First desktop spec

W

w09scottj

Member
Hi,
I’m buying my first gaming desktop, my budget for both desktop and monitor is ~£1000. I play mostly strategy games e.g. Total War, and when I have a pc that can actually handle them I intend to get games like Crusader Kings 2 and BSG Deadlock. I went on google to try to figure out what I wanted/needed/could afford and ended up with more questions than I'd started with so the specs below are a bit of an experiment and I have a few questions.

Monitor- Here I have many questions. Would 1080p/75hz be sufficient? If 75hz wouldn’t be worth it are there any good 1080p/144hz monitors and how much do they cost/which ones do you recommend, or should I really be aiming for 1440p/144hz? Would it be better to get a 1080p/144hz monitor or a 1440p monitor at a lower (~60hz?) frequency? What sort of budget would I need for a pc and monitor that could run a 1440p/144hz at high settings for these games, because if it wasn’t a ridiculous amount more I could push my budget up a fair bit.

CPU- I put a 3600 here but would the 2700x be good enough? I also considered an intel build with the 9400F. I know that the previously the AMD v Intel debate was favoured Intel for the poorly optimised Total War games but that things may or may not have changed both with AMD improving their single core speed and Total War games being better optimised. For a PC that will be almost exclusively used for strategy games and Total War is AMD still the better choice? Also would I need an aftermarket fan for any of these options?

RAM- I put 8GB here, is this enough or would I have to upgrade to 16GB soon? If I got 8GB in one stick to allow a cheaper upgrade later would that compromise its performance too much until I put a second stick in there?

PSU- Would the 450W one allow future upgrades or should I go with 550W?

Storage-This will be mostly for gaming so I don’t need a huge amount of storage, thus the 256GB ssd instead of the 512GB one that is often recommended on here.

Sorry if some of these questions are a bit stupid. At the end of the day I’m going from playing on a fairly weak laptop so anything will be an improvement!

Thanks in advance!

Case
FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B450-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2400MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1660 SUPER - HDMI, DP - GeForce GTX VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
256GB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (1900 MB/R, 1100 MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 450W CV SERIES™ CV-450 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
STANDARD AMD CPU COOLER
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS 802.11N 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 12 to 14 working days
Price: £892.00 including VAT and Delivery
 
A

apersonwhoexists

Active member
Going to at least 550W will give you much more clearance for the system, and would leave more room for upgrades, that said if you want your PC to be more power efficient, bump it up to 650W as the lower power the PSU is supplying, the more efficient it is.

16GB of RAM is practically a must for any gaming system as it will allow you to more comfortably run more programs, for example if you wanted to have Discord open while gaming your overall performance would be less impacted, and you would still have room for more programs. Another thing about the RAM, is that Ryzen CPU's perform far better with faster RAM, so a minimum speed for RAM for a 3600 should be 3000MHz to get the most out of your processor.

The monitor is up to you, if you are playing mostly strategy games that don't require much reflexes, then 75Hz is sufficient, however 144Hz is a great quality of life improvement, and will make everything look much smoother in general. Honestly, looking back, I would never want to have a 75Hz monitor, however if you only play strategy games, it shouldn't be a massive drawback. 1080p and 1440p are up to you, if you want to have much nicer looking games, 1440p is a great upgrade, but it will also require bumping up your GPU depending on the refresh rate. You would need to push your budget up by around £300+ for 1440p, both for the monitor and a GPU upgrade.

AMD is much better bang for your buck, and offers a much better platform for future upgrades as they are running on an improved architecture compared to Intel, who is lagging behind quite badly and just rehashing their old hardware, and will need to release a new architecture needing a new board, so you will not need to upgrade the motherboard as soon if you go with AMD. As for the AMD CPU, the 2700X is much better for multi-tasking, and productivity, however if you plan to only play games, and don't go too high on the GPU side of things, the 3600 will be perfectly capable and should not hold you back. Don't know much about Total War's optimisation for AMD vs Intel, but I can tell you that the 3600 is a great processor, at a great price.

If you already have good airflow for the case you won't likely need more fans, and the stock cooler for the 3600 is sufficient for most loads, but that is dependent more on the load as to how much cooling you will need.

tl;dr go to at least 550W, if not 650W, go to 16GB of 3000MHz RAM at least, monitor is dependent on what you want, 144Hz is a great upgrade though, and 1440p would require a GPU upgrade and a fair bit more expensive monitor, 3600 is perfectly capable if you're not planning to multitask e.g. stream, and the stock cooler is sufficient for most loads for the 3600, another fan is dependent on load.
 
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W

w09scottj

Member
I'm happy to spend a bit more it it will give a better experience and future-proof a bit. Plus although I play only strategy games at the moment I can't rule out playing other games down the line. If I did go to a 1440p monitor, what sort of GPU would I need, would a 2060 be sufficient or would I need to go to the 2060 super? Also roughly how much would a 1440p/144hz monitor cost? I could probably stretch to £1400 max if it was worth it.
 
W

w09scottj

Member
I'm trying to decide between the 2060 Super and 2070 Super (the next option up on PCS). Quite helpfully I found some benchmarks online for the 3600 paired with each of these cards for Total War games, which across the various testers only showed a 5-12fp difference between the two gpus . The 2070 Super is ~ £150 more on PCS and I don't think it's worth it for ~10 extra fps. Would 10 fps be that noticeable and if not is there any other reason to get the 2070 super e.g. future proofing? Also thank you for taking the time to help me, this has been extremely helpful.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
w09scottj said:
I'm trying to decide between the 2060 Super and 2070 Super (the next option up on PCS). Quite helpfully I found some benchmarks online for the 3600 paired with each of these cards for Total War games, which across the various testers only showed a 5-12fp difference between the two gpus . The 2070 Super is ~ £150 more on PCS and I don't think it's worth it for ~10 extra fps. Would 10 fps be that noticeable and if not is there any other reason to get the 2070 super e.g. future proofing? Also thank you for taking the time to help me, this has been extremely helpful.
Click to expand...
Have you got a link to those benchmarks as that doesn’t sound right at all.
 
A

apersonwhoexists

Active member
w09scottj said:
I'm trying to decide between the 2060 Super and 2070 Super (the next option up on PCS). Quite helpfully I found some benchmarks online for the 3600 paired with each of these cards for Total War games, which across the various testers only showed a 5-12fp difference between the two gpus . The 2070 Super is ~ £150 more on PCS and I don't think it's worth it for ~10 extra fps. Would 10 fps be that noticeable and if not is there any other reason to get the 2070 super e.g. future proofing? Also thank you for taking the time to help me, this has been extremely helpful.
Click to expand...
Mind linking us the benchmarks, as the 2070 super is quite an improvement over the 2060 super, so that does sound rather bizarre. Even if that is true, if you plan on playing any other game at a later date, the 2070 super has got you covered at 1440p 144 fps - obviously depends on game and settings, but its a great card for 1440p at that level of refresh rate. That said, you could always go for the 2060 and upgrade at a later date e.g. when the next series of Nvidia cards either comes out or drops in price. 2060 has got you covered for most things, but might struggle with demanding games at 1440p at pushing 144fps.

Edit, I think I may have found benchmarks you referred to, or similar to those, with a difference between 50 fps with a 2060s and ~ 60 fps with a 2070s, at ultra settings, it is definitely a noticeable difference as you will likely stutter less, however only you can decide whether you deem that to be worth the extra money. However, as far as I can see Total War is very GPU intensive, so even a 2080 Ti at max settings struggles to get about 90 fps, so with lowered settings I have a feeling you would see more of a difference, and you definitely would have a quite discernible difference in performance in other games, as the 2060 super is close to the performance of an original 2070, so you can expect perhaps 15% better performance with a 2070 super based on that.
 
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W

w09scottj

Member
Here's a few. It took me a bit by surprise too given the price difference.
www.anandtech.com

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super & RTX 2060 Super Review: Smaller Numbers, Bigger Performance

www.anandtech.com www.anandtech.com
www.overclock3d.net

Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super Review - OC3D

Introduction The Nvidia RTX cards brought Ray Tracing and improved Super Sampling to the market and there is no doubting at all that they have proved to be a roaring success. The RTX 2060 in particular has been flying off the shelves almost as fast as Nvidia can produce the Turing GPUs that...
www.overclock3d.net www.overclock3d.net

Review: Palit GeForce RTX 2060 Super JS - Graphics - HEXUS.net - Page 8

m.hexus.net m.hexus.net
www.bit-tech.net

MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Super Gaming X Review | bit-tech.net

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.
www.bit-tech.net www.bit-tech.net
It may just be a total war thing.

My problem is the 2070 Super would take me quite a way over my already increased/stretched budget, I don't really have the money. I think I'm gonna have to go for the 2060 super, accept less than 144hz on newer games, and upgrade later. Correct me if I'm wrong but with a freesync monitor having an fps lower than the refresh rate won't result in tearing or other anomalies will it?
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
w09scottj said:
Here's a few. It took me a bit by surprise too given the price difference.
www.anandtech.com

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super & RTX 2060 Super Review: Smaller Numbers, Bigger Performance

www.anandtech.com www.anandtech.com
www.overclock3d.net

Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super Review - OC3D

Introduction The Nvidia RTX cards brought Ray Tracing and improved Super Sampling to the market and there is no doubting at all that they have proved to be a roaring success. The RTX 2060 in particular has been flying off the shelves almost as fast as Nvidia can produce the Turing GPUs that...
www.overclock3d.net www.overclock3d.net

Review: Palit GeForce RTX 2060 Super JS - Graphics - HEXUS.net - Page 8

m.hexus.net m.hexus.net
www.bit-tech.net

MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Super Gaming X Review | bit-tech.net

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.
www.bit-tech.net www.bit-tech.net
It may just be a total war thing.

My problem is the 2070 Super would take me quite a way over my already increased/stretched budget, I don't really have the money. I think I'm gonna have to go for the 2060 super, accept less than 144hz on newer games, and upgrade later. Correct me if I'm wrong but with a freesync monitor having an fps lower than the refresh rate won't result in tearing or other anomalies will it?
Click to expand...
Wow, I knew total war was heavily CPU bound but that’s crazy. Yes, it is just a total war thing, check out any of the other games and the increase is around 15%. The 2070 Super is the go to for 1440p 144hz

Yes, freesync or gsync will sync the refresh rate of the monitor with that of the card so screen tearing is basically non existent.

The 2060 Super is still a worthwhile card, it’s not to be discounted. It would still be a significant leap from 1080p 144hz maxed out.
 
A

apersonwhoexists

Active member
w09scottj said:
Here's a few. It took me a bit by surprise too given the price difference.
www.anandtech.com

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super & RTX 2060 Super Review: Smaller Numbers, Bigger Performance

www.anandtech.com www.anandtech.com
www.overclock3d.net

Nvidia RTX 2060 Super and RTX 2070 Super Review - OC3D

Introduction The Nvidia RTX cards brought Ray Tracing and improved Super Sampling to the market and there is no doubting at all that they have proved to be a roaring success. The RTX 2060 in particular has been flying off the shelves almost as fast as Nvidia can produce the Turing GPUs that...
www.overclock3d.net www.overclock3d.net

Review: Palit GeForce RTX 2060 Super JS - Graphics - HEXUS.net - Page 8

m.hexus.net m.hexus.net
www.bit-tech.net

MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Super Gaming X Review | bit-tech.net

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.
www.bit-tech.net www.bit-tech.net
It may just be a total war thing.

My problem is the 2070 Super would take me quite a way over my already increased/stretched budget, I don't really have the money. I think I'm gonna have to go for the 2060 super, accept less than 144hz on newer games, and upgrade later. Correct me if I'm wrong but with a freesync monitor having an fps lower than the refresh rate won't result in tearing or other anomalies will it?
Click to expand...
Like I said, perfectly capable card for entry-level 1440p, you won't expect to max everything out and run at 144fps, but you can expect some pretty playable frame rates on higher graphics and good frame rates on lower settings. At least this way you can probably upgrade to the 3000 series when they are released and are at a sensible price, as you could probably expect some significant performance increases judging by the 2nd gen vs 1st gen - a 2nd gen 60 is about equivalent to a 1st gen 70.

I believe SpyderTracks already answered the FreeSync question quite well, but yes, FreeSync should sync refresh rate and fps up to a certain refresh rate depending on the monitor if I remember correctly.

Mind linking us the monitor you decided to go with if you are decided?
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
w09scottj said:
Not entirely sure about the monitor, the one you linked looks good. Or maybe this one if I go for a flat one:


How big is the difference between curved and flat monitors? Also I remember reading somewhere that curved monitors are only worth getting a sizes of 30+inches, is that the case?
Click to expand...
Apparently curved is more immersive for gaming but not tried it myself.

That screen is 1080p so you would t pair that with a 2060 Super really.
 
W

w09scottj

Member
:unsure: It's 1440p? Maybe the link is being odd but the description on amazon for me says 2560x1440. It's one that PCS does, it's the 11th row down in their list, the £303 option.
 
A

apersonwhoexists

Active member
One thing, you would probably be paying a bit more if you bought it from PCS, looking on Amazon, I can find it for around £270 from the link you gave me, but if you say its £303 from PCS, then you are paying an extra £30 to have it delivered with your PC. Probably a better idea to order it separately, ebuyer often has good deals on monitors if you want to save £10 or so.

Also, as far as curved vs straight screens go, on a screen that size, you will barely notice the difference when actually using it.
 
W

w09scottj

Member
Ok, this is what I've come up with. Is this balanced and generally ok?

I procrastinated a few days and it went up by £50 :mad:. I've saved a quote at this price so it won't go up again for a while but are desktop prices going to keep going up like that? i.e. should I be in a hurry to buy this before they go up even more or will it go down again if I wait a few months?
Do I need a cpu cooler? I'll be going for the highest settings I can so I'll probably end up working the cpu pretty hard. Also if I went down to 256 on the ssd to try to save some money will it really hamstring me? Most of my games are on steam so it'll be easy to move them between drives.

Will be paired with one of the 1400p/144hz monitors mentioned above if they ever come back into stock 😂

Case
FRACTAL FOCUS G BLACK GAMING CASE (Window)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.2GHz/36MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B450-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3000MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 2060 SUPER - HDMI, DP - VR Ready!
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (2000 MB/R, 1100 MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 550W CV SERIES™ CV-550 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 100 V2 Series High Performance CPU Cooler (AMD)
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 2,400Mbps/5GHz, 300Mbps/2.4GHz PCI-E CARD + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Microsoft® Edge (Windows 10 Only)
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 12 to 14 working days
Price: £1,203.00 including VAT and Delivery
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
With covid issues, stocks are likely to become more scarce and prices will be going up as shipping routes are drastically lessened so it's more expensive to ship parts over from China. It's very likely prices will keep going up over the next few months. And possibly stock shortages also.
 
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