Possible PC Price Check

[Spacedeck 915]

So after around 5 years, my brother has decided he wants to upgrade his PC, but I think he might go down the route of buying new everything.  He offered (maybe not serious at this point, I don't know) his rig for £300 and I'm wondering if you would?

 

AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.7 GHz 8-Core Processor
NZXT Kraken X62 Liquid CPU Cooler
Gigabyte X470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI ATX AM4 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 CL16 Memory
Samsung 970 Evo 250 GB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
Seagate BarraCuda 4 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM Internal Hard Drive
NVIDIA Founders Edition GeForce RTX 2070 8 GB Video Card
GameMax Graphite ATX Mid Tower Case
Corsair TX750M 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply
Asus DRW-24D5MT DVD/CD Writer

 

This is obviously an improvement over my aging i7 4790k and GTX 980.  I believe it has the possibilities for upgrades without major changes being needed should I be able to afford to upgrade later on.

 

Would you say it's a good deal? Being that I'm gaming at 1080p.

[Greboth 2,705]

Pricing up what I know second hand prices for

CPU ~£40-£50

RAM ~£20-£25

GPU ~£130-£150

 

So £190-£225 just in those but you could add £40-£50 for the PSU.  The motherboard is obviously an older version but if memory serves, the Auros 7 was one of best Ryzen 2000 series motherboards so probably add £50 easy (probably more) but makes it another £100 bringing the current total to ~£300.

 

After that everything else is “free” with the cooler being pretty good too so another bonus.  Drives are cheap these days so they won’t add much but always nice to haves.

 

For gaming at 1080p that PC should be fine and still hit 60fps at quite high-ish settings.

 

As for upgrades; yes there would be some easy upgrades.  RAM is obviously easy but 16Gb is probably enough unless you’re playing some intensive games.  GPU is also easy but for 1080p the 2070 should be enough.  The 250Gb NVME drive is small these days but the motherboard has multiple slots so cloning the existing one would be easy (from memory Ryzen 2000 doesn’t have the pci-e lanes to run 2 nvme’s without some performance loss so it would be better swapping it out rather than use 2 but worth double checking as my memory of hardware specs from years ago could be wrong).  CPU wise obviously it’s a few years old but the 2700x was the top of the 2000 series and it still holds up well today and I’m not sure it would be worth upgrading but it would be possible to swap it out for a newer CPU as the AM4 socket included 3000 and 5000 series too.  You’d need to check on Gigabytes site but the Auros 7 was their top board so can’t believe it wouldn’t support newer Ryzen.

 

There’s some downsides though namely everything is EOL.  Ryzen now uses socket AM5 so you couldn’t go newer than 5000 series.  DDR5 RAM is the current where this is DDR4.  I wouldn’t put too much weight on these though as that PC should still last for years.  It’s just worth noting so you’re fully informed.

 

So overall is it a good deal?  I’m always loathed to answer these sort of questions as so much of what it depends on is subjective but I’d say so, yes.

[Spacedeck 915]

35 minutes ago, Greboth said:

There’s some downsides though namely everything is EOL.  Ryzen now uses socket AM5 so you couldn’t go newer than 5000 series.  DDR5 RAM is the current where this is DDR4.  I wouldn’t put too much weight on these though as that PC should still last for years.  It’s just worth noting so you’re fully informed.

 

Very informative mate, thank you.  I think I'll tell him tomorrow I'll have it should he wishes to go ahead.

 

I'm aware about the AM4 and EOL for most of the system. For comparisons, this is what I currently have:

 

Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.00GHz

16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 790MHz

Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd. Z97X-UD3H-BK-CF

4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980

238GB Crucial_CT256MX100SSD1

1863GB TOSHIBA DT01ACA200

 

Upgrading isn't something I'd be able to do anytime soon anyway, so just having something that would be better than I already have is my main aim.  I don't expect a miracle jump in performance, although my 980 really struggles with pretty much every game now sadly.

 

If I do end up with his PC, I'd plan on putting this PC in a smaller case for the daughter to use.  Unless the MB and GPU wouldn't fit a smaller form factor case?

[Greboth 2,705]

7 hours ago, Spacedeck said:

I don't expect a miracle jump in performance, although my 980 really struggles with pretty much every game now sadly.

 

Googling some benchmarks of the 2070 it can use high to ultra settings in games like Far Cry 5, Forza Horizon, Shadow of the Tomb Raider etc. and maintain over 60fps.  So hopefully it should be quite a noticeable jump in performance.  Some of that will be down to VRAM too, 8Gb is the minimum I’d go for these days as games are getting chonky ao your 980 was probably having to do some VRAM management which definitely wouldn’t help game smoothness.

 

7 hours ago, Spacedeck said:

If I do end up with his PC, I'd plan on putting this PC in a smaller case for the daughter to use.  Unless the MB and GPU wouldn't fit a smaller form factor case?

 

The motherboard is ATX form factor which means you can’t go too small but you can get some pretty small atx cases.  Motherboad sizes are easy as the case will say what if they support it or not.  It’ll just be some googling to make sure the 980 fits too.

[Spacedeck 915]

I should be receiving this next weekend. He decided £300 seemed excessive, so now selling me it for £250.  It'll tie me over for a while until I decide what I'm doing.

 

I'll have a think about what to do with the other desktop. If I can go smaller, I'll be tempted. She only plays Roblox anyway, so even though my 980 isn't going to fit in a smaller case most likely, I have a 560 Ti in a box I could swap for instead. If it means I can transfer to a smaller case.

[J4MES OX4D 9,798]

If you're just using 1080p then you can expect to run most modern games at almost-maximum settings. There may be some issues with certain games especially the RAM hungry ones like TLOU but otherwise that's a half-decent rig that will keep you going for at least 4 years before you even have to consider really toning things down. £250-300 is a very fair price. 

[Spacedeck 915]

On 9/3/2023 at 4:45 PM, J4MES OX4D said:

If you're just using 1080p then you can expect to run most modern games at almost-maximum settings. There may be some issues with certain games especially the RAM hungry ones like TLOU but otherwise that's a half-decent rig that will keep you going for at least 4 years before you even have to consider really toning things down. £250-300 is a very fair price. 

 

I'd hoped so! I'm already thinking about possibly upgrading the CPU to 5800X3D when I can afford to, it's a bit pricey though.  So far I'm finding it a mixed bag, depending on the game.  I installed BF2042, took some time to get it to play nice.  Managing in a way that utilizes GPU hovering around 90% usage in mostly Ultra, and the CPU also around the same, with frames from 60-80.  I didn't realise until I went searching, that certain in-game settings are handled by the CPU.  I struggle with Starfield though, luckily I didn't have to buy it as he gave me an extra code he received with his new PC.

 

Hell Let Loose seems to be a headache to get to play right, and I can get Escape from Tarkov to run well enough, that game is heavy on the CPU though and I think my current CPU just doesn't cut it.  Plus I've been reading up that the CPU is used much more when you game at 1080p.  Going past that, 1440p and 4k tend to rely more on the GPU to power everything.

 

Good points though, I can play GTA V pretty much maxed, Master Chief Collection also maxed out, mostly highest in Chivalry 2, and The Hunter: Call of the Wild.  Making these games look amazing with at least 60fps, compared to what I'm used to seeing!