Putting together new PC

Said I wasn’t going to buy PCs or hardware anymore but here I am going to buy parts and build a new PC… :roll_eyes:

I have a small limited budget, about £550, and can get a fairly decent setup (well miles better than what I have now which is over 12 years old now) for what I want. I’ll keep my graphics card (RX 570 8Gb) for now seeing as they are virtually non-existent or selling at stupid prices.

So I’m looking at:

Intel Core i5-10400F (base stroke: 2.90 GHz; socket: LGA1200; 65 watt) box BX8070110400F - £128

MSI B460M-A PRO mATX Motherboard (10th Gen Intel Core, LGA 1200 Socket, DDR4, USB 3.2 Gen 1, Gigabit LAN, DVI-D/HDMI) - £85

Memory D4 3000 16GB C16 Team DeltaRGB K2 - £86

Crucial P2 CT500P2SSD8 500 GB Internal SSD, Up to 2400 MB/s (3D NAND, NVMe, PCIe, M.2), Black - £45 (500Gb) (also have a 1Tb SSD to transfer from current PC)

Corsair VS Series VS500 80 Plus Certified Non-Modular ATX Power Supply - £105

Apevia PRODIGY-WH Micro-ATX Gaming Case with 1 x Tempered Glass Panel, Top USB3.0/USB2.0/Audio Ports, 3 x RGB Fans, White Frame - £113

Comes to £562 and then I’ll have £15 on top for W10 OEM key.

Any thoughts on this before I go ahead and buy?

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This seems awfully expensive, unless the Pound Stirling has had a Zimbabwe level crash.

I am seeing these power supplies for 50-60 €/$

I would recommend to shop around and see if you can get this model for half the price, and otherwise get an 80Plus Gold rated PSU for £70 that’ll pay for itself in a few years, depending on how much you use the pc.

Rest looks good!

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Thanks @Freak .

I must admit I’m not so sure about PSUs now. I’m sure the last time I bought one it didn’t have the 80+ Gold/Bronze rating system so not sure what to look for. I’ll have a search for some and post here and I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t mind having a look for me?

There’s this one from Coolermaster for £73 and modular too: Amazon.co.uk

This Corsair for £62, semi-modular: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Corsair-CP-9020133-UK-TX550M-Power-Supply/dp/B06WW8G3S8/ref=sr_1_14?dchild=1&keywords=ATX+psu+550&qid=1625922633&s=computers&sr=1-14

Another Corsair for £58, fully modular: Amazon.co.uk

Thanks in advance

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Seems like a much better match for your system/budget.

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Thanks :slight_smile: I’ve gone for that one, new list below…

Okay so I’ve rejigged and and with a cheaper PSU and case (other one was coming from the US and didn’t want the hassle) I’ve upped the RAM and SSD size, please let me know what you think…

Intel Core i5-10400F (base stroke: 2.90 GHz; socket: LGA1200; 65 watt) box BX8070110400F - £130.96

MSI B460M-A PRO mATX Motherboard (10th Gen Intel Core, LGA 1200 Socket, DDR4, USB 3.2 Gen 1, Gigabit LAN, DVI-D/HDMI) - £85

Crucial Ballistix BL2K16G30C15U4B 3000 MHz, DDR4, DRAM, Desktop Gaming Memory Kit, 32GB (16GB x2), CL15, Black - £139.63

Crucial P2 CT1000P2SSD8 1 TB Internal SSD, Up to 2400 MB/s (3D NAND, NVMe, PCIe, M.2) - £89.99

Corsair CX550F RGB, 80 PLUS Bronze Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (80 PLUS Bronze Certified, 120 mm RGB Fan, Optimised for Low Noise, 105°C Japanese Capacitors, Compact 140 mm Long Casing) Black - £58.98

Cooler Master MasterBox MB511 - ATX PC Case with Front Mesh Panel, Racing Intakes, Transparent Side Panel, Flexible Air Flow Configurations - Black Accent - £53.65

Comes in at £559.17

I know I have a mATX board in a ATX case but it’ll give room for expansion I guess…

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That looks much better and is also modular which I will always recommend. For my first build years ago I went with a non-modular PSU and it was a bit of a nightmare to cable manage.

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Fully modular is certainly nice to have, but the TX550 scores better on essentials: efficiency and quality of components (meaning lower risk of failure within the lifespan).
For just £4 more, I would certainly recommend the TX550 over the CX model, unless you really want your power supply to be RGB.
You will recoup those 4 pounds in energy savings

But this is all just “mierenneuken” (ant f-ing) as we call it on this side of the North Sea. Compared to the heavily overpriced VS model you were looking at earlier, this is all good and the differences small.

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No wish to have RGB at all in fact I’d rather not have any RGB lol. Okay so if the TX550 scores better and has better components I’ll go with that for such a small price increase.

All the rest look okay?

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Yes should be fine. mATX MoBo in an ATX case is often a good idea: mATX boards are cheaper, ATX cases are not expensive and they usually fit just about any GPU you might upgrade to.

Only thing that I would do differently is to replace the stock CPU fan.
In my experience, they are very noisy and that can be annoying even when you do not need much more cooling power. Something like a CoolerMaster Hyper 212 or similar small tower cooler with a 120mm should be available for about 20 GBP, perhaps 25, and will make your pc a lot quieter.

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30 GBP seems to be more accurate, and unfortunately, the cheapwr non paintwd version of that particular cooler seems to be sold out there.

This is the closest thing I could find: Arctic 120mm cooler, in stock for 30 GBP

But 30 GBP is a lot, so maybe it is worth it to look up a review and see if one of those smaller 100mm CPU cooler is also a significant improvement from stock (they probably are). Those seem to be almost 10 GBP cheaper

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Thanks. All ordered!!

@Freak I’ll build it with the stock fan for now and look into some aftermarket ones to get for it, i’ll keep an eye out for what you’ve mentioned :slight_smile:

Thanks everyone for the advice.

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Great, as I said, it may not be necessary, but if you are annoyed by the sound of your pc at idle, then it’s the first thing to look into.

I have also seen CPU coolers being traded on the used market, gotta be careful if it contains the parts you need for your socket but very good deals can be found there.

I love helping out in pc parts selection, especially on mid-range builds for flight sims, and you already had a great list that made it easy. Glad I could spot that overpriced budget PSU!

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Always glad to save some money especially when it means RAM and SSD can be increased in size :blush:

This is obviously going to be night and day compared to my current PC but hopefully it’ll give decent performance in DCS, with the RX570 8Gb I currently have.

Just a question on adding my current Samsung SSD 860 Evo that Windows 10 is on in my PC now to the new PC as a secondary drive. Should I erase the drive whilst it’s in my old PC so that Win10 isn’t on it to confuse the boot sequence? I’ll install a new version of Win10 on the Crucial P2 SSD.

@Freak Sorry, a quick question. I have all the parts arriving and should all be here on Saturday. I have a query on the RAM though, it’s 3000Mhz and the Mobo allows 2933Mhz - will it automatically run at this speed or will I have to change something in the BIOS?

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All DDR4 RAM runs at the stock DDR4 speed, just like with DDR3 before it.
RAM that is advertised with a clock speed is usually overclocked RAM.

This means that the RAM comes with an overclocked profile (called XMP) at which it is guaranteed to work by the RAM manufacturer. This can be enabled by flipping a switch in your motherboard’s BIOS.

This higher speed may or may not be supported (guaranteed to work) by your memory controller. That is not a huge deal, it usually works, and if you do notice stability problems, run memtest and if necessary, you can manually set the clock speed lower while leaving the rest of the XMP as is.

For example, my Ryzen 5600X has a memory controller that officially only supports up to 3200MHz RAM speeds. However, most people use it with 3600MHz RAM and it almost always works. It’s just not guaranteed to work.

I was so stupid to buy 4000MHz RAM. That didn’t work when I enabled the XMP.
So what I did then, is after enabling XMP, setting the RAM clock speed lower. Now running it at 3600.

3000MHz is fairly low so will probably still work even if not supported by your motherboard’s memory controller. If you do have issues, run memtest to verify the memory is to blame, then set the RAM clock speed to 2933 in BIOS.

Do make sure to enavke XMP though!! Many people forget and then the memory runs at default DDR4 speed, which was around 2400 MHz IIRC, so that is leaving a lot of performance on the table

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So it should be okay but if not, enable XMP and set the memory clock speed to match the motherboard max.

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Yes but definitely enable XMP first. If you don’t, your missing out on 15% of RAM speed

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So all parts are here yesterday, opened the case up to find out only had 1 fan at the back and none of the 3 at the front… Looking again at the blurb on Amazon seems only the cases with RGB get the fans at the front! So quickly ordered 3 120mm fans and they came today.

Started building this morning and all going well until it came to connecting the rear fan and I see there’s only 1 sys fan header on the motherboard… Googling it it seems I need a splitter!!! So quickly ordered one on Amazon and will be here tomorrow…:roll_eyes::roll_eyes:

Everything is in, windows installed and running great but seeing as we have a mini heatwave in the UK I don’t want to use it until I get the fan header splitter.

Starts up very fast though, so other than the schoolboy errors it went okay :blush:

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