Solid build, he's clearly been doing his research. Can't really find a fault with it. Very similar to my setup, only mine's one tier above with a 5700X and a 6800XT; so what he's given you there is upper-midrange and would last a good few years.

If you want to scrimp a few quid, he doesn't need such a fancy motherboard, having the "gaming" motherboard rarely makes that much difference in the grander scheme. You can also probably get a better value SATA SSD instead of a NVME, it'll just be a bit slower, but it's not the end of the world. And you can probably get some cheaper RAM at the same spec.

You could plausibly get a bit of a better deal on a different graphics card now that the new generation has come out, but keep in mind that out of anything, the CPU and GPU are where you want to prioritise spending the money to get the most life out of it. Something like a 3060ti might have better deals if you shop around, but I don't know off the top of my head what it's like right now. I would stick with the 5600 processor he recommended, it's definitely one of the better deals at the moment, just maybe the non-X version, depending on the price difference.

But yeah, he knows what he's doing by the looks of it, so if it's a bit much you can probably feel pretty safe having a word with him and asking him if he can bring it down by a couple of hundred quid or whatever. He will probably know what alternatives he'd prefer. This represents his first choice of parts without being a cheeky bugger and asking for a 13900K and 4090.

>>28231

Oh and I forgot to say, don't cheap out on the power supply, it might be tempting but it's very much a false economy. A good power supply will keep up with every upgrade for the next ten years, a shit one will blow up take the rest of the machine with it.

Also the case is already likely one of the best value around at the moment, depending on the offers. The "cheap and cheerful case" market has sort of dried up in recent years now that even midrange "mainstream" parts actually need thoughtful cooling.

There's a website called Logical Increments where you can choose how much you think you'll need and build the PC from there:

https://www.logicalincrements.com

Perhaps you could set a target for how well you want him to do, and then buy him a cheaper computer if he does worse?

I started typing out a post, but then I remembered that GCSE results come out in, what, August?

PC component prices are incredibly volatile, with the best value options changing on a near-weekly basis. We've just had a couple of big launches (RTX 4000, Ryzen 7000, Radeon RX7000) so we expect to see some significant disruption to prices over the next few months as retailers get hold of new parts and try and sell through their older stock.

Your son's build is basically sound, but there are some poor value items in there. The CPU cooler and the motherboard are expensive units that won't give a meaningful improvement over a mid-range option at about half the price. 32GB of RAM is excessive unless you're doing something weird (4K video editing, heavy-duty software development) and most users won't notice any difference over 16GB. The PSU is grossly over-specified, because that build will draw no more than about 400 watts under full load. As >>28231 says, it looks like he's chancing his arm with the very high end of what might be considered a "mainstream" build.

Make a note to post a message closer to the time and we can give some more specific advice. In case you forget to do that, bookmark the Logical Increments guides - they carefully work out the best value combination of components at any given moment and at any given price point. You can sometimes beat the Logical Increments builds if you spot something on sale, but you can't really go wrong with what they recommend.

https://www.logicalincrements.com/

Something I'd suggest is getting two SSDs. One for booting from and one for sticking all his games on. Total Warhammers 3 is about 100 GB and Red Dead 2 is 120, so if you get another 500 GB M.2 drive to boot off and stick other programmes on, then that leaves the whole of the 1 TB SSD for 4k textures games.

You did mention wanting to spend less though, so as far as cost cutting goes 16 GB of RAM will be absolutely plenty and a 850 W power supply is overkill for that everything else in the PC. However, Otherlad's right when he says buying a good quality one is the best way to go. I've just glanced at PCPartPicker myself, but these are a bit cheaper than the one you listed but just as reliable. And again, I really can't overstate how a gaming PC won't need 32 GB of RAM, that money would be much better off being spent on storage.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/9htQzy/be-quiet-straight-power-11-750w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-bn283
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/xJRYcf/be-quiet-pure-power-11-fm-650-w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-bn671
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product/CRC48d/corsair-rm650-650-w-80-gold-certified-fully-modular-atx-power-supply-cp-9020233-na

I rebuilt the entire thing (link below) using my own suggestions and saved you a grand total of £50. One minor disclaimer is I went for a slightly cheaper motherboard from a brand I've used myself, but my understanding is the quality of motherboards vary greatly from model to model. But, honestly, how likely is your son to find himself fine tuning the PC's memory or worrying about how his overclock will effect the MOSFET temperatures? The one I've chosen looks to have plenty of heatsinks so I wouldn't sweat it.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/jLCCW4

Thanks lads. His mum thinks we should have given him a strict budget, which she wants to set at about £750, but I'd rather know what his ideal computer would look like and see what parts could be replaced with cheaper alternatives with no significant drop in quality. I think it's a better idea to come up with a few tiers based on how well he does, possibly having the ~£1,300 one as the top level as something he could only achieve if he seriously upped his game.

As far as I'm aware, he's mainly looking for something capable of running Mount & Blade II smoothly.

If we're all having a go on PCPartsPicker here's what I'd do to get it down under a grand.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/vcByd9

If you're trying to save money without sacrificing too much performance, there's absolutely no need for daft shit like RGB memory so there's 16gb of no-nonsense DDR4 3600 for you. You can get away with whatever motherboard the processor is compatible with by and large (the only caveat is this one might need a BIOS update first), so there's the cheapest one that didn't look like complete shit.

I've swapped the 5600X for the non-X, saves £30, and you'll barely feel the difference in games; and incidentally there's no need for a massive cooler on a 65w part like that anyway so I've swapped it for the reliable old Hyper 212 at half the price. Swapped the graphics card for a 3060 that's £50 cheaper and will still play all the Fortnite Apex: Modern Overwatch the kids play nowadays more than adequately.

Took the NVME SSDs out and got a 1tb stone age HDD along with a 480gb SATA SSD, because as long as you can put your Windows install and most frequently used apps on the SSD you'll still feel most of the benefit. A spinning disk is still more than fine for storage, and remember, he's a teenager, he's only going to fill it with porn. Saved about £30 on the power supply, because subsequently that also reduced the power overhead, and £25 on the case.

Job's a good 'un. But if you want it much cheaper than that, you're going to be starting to sacrifice on the performance in ways that can actually be felt. You can still get more than adequate performance out of a build in the £6-700 range, but it's going to require compromises, sadly prices have gone up across the board over the last couple of years and that's basically the minimum entry point these days.

>>28237
Paying £40+ for a 212 is mental when you can get the (horribly named but actually good) ARCTIC eSports Duo for the same money. And I would strongly recommend against an HD drive for everyday usage, especially for games. Loading times on a hard disk will be unbearably long in a lot of modern games.

I think we owe it to dadlad's lad not to force him to grow up as another generation who have to suffer through stupid, fragile, disks that have to spool up and take six hours to transfer a few hundred gigs of data.

>>28238

Beggars can't be choosers my old man used to say. If I was trying to keep a budget down I'd rather deal with longer loading times for better in game performance, than sacrifice performance for it to load quicker.

For the cooler fair point, but I'm pretty sure they're all about the same nowadays, I just wouldn't spend much under that. Just enough to make sure you get some decent fin density and a couple of heat pipes. Ryzen 5000 is incredibly efficient though, so it could very comfortably even get away with the boxed cooler and save that money entirely if the push comes to shove.

>>28238

>I think we owe it to dadlad's lad not to force him to grow up as another generation who have to suffer through stupid, fragile, disks that have to spool up and take six hours to transfer a few hundred gigs of data.

The problem is that modern games are fucking massive. You're looking at the thick end of 100GB of disk space for a lot of current-gen titles. A 1TB SSD gets filled up pretty damned quickly at that rate.

With the falling price of SSD storage and the high cost of hard drives due to current shortages, it's becoming a tough call. You're looking at a bit less than 2p/GB for spinning rust, vs 5p/GB for a bargain-basement DRAMless SSD.

SATA SSDs are no cheaper than NVME SSDs these days but they're a lot slower, so I don't think that's really a sensible choice.

In the above build, I'd swap out the 970 Evo Plus for a 2TB Kingston NV2, which is basically the same money for twice the capacity. You won't really notice the reduction in performance as it's still an NVME SSD.

Is the GTX 1050 still a viable option? I can't justify buying a modern graphics card.

>>28241
Not for Bannerlord it's not. Also I probably wouldn't talk to my dad ever again if I asked for a 6700 XT annd he got me a 1050.

>>28240
These are good ideas. I perhaps stayed to close to what the OP posted when I rejigged it.

>>28242
>I probably wouldn't talk to my dad ever again if he got me a 1050
Ah this isn't OP, just a throwaway question in a semi-relevant thread.
Cheers.

>>28241

It's fine for older games, but it might struggle with some newer games even at 720p. The 6700XT that OP mentions is about eight times faster.

If you're looking for a second-hand card, a GTX 1060 6GB or a Radeon RX 480 is about twice as fast as a 1050 and you can get one for under a hundred quid on eBay if you're patient.

What's the fastest card I could upgrade to in this without throttling it? It came with a GTX 970 and 625W PSU.

https://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc-mac/pc-mac-desktops/lenovo-ideacentre-y900-1303591/review

>>28245

Anything up to a 3080 or 6900XT would work fine with your power supply, but you wouldn't see the benefit without a CPU upgrade. I think a 1080, 2060 or 3050 would probably be about the sweet spot for your CPU, but even that might be slightly bottlenecked.

>>28246

Depends on the resolution he's playing at to be fair, that CPU is getting on a bit now but basically anything modern is already bottlenecked at 1080p nowadays. I think perhaps a 5700XT or 2070 would do nicely.

>>28247
I wouldn't be playing beyond 1080p, that would need a new monitor to boot.

I'll look at 2070s then, thanks.

How does this deal from Costco stack up?

https://www.costco.co.uk/Computers/Desktops-PCs-iMacs/Cyberpower-AMD-Ryzen-5-16GB-RAM-1TB-SSD-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-3060-Gaming-Desktop-PC/p/411114

>>28253

Fairly decent for the money. CPU is on the weaker end but to my knowledge it should be, if nothing else, adequate. Rest of the specs seem fine.

One thing to be wary of with these pre-builds is that the cases often have atrocious airflow, which never used to be a massive problem, but with the power of today's parts it really can be. If the fans are starved for air, the system will throttle itself down and perform worse. That case looks like more or less a sealed box rendering the front fans little more than cosmetic.

Might be worth taking the list of specs and seeing if you can assemble the same thing yourself for a similar or lower price. Usually the OEMs have an advantage in bulk buying parts so it's often a narrow margin, but worth checking.

Why don't PC cases have USB-C ports as standard? Lots of modern phone charging cables have a USB-C plug instead of the standard USB plug. If I'm going to build myself a new computer, which I'm sure I will have to do soon, I would like to be able to charge my phone off it. Is this just a lull in innovation and all PC cases will have them in six months? Or would I need to buy some sort of additional card for my motherboard?

>>28458

Most modern high-end cases do have USB-C ports. Cheaper cases don't, mostly because a large proportion of the cost of a case is the tooling.

A lot of newer motherboards have a USB-C header, but not all of them support Power Delivery, which is what gives you the super-fast charging on modern phones. I appreciate that this is needlessly complicated and confusing.

OP here again. It's results day on Thursday but I don't think I'm going to get my hopes up that he's managed to get his act together.

>>28462
Buy the PC for yourself and just use it to post here and never let him use it.

The results are in and he's largely got 4s and 5s across the board. Best was a 6 in maths and worst was a 3 in English so he'll have to resit that at sixth-form. Computer science should have been one of his strongest subjects but he said a lot of the exams were on things he hadn't been taught about so he only got a 4, one mark off a 5 so it feels a little harsh to have narrowly missed out.

What sort of computer could I get in the £400-£600 range that has the scope for future upgrades? I'm half-tempted to tweak the configurations on something cheap like these:

https://www.palicomp.co.uk/pc_budget_buy_fac3

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-ryzen-5-5600g-volt-with-amd-vega-graphics-pc-for-gaming.html

>>28464
>Computer science should have been one of his strongest subjects
Ebay thinkpad, video games will only distract him.

£600 is a bit low for a gaming rig, can you give him more and count this as a combined early Christmas/birthday/exam gift?

You're going to want to build one yourself rather than buying one anyway. Give him the budget, tell him to come up with a parts list, then post the parts list on the other places's pc building thread to make sure he hasn't picked anything stupid.

>>28465
I'm not expecting it to be anything brilliant, but I don't know what games he'd be looking to play beyond Crusader Kings and whatever else I've picked up on Steam/Epic.

>>28466
He's had an early birthday/Christmas present already because we've bought him a new phone after he dropped a bowl of cereal on his old one.

>>28464
A Ryzen 5 or 7 with an intergrated GPU is a sound idea. These are quality processors which will still be very good if or when a dedicated graphics card is put into the PC.

I've put this together as something I would say meets your criteria, but I understand it's at the upper end of your budget: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/drp4Cd

I know it says there's a compatibility issue, but the BIOS update the motherboard would need to fix that is years old at this point, so I have to imagine it will be delivered with that already applied. Obviously you might not need a monitor and if you want to save another £50 replace the Ryzen 7 5700G CPU with the Ryzen 5 5600G. If you wanted you could get rid of the aftermarket CPU cooler I've added, because the CPU will come with one, but I found stock Ryzen coolers to be a bit loud, but it's not going to cause issues beyond that. And while the case seems a bit pricy too, but it's highly regarded and comes with two fans, while anything cheaper will probably have you buying at least one aftermarket fan anyway, which would mean you wouldn't be saving all that much in the end.

Regarding windows activation, a place called "digitalchillmart.com" seems to be the go-to place for cheapo Windows keys, but you can install Windows without one initially and then decide what you want to do from there. While typing this I realised I haven't activated my operating system since I bought a new motherboard and that was two years ago.

I guess the only other thing I'd say is I understand if you or your son don't want to build a PC, but that it's easier than you might think.

>>28464

Go with the Palicomp system (or build something with a similar spec), upgrade the PSU to something with a brand name and an 80 Plus rating, get a second-hand GTX 1070 off eBay. NVMe SSDs are super cheap at the moment if extra storage is needed.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BP1CPZLB

>>28464

Those are probably fine as a starting point, anything built around the 5600 is a solid mid-range base I reckon, but lacking a discrete GPU severely limits them. I'm assuming you know that and would intend to throw a proper GPU in down the line though.

For gaming you essentially don't need any more CPU horsepower than your graphics card will be demanding. If you spend £350 on the base and allow for about another £200 to throw in a budget-friendly graphics card like a RTX3050 or RX6600 later down the line, it'll be ample. It won't be pushing the highest settings at 4k resolution etc but it'll still destroy the console gaming experience.

I'd get him the base unit for as cheap as you can, then hold the graphics card upgrade over him to make sure he does well on the resits.

OP here again, this is what I've initially come up with so please let me know what you think as this is largely guesswork.

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/wxk3Fs

If I modified the Palicomp rig then it's £508 if I replace the hard drive with a 1TB Samsung SSD, change to the EVGA 80+ PSU and add a be quiet! fan. Not really looked at their cases. I'm sure they have a voucher as well to get money off.

https://www.palicomp.co.uk/amd-kaveri-400-gamer-amd1

AWD-IT would be £397 if I upgrade it to the 'bronze rated' PSU and the Western Digital 1TB SSD. Very few options to customise here.

https://www.awd-it.co.uk/awd-ryzen-5-5600g-volt-with-amd-vega-graphics-pc-for-gaming.html

Cheapest package on Cyberpower is £542 with an upgraded PSU but I'm writing them off because they seem more gimmicky and catering for the RGB crowd.

https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/genshin-ultra-gaming-pc

Not sure if I buy the 'was £870, now £390' promotion on this, but this seems like a decent deal from Stormforce. Doesn't look like it's possible to customise it.

https://www.stormforcegaming.co.uk/product/onyx-6291-apu-ryzen-5-5600g-no-os/

>>28471
The one you've built on PC Part Picker is fine, except you've put the Ryzen 5 5600 in it, instead of the 5600G. The G is what designates it as having integrated graphics, otherwise you won't get a video output from it. Intergrated graphics just means the CPU has the capacity to output video, without the need for a graphics card.

The only thing I'd say about these pre-built PCs is they're saving money on shite PSUs and cases, two parts that are really good to get right to begin with because they're the last things you'll ever think of upgrading. Plus, the better quality the PSU, the cheaper your electricity bill, not by a massive amount, but so much so it's probably worth an extra £20 up front

The images that Cyberpower are using aren't the PC you'd be buying. The one they're showing off has a liquid cooler, despite listing the actual cooler as the stock AMD Ryzen one, the RAM listed also doesn't have an RBG on it. Pretty shitty sales practice on their part. As for the rest of the pre-builts I'd say the best one is the AWD-IT option.

>>28472
Thanks lad. Do you think the 5700G would be better than the 5600G for an extra £50?

>>28473
I've looked at some benchmarking videos on YouTube and a review by Gamers Nexus and honestly it's not. It is a little bit better, obviously, but if your son's going to be playing Crusader Kings then I don't think it's going to make much of a difference. Definitely not worth a 50% price increase just for the gaming performance.

OP here again, as a bit of a (belated) update, I let him have the final say and he went for one of the AWD-IT pre-built computers. It came to about £440, which is about £30 less than they're charging now for one with similar spec even though it's supposedly 14% cheaper due to Black Friday.

Anyway, I digress, I'm looking to get him a wireless keyboard and mouse for Christmas. Are there any you'd suggest for a c. £50 combined budget?

>>28601

I've had one of these wireless ANKER mice for a decade and it has served me well.

>>28601

For gaming, the mouse is far more important than the keyboard. Any old wired keyboard will do the job fine, but a standard wireless mouse has too much latency for gaming and will glitch if you're flicking about like a maniac in Fortnite.

You can't go wrong with a Logitech G305, which is usually available for less than £30. It's quite plain looking, but the sensor is excellent and the shape is comfortable for nearly everyone.

Wireless keyboards tend to be more hassle than they're worth - you don't generally move a keyboard around, so the cable isn't really an inconvenience.