Gaming desktop

[w09scottj]

Posted here during lockdown and had everything worked out but then life got in the way and didn't order. This time I'll actually get it and stop bothering the forum
Upside of the delay is that after a summer of work my budget for both desktop and monitor is now ~ £1800. Will be using for 1440p/144hz gaming with games like eu4 and Total War Three Kingdoms (thus going for the 3070 over a 3060ti). Monitor I'm planning to get is the iiyama G-Master GB2760QSU-B1.

This is what I came up with for the budget, I am aware that this is the cheapest 1440p monitor I can find, I also have a vague recollection of someone saying that the Firecuda SSD would be overkill for people that aren't doing things that involve moving massive amounts of data e.g. editing. So, would it be a a good idea for me to downgrade the SSD to the PCS version and use the ~£50 saved on a better monitor (e.g the AOC Q27G2U/bk as recommended in Spidertracks' monitor guide (~£50 more expensive than the iiyama)), or would I benefit from the Firecuda? Would I notice the difference from the better monitor?
I was also wondering about DVD drives, I want one as I do sometimes play some older games that need to be installed from a disk. I was originally looking at the Fractal Focus G case which had a slot for an internal DVD drive, but that's out of stock and the 275R doesn't have blue fan lights like the Focus, which I'm not keen on, but the 275R also doesn't have a DVD drive slot. Is there any disadvantage/reduced functionality from using an external DVD drive? As an aside if the wraith cooler that comes with the 5600x is an RGB one can the rgb be turned off/set to a single colour?

iiyama monitor: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B071JH67R8/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_2?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1
AOC monitor: https://www.amazon.co.uk/AOC-Q27G2U..._1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Q27G2U/BK&qid=16050954


Case
CORSAIR 275R AIRFLOW TEMPERED GLASS GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU (3.7GHz-4.6GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B550-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.2, 6Gb/s) - ARGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 3600MHz (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
8GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3070 - HDMI, DP
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
1st M.2 SSD Drive
500GB SEAGATE FIRECUDA 520 GEN 4 PCIe NVMe (up to 5000MB/R, 2500MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 750W TXm SERIES™ SEMI-MODULAR 80 PLUS® GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
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)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
Wireless Network Card
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 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Google Chrome™
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 13 to 15 working days
Price: £1,558.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-gen3-pc/82utXjF6Xh/

 

[Martinr36]

I can't comment on the build itself I'm not that knowledgeable, however re your question about external DVD drives, I have 2, 1 for the desktop and one for the laptop (both from PCS) and they both work fine, the one that came with the desktop requires 2 USB ports (from what i can make out it uses 1 for power & the other one for power & data), the one that came with the laptop only uses one port.

 

[w09scottj]

Great! Thank you both, that's helped a lot! One quick final question; are the upcoming amd gpus likely to be much better than the nvidia 3000 series/should I wait for the amd 6000 release, or is there unlikely to be too much difference? At the moment all the benchmarks for total war + driver issues seem to give nvidia cards the edge, is that likely to change?

 

[SpyderTracks]

I don't know enough about the new AMD cards to say which will be better. @SpyderTracks or @Scott Any thoughts on this please?

We don’t know anything for sure yet as there aren’t any 3rd party reviews until the 17th or 18th, BUT, given that AMD downplayed the capabilities of their new CPU’s, from what AMD are telling us, then yes, we’re expecting better performance than the 3000 series nvidia cards.

The questions everyone has are:

How does ray tracing perform? This is a first gen product for AMD, they do have hardware level ray tracing cores but we’re not expecting the same level of performance compared to nvidia who are on second gen ray tracing tech.

BUT, given that the new XBOX and PlayStation are both on AMD GPU’s and what we’ve seen on PlayStation, the ray tracing looks pretty superb, this may also be a pleasant surprise.

Also AMD’s answer to dlss? They do have something in the works but won’t be available until after launch:

AMD's DLSS alternative won't be ready to rival Nvidia until after launch

The picture of Big Navi and its ray tracing potential is becoming clearer.

www.pcgamer.com

And lastly, given the problems they had with drivers on RX5000 series, are they capable of supporting the cards with drivers. I personally think that they will have focussed very heavily on this.