Buy vs Build advice

Cerberus

Hi all,
I'm looking for a new PC build that will primarily be used for sim racing gaming. I am very conscious of the merits of building my own PC, and indeed I am well able to do it, and have enjoyed researching it so far. However, I am very time poor and cursed with tendencies towards procrastination.

I was hovering my mouse over the 'Buy' button on a €2,500 Alienware Aurora an hour ago, but said I would just seek counsel first. I know I'm paying more for less, but my gut feeling is that it's good enough for what I want, and means I will be up and running next week. If I go the build route, good chance I will be still researching in 3 months time.

I guess my real question is, if I spend €2,500 on the Alienware, am I getting a €2,000 PC and convenience/peace of mind, or is it a €1,500 PC and mostly branding. I'm fine with the former; the latter would make me feel like a sucker.

Alienware build

I've filled out the form as below. Thanks very much for your time and consideration.

1. What is your budget? [€2500]

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Sim-racing/High-end gaming

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? No

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No

5. Do you need a monitor? No but I will need to be able to handle triples, or a ultra-wide 49". 4k gaming is not a target.

6. Do you need any of these peripherals? Wireless Card. Will likely need lots of USB ports.

7. Are you willing to try overclocking? Yes

8. How can you pay? Any way

9. When are you purchasing? Now

10. If you need help building it, where are you based? N/A

11. Other considerations: I would like it to be quiet. Space for case is not an issue

Samuel T. Cogley

I'm not sure that's even €1500 worth of PC.

Shlippery

Yea..9700k and 2070 Super for €2.4k is ...not amazing.

You could get a mind-blowing build for less! Someone can put something together..no need for 3 months research then! Just the patience of a few packages arriving and a few hours in a day!

K.O.Kiki

Buy this instead, just a touch over €2000

https://www.cclonline.com/pc/gaming-pcs/shadow-hawk/ccl-shadow-hawk-gs-gaming-pc/

Comes in one of the best chassis on the market (Phanteks P400A-RGB), features a better GPU (2080 Super), more future-proof CPU (Ryzen 3700X), 16Gb fast RAM, 1Tb SSD & HDD, CPU water cooling.

If you configure with a 2070 Super, it's ~€1700.

Cerberus

That makes the Alienware look very, very expensive. Thanks.

Cerberus

I spec'ed up the same PC in PCPartsPicker and they are only charging 200 quid more for their labour, ancillary costs, margin and postage. That's fairly reasonable in my view. However, now that I have a template of sorts to work from, I'm getting the itch to buy and build myself now :-)

Homelander

There's absolutely no problem with that (in my opinion), if you don't want to build yourself it's a good deal, I mean the retailer has to make money too.

The Dell though is taking the piss, it's a 1K profit margin.

If you have a 49" ultrawide that's not far off 4K, so you would need a strong GPU. I have a 2070 Super and it struggles on 3440x1440 (in the sense that I like playing at high/ultra settings I mean).

Problem is, the 2080 Super is poor value to performance, and the 2080Ti is crazy money.

Personally I am waiting for the new RTX 3 series cards.

Cerberus

So just an update on this. I went to order a pre-built from CCL (same one recommended above) with some slight customisation requested. I got a polite but firm email from them saying they are too busy to be dealing with me because they are so busy selling shed-loads of stuff to the remote working crowd.

So I'll just buy the components myself and build it. I decided to adjust my budget downwards after some research because I realised I really don't need a €2,500 PC for gaming. It would just be wasted on my particular needs. I'll redirect the budget saved toward a Valve Index VR headset instead. This will then be my replacement for the 49"inch super ultrawide I was also planning on getting for sim racing. However, I'll get a smaller, more sensible 32" 1440p 140hz curved display for other more general gaming and computing workloads.

This is the build I've configured here and comes in just shy of €1,900. Does anything jump out as being a poor choice or otherwise odd, i.e. given I'm not overly budget sensitive, are there materially better components I'm leaving on the table for the sake of a few quid?

Homelander

If you are spending that kind of money I would get a Ryzen 3700X. You can cover the cost straight off by dropping the watercooler, the 3700X comes with a very good stock cooler. You won't need to overclock with Ryzen, returns are minimal. Overclocking only comes into play really with Intel CPU's.

I also would not buy a 2080 Super at this stage (I never would have either at any point, personally). New, vastly improved RTX 3 series cards coming out later this year. At best I'd buy a cheap 2070 Super and think about replacing it towards the end of the year. These cards will plummet in value once the new ones arrive.

The 2080 Super is not much faster (about 15%) but you are paying hundreds of pounds more. Cheapest 2070S is around £460, 2080 Super is £700. 50% increased cost for 15% performance.

K.O.Kiki

Balanced it for you.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£269.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 33 eSports ONE (Black/Green) CPU Cooler (£40.09 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI X470 GAMING PLUS MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£99.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory (£89.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£138.97 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB GAMING X Video Card (£572.04 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital ATX Mid Tower Case (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: be quiet! System Power 9 CM 700 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£86.76 @ CCL Computers)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link Archer T6E AC1300 PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter (£35.38 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1432.21
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-09 09:11 BST+0100

Cerberus

Homelander wrote: »

If you are spending that kind of money I would get a Ryzen 3700X. You can cover the cost straight off by dropping the watercooler, the 3700X comes with a very good stock cooler. You won't need to overclock with Ryzen, returns are minimal. Overclocking only comes into play really with Intel CPU's.

I also would not buy a 2080 Super at this stage (I never would have either at any point, personally). New, vastly improved RTX 3 series cards coming out later this year. At best I'd buy a cheap 2070 Super and think about replacing it towards the end of the year. These cards will plummet in value once the new ones arrive.

The 2080 Super is not much faster (about 15%) but you are paying hundreds of pounds more. Cheapest 2070S is around £460, 2080 Super is £700. 50% increased cost for 15% performance.

Thanks for taking time to reply Homelander. Regarding the CPU, the reason I picked the 3600X was because I couldn't see any benefit to having the 3700x for my workloads. From what I have read, gaming is now, and likely for a good while yet, still heavily dependent on maximum single core speed. Assuming that holds true, in that respect the 3600X is the same if not slightly better than 3700x, but the 3700x is 40% more expensive. I don't see the value for me in the extra two cores. Am I missing some other benefits I would get from 3700x? CPUs seem cheap, so replacing one if my workload changes isn't a major factor.

Which brings me on to the 2080 Super. It's interesting I'm trying to talk myself down to a 3600x and up to a 2080 Super, and you're advising me to do the opposite :-). Your advice is very good in fairness and from a value perspective you're dead right - the 2080S is on the tail end of the diminishing returns slope with the Ti at the bottom.

Cerberus

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Balanced it for you.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor (£269.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 33 eSports ONE (Black/Green) CPU Cooler (£40.09 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI X470 GAMING PLUS MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (£99.99 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Crucial Ballistix RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory (£89.99 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£138.97 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB GAMING X Video Card (£572.04 @ CCL Computers)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital ATX Mid Tower Case (£99.99 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: be quiet! System Power 9 CM 700 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£86.76 @ CCL Computers)
Wireless Network Adapter: TP-Link Archer T6E AC1300 PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter (£35.38 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1432.21
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-04-09 09:11 BST+0100

Thanks Kiki. I've mixed and matched yours with mine based on availability in the stores. I've tried to buy as much from Amazon as I can because I have Prime, but the price for Amazon stuff on PartsPicker is hit and miss because 50% of the time it's not available when you go to Amazon.

Am I right in thinking that the liquid cooler I had spec'ed is a waste of money and a good air cooler is just as effective and quiet, and less complicated and prone to reliability issues? They do look cool....(won't someone think of the RGB!! )

K.O.Kiki

I just wouldn't recommend Corsair AIOs as their fans aren't great.

NZXT X72 360mm AIO is on sale on Amazon for £110 - it's basically the best AIO you can buy before going full-custom right now -- however the upcoming EKWB AIOs: https://www.ekwb.com/solutions/all-in-one/ are supposed to be brilliant.
Maybe use the stock cooler for now & then decide if you want to AIO in a month?

Regarding PCPartpicker links oftentimes you can still find the item through a regular search.

Cerberus

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I just wouldn't recommend Corsair AIOs as their fans aren't great.

NZXT X72 360mm AIO is on sale on Amazon for £110 - it's basically the best AIO you can buy before going full-custom right now -- however the upcoming EKWB AIOs: https://www.ekwb.com/solutions/all-in-one/ are supposed to be brilliant.
Maybe use the stock cooler for now & then decide if you want to AIO in a month?

Regarding PCPartpicker links oftentimes you can still find the item through a regular search.

Yes good advice, I think going with stock and seeing how I get on is probably the smart move. I can go with the EKWB AIO then if I think I need it (or just want it :-))

laneooo

Cerberus wrote: »

Yes good advice, I think going with stock and seeing how I get on is probably the smart move. I can go with the EKWB AIO then if I think I need it (or just want it :-))

Would Intel not be better for you for gaming?
I was looking at this few months ago and is built for silence - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/TgMXdm (no wifi card) but then went with 3950x build in the end.
A bit more costly than kiwi's build but in my opinion is worth it. In regards to CPU cooler I have a dark rock 4 and it's not quite, it's literally silent.

This build is in line with what i went with - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PjFCq3 - Costly but if you shop around you'll get it much cheaper...I think i payed 1700 all in few months back. I got parts over a few weeks and waited for best prices.

Cerberus

laneooo wrote: »

Would Intel not be better for you for gaming?
I was looking at this few months ago and is built for silence - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/TgMXdm (no wifi card) but then went with 3950x build in the end.
A bit more costly than kiwi's build but in my opinion is worth it. In regards to CPU cooler I have a dark rock 4 and it's not quite, it's literally silent.

This build is in line with what i went with - https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/PjFCq3 - Costly but if you shop around you'll get it much cheaper...I think i payed 1700 all in few months back. I got parts over a few weeks and waited for best prices.

Hi Laneooo, I looked into Intel initially for that very reason but from what I've read, the gains in FPS compared to similar AMD CPU are marginal, and the difference in price is not. They gains are there though, and I can understand if you're chasing every last FPS it might be worth it, but I'm not going to be. Going with Intel would also seem to be a dead end from an upgradeability point of view as well, but I'm not sure that is a major factor for me given how inexpensive motherboards are. In the end I just went AMD over Intel because most people in the know recommend it.

Point noted about the Dark Rock 4. Noise was definitely a factor in my initial build requirements but I'm here sitting in my office / games room now and the air ventilation cooling system is literally just after turning on the afterburners for the first time this year. I'm pretty sure I could have a v8 engine idling beside me and it wouldn't be heard :-). So I'll go stock cooler for now and see how I get on after the summer when it quietens down again. TDP could actually be something I need to factor in more :-)