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Does this build make sense? AMD light gaming

R

Richard Schollar

Junior Member
My son (13) wants a computer for his birthday which he will clearly be using for purely educational purposes. Yeah, right! So he will probably want to play plenty of games on it. I have an existing case, monitor and keyboard I can use. I am so far out of the system building universe (the last one I built was back in 2012) and have next to no idea what works and what would be good. For the remaining components I have a budget in mind of c. £500 (probably more to accommodate a decent(ish) video card):

  • MSI B450 TOMAHAWK AM4
  • Ryzen 2600 with Wraith Stealth Cooler
  • Corsair CMK16GX4M2D3000C16 Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB)

That's as far as I've got - I know I need some kind of SSD and a power supply and then the graphics card. Does the above make sense to use as the backbone though?

Any recommendations for power and SSD and graphics also appreciated. Not looking to spend more than £250 on these 3 items unless absolutely necessary.

As an aside the monitor Im intending to re-use will not be the long term monitor - just until my son can save up for a better one. It only has VGA input (it's that old) - will this cause me problems?

Many thanks for all help/suggestions.
 
Richard Schollar said:
It only has VGA input (it's that old) - will this cause me problems?
Click to expand...
Yes. No modern gaming-capable (current, modern AAA games, we're talking about) supports VGA any more. It's been deprecated for a while now. It's basically as obsolete as IDE HDDs, except possibly in business settings, where they might have an older VGA-input projector or something.

The parts that you picked out, seem like a decent base.

MSI B450 Tomahawk AM4 ATX mobo (my friend has this one)
Ryzen R5 2600 with cooler
RAM seems OK too, but you could stand to double-check both MSI's mobo QVL and Corsair's to find out if that kit is explicitly compatible. (Probably is, and even if it isn't, it might work OK.)

As far as SSD, you have your choice of M.2 PCI-E NVMe (fastest), or SATA 2.5" SSD (physically bigger, also can get higher capacities, generally cheaper, slightly to substantially slower, depending on brand/model of SATA SSD.)

Power Supply: I recommend an 80Plus Gold unit, 600-650W for a Ryzen rig, from EVGA, Corsair, SeaSonic, maybe XFX or Antec too, if they're still relevant.

Graphics card: That requires some extra information, besides just budget. Also, what screen resolution (not physical panel size) and refresh rate is he going to use, and what games does he intent to play?

Generally, for the under-$200 budget, there's the AMD Radeon RX 570 and 580 (there's also a 590, but that tends slightly more than $200), and the NVidia GTX 1060 3GB and 6GB variants, as well as the newly-released (the 14th of March this year) GTX 1660 card for $220-$250. There's also a GTX 1660ti and RTX 2060 to be considered, but those are $280 and $350.

All of those are "1080P"-class cards, more or less, although the GTX 2060 is capable of 1440P gaming as well.

Edit: You could eschew the "pro gaming" aspect, and just get a (used) GTX 750ti card, which I believe had a VGA output, and use that. I know for a fact that the GTX 950 cards also had a VGA output. Then then go with the monitor that you current have. Then save up for a "real" GPU and a "serious gaming monitor" (high refresh-rate, variable-sync, HDMI2.0 / DisplayPort 1.3, etc.)
 
Last edited:
[PCPartPicker part list](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/XZfFD2) / [Price breakdown by merchant](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/XZfFD2/by_merchant/)

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
**CPU** | [AMD - Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/jLF48d/amd-ryzen-5-2600-34ghz-6-core-processor-yd2600bbafbox) | £139.99 @ Aria PC
**Motherboard** | [MSI - B450 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/Hy97YJ/msi-b450-tomahawk-atx-am4-motherboard-b450-tomahawk) | £89.98 @ Amazon UK
**Memory** | [Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...b-2-x-8gb-ddr4-3000-memory-cmk16gx4m2d3000c16) | £85.69 @ CCL Computers
**Storage** | [Crucial - P1 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/xpYLrH/crucial-p1-500gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-ct500p1ssd8) | £71.98 @ Amazon UK
**Video Card** | [Asus - Radeon RX 570 4 GB ROG STRIX Video Card](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...g-strix-video-card-rog-strix-rx570-o4g-gaming) | £144.98 @ Box Limited
**Power Supply** | [Corsair - TXM Gold 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply](https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...d-semi-modular-atx-power-supply-cp-9020132-na) | £74.99 @ Amazon UK
| *Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts* |
| **Total** | **£607.61**
| Generated by [PCPartPicker](https://pcpartpicker.com) 2019-03-15 20:27 GMT+0000 |
 
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