PCI 3 or 4 or something like that? I’m thankful for any help. I’m sorta new to this. Also i think there is no way to reuse the windows license i already have on my old PC, right? Like i cannot deactivate it there and activate it on the new one?
Not sure about specific prices in Switzerland.
But I would like to share a build I just did for a neighborhood kid that would like to do 1080p gaming, but has no existing computer/parts.
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total (before mail-in rebates)
$957.92
Mail-in rebates
-$20.00
Total
$937.92
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-10-13 17:24 EDT-0400
Don’t get scared by the total amount. It contains costs for case, power supply, even a monitor. The individual prices are US online and only a rough indicator.
So, I think there are some key observations about the technologies:
The main cost of your build is going to be the video card. I looked quite hard around and could not convince myself to recommend a NVidia 1650 or 1660 but picked a newer generation RTX 2060. Unfortunately, I don’t speak AMD graphics cards - the point is: find a card of current or last-gen technology. As indicator: the cost should roughly be half of the total build.
An AMD AM4 based CPU/mobo with 6 fast cores should go for roughly the same price, but is probably superior to your pick - at least for general computing
Look for faster RAM (DDR4-3200 CL16 vs DDR4-2666 CL19)
Look for a 1TB NVMe drive. This is much faster than the SATA drive in your configuration. Smaller NVMe drives make compromises that affect (typically write-)performance. Also, 1TB NVMe drives are currently price/performance leaders
Since this is not your first build (you have existing parts) I would recommend for you to take a more mid-term/long-term perspective to computer ownership. Ask yourself when you plan to upgrade to your next computer after this one. Will this configuration last until then? Or would e.g. a more expensive graphics card give you a better time horizon?
I would look for price/performance leaders in all the categories in your market (Switzerland) for current a last-gen technologies.
In my market I would in good conscience not buy DDR4-2666 memory today. I would not buy SATA SSDs. Maybe things are different in Switzerland?
Don’t purchase anything yet @whyinator; there is some BIOS incompatibility with the @jode suggestion. The motherboard he picked might need a BIOS upgrade before that CPU even posts. We might need to switch to an ASUS motherboard that will allow updating the BIOS without needing a CPU. Since this is your first build, I want to make sure putting the parts together is as easy as possible. I use a PC part picker to ensure everything is as compatible as possible. I have one question for you can your computer case hold an ATX motherboard? It might be easier to find a motherboard that ships with the correct BIOS already.
Hey.
What you can do is probably give us some website from your country where you are gonna shop from.
Cause I am saying things like 6600 is faster and cheaper than 2060 but this is US pricing. In Switzerland the pricing may be different. For example 6600 in US is 270$, in my country is 350 euros…
This is absolutely wrong. RX6500XT will have no issues what so ever running on an older system (up to a point of course), but there will be no issue with PCI-e 3 and 4 compatibility.
Things change so fast we all kinda are to some point
I am really not sure about this one…
The brand doesn’t matter at this point.
Since the budget is so limited it is all feature set we should be worried about.
Most self respecting stores should be capable of updating BIOS, so it really shouldn’t matter at all what brand it is. As long as the feature set is good and the board is not a complete trash.
I agree with @psycho_666 that motherboard Manufacture doesn’t matter when you are building a gaming PC; when it matters is when you are dealing with features that most motherboard manufacturers don’t support, like passing graphic cards to virtual machines, but @whyinator isn’t doing that. Great suggestion about the website where @whyinator is going to purchase his parts. I suggested an ASUS motherboard because it was the only manufacturer I knew that would allow flashing the BIOS without needing a CPU. I am glad most motherboard manufacturers have gotten their act together and added
flashing BIOS without a CPU to their motherboard features. Thanks, @whyinator. I learned something new today.
modern windows installs handle swapping to a new system really well. I recommend cloning the install to the ssd. but you should be able to avoid buying a new copy of windows. Also I’ve had alot of luck so far with steam in the pop OS distro. I can’t speak on that particular cpu, board, and gpu combo. but i agree with one of the other responders, PCIE 3/4 should not cause any issues. some board/bios combos required enabling compatability mode, but you have both integrated graphics and a 460 on hand so that would be a easy problem to solve.
I’m afraid I have to disagree with @Jeremy_Collins advice about cloning your old Windows installation. I have had nothing but problems installing Windows that way. So instead, I advise creating a USB installation stick and installing Windows that way. A few months back, Tom Hardware wrote an article on how to reuse your Windows key for Windows 10 on a new system for Windows 11. I am almost sure you can transfer your Windows 10 key from an old system to a new one. Of course, it will depend on your Windows key type. If you are using Windows 8, I suggest purchasing a Windows 10 key. Because today I got a pop-up from Windows 8, they are ending all support of Windows 8 this coming January.
It would be best if you never mixed different Ram manufacturers, Ram, they should be the same type and speed for the best compatibility; having said that, after you build your system and it works, you want to try using your old ram the worst thing I think could happen is either your new PC will not post or you will have issues with Windows.
Your budget is too limited to get the best bang/buck. For example the RX 6600 is 100% faster than the RX 6500 XT for just 50% more cost.
If you can’t spend more right now I recommend upgrading in steps. First the graphics card and later the CPU/Motherboard/RAM combo. Ram should be 3200 CL16. It’s still cheap, but gives noticeably better performance. For storage I can’t recommend SATA anymore. It should be an nvme drive and the sweet spot in 2022 is 1TB. Something like a WD SN570 is very fast and budget friendly.
Keep shopping around…
Possible to spotting GTX1660__ / RTX2060 / RX-_600, at more reasonable prices
The 6500/6400, are working with a 4.0 x4 connection.
It is severely gimped, with worse off implication, when applied on older tech [PCIe 3.0<]
The data input/output rate, goes through multiple halvings [leading to major fps swings]
Their is 0 decoder/encoder… In essence, this is a [glorified display adapter]
… The 6500 is further insulting, that it wasn’t designed, to operate off of PCIe power
I would wait for Black Friday, coming up in just a few short weeks, to snipe deals off AM4 if I was building now.
Regarding your current parts:
Your 430W power supply is barely able to cut it these days; I recommend a PSU upgrade. If you want to run a 6600, and you do want to run a 6600, you need something that can comfortably handle 250W power spikes on a 100W maxed CPU and still have power to spare. You can make it work for most titles but do upgrade to 650W if possible.
Don’t go for SATA SSDs for a modern system, NVMe is the way to go. SATA is only good for bulk storage these days, even with SSD drives.
The 6500 XT is terrible value for your money, stretch to an RX 6600, you’ll thank me later.
The 12100F is a bottom-of-the-barrel scraper CPU, not exactly the best value for your money.
PCIe Gen 3.0 is still fast enough to game on, and will be for the foreseeable future for both 1080p and 1440p; but not 4k.
Here is the full system spec for my recommended extreme budget gamer build in Black Friday 2022, if you remove PSU and case it just barely fits in your budget (Euro pricing):
It currently has a MSI Z170A PC MATE ATX LGA1151 Motherboard in it so that’s ATX right? So it should work.
The big one is digitec.ch . There is also brack.
The $ to swiss frank exchange rate is pretty much exactly 1 to 1 right now.
Ok so I’m as confused as before about it now… Sorry. So people disagree about whether it’s an issue? Because to me just getting a 6600 and using it in my current computer is cheaper and sounds more convenient too. But i was told elsewhere on the internet that’s a terrible idea. With the 6600 and an SSD my PC would look like this:
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-10-14 08:13 EDT-0400
It’s in the original post. Switzerland. 1080p. 60Hz.
So keep in mind that i right now have a i3-6100 and a RX 460. So my current PC gaming experience is probably best approximated by the Wii. So even a bottom-of-the-barrel scraper CPU is blindingly fast to me.
Thanks for all the input guys. This would all be a lot easier if i had like 2k to spend . Maybe i should wait for some sales.
6600 is also faster, have the full X16 slot, so even if you use your current system there will not be any severe performance penalty.
Look, if I have to give you my proper advice - don’t buy anything right now unless you have nothing. If your system is working - keep using it for a bit.
Right now, meaning by the end of the year, there will be new AMD CPUs (already released), Intel CPUs, Nvidia GPUs (4090 is already out) and AMD GPUs.
You may not buy any of those since they are quite a bit out of your price range (and mine), but they will change the market. I fully expect there to be price cuts for some older products. So if I have to buy something I will probably wait for end of year christmass sales and stuff…
At the end, if there is no price change, you can still buy a 6600 and later on when you have a bit more cash on the side, maybe look for something like Ryzen 5600X or maybe 5800X3D on some B550 board and you have full upgrade…
You may also want to check a nice large SATA SSD for games. You don’t need something crazy, but it will help speed things up compared to your hard drive. And you don’t need something huge. 500-512GB SSD is more than enough for games…
Many folks here are chasing the ever-changing best-bang-for-buck. I used too many words to ask if you can swing that. Now, let’s see what we can do in your current budget.
SATA SSD will make a world of a difference to your current setup. Also, there seems to be consensus on RX 6600 for 1080p gaming. Maybe this is a first step?
Your current CPU is quite a clunker and with only 2 cores clearly a major bottleneck in your current setup. Yes, that 12100F is much better, but still not good. 4 cores IMHO are too few in 2022 for gaming. I think you’ll find yourself bottlenecked on that CPU again before too long.
Consider going AMD 6-core on AM4 for roughly same cost as I suggested.
If budget constrained, you don’t even need the newest platform.
I think any 6-core modern CPU will do.
10400f, 11400f are still good CPUs and can be paired with a cheap mobo + DDR4 memory. I personally own a 10600k and it is plentiful for modern games.
Well my PC is technically working. But i cannot play Overwatch 2. At the lowest settings and resolutions i do get 30 fps for 2 seconds before it freezes for a split second and then repeat. So it’s unplayable.
Yes I feel like i definitely need to upgrade to an SSD for the OS and some games, independently of whether i’m getting a new GPU or not because. The. Startup. Times. Are. So. Slow.
Also i was just told above not to buy SATA SSDs anymore. That it should all be PCIE. Is that true?
If you have free m.2 nvme slots or pci-e slots, please go NVMe, but SATA is plentiful for gaming.
All the people here have your best interest in mind and I do not deny that NVMe is better. But from my experience it is not necessary.
If you find a great deal on a SATA drive, just go with it. Ans as a bonus you could stick a SATA drive in your current machine!
So even a bottom-of-the-barrel scraper CPU is blindingly fast to me.
. Maybe i should wait for some sales.