This is available again at my local Microcenter. The price this time is $100 more for the new version, but the same $810 for the open box version. Very tempted. I even have a plan this time! I could pick it up on Saturday before work, and keep it at the office. Then, when I can get my hands on an RTX 3060 or 3060Ti or 3070, I get that, and install it at the office, THEN bring it home and say, “look, I got a new computer from Microcenter!”
Hmmmm. It seems like a sound plan. I wonder how hard it is to get those video cards at MSRP these days though. Maybe I’ll look into this hotstock app that stusser talks about.
Looks good. The GPU shortage is one place where it’s nice to have an Intel with integrated graphics, so you can at least use the system while you wait to get a new card.
So this is somewhat outside Stusserbeast territory, but since this seems to be the current hardware recommendation thread, I am posting it here.
My situation: I’m finishing grad school (finally) this spring, and also having a birthday (the age being characterized by my wife as “you can no longer say you’re in your mid-40s.”) I plan to celebrate by building myself a new PC. I’ll be passing my 4 year old PC, which is perfectly serviceable, down to my 14 year old daughter (she’s looking forward to rebuilding it with me into a new, RGB-festooned case).
While I hadn’t planned to buy anything until the spring, I got extremely lucky shortly after the release of the 3000 series RTX cards and scored a 3080 at MSRP. So now I’m trying to figure out what to do with respect to the rest of the computer – Intel or AMD being the chief question. I’ve got in the neighborhood of $900 left in my computer budget. I can probably reuse my existing RAM (32 GB of DDR4 3600), and can definitely reuse my existing case and power supply. I intend to get an M2 drive just because I’ve never had one, but I can reuse a 1 TB SATA SSD and 5 TB spinning hard drive for auxiliary storage.
So my question is: what’s going to be my best bang for the buck? I’ll use the machine primarily for productivity stuff that any decent machine from the last decade could accomplish, but I’d like to be future-proof enough that I’m good on the gaming front for, say, at least 5 years or so. I’d like to be able to build the machine in either early April or late May (just because that’s when I’ll have more free time). I have been exclusively Intel for the last couple of machines, but I’m open to exploring AMD again (esp. post Spectre and Meltdown).
Specific parts and brand recommendations are welcome, as are more general suggestions. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Bang for the buck is an i5-10400 for sure. You can find a 5600X and B450 motherboard pretty easily though, and that would work great. Make sure the motherboard has BIOS flashback.
You’ve got perfectly fine components for a current-gen build, although possibly could use a new CPU and motherboard. Both the AMD 5000 series and the Intel 10xxx & 11xxx series CPUs still use DDR4. By some time in 2022, they’ll both have switched to DDR5. If it’s just gaming, an M.2 drive will likely see only nominal gains over a SATA SSD, but they’re still real.
From AMD’s side for pure gaming and non-OCing purposes, an AMD 5600X ($300) with a solid-but-not-overpriced B450 ($100-$125) motherboard will get you done and shouldn’t eat up too much of your budget. That will perform better than the 10400, but it also costs a good deal more. Good B550 and X570 motherboards will cost $100+ more and provide PCIE 4.0 in differing quantities and some better connectivity options for more drives and cooling for the overclockers, but these may be features you’d never “need” in the expected lifespan of your PC (I saw you said you want some future proofing, but just how far that means varies from one person to the next). I’d personally spend the extra for at least a midrange B550, but I lean toward overspending so take that with a grain of salt.
Maybe a useful comparison (you’ll find it’s not a large difference for most games)
Is there any real benefit to going 8 cores rather than 6 given that the current gen consoles (PS5 and XS|X) have 8 core processors? Or are we likely to remain in a world where games on the PC are really just maxing out one core, so clock speed is more important than the number of cores?
This is a pretty decent deal for a 1080p or 1440p gaming desktop. Comes out to $627 with a 10100, 8GB RAM, 1TB mechanical HD, and a 1660 Super. Then you buy another stick of RAM and a 1TB NVMe SSD from newegg or amazon for $150, pop 'em in, and you’re good to go.
