Hello all. It looks like I'll be getting a somewhat larger tax refund this year than I was expecting, so I've been thinking about trying to build a new PC for general purpose use and moderate gaming. I built my current PC way back in 2009 (yikes!) and while it has served me pretty well and I can still play a surprising number of relatively recent games at low quality, it's getting quite long in the tooth and experiencing some occasional problems. I'm looking to put together a reasonably nice but still budget-oriented PC to browse the web, use general office apps, watch Netflix, and play the occasional game at decent quality levels. I'm sure anything I put together will be a huge improvement over what I have now. I will not be streaming, rendering, encoding, mining, or doing anything else particularly computationally intensive. In theory it could be interesting to mess around with overclocking at some point, but I probably won't bother for the time being. I do not care about RGB lighting or similar gaudy crap *at all*. I'm hoping to get some comments on my components list or at least a general confirmation that I'm on more or less the right path here.
My current PC, built in 2009:
- AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz CPU
- Asus M4A78T-E mainboard
- 12gb DDR3 RAM
- EVGA GeForce GTX 680 (2GB)
- EVGA SuperNova G2 550W PSU
- 1GB WD Black 7200 RPM SATA HDD
- Lian Li PC-7B Plus II case
- Budget Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and mouse
- NEC MultiSync 20WMGX2 20.1" 1680x1050 IPS LCD Display
- Windows 10
Either the motherboard or CPU seems to be slowly dying, as I get very occasional BSODs and all the USB ports seem to crap out for a couple seconds every once in a while before turning back on again. As this trips my wireless network connection, it's pretty irritating. The GTX 680 was a gift from a friend about 2 years ago, and I purchased the PSU around the same time to replace my previous one as it was either dying or not sufficiently powerful to supply the new graphics card. I intend to re-use the PSU in the new build. For the short term, I will also probably re-use the GPU and the display, though the display is now extremely old (c. 2007). It was a very nice product when I bought it way back when, but I'll look into replacing both of these items at some point once I get the new PC up and running.
My tentative parts list for the new PC:
- AMD Ryzen 2600 CPU w/ Wraith Stealth Cooler - $165
- Gigabyte B450 AORUS Pro WiFi - $120 *or* MSI B450 Tomahawk - $110
- 16 GB (2x8) DDR4 3000 or 3200 RAM from Corsair, Team, G.Skill, etc - $90-105
- MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro M.2 PCIe 480GB SSD - $100 *or* Corsair Force MP510 M.2 PCIe 480GB SSD - $115
- Fractal Designs Focus G midtower case - $54
- New Windows 10 license? Not sure how this works
The Ryzen 2600 appears to occupy the value-for-price sweet spot right now, so that seemed like a good choice for CPU. I'm not totally sure about the mainboard - both the Gigabyte and MSI models I listed above have received good reviews, and neither are particularly expensive, though the Gigabyte seems a little nicer in general. As I use WiFi and my current adapter is old and possibly flaky, I also *will* need either built-in WiFi or to buy a separate USB wireless adapter, so for a couple bucks more the Gigabyte model is attractive. I'm not too concerned about the RAM - I figure if I purchase 16GB of at least 3000MHz DD4 from a reputable manufacturer I should be fine.
As mentioned, at some point in the not too distant future I'll probably want to upgrade both the GPU and display, but that's another good-sized chunk of change and I think I'll be OK for another 3-6 months at least. As far as GPUs, the Radeon RX 580 8GB seems decent and reasonably priced at $200-200. I don't really know much about displays but a 24" 1080p or 27" 1440p IPS/MVA display seems like it would be in the right neighborhood. Any display suggestions for the future would be appreciated.
As far as some of the other items, I'm replacing the case because my existing one is really old, dirty, and hard to work in, and the Fractal Designs budget Focus G line seems nice for the price. I'm not totally sure what the best SSD option is but I have heard good things about NVMe drives so I thought I would try to buy one of those. The Corsair and MyDigitalSSD units have newer controllers and have received good reviews. I will also probably continue to use my existing 1TB HDD as a data drive, but it occurs to me that it is going on ten years old at this point and might not have much life left in it. Would it be silly in 2019 to buy a new 2TB physical HDD for data? The larger SSD drives seem kind of expensive, but maybe a cheap and large SATA SSD is the way to go here.
I also will need to replace my existing keyboard and mouse at some point as my current ones are quite elderly, grody, and aren't particularly responsive anymore, but I really have no idea as to good value choices in this area. If a decent but entry-level mechanical keyboard is available, I might consider that.
Again, I will reuse my existing EVGA G2 550W PSU, which works fine and should be more than sufficient for this build.
I'm not really sure how Windows licensing works but I do own a legitimate Windows 10 key (originally a Windows 7 Pro installation on DVD) and was hoping to transfer it to the new PC. I do not intend to use the old PC after I build the new one.
Any comments or suggestions on this prospective build would be much appreciated! As it stands, I think I'm looking to a move to a *much* faster, more stable PC at a relatively low price. Thanks very much!
My current PC, built in 2009:
- AMD Phenom II X3 720 2.8GHz CPU
- Asus M4A78T-E mainboard
- 12gb DDR3 RAM
- EVGA GeForce GTX 680 (2GB)
- EVGA SuperNova G2 550W PSU
- 1GB WD Black 7200 RPM SATA HDD
- Lian Li PC-7B Plus II case
- Budget Microsoft ergonomic keyboard and mouse
- NEC MultiSync 20WMGX2 20.1" 1680x1050 IPS LCD Display
- Windows 10
Either the motherboard or CPU seems to be slowly dying, as I get very occasional BSODs and all the USB ports seem to crap out for a couple seconds every once in a while before turning back on again. As this trips my wireless network connection, it's pretty irritating. The GTX 680 was a gift from a friend about 2 years ago, and I purchased the PSU around the same time to replace my previous one as it was either dying or not sufficiently powerful to supply the new graphics card. I intend to re-use the PSU in the new build. For the short term, I will also probably re-use the GPU and the display, though the display is now extremely old (c. 2007). It was a very nice product when I bought it way back when, but I'll look into replacing both of these items at some point once I get the new PC up and running.
My tentative parts list for the new PC:
- AMD Ryzen 2600 CPU w/ Wraith Stealth Cooler - $165
- Gigabyte B450 AORUS Pro WiFi - $120 *or* MSI B450 Tomahawk - $110
- 16 GB (2x8) DDR4 3000 or 3200 RAM from Corsair, Team, G.Skill, etc - $90-105
- MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro M.2 PCIe 480GB SSD - $100 *or* Corsair Force MP510 M.2 PCIe 480GB SSD - $115
- Fractal Designs Focus G midtower case - $54
- New Windows 10 license? Not sure how this works
The Ryzen 2600 appears to occupy the value-for-price sweet spot right now, so that seemed like a good choice for CPU. I'm not totally sure about the mainboard - both the Gigabyte and MSI models I listed above have received good reviews, and neither are particularly expensive, though the Gigabyte seems a little nicer in general. As I use WiFi and my current adapter is old and possibly flaky, I also *will* need either built-in WiFi or to buy a separate USB wireless adapter, so for a couple bucks more the Gigabyte model is attractive. I'm not too concerned about the RAM - I figure if I purchase 16GB of at least 3000MHz DD4 from a reputable manufacturer I should be fine.
As mentioned, at some point in the not too distant future I'll probably want to upgrade both the GPU and display, but that's another good-sized chunk of change and I think I'll be OK for another 3-6 months at least. As far as GPUs, the Radeon RX 580 8GB seems decent and reasonably priced at $200-200. I don't really know much about displays but a 24" 1080p or 27" 1440p IPS/MVA display seems like it would be in the right neighborhood. Any display suggestions for the future would be appreciated.
As far as some of the other items, I'm replacing the case because my existing one is really old, dirty, and hard to work in, and the Fractal Designs budget Focus G line seems nice for the price. I'm not totally sure what the best SSD option is but I have heard good things about NVMe drives so I thought I would try to buy one of those. The Corsair and MyDigitalSSD units have newer controllers and have received good reviews. I will also probably continue to use my existing 1TB HDD as a data drive, but it occurs to me that it is going on ten years old at this point and might not have much life left in it. Would it be silly in 2019 to buy a new 2TB physical HDD for data? The larger SSD drives seem kind of expensive, but maybe a cheap and large SATA SSD is the way to go here.
I also will need to replace my existing keyboard and mouse at some point as my current ones are quite elderly, grody, and aren't particularly responsive anymore, but I really have no idea as to good value choices in this area. If a decent but entry-level mechanical keyboard is available, I might consider that.
Again, I will reuse my existing EVGA G2 550W PSU, which works fine and should be more than sufficient for this build.
I'm not really sure how Windows licensing works but I do own a legitimate Windows 10 key (originally a Windows 7 Pro installation on DVD) and was hoping to transfer it to the new PC. I do not intend to use the old PC after I build the new one.
Any comments or suggestions on this prospective build would be much appreciated! As it stands, I think I'm looking to a move to a *much* faster, more stable PC at a relatively low price. Thanks very much!
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