Is this good?

JamieB123

New member
Hi
I am looking to purchase a computer for general use including some gaming (simulator games). My budget is £600-650. I have a 22" 1080p monitor and will probably get a second in the future.
My spec I am looking at is:
Case
PCS 3601 CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3500X Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.1GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME A320M-K: Micro-ATX, AM4, USB 3.0, 6GB/s
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
1st Storage Drive
512GB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 450MB/W)
1st Storage Drive
1TB SEAGATE BARRACUDA SATA-III 3.5" HDD, 6GB/s, 7200RPM, 64MB CACHE
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 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)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT (Wi-Fi NOT INCLUDED)
Wireless Network Card
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 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
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: £623.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-home-office/hbQNGjywsy/

Is this a good build for the price? Is everything compatible? Do you have any other thoughts?
 
Hi, I'm new here and no expert but my first thought - whilst I wait for a reply on my own spec - is that if you're getting a Ryzen 5 it might be worth pre-ordering the 5600x which has been released earlier this month rather than going for the older 3500x - however I see that is not an option on this configurator - you'd have to use the higher end one and it will probably blow the budget (as it did for me!).

Basket case: Do you have the time, to listen to me whine? I think you're skimping on the case when you could spend £22 more and get the Corsair 175R RGB mid-tower gaming case for £43 which is what I've gone for on my build (I've posted mine, you can see it if you search my posts)

I think everything will be compatible, in fact I'm counting on PC Specialist to not allow non-compatible builds to happen which I think the configurator is pretty good at doing, however I wouldn't by any means take my word on it - did I mention I'm new here and yet to prove my worth - I've not ordered anything yet (but I've spent countelss hours thinking about it and researching and reading other posts here)

If you want your system to be snappy I'd definitely consider getting an NVMe M.2 SSD and going for the faster options such as that from Samsung although I'm a little unsure about the various PCIe options if I'm honest, I just know they're hella better than any other option. It adds £50+ to the cost though so you could instead go for the cheaper 512GB ADATA option, but I don't know it so I've gone for the super fast Samsung with my own build to get the most performance benefit that I definitely WILL notice for fast boot time and app loading.

Personally I would not put spinning rust (ie. storage drives with moving parts in them) in an otherwise lovely machine and would go for SSD all the way, but as you're on a budget you can always just leave that 1TB 2nd storage drive as it is with no harm done (until it rusts over the pathways to hard drive hell and inevitably fails on you which all drives at some point are gaurenteed to do, it's just a matter of time...)

*luckily I've rarely had my various 10 different spinning rust drives containing 13TB fail on me, so I wouldn't worry too much if you have solid backups. I'm not trying to scare you too much, I just think that SSD is the way forward.

I'd suggest the next wireless card up from what you've got so you are using 5Ghz and also with added bluetooth - you might not use it now, but you will find a use for it for just an extra 11 squids!

Personally I prefer to install my own Windows 10 Pro, but you can also just stick to what you've got there I guess.

I see you've selected the Silver warranty option, wise move fine sir!

So I've had fun changing up your build for you and as your budget is very specific I went for the Intel NVMe PCIe SSD up to 1500MB/sR, removed the other storage drive and voila it's £633 inc. VAT

If you want 1TB of spinning rust you can have an old one I have lyring around*

*I'm joking of course - I wouldn't wish 1TB of spinning rust on my worst enemy.

Actually, having spinning rust is not so bad as secondary storage, so you can also take what I've said with a pinch of salt until someone better comes along with better advice ;)

My approach however to keep to my own budget of £600 was to just have the one NVMe drive for now and to add an old 125GB SSD that is sitting around in there as a secondary drive and wait for it.... probably some spinning rust 3.5" drives also currently gathering dust - the case I've chosen and suggested for you will a few drives in there I reckon.

My suggested changes are below (with the disclaimer that I'm just reconfiguring this on a whim for you but you might want a second opinion from an expert)

Case
CORSAIR 175R RGB MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3500X Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.1GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME A320M-K: Micro-ATX, AM4, USB 3.0, 6GB/s
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB INTEL® 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 1500MB/sR | 1000MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 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)
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
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
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: £633.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-home-office/Pq6By4s3YV/

Actually, on second thoughts I would actually amend the above to the following which I think would be a better motherboard although it's slightly over budget you might thank me later...


Case
CORSAIR 175R RGB MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 3500X Six Core CPU (3.6GHz-4.1GHz/35MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME B450-PLUS (DDR4, USB 3.1, 6Gb/s) - RGB Ready!
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB INTEL® 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 1500MB/sR | 1000MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 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)
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
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
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: £671.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-home-office/jGwS!fNkmX/
 
it would be an idea swap out the intel M.2 (they don't have a very good life span) and replace with the PCS one, which also saves money
That is good to know about the short lifespan as I have very little clue about various M.2 options having not bought anything in years, and makes sense on this build. I'm now wondering if I should swap out the pricey super fast Samsung 970 EVO PLUS on my pending build pocket the £53 difference :unsure: I'll be darned if I do more research tonight 🥴 so I'm going to leave that question to the forum gods for now.
 

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
If you want 1TB of spinning rust you can have an old one I have lyring around
An HDD is the ideal storage medium for video and music files since these types of file get zero benefit at all from being on a SSD (because they're 'played' in real time).

An HHD also makes good sense for very small files (less than 4kB - because that's the default cluster size on NTFS formatted HDDs) which can never be fragmented. In practice, and unless the HDD is very full or badly fragmented, files less than about 1MB can be accessed in a single seek (the actual size depends on the HDD geometry (cluster size and clusters per cylinder)). This means that for a read of a 1MB file from an HDD (assuming average seek of about 15ms, 7200rpm latency of 4.17ms, and a 160MB/s data transfer rate) the data can be in RAM in just over 25ms. Whilst it's true that a 3500MB/s M.2 NVMe drive will read the same 1MB file in just under 0.3ms we're talking about a time difference of 24.7ms or 0.0247 of a second - a human simply can't detect that short a time.

It's a myth that HDDs are dead and that you shouldn't buy one, they have a valuable and important part to play in the storage hierarchy and are most definitely not 'spinning rust'. :).
 
I think in my excitement of being on this forum and wanting to give something back or get involved in discussions, I've jumped in just a tad too quickly to call things out which I haven't really thought through. It's really great learning so much on here and getting unbiased informatioin and opinions that make so much sense.

I also really loved the term 'spinning rust' when I first started hearing it being typed somewhere not that long ago, however...

The last thing I want to be doing is propograting myths, especially when it might lead others to make poor decisions.

So what I'm saying is great response to my ill thought out, willy nilly remarks about HDDs @ubuysa

Also it's important to live by what you say and I certainly won't be ruling out HDDs anytime soon. In fact, coming to think of it I plan to buy many many more TBs of HDDs actually at some stage as I have around 10-15TB of data in total from 15 years of content creation and I need to find better ways to consolidate my backup solutions on a shoestring buddget as having solid backups for that stuff is probably one of the single most important things I can do in my life, as that data is probably one of the most precious things I own. Everything else (except time itself) is replaceable.

So yes, I wholeheartedly agree and will be buying more HDDs. I guess I just will pipe up if I see someone misconfiguring them (or planning to) based on what I know, and that knowledge which will probably increase in magnitudes of order in direct correlation with how much time I spend on this forum.

TLDR: Yep, you're right. I like it here.
 

Bigfoot

Grand Master
If you have an old PC, you could transfer the Windows licence and save about £100. I would put some of that towards a better PSU to give more scope for upgrades in the future. Going too low end will cost you more in the long run, as you will need to replace the PC earlier.
 

JamieB123

New member
Hi everyone! Thank you all for your feedback.
I have reduced my budget to £600.
I have added the wireless card with Bluetooth, and gone with a 1tb ssd.
I have downgraded to a Ryzen 3 3100 as I don't think there is a significant difference for the extra price.
As before, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Case
PCS 3601 CASE
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 3 3100 Quad Core CPU (3.6GHz-3.9GHz/18MB CACHE/AM4)
Motherboard
ASUS® PRIME A320M-K: Micro-ATX, AM4, USB 3.0, 6GB/s
Memory (RAM)
8GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR4 2666MHz (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card
4GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1650 - HDMI
1st Storage Drive
1TB PCS 2.5" SSD, SATA 6 Gb (520MB/R, 470MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 350W VS SERIES™ VS-350 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)
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: £588.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am4-home-office/yJgjBRSZtD/
 

JamieB123

New member
Yes it can. If you convert it to a digital license associated with the Microsoft ID you sign in with then you can transfer it to a new PC simply by logging in with that Microsoft ID. Your old PC will of course no longer have a valid license.
Thanks for that! I've taken off the Windows license and upgraded to 16GB corsair vengeance ddr4 2666mhz (2x8GB).
The price is now at £549, which I'm happy with
 
Top