Hello, It’s that time again! It’s been quite a few years and time to invest (and futureproof) a new PC! Budget is between £1,200-£1,800. I’ve had a AMD/Radeon/Ryzen system for a few years, and while I was initially very impressed, it’s seems to have been passed by now, years later. So looking for an Intel/Nvidia combo + SSD is a must. Any suggestions? Based on people’s experiences here to play the game in beautiful detail and high performance! thanks!
I think you take a chance Shaun, it's a hell of a gamble. I decided to use Amazon being established and all that, I went for a Cyberpower, paid £1,500, a few sleepless nights, it is a lot of money. it has a i7 an ssd but the c drive is an up to date wd black sn750 NVMe 500gig ssd. it has a Gforce 2070 graphics card. So far I am very pleased.
I got a new system from CCL last year for TS and TSW. They have a standard range of course but were very open to discussion and changing spec's, made very sensible recommendations when I played a little dumb and I ended up with a Ryzen/NVidea based PC in a quiet case and QHD monitor for just over £1,000. With the benefit of hindsight I wish I had stretched a little more for a bigger boot drive but overall I remain pleased. It had to go back for repair under warranty when a component failed after a couple of months use but I don't think I can blame them for that and it was handled well. Standard disclaimer.
Over the last 13 years I have bought 3 desktops and 7 laptops from PC Specialist. I would like to qualify that by saying 2 of the desktops were for me 9 years apart and I was so impressed with the latest one I bought an identical one for my daughter. 2 of the laptops were for people outside our house and 1 for the local church. I like their service and the configurator that tells you if you are picking incompatible parts. Example of the service - I had 1 SSD fitted when I bought the PC and then bought a second one 3 years later just after the PC went out of warranty. The second NVMe SSD did not come with a spacer or mounting screw and although I was fairly certain those were supplied with the bag of bits that came with the PC I could not find them. 1 quick call during the lockdown earlier this year and after 5 minutes on the phone the very helpful customer service lady had messaged the workshop and arranged for a spacer and screw to be shipped to me free of charge. I was amazed having expected to pay for it.
Funny enough, I was looking on Amazon earlier!! Here’s one that has taken my fancy - thoughts?! https://www.acpcs.co.uk/collections/coffee-lake/products/9700k-gtx-1080-32gb-2tb-gaming-pc Also I have Samsung 27 inch, curved monitor, 1080p, 60hz, so take it that will need an upgrade too!
Honestly Shaun123 now is a horrible time to buy a new system. You have the 30 series cards just releasing that have made the value prospect of a 20 series card a bad deal and they never where exactly brilliant value to begin with. On top of that AMD also has new CPUs out before the year is done. If you can hold off a few more months that is honestly what i would do, and I would lock down what your planned gaming resolution is prior to investing in a system, if your sticking with 1080P then honestly any card from a 1080, 2070,2080 ect is going to do the job just fine however if you have plans to move to 1440P or 4K then the focus will shift drastically on ensuring majority of your budget goes on the GPU in this case honestly 3080 makes perfect sense if and when you can get ahold of one. If your stead fast on an intel based system even intel has new desktop CPUs incoming, just be aware that Intel has canned all its 10nm plans for desktop until 2021 and will likely offer a refresh of there CPU lineup on the current LGA1200 socket before the year is out from memory code name 'Rocket Lake' so again buying right now your paying top dollar for something that will be superseded within 3 months. End of the day its up to you, if your in need of a new system now then its your call, however you mentioned you are already on a Ryzen platform ? so what's stopping you from simply investing in a better GPU now for that system and holding off on a full system revamp until the new CPUs are out from both AMD and Intel ? I also take it your not interested in self building ? id strongly suggest you look into it as it will allow you far more flexibility in component choice and you will wind up with more for your money when you can fine tune the build to your requirements. Its also simply one of the great aspects of gaming on PC the fact you get to build it your self. Better yet it enables you to transfer components across, for example lets say your current system has 16GB of DDR4 why would you buy that again ? when you could just transfer it to a new build and put the money you would have spent on RAM into better GPU or higher end CPUs ect.
You probably should look for a custom built system. Do not buy the fastest and most expensive stuff, but invest some money in a good power supply and good cooling. Silent casing also is a wonderful addition, worth its money. Get a separate SSD for your OS and for data. The data SSD should be at least 512 Gb, for OS 256 is enough. You will need it! For most standard PCs storage is still an issue for this game. I had an SSD of a less known brand, and it really was no good. Now I only want Samsung SSD drives. A bit more expensive, but fast and they work excellent.
If you want to lose yourself down a rabbit hole for a couple of hours you can do a lot worse than go here. As far as a graphics card is concerned, unless AMD's Big Navi is something special an RTX 3080 is the way to go (it's within your budget and is best bang-for-buck), you just might have to wait until 2021 to get one. A good i7, 32GB RAM, an SSD for the OS and whatever drive you like for everything else would make for a top tier system.
Rudolf gives good advice. I have an older i7 with an rtx2060 which gives me a good 60-62 fps with Tsw2. So you needn’t blow all on the video card Would go for an 850gb or larger SSD as they fill up faster than you think.
A good guideline for working out how much storage you need is to start with how much a Windows install will take, what the software you're going to use will need as well as the files it will make. Think about how many pictures, video and audio files you're likely to accumulate and how much space they will take up all the while being generous in your estimates and keeping in mind that it's good practice to leave about 20% to 30% of the drive capacity empty so any reorganisation can be done quickly and with a minimum of shuffling... ...Then just buy the biggest drive you can afford.
Hi Shaun123, a lot of good advice here already from Rudolf and DTG Proatogonist. DIY gaming rig is the way to go, you pick the parts according to your budget. It is both fun and a learning experience! I have put together my own PCs sine Pentium 90 was the cutting edge CPU... It is really not that hard, even Miss Sweden managed to get one up and running! But if you rather choose a pre-build (and the warranty) have a look at this site and see if you find something to fit the bill. https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/best-gaming-pc/ These are the best 2020 UK builds at a budget!
Morning everyone! Thanks for all the advice, I’ve shopped around, and I’m currently looking at this one. How 32GB memory is a must. I’ve gone with pre-built for the warranty, and it’s a local store, and I wouldn’t know where to start with building one from scratch! This is what I’m thinking anyway; https://www.acpcs.co.uk/collections...0k-rtx-2080-or-2080-ti?variant=12852683964439
No offence this system is just not balanced. RAM - " 32GB Fast DDR4 2666MHZ " 2666 is not considered fast in the world of DDR4 also i don't think anyone makes a matched 32GB kit at those speeds at least none I have ever seen meaning its probably 2x 16GB kits that's fine however if you plan on Overclocking the CPU considering it is a K series chip you will run higher risk of memory stability issues and also that ram is just slow considering you can get 3200 + speeds for as little as $10 more. PSU - 650 Watt "Quality" ?? - what brand is it also its not future proof if you wish to to change over to a current tier GPU from Nvidia your already out of luck with that as 650 watts is right on the edge of recommended power for the 3080 series cards. CPU- Solid CPU but already a generation old and about to be replaced again end of year meaning your paying top dollar for a 2 generation old part. GPU - 2080 super was not a good card new and still is not now, its performance is not even at 1080ti levels its bad value and always has been, with RTX3070 coming out at $500 price point that's $100 cheaper than a 2080 for more the same performance as a 2080ti. HDDs: SSD - good? what one is it SATA ? NVMe ? again no real info here on there site. for perspective a 2TB non SSD HDD these days is worth nothing about £51.25 . If you want fast HDDs then you really want to ensure one of them is an NVMe especially now that DirectStorage is a thing going forward to ensure you can make use of all it will offer over the coming years. CPU Cooling : assume its stock heatsink ? at that price point id expect a decent cooler for the CPU the 9700K is a CPU than can top 5.1Gz all cores if clocked up so pairing it with a stock cpu cooler utter waste of time. And if your not going to overclock id still put a decent cooler on them stock heat sinks are horrible. I don't no how to say this nicely but that system is a rip off and already outdated. Example: https://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/system/Infinity-X10-GT-Gaming-PC And that's a 10th gen with a 3080.
2080ti, i9 10900 32gb ram. Same here, runs most things fine, gutted I wasn’t aware of the 3080 (recently returning from console )
Thanks for your input everyone! A few decisions to make, I did plan on getting one this weekend as it was my birthday last week, so planned on treating myself! As I said my budget is £1,200-£1,800, would prefer to go high-end spec so I know looking toward the higher end of that budget, which is fine, preferably pre-built and something that will last a good few years. I have a native 1080p monitor but would look at upgrading to 1440p (again Monitor suggestions would be great!) And would prefer an Intel/Nvidia combo, no offence to AMD of course but I just haven’t been won over by them! As it stands, from experience what is the best GPU around at the moment? I obviously play TSW2 the most, my issue at the moment isn’t performance at the moment I’m running TSW2 at 60FPS mostly, but it’s how it looks now is what I’m bothered about!
The best GPU is the 3090, but the price / performance ratio is terrible. You pay 2x for 15% more performance. So, as chieflongshin said, go with a 3080. For 2k gaming you will also be fine with a 3070, if price is a concern. About the monitor, you should go with one that has G-sync. It is more expensive, but there will be no tearing and everything feels more fluid. I bought the Asus PG279Q 3-4 years ago and I'm very happy with it. There might be newer models.