Hiya folks, the last PC I built had a top-of-the-line ATI Radeon 9800 in an AGP port. I’m on a PowerSpec prebuilt now, which is working fine.
My kids are ready to graduate from the spare laptop to an actual PC, and I want to build it with them so they learn about ESD and the joys of thermal paste. I plan to have the kids upgrade these in pieces over the next few years as/if they grow to need more power.
They mostly play minecraft, fortnight, and roblox. They don’t care about max graphics or AAAA games or max FPS yet, but maybe they will in the future. I still don’t.
I’m trying to keep it under $800, and I already have OK but not great 1080p work monitors.
Here’s my first draft: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vxcfFZ
I’m very open to suggestions on any front!
I would spend a little more to get an AM5 build if you want them to be able to upgrade it down the line. Here’s my proposed counter build for about $100 more (still under the stated $800 budget). Since the 7600 comes with a stock cooler you could save a little money by skipping the 3rd party cooler. If you have access to Microcenter you can save about $30 and get a 7600X instead of the 7600 in a bundle with mobo and 32GB RAM (you have to get the second stick separately) and $10 off the GPU.
That’s a great deal, I appreciate your input very much.
Swap the 5700X for a 5600X and bump the 6500XT up to a 6600 (non-xt is fine). They won’t notice any difference with the CPU swap and that frees up the money to switch to a better GPU with 8gb vram which will keep them happy for much longer. I ran a 6600 for a while at 1440p and was impressed by it especially for how little I spent. Other than that, should do fine. Silicon Power has had reliability issues in the past, not sure if they got better. I ran an SP drive for a few years and didn’t have issues fwiw, but you may want to see if there’s anything in recent reviews about their ssds.
Good call on the swap and thank you for the brand tip. I’ll read some more!
I’ve never personally used that exact CPU cooler, but it looks fine.
Never had any issues with MSI boards or Corsair RAM.
I haven’t heard of it used that SSD brand so you might wanna do some research and make sure it isn’t some cheap nonsense that’s just gonna fry itself in 6 months.
4gb of vram on the GPU is probably fine for 1080p mid to low settings but I feel like if you can swing getting something even a little better it will improve performance significantly.
I haven’t used that case specifically but I have a a thermal take case currently and I love it. My only issue is the power button can get stuck fully depressed if your are careless about turning it on. Something that will result in boot looping if you don’t figure out what is causing it lol.
Personally I would not risk the PSU from Apevia. 650w is definitely more than enough for that system as it’s specked but I would get a reputable brand PSU if anything. Never go cheap on the PSU.
The only other thing I see is that you’ll need to potentially do a BIOS update on that MOBO in order for it to work with that CPU. I’m not sure how tech savvy you are but if you are planning on building a computer yourself in the first place I’m guessing you are comfortable enough to figure out that process.
Thank you, these are all great tips.
I’ve updated my bios before, no worries. I built all of my computers except this last one.
Bunmp
