Help building gaming pc for £700 budget

[SenMithrarin85]

Hi guys I've been asked to build a beginner gaming pc for a family friend's son. They don't want to spend more than £700 but the cheapest I would have gone for on partpicker came to £800

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/8YnvbL

Anyone suggest any changes?

[pasa]

I'd swap the ram for 2x16, but in general looks okay.

[C1REX]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/LfYGxH
Slightly cheaper with the same performance.

[A&A]

get a non X version cpu, £20 cheaper

[SenMithrarin85]

Publicado originalmente por C1REX:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/LfYGxH
Slightly cheaper with the same performance.

Don't the b450s need bios updates to support Ryzen 5000s?

[pasa]

I'd rather find the money than going for those downgrades.

[C1REX]

Publicado originalmente por SenMithrarin85:

Publicado originalmente por C1REX:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/LfYGxH
Slightly cheaper with the same performance.

Don't the b450s need bios updates to support Ryzen 5000s?

Not that specific board according to part picker.

[C1REX]

Publicado originalmente por pasa:

I'd rather find the money than going for those downgrades.

I would spend that extra £100 on more performance rather than different brand of nvme or PSU.
$100 more can give him Radeon 6800 16GB for a massive 65% performance boost.

[pasa]

sure you would pair yout 650W psu with the 6800...

[C1REX]

Publicado originalmente por pasa:

sure you would pair yout 650W psu with the 6800...

Why not?
Ryzen draws almost no power. So Ryzen 5600 + Radeon 6800 is about 400W. Enough headroom in my opinion.

[r.linder]

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/CpCXn6

Don't even have to downgrade the hardware, just the things that don't matter to performance or reliability lol

[pasa]

Headroom? No, sir, that's exactly what we call walking on the edge. gpus have that spike problem for some time.

Also, it's quite a stretch to call that ssd "same performance" in an under-rammed system serving as system drive and holding the pagefile. dram vs hmb is a thing. durabilitycut to third is also a thing.

Adding more heat to a system while reducing volume, shrinking the mobo is also asking for problems. The excel sheet may show a save or equivalence, but when you put stuff together in real life, it is a different thing. I'm pribably the biggest enemy of overspending on this forum, but a the same time cutting corners for micro saving also leads to losses.

[r.linder]

Publicado originalmente por smallcat:

尺．し工几ᗪヨ尺 , good job ! Yet i d get a better ssd along with a cheaper PSU.

There's no point in going cheaper because it sacrifices too much on quality (and I left it as is for future upgrade headroom, a cheap PSU will not handle a high end system years down the line), and KIOXIA Exceria G2 is fine, it has performance comparable to 4.0 x4 drives.

Even the older version is comparable to a 970.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/kioxia-exceria-1-tb/

[C1REX]

Publicado originalmente por pasa:

Headroom? No, sir, that's exactly what we call walking on the edge. gpus have that spike problem for some time.
.

It's more than 50% extra power from a known brand that should absorb spikes well beyond that. Are you suggesting that he must have a PSU with double the power of the system's requirement?

[C1REX]

Publicado originalmente por 尺．し工几ᗪヨ尺:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/CpCXn6

Don't even have to downgrade the hardware, just the things that don't matter to performance or reliability lol

There is a red warning about compatibility. How does a BIOS update work if the stock BIOS is not compatible with the CPU? Will the BIOS work as normal so you can update easily, or do you need a compatible CPU first to update the BIOS and then change the CPU?

[r.linder]

Publicado originalmente por C1REX:

Publicado originalmente por 尺．し工几ᗪヨ尺:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/CpCXn6

Don't even have to downgrade the hardware, just the things that don't matter to performance or reliability lol

There is a red warning about compatibility. How does a BIOS update work if the stock BIOS is not compatible with the CPU? Will the BIOS work as normal so you can update easily, or do you need a compatible CPU first to update the BIOS and then change the CPU?

It's been 3 years since the main 5000 series launched, at least 90% of 500 series boards in warehouses and on shelves are going to have updated BIOS, if not all of them.

It would be bad luck to end up with a board with a BIOS only good for up to 3000 series. PCPP only leaves the warning up because of the minute few that might end up with a board from a pre-Zen3 production run.