I’m working on a build list for a Linux gaming rig. It’s my first build so I’d welcome any comments or tips!
I’m mostly looking to run games like the Total War series. I’m not obsessed with getting peak performance, I’m angling more for a reasonable value mid-range build.
Linux support is essential, I won’t buy any Nvidia products.
UK market if that makes a difference.
List below…
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor (£139.99 @ Amazon UK)
- Motherboard: MSI B550 GAMING GEN3 ATX AM4 Motherboard (£89.97 @ Ebuyer)
- Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory (£64.98 @ Amazon UK)
- Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£84.24 @ Amazon UK)
- Video Card: PowerColor Fighter Radeon RX 6650 XT 8 GB Video Card (£239.00 @ Computer Orbit)
- Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case (£74.50 @ Computer Orbit)
- Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply (£101.62 @ Amazon UK) Total: £794.30
The cheapest 16 GB GPU is currently the Arc 770 OC for €330. It would give you many more years of good experience. Or if you want an AMD GPU, it would be the RX 6800 (+44% more performance) for €414.
Your choice is also fine but you will probably want to upgrade it after 3+ years. The others only after 5+ probably. I had my old rig for a bit over 10 years as an example.
I think nvidia has some decent drivers for gpus nowadays but you can’t go wrong with AMD, aldo their company philosophy will probably suit you better.
Me, I like to go single brand as much as possible. So going for a corsair psu would be my way to go, just for the logos.
Your cpu won’t bottleneck your gpu and your RAM seems fine. I have the same SSD, I have heard some stuff about them dying quickly as OS disks.
As far as your mobo is concerned: that’s down to personal preference, which ports you need and more importantly which ones you don’t. I went auth q micro-ATX because I prefer it to be smaller.
Can you recommend a Corsair PSU?
To be honest the only things on the list I’ve thought about much are the CPU and GPU. In between posting and now I’ve been fiddling with the motherboard selection to get rid of a USB header compatibility warning and it seems that this one would do it:
MSI PRO B550M-VC WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
I will do some more research on ports, I always find it difficult to predict what I will need in future!
Any PSU will do, if it’s 80 Plus anything certified, depending on your electricity costs. 600W seems about right, having an underpowered psu is not good and having an overpowered one is bad for the psu.
I’m not sure I’m understand you correctly, but having an PSU with higher capacity than you use is not bad for it. Generally you’ll get increased power efficiency
Thanks, really appreciate the help!
OP can’t buy an nvidia gpu if they want use Linux going forward. Xorg is in sunset mode at this point, with the bleeding/leading edge distros looking to retire it in favour of Wayland based compositors. Nvidia’s GBM back end in their driver is in no state for anyone who wants a problem free, no hassle Linux gaming experience.
Buying nvidia for Linux would be buying hope that nvidia straightens Wayland support out. But why take the risk when you could buy a known working amd (or even Intel) gpu today