Well, my computer took a shit.
If I just want to replace it with a prebuilt computer that will run whatever is out now really really well and will last me another 10 years with minor upgrades - what kinda cost am I looking at?
Eta: are any of these Costco PCs worth it?
https://www.costco.com/gaming-computers.html
What level video card are you thinking about?
A 4070 is very nice for right now (I’m quite loving mine!), but I’m not sure how well the 12 GB of vram will hold up even 6 years from now if you’re running 1440p or 4K. It would probably be fine or at least good enough for 1080p for your entire 10-year window.
Would you consider AMD? AMD motherboards tend to let you upgrade just the CPU for much longer than Intel. Also AMD video cards generally come with much more vram than the Nvidia counterpart of the same tier. Meaning AMD might lend itself better to a 10-year use case.
Can I infer from that Costco link that you’re thinking around a $1500 budget? Or were you hoping for more like $1200?
I’ve never really seen 4k, my TVs and monitors don’t do it and I don’t really feel a need to upgrade them to do that. So that’s not crucial.
I’m open to either, though I do currently have NVIDIA and enjoy some of the features.
I was hoping for $1000 but I can tell that may not be realistic 
Well it might be depending on what you are used to. Your current computer that you need to replace, how long have you had it and what video card and CPU does it have?
So far, the entire discussion has been surrounding new computers, would you consider buying used? It’s a bit more shoe leather work but if you’re in the used market, there’s plenty of people who specced out a thoughtful, hand built gaming PC who are looking to upgrade and are happy to let their existing rig go for substantially less than the new price. You just have to find the used market in your city that has the most liquidity and chat with a few people until you find someone who is both an enthusiast and knows what they’re talking about and doesn’t have any pretensions about what the true value of a used PC is.
For a new system on a $1000-$1300 budget, I would look for an AMD system. The most VRAM you can get and an AM5 platform CPU. This will extend the life of your video card and give you an upgrade path for your CPU down the line if you want.
Alternately, an AMD video card with an i7 or i9 processor from 12th gen onward. You wouldn’t be able to upgrade past a 14th gen CPU (which likely wouldn’t be a big jump) but the one you have will likely last you a long while.
Here’s a potential option (that I haven’t fully vetted this morning but looks promising at a glance. The Ryzen 5 7500F has reviewed well as a budget option, being basically a Ryzen 5 7600 with the integrated graphics turned off and on the AM5 platform. The RX 7700 XT is a 12GB card that also reviews well, with the major complaints being it not shining brighter against previous cards in its class.
I’d probably go for new but self built before used TBH, I’m leaning prebuilt for the convenience (2 very young kid) and the idea of having to chase someone down if a part I bought used fails really doesn’t appeal to me.
I’ve had it for 10 years, I’m not 100% sure on the CPU by the GPU is a GTX 1070 that I upgraded to.
Hmm, that does look really promising. Is there a site where I can check these specs against my games?
Eta: and how much could I save by building something similar?
I see where you wrote that you can build it yourself but would prefer a pre-built because it’s hard to find the time with young kids running around.
That 1070 isn’t the worst card in the world. Would you consider keeping the 1070 for now and building a new computer around it, then upgrading to a new video card next year or the year after? I’m assuming the answer is no, but I’m going to make the pitch anyway…
For $1100 now you could assemble what amounts to a top of the line high-end system around that 1070. Using the am5 platform for future upgradability, which is nice, but including the hands down best CPU for gaming right now: the 7800X3D. That’s the CPU I would recommend if you were building a $3000 system. For gaming, it is the best of the best. That means that even though you could upgrade later thanks to the expected longevity of the am5 platform, it is unlikely you would need to.
Also included is a nice “budget” motherboard for $200 and a very nice top tier PSU from Super Flower. (Literally top tier.) If you haven’t heard of it, Super Flower is known for quality. (Back when EVGA power supplies were considered among the best, EVGA was getting them from Super Flower and slapping their labels on.) Not only would that PSU be solid for your entire 10-year window, it is also ATX 3.0, which is the new standard that Nvidia has already gone to with the 40 series cards. Hopefully that means you wouldn’t have to worry about adapters during the life of this machine. (Not that adapters are the end of the world or anything. I’m using one right now and it’s fine.)
| Type | Item | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor | $384.00 @ Newegg |
| CPU Cooler | Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler | $33.90 @ Amazon |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ATX AM5 Motherboard | $209.99 @ Best Buy |
| Memory | G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory | $112.99 @ Amazon |
| Storage | Western Digital Black SN850X 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive | $84.99 @ Amazon |
| Case | Fractal Design Pop Air ATX Mid Tower Case | $79.97 @ Amazon |
| Power Supply | Super Flower LEADEX VII Platinum PRO 850 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply | $199.99 @ Newegg Sellers |
| Total | Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts | $1105.83 |
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-04-10 11:30 EDT-0400 |
Other notes:
Coolers are in a weird place right now. The best performing ones are also very cheap, including the thermal rate peerless assassin I have penciled in here. Testing has it beating noctua’s best air coolers pretty handily. The 7800X3D is not a particularly hot running CPU, so water cooling is definitely not required. It seems weird that $33 gets you a top-tier cooler, but it does.
G.skill ram is nice quality and pretty cheap. 32 GB is plenty for now and probably for many years to come. Possibly the entire 10 years you are hoping for. The gold standard metrics are 6000 MHz CL30. For technical reasons, you don’t want to go higher speed for AMD chips. Also you do not want 4 sticks, instead sticking with 2 so that the (bus?) doesn’t get oversaturated. Some ram is optimized for AMD (EXPO), some for Intel (XMP). In terms of G.skill, Trident is their EXPO line for AMD, Ripjaws is their XMP line for Intel.
The pop air was cited by Gamers Nexus as one of the best mid-range cases you could buy last year. Essentially it’s the best case I could find for $80 or less that also comes with enough fans right out of the box.
Western digital black m.2 drives are recognized as the smart choice. Basically as good as a Samsung but without paying the premium price for it. I slotted in only a single 1 TB drive for now to save money, and that’s enough to work fine. Later on you could add in another 2 TB or even 4 TB drive easily enough. Note that pretty much all the pre-builts we are talking about also only come with a single 1 TB drive.
So anyway, that’s the pitch. If you did go this route you would be able to choose to get RGB parts or non-RGB parts depending on your preference. They are generally the same price, or at least within $5 or so. I’m not sure about the motherboard, but the case and RAM sticks definitely offer either option.
If you’re willing to build yourself, I’d go with this recommended parts list from PC Part Picker: Great AMD Gaming Build - PCPartPicker
Around the same price but a slightly better CPU (Ryzen 5 7600) and better GPU (RX 6800) which is one generation older but with 16GB VRAM over the 12 GB in the 7700 XT and benchmarks better as well.
The 7700 XT retails for more than the 6800 due to it being newer and the 6800 being out of regular production and the Ryzen 5 7500F isn’t a regular retail chip so you’d be unlikely to save money by trying to build the Newegg linked PC. If you’re willing to build yourself, I’d definitely go with the PC Part Picker recommended list.
Edit: If the 1070 works and you’re still looking up upgrade it, consider selling the 1070 once you’re done with your new build. A glance at Facebook Marketplace suggests you could get around $100 for it which could be added to your budget (retroactively)
My criticisms of that auto-generated build would be:
I don’t love the ram speed. 5600 MHz CL36 is pretty far short of both 6000 MHz and CL30. Granted it’s $40 cheaper, but that’s why.
I wouldn’t be thrilled about getting a PCIE Gen 3 M.2 drive. 2 TB is much nicer, of course, but honestly I’d rather have a 1 TB C drive and then later get a larger secondary drive for games and media and such. (Which I say from experience, as this is exactly what I did.)
That power supply is in the Tier C section of the PSU tier list, which does not fill me with confidence. PSU Tier List rev. 17.0g - Cultists Network
It seems like I’d get slightly better performance when all is said and done, at the cost of worse performance for now and an extra $500 or so for a graphics card next year? (Plus the extra hassle of assembling it myself and buying it in pieces).
It’s a good pitch and if I wasn’t so sleep deprived with the new baby I’d probably go for it. But I think I just want to take the easy route, if the gains aren’t massive.
Yeah, I’ll definitely sell off the 1070 if I buy a new machine.
I do like that auto-generated video card pick, though. A little shy of twice as fast as a 1070. It wouldn’t be crazy to drop it into the $1100 system above, resulting in a $1500 system total now with an eye toward getting a new video card maybe 4 or so years from now.
I also like that 2 TB gen 3 m.2 drive as a secondary drive, maybe purchased next year or possibly for Christmas.
Yeah I misread that. I thought it was young kids. An actual baby is a whole other level of busy.
Pre-built does seem like the way to go. I don’t know that you’ll find one that will be good to go for 10 years. I guess the goal would be to aim for an upgradable pre-built, meaning one that is assembled from regular parts instead of proprietary.
Fair enough, though I expect things like slightly slower memory (relative to the DDR3 that’s probably currently in use*) or storage speeds are unlikely to be noticed by someone making a significant upgrade. Or are easily enough subbed with better components when purchasing.
The gaming performance difference between the memory is about 5-8%. Up to the user how much that matters but it’s a point worth bringing up before making a purchase. In any event, the CPU/GPU bones of the system is still the direction I’d go if building, especially since you can’t build a R5 7500F/7700XT system for less.
(also depends a lot on the games-- a 5% uplift from 220fps to 231fps is pretty academic; a lift from from 35 to 39 will probably be noticed)
*Guess based on “ten year old system that was upgraded with a 1070 at some point”
Here’s a reasonably decent candidate that’s almost in budget. Highlights being a 14700 CPU (fast!), the “good” version of the 4060 TI that comes with 16 GB vram, and hopefully because it’s ABS it’s off the shelf parts that can be upgraded normally. I did not confirm that for this specific model, but somebody else here on the boards has bought an ABS system within the past year and seemed to be pretty happy with it.
On sale for $1300 down from $1800 list price. (Of course always take those kind of sale prices with a grain of salt.) I think the name aqua is implying that it’s water cooled, which for me would be a negative.
Check this out on @Newegg:ABS Cyclone Aqua Gaming PC - Windows 11 - Intel i7 14700F - GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB - DLSS 3 - AI-Powered Performance - 32GB DDR5 6000MHz - 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD - CA14700F4060ti https://www.newegg.com/abs-ca14700f4060ti-cyclone-aqua/p/N82E16883360492
Here’s the $100 cheaper version for $1180 on sale from $1700. Unfortunately this sale ends in 14 hours. Everything’s the same as the $1300 system above except it has a 13700 instead of a 14700 (basically the same thing) but only 8 GB of vram on the video card instead of 16 GB, which is kind of a bummer. But still… Again, I have not confirmed that they are off the shelf parts.
Check this out on @Newegg:ABS Cyclone Aqua Gaming PC - Windows 11 - Intel i7 13700F - GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 8GB - DLSS 3 - AI-Powered Performance - 32GB DDR5 6000MHz - 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD - CA13700F4060TI https://www.newegg.com/abs-za13700f4060ti-cyclone-aqua/p/N82E16883360485
I did drop the 1070 into my current PC which was a prebuilt from 10 years ago. So if I need to upgrade the graphics card halfway through the lifespan I can live with that.
That seems like a given pretty much regardless. I’m more concerned about how the CPU will hold up. Most of the $1000 pre-builts I’m seeing come with a 13400 or equivalent. I would feel much better about recommending a 13700 in terms of going the distance for the CPU.
Or anything on the am5 platform, which should actually be upgradable in a reasonable manner. Intel CPUs aren’t generally upgradable in a meaningful way, so you’d be locking yourself in if you go Intel.
What about the Ryzen CPU on the PC Jophiel linked?