Posts by wiredotter14

swiftfalcon89 said:You can grab Windows 10 for free directly from Microsoft's site, and honestly, running an unactivated version works just fine if that's what you want. If you do decide to activate it, you can find licenses on eBay for basically pocket change.
An optical drive—do people actually still use those?
Besides the fact that you could have squeezed a noticeably beefier GPU into that budget, you also picked a Red Devil, which is pretty much one of the worst versions of that specific card you could have gone with.
As for that Patriot Burst, if it doesn't die on you within two to six months, consider yourself lucky. It’s easily one of the worst choices for a Samsung.
You don't need an X470 for a Ryzen 2600. Any decent B350 or B450 board will keep a Ryzen 2600 sitting comfortably at 4-4.1GHz as long as your cooling is up to par.

When you can get a much better build for the same price here in the States, you realize how much you missed out. $2.75 Including shipping, you paid that amount, but for $27 more, you could have built something significantly stronger over here with a 250GB NVMe Samsung plus a 1TB SATA3 Samsung:

1 * AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Processor (6C/12T, 3.9GHz, 19MB, 65W, AM4) box, Wraith Stealth
Part #: YD2600BBAFBOX - $466

1 * ARCTIC COOLING Freezer 34 Cooler, fits 1150/1155/1156/2011/2011-3/2066/AM4, black
Part #: 050.903.387- - $66

1 * Gigabyte B450M DS3H AMD B450, AM4, 4xDDR4, DVI-D/HDMI, 2xPCIe x16, 1xPCIe x1, 1xM.2, 4xSATA, mATX
Part #: B450M_DS3H - $200

1 * GSkill Aegis 16GB (2x8) DDR4 3000MHz
Part #: F4-3000C16D-16GISB - $316

1 * Palit GF RTX2060 Gaming Pro OC, 6GB
Part #: pal-2060-gpr-6gb - $1033

1 * Kingston A1000 NVMe 240GB, R1500/W800, M.2 2280
Part #: king-a1000-240g - $153

1 * Kingston SSD A400, R500/W450, 960GB, 7mm, 2.5
Part #: king-sa400-960 - $354

1 * Seasonic SS-520GB Power Supply, 520W
Part #: 0150793 - $150

1 * Zalman S2 Case, 2x120mm, USB3.0
Part #: ZAL-S2-1 - $98

Total: $2838 (-2%=$2.75)
Free assembly and shipping

Point taken, that's why I mentioned it. But keep in mind, shops over in Germany don't just let you pick whatever components you want for free. You have to use sites like this where you configure it and they offer what they've got available.

That said, you can put together a pretty decent build here:

1 (ID: 194844)

Configuration:
Main Components
Sharkoon S25-W with AMD Ryzen 5 2600 window
AMD Ryzen 5 2600 (6x 3.4GHz / 3.9 Turbo)
COSMO COOL LC-CC-120
MSI B450 Tomahawk
16GB (2x8GB) GSkill DDR4 3000MHz AEGIS
500GB Crucial MX500 M.2 SATA-SSD ( L 560MB/s ; S 510MB/s)
1000GB SATA 6GB/s 7200rpm
no Hard Drive/SSD
6GB KFA RTX2060 OC
400W be quiet! Seasonic Prime Gold 2-year warranty
no drive
Warranty and Service
Seasonic Prime Gold 2-year warranty

This comes out to $1048.50, or roughly $2600 with shipping.

Windows 10 is an extra $50 if you don't feel like messing around with the installation.

P.S.

I personally own that AMD Radeon RX 580 PowerColor Red Devil; picked it up right before that massive price spike in 2017 during some sale.
The cooler design and everything is solid—it's massive, temps are fine—but the GPU itself isn't anything special. They use chips that aren't exactly top-tier when it comes to holding clocks and voltage.

Adam Lopez5 said:I'm looking at buying a new PC these days and spotted 4 options on Craigslist. I'd love some advice on which one is the best move, especially since I plan on upgrading the processor down the road.

https://www.craigslist.org/search/cpu/27901030

https://www.craigslist.org/search/cpu/27725796

https://www.craigslist.org/search/cpu/27775137

https://www.craigslist.org/search/cpu/27687852

They're all pretty much in the same ballpark. Difference is, the ones with newer CPUs use DDR4 RAM. If you ever decide to swap platforms later, keeping that RAM helps, though you probably won't be swapping the motherboard when you buy the build anyway.

The issue is none of these are cheap enough to justify building something similar from scratch—maybe a new build with slightly budget components like the PSU, but performance-wise, it's the same story.

So, if I were picking between them, I'd just go for whichever one allows me to haggle the price down the most.

That said, for these prices? I'd take the one with the AMD Ryzen. You get a platform with an actual upgrade path, whereas the others leave you stuck. Plus, it has the GTX 1080; the rest have similar or worse cards.

P.S.

The i5 6600 one is the worst deal here. Avoid it.

Maybe turn off CAPS LOCK? No need to shout.

An NVMe Samsung won't make a difference here. If you're building a $1,000 gaming rig, two separate drives just don't make sense.
The motherboard won't feel any different either, unless you're planning on overclocking—and even then, you can get decent results with this B450.

The PSU is from the same lineup (EVGA SuperNOVA), so the quality is comparable. Plus, 400W is plenty since this build won't pull more than 300W under full load.

You can grab Windows 10 online for less than $10, so it's hardly a major cost factor.

Look, I'm not saying the build I linked is perfect; it's a pre-configured setup, and you shouldn't expect much from those.

The bottom line is that you picked a drastically weaker GPU for roughly the same price.

That build wouldn't have been half bad if there was a higher budget—like if you'd just gone for a GTX 1660Ti instead of cutting corners.

crimsonstag84 said:That seems way too pricey for an RTX 2060 build...

DDR4 16GB (2x8GB) PC4-24000U 3000MHz CL16 G.Skill Aegis, F4-3000C16D-16GISB
Procesor Intel Core i5-9400F (9MB Cache, 2.90GHz), boxed, BX80684I59400FSRF6M
Matična ploča Gigabyte GA-Z370P-D3, s.1151
Grafička kartica Gigabyte RTX2060 OC GDDR6 6GB, 1755/1750MHz, GV-N2060OC-6GD
Napajanje Thermaltake ToughPower Grand RGB Gold 750W ATX 2.4, PS-TPG-0750FPCGEU-R
Kućište Fortron CMT 230, crno s prozorom, bez napajanja, ATX
Intel SSD 660 p Series, 512GB, M.2, 1500/1000 MB s, SSDPEKNW512G8X1
HDD 1TB Toshiba P300 High-Performance, 3.5", 7200RPM, 64MB Cache, SATA3, HDWD110UZSVA

~$2.75 ADM

Solid setup if you're committed to Intel. But honestly? It feels like a waste to pick up an i5 when the Ryzen 5 2600 is cheaper $467 and offers a better path for future upgrades.

Adam Moore3 said:$2667 man, just an RX580. You spent way too much on those SSDove while the GPU took a massive hit. You should've at least thrown in a 1660Ti, seriously. 🍿

He would've been better off grabbing this one from the homepage

https://www.newegg.com/GAMING-PC/Game...060::3644.html

Jerry Wright8 said:Thanks for the reply. I’m assuming you mean we need at least an i5 because those F-series chips don't have integrated graphics.
Does the graphics part actually eat into the CPU's performance, or is it just some "dedicated" section handling things on its own?

Yeah, it’s a separate part of the chip. It shares RAM with the CPU, but honestly, you won't notice any impact on performance.

Just steer clear of the F-series. Doesn't strictly have to be an i5; an i3 or even an Intel Pentium Gold will work fine.
An Intel Pentium Gold should do it—it likely uses the same Intel UHD Graphics as the Celeron G4900.
..
The others run on Intel UHD Graphics.

crimsonstag84 said:On the flip side, the CX is basically just a slightly beefed-up Vengeance with a bit more quality behind it.

👍

Haven't really seen them much in the local stores.

Is that Vengeance just a rebrand of the CX?

That’s just a bunch of people making stuff up based on "gut feelings."

Seems a bit overpriced to me, honestly.

If you're looking at this for professional work, you might actually get some value out of an RTX card (like a 2060).

Andrew Hill18 said:No way, that’s a massive jump—we're talking over 100% if we're looking at Joe's stash. 🤣

You're right. He didn't say a case of beer.

jadetrucker43 said:I finally worked out getting an extra 8 GB of DDR3, so I went ahead and ordered the 8 GB RX 570. With a CPU overclock, that should hold me over for a while.

👍

Timothy Kim60 said:It might actually be closer to a GTX 1060.

Which is basically an RX 570.

That’s exactly the sweet spot we need. For Nvidia, this will be a budget card (small chip, low memory), but since AMD Polaris production is already fully scaled, they'll be heavy competition in that <=$200 segment.

Yeah, look, the idea is to hit performance levels close to a GTX 1070 for about $200, and if you push just a bit higher, you're looking at a GTX 1080.

But in this specific bracket below $500, it really just comes down to the price tag compared to the Polaris cards, which are dirt cheap right now.

The GTX 1650 is stuck with 4GB of VRAM, so honestly, you're better off grabbing a Polaris with 8GB; at least that way you're somewhat future-proof.

Timothy Kim60 said:If you aren't planning on swapping out your whole rig this year, you might want to hold off for a GTX 1660 or a GTX 1650. They’d actually pair better with an FX processor—especially the second option, since the first one will likely land somewhere right between a GTX 1060 6GB and a GTX 1070 in terms of raw power. Honestly, the FX won't be such a massive bottleneck if you're running a 1440p monitor.

You really think the 1650 is going to be a better value than the RX 570 8GB for $417?

Just look at how much VRAM you get with that RX 570 for the price.

wanderingbison9 said:P.S. check eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Genuine-AM4...frcectupt=true

Honestly, at that price point, you might as well just buy a dead motherboard.

What exactly does more memory get you in this scenario?

Honestly, you're better off putting those extra couple hundred bucks toward a better GPU rather than dumping money into more DDR3.

Or grab an aftermarket cooler if there isn't one. Get something that supports AM4 so he can actually reuse it if he eventually jumps to an AM4 platform.

Plus, on AMD's site, you can see the cash price on the individual item, but it doesn't show up in the cart. You have to go through the damn hassle of logging in or entering all your info just to see the total discount for the whole basket.

Adam Moore3 said:ASUS Prime B360M, LGA 1151 8th Gen
Intel Core i5-9400F (9MB Cache, 2.90GHz)
DDR4 8GB (1x8) PC4-21300U 2666MHz CL19 G.Skill NT Series
Gigabyte RTX 2060 OC GDDR6 6GB
Crucial MX500 250GB SSD
SAMA 750W 80PLUS GOLD
Zalman Z1 NEO mid tower case

Total: $2325 Best Buy

The PSU is overkill, but it's such a killer deal it's totally worth it.
I wouldn't even touch 12 GB of RAM; I'd stick to either 8 or 16. If he really wants to save money, he could swap the SAMA for an EVGA 850 and get maybe another $33 back.

BTW, does anyone know what happened with the new site layout at Best Buy? There aren't even any filters for detailed component searches?

As long as everything looks fancy and polished... 🕺

My theory? The guy running AMD's webstore is either a total saboteur or just some kind of agent provocateur.

I can't make sense of this link. It looks like it might be broken or lead to a page that isn't loading properly on my end. If you're trying to share something specific, try sending the text directly or checking the URL again.

For the GPU, you might want to hold out for the Nvidia 1660 or 1650Ti dropping later this month.

As for the CPU, I'd go with the Ryzen 5 2600. Honestly, take whatever you would've spent on an Intel Core i5-8600K desktop Processor 6 Cores and dump that extra cash into a better graphics card instead.

If you grab a new laptop online, you've got a 14-day window to send it back. Basically, you can use that time to test it out.