Christmas is coming, and I'm thinking a family PC is on the cards from santa.
It would need to run minecraft and Lego city undercover and that sort of thing.
I already have a spare TUF 750W bronze rated power supply (that I bought one time I was troubleshooting).
I will also probably upgrade my RX5700XT graphics card so put that in this build (suggestions welcome for a good bang for buck replacement that's good for a server running Mint and ollama (needs high VRAM) as well as used for gaming).
Everything else would be new. Suggestions for monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers too please!
Let's aim for a ballpark of $1000USD (I'll be purchasing in New Zealand).
Thanks in advance!
I assume the $1000 budget doesn't include the new GPU you want to replace the 5700XT with. I believe the most VRAM for the buck is still the 7900XTX and it seems prices on those have been coming down in the last month or so, which helps.
Since you mentioned the 7800X3D I used that as the basis for the build. Even that would be overkill for the 5700XT but it gives you options for the near future. The peripherals I just went for low cost basic-ish options.
PCPartPicker Part List
The 7900XTX doesn't seem to be in stock locally at the moment. What about something like the RX9070? It's only 16GB but a lot cheaper too. Or something else with good back for buck at or around that VRAM level?
9070XT would probably be your next best bet. There's also the 7900XT (not XTX) that I believe has 20GB VRAM but it might be difficult to find, similar to the XTX
Yeah I can't find that 7900XT either, I haven't found anything about 16GB VRAM.
Do you think the 9070XT is worth it over the XT? I found mixed reviews online, many people don't think the extra cost is worth a minimal improvement.
At current pricing you might be better off with the regular (non-XT) 9070, it's skewing much closer to MSRP right now, whereas the 9070XT is still marked up such that the price increase outpaces the performance increase. Something else to consider is the 9070XT has a 304W TDP compared to the 9070's 220W, so the regular 9070 is also more power efficient, which may be something you need to consider for the power supply being used with it or your local electricity rates.
Yeah, I see many are listed as needing a 800 or 850W power supply, where as the 9070 are often 700 or 750W. My current PSU is 650W and the spare one is 750W, so probably better to go with the 9070 rather than have to get a new PSU as well.
Thanks for the build!
Correct
Thanks for the suggestion! The one I looked up says it needs an 850W power supply! I think mine might be 650W so might have to plan it out a bit, make sure it will fit, has enough power, etc. I was hoping to minimise the down time for this PC as it's an active server.
Only as the other reply suggested the 9800X3D and the comments on there suggested the 7800X3D for the better value, but I think locally the prices aren't too different so maybe I'll go with that 9800X3D if it's good bang for buck.
Interestingly I have trouble finding many of your components locally. How does this look? What should I be looking for in a CPU cooler? What about the motherboard, is the cheapest fine? I've gone for 2TB drive as I think it's worth the extra space if three kids will be sharing it, especially with their own profiles.
That's a perfectly reasonable list, the only change I would do is change the cooler to the Thermalright Peerless Assassin, I think it would be worth the extra ~26NZ$. If that breaks the budget, here's some alternative case options that should save enough money to make up for it while retaining similar design and features to the one you linked. I wouldn't try to save any more money on your other parts since that will affect performance (maybe not the motherboard but there's not much room for you to go cheaper there, or really with much other than the case)
https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/product/gBzp99/lian-li-v100r-atx-mid-tower-case-v100rx
https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/product/ttBzK8/msi-mag-pano-m100r-pz-microatx-mid-tower-case-mag-pano-m100r-pz
https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/product/ckBzK8/antec-c3-argb-atx-mid-tower-case-0-761345-10029-8
Thanks, the budget is loose, happy to make that swap. I wasn't picky about the case either, just picked one at the cheap end, available at my preferred store, and went for one with all the RGB because I figured the kids will love it haha.
Thanks for the help, I will use it as the plan and work on getting things as they come on special as we head towards Christmas.
That's a cool keyboard you put in your original parts list, maybe I'll keep it for myself 😅. For the mouse/keyboard, is there anything to look for in particular, or cheapest is fine?
I'll admit I'm quite novice when it comes to evaluating peripherals, so I went with pretty much the cheapest full size mechanical keyboard they had listed. Unfortunately PCPartPicker doesn't seem to have any mechanical keyboards in close to equivalent pricing listed for NZ.
Given the pricing and that it's for kids, the cheapest from a brand you recognize will probably be fine. I don't know that spending more money will make much of a noticeable difference until you spend quite a bit more money. In my opinion, a lot of it is just personal preference, like the keyboard size/layout, wired or wireless, backlit or not, any extra shortcut keys, things like that.
For the mouse I went with what I recognized as a frequently cited best cheap/budget mouse. Something like this might be the closest available equivalent. Again, I feel like a lot of it comes down to personal preference. I don't know that it will matter much in your use case, but I know people look for things like high DPI, high polling rate, light weight, being able to switch DPI on the fly, additional buttons. Trying to stay within the equivalent budget of what I selected before, again I would say the cheapest from a brand you recognize will probably be fine, you're not going to get many bells and whistles without spending a fair bit more.
Yeah I think that's a fair assessment. Get the kids the cheapest stuff, upgrade them as and when it becomes clear they aren't good enough.