The RTX 3060 sits as a mid-range GPU champion. Its MSRP of $329 places it perfectly among the rest of NVIDIA’s stock, although getting your hands on any graphics card at the recommended price is still a challenge. This card is not meant to push 4K gaming or anything close. Instead, it serves the 1080p crowd perfectly, and can respectfully manage a few games at 1440p. Perhaps more than any other card from the 3000 series, the rest of your rig will have to pull its weight for the best performance.

With all of that in mind, the question of the best resolution to play it with this card comes up. Note that everything we just said is about the RTX 3060, not the RTX 3060 Ti. If you manage to upgrade to that even more elusive card, your resolution options open up significantly. While this article focuses mostly on the original 3060, we’ll reference the 3060 Ti a few times. And, to put it out there; if you have the choice between the 3060 and the 3060 Ti at MSRP, choose the upgrade. The extra $70 will be worthwhile.

Above all else, the 3060 is a 1080p GPU. You should always look at what games you play and their requirements, as well as the rest of your rig. However, for those looking to future-proof their build or game in high resolutions, you’ll have a better time waiting for an upgrade. Let’s see why and how to optimize this card.

The Champion of 1080p Gaming with RTX

For those looking to play the most modern games at good frame rates on the RTX 3060, there’s only one resolution option. 1080p became the standard monitor resolution years ago, and for good reason. It’s sharp enough to be usable at almost all screen sizes, games can hit ludicrous frame rates on it, and 1080p monitors are relatively cheap.

Compared to other cards in both the 2000 and 3000 series, the RTX 3060 is an exceptional deal for playing at 1080p. This is especially true for those interested in utilizing RTX technology for ray tracing and special effects. At only $329, it’s one of the cheapest ways to access this tech and get great performance. Across benchmarks, its performance is almost equivalent to the 2060 Super while being slightly cheaper.

Techspot’s analysis of modern games such as Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Watch Dogs: Legion, and Death Stranding all place this GPU around the middle of the pack at maximum settings. While this might seem like a lackluster result, it’s actually great performance for the price. Most GPUs ranking higher than the RTX 3060 are much more expensive and made for gaming at higher resolutions. Notably, the 3060 Ti breaks this mold. It’s only $70 at MSRP but consistently beats more expensive cards, even outperforming the RTX 2080.

RTX 3060 performance suffers moving up to the 1440p range. In fact, at maximum settings, it rarely even hits 60FPS on the same titles. While many gamers would be fine using the 3060 for 1440p gaming, it will not be useful for monitors with a refresh rate higher than 60Hz.

What Refresh Rate to Aim for While Gaming At 1080p

As we mentioned earlier, the exact performance you’ll get with this card depends heavily on the rest of your setup. However, assuming you don’t have a major bottleneck for your CPU, there are some general guides we can provide. Most people gaming at 1080p on the RTX 3060 will comfortably hit 120 or 144 frames per second using medium settings. If you bump that up to ultra-settings or care more about RTX, you’ll probably be closer to about 60 frames per second.

If you’re looking to upgrade your monitor, a 120 Hz monitor is a safe bet. With that said, it may not be worth upgrading specifically because of this card. Due to how long 1080p monitors have been the standard, many of them at 60 Hz refresh rates, your current setup may be more than enough.

However, for those of you who need an upgrade, consider grabbing a monitor with a higher refresh rate. We recommend splurging for the upgrade for three reasons:

1. You will likely play many games that can reach those higher frame rates
2. The monitor will be better for future upgrades to your build
3. The difference in price between a 60 Hz and 120 or 144 Hz 1080p monitor is minimal

Choosing A Higher Resolution

While the RTX 3060 performs best at a 1080p resolution, gaming at 1440p is certainly a possibility. If you’re considering leaving behind higher frame rates for graphical fidelity, you’re not making an incorrect choice. We recommend upgrading to a 3060 Ti instead if you can find one, however. It simply performs far better while gaming at 1440p than the basic 3060 can.

Consider that RTX features and ray-tracing capabilities will be limited while playing at 1440p on this card. With these effects on at a higher resolution, it’s easy for the 3060 to fall well below 40 FPS, which many people consider unplayable. Think about your personal tolerance and preferences before deciding.

Closing Thoughts

The RTX 3060 is currently one of the easiest graphics cards on the market to place. When found at MSRP, it is a respectable deal that serves all gamers who aren’t interested in upgrading to 1440p resolution just yet. Its graphical prowess will get you through all modern games and likely the next few years with no issues, even on maximum settings.

It’s not the choice for those with enormous budgets or who want to push the very edge of gaming, but it’s not supposed to be. However, there is enough zip in this to carry a few games through nice 1440p performances. As always, consider what games you play and their requirements to make your final decision. If it were us, we’d choose a 1080p resolution with a high frame rate for this card every time.

Relevant Guides

Want to read more about the RTX 3060 and its capabilities? We’ve written plenty about NVIDIA’s 3000 series and have the answers to all your questions. Check out these articles to get a head start:

• RTX 3060 vs RTX 3060 Ti: What Are the Key Differences?
• RTX 3060 Ti vs 3070 vs 3080: Benchmark Comparison (Real World Tests)
• 5 Best Monitors for the Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti
• AMD RX 6700 XT vs Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti: Which is Best?

The post What is the Optimal Monitor Resolution for RTX 3060 Builds? appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

The GPU crisis has been in full flood for months now, with a near perfect storm of production issues, supply shortages and peak demand meaning that graphics cards are almost impossible to purchase at anywhere near sane prices. In turn this means that if you’re looking to build a PC now, you might be put off because this key component is out of reach.

But there are options. 

In this article we’ll show you a couple of builds that don’t need a graphics card for general use and basic gaming. We’ll also explain how you can use them to play high end titles right now, without a graphics card so you can get gaming without paying outrageous prices. As an added bonus, they form a fantastic basis for a PC without compromises, meaning that when the market corrects itself you can slot a graphics card right in and enjoy all the advantages a GPU brings to a true gaming PC. 

Sit tight for the Premiumbuilds guide to beating the GPU crisis!

Why do you need graphics anyway?

A PC needs some form of graphics adaptor to process a video signal and output it. A discreet graphics card does this job for you in a standard gaming PC, but of course, we’re in a situation where they’re exceptionally hard to buy and vastly inflated in price. Most motherboards have an HDMI and sometimes a Displayport video output but this is driven by the CPU itself, via an integrated graphics processor or ‘iGPU’. This small section of the CPU allows for basic display output but lacks the power and versatility to render game graphics with anything like the performance of even a basic of dedicated GPU. Most AMD CPUs lack an integrated graphics processor, whilst Intel CPUs have traditionally only been capable of the most basic office desktop output and cannot run games.

However, things have changed a little recently. AMD pioneered 3D Capable CPU’s, or ‘APU’s’ as they are known with their Zen+ CPUs and the Ryzen 2200G and 2400G. They were later refreshed to as the 3200G and 3400G but these are still Zen+ designs. They incorporate 8 or 11 ‘Vega’ graphics cores respectively and offered surprisingly capable gaming performance, particularly when paired with fast RAM and a motherboard flexible enough to allow overclocking of the memory and iGPU core. But that isn’t the end of the Ryzen APU story as you’ll discover in our build guide below.

Intel have also enhanced the capabilities of their CPUs, with the most recent ‘Rocket Lake’ 11^th Generation CPUs incorporating the updated Intel Xe graphics architectures into UHD750 graphics. These aren’t as capable as the Vega units found in AMD CPUs, but they do allow passable gaming performance in some more basic games.

Importantly, either of these solutions enables you to build a viable PC with no graphics card at all, and that in turn lets you exploit a service to get gaming in high fidelity right now. 

GeForce Now – is now the time?

Of course, we’ve long been advocates of building a stand-alone gaming PC. However the joy of PCs is their flexibility, and it’s that versatility we’re leveraging to get you gaming without a GPU. Nvidia launched its ‘GeForce Now’ service several years ago, but this is a golden opportunity to revisit it. It is a subscription-based service, where for $10 a month you can run games on their data centre, streaming to your PC. It connects to a number of game stores including Steam, Epic Games, and Ubisoft so if you own a game already, you’ll be able to play it without re-purchasing it. There’s also a huge library of free-to-play titles. All the favourites are covered –CS:GO, Rocketleague, Fortnite, CyberPunk 2077, Tomb Raider, Watchdogs:Legion – Enough top-tier titles are available so that you can game in high fidelity on a PC without a GPU for months, whilst you wait for the opportunity to get the GPU of your dreams. 

Given the performance and cost, we consider this the best way to keep PC gaming through this crisis, whilst still enjoying the benefits of your own PC for general use, media consumption and more. $10 per month is an easier price to bear when a GPU capable of an equivalent experience would be $500 or more and take a great deal of heartache to obtain. The fact that you can buy games on Steam or other platforms to experience offline for as long as you want, and are not locked into purchases within GeForce now is an important factor. The primary downsides are the requirement for a high-quality internet connection and very light latency penalty of having the game rendered remotely and streamed back to your PC. We’d call those acceptable trade-offs in the circumstances. 

So, with that ‘one weird trick’ revealed, let’s look at a couple of PC’s you can build right now and get gaming on both offline and via GeForce now. Both of these builds have been uploaded into our PC builder tool, which can be found here.

1. AMD Ryzen ‘Renoir’ APU build

AMD CPUs seem to be at a major disadvantage in this market owing to their lack of integrated graphics. Only a select few options suffixed with a ‘G’ have integrated GPUs, allowing you to get graphics output from the CPU itself. Earlier we mentioned the Ryzen 3200G and 3400G, but these 4 core parts lack the performance and versatility we strive for as the basis for a strong PC. 

AMD have another option though – so long as you’re prepared to go off the beaten path. The Ryzen 4650G and 4750G are 6 and 8 core CPUs that are available to OEMs only. However, they’re available to buy via sites such as Aliexpress for around $250/$350 respectively. Just be mindful of longer shipping times and the lack of a direct warranty, as these parts are not meant to be sold to consumers directly. Keep an eye out also for the higher performance 5600G and 5700G – the more recent versions of these CPUs that have yet to land with OEMs but will no doubt trickle onto the grey market soon. 

These ‘Renoir’ APU’s are really special bits of kit. They pair Zen 2 architecture with Vega Graphics cores, essentially making them a Ryzen 5 3600 or 3700 with an entry-level graphics card built-in. Whilst you can’t expect miracles, the 7 or 8 Vega cores do a great job of rendering 3D graphics, and many games are playable at lower settings and resolutions. Meanwhile, the underlying 6/12 or 8/16 core CPU specification makes them powerful and versatile all-rounders capable of all normal tasks including basic video editing and productivity work.

Motherboard

This build pairs the Renoir APU of your choice with the MSI B550M PRO-VDH WiFi motherboard. This board has a BIOS flashback button that allows you to flash the most recent AMD BIOS even without a compatible CPU. This ensures it will accept the Renoir CPU as old BIOS revisions may not recognise it. It’s a full-featured but good value B550 motherboard with HDMI and Displayport out, integrated WiFi, 4 RAM slots and 2 M.2 slots. It’s fully compatible with the high-performance Zen 3 CPUs for future upgrades. The 4650G is the better value of the two potential CPU options, offering 6 cores, 12 threads and solid underlying gaming performance. If you have a more varied workload, the 4750G offers 8 cores, one more VEGA GPU core, and slightly higher iGPU speeds for better graphics performance, but it is more expensive. 

RAM

RAM speed is really important to help the APU perform: It is used as both system and video RAM. For that reason, we’ve opted for this 3600MHz CL16 kit from Crucial. Using their E-Die Integrated circuits, this RAM has high speed and tight timings, and it’s receptive to overclocking so you can boost performance further if you like to optimise manually. The two stick kit allows operation in dual channel mode, essential for performance, whilst 16GB is ample for both system memory and video memory and forms the basis of a versatile PC. This RAM helps you get the most from your APU in the meantime, for just a few dollars more than slower kits. 

Storage

For storage we’ve opted for the Adata Swordfish. This entry level NVMe drive gives good performance and 1Tb of space at just over $100. It’s a great starting point and since this system doesn’t force you to download large AAA titles to be able to play them, it’ll go a long way. It fits in the primary M.2 slot with no additional cables required. 

Case

For the case, we’ve chosen the great value Cooler Master MB311L. This compact mATX case comes with a mesh front panel and two large RGB fans, reducing the cost if you want a bit of bling. It has a good balance of airflow, build quality and looks and is a cost-effective case. You can of course choose any case you like for this build including the non-RGB version of this one.

Cooler

To further aid cooling and because the Ryzen APU’s are generally sold without a bundled cooler, we’ve opted for the great value and high-performance ID-Cooling SE-224 XT. This four-heat pipe cooler keeps noise to a minimum and by cooling the APU effectively you can get maximum performance without thermal throttling.  

Power Supply

Finally, we’ve selected the Cooler Master MasterWatt 650W 80+ Bronze PSU for the build. This power supply has ample power to add a GPU later and is a lower cost but good quality option. It has zero fan mode so at light loads the fan does not spin meaning it’s silent. The semi-modular design lets you keep the build really clean and simple with no superfluous cables and it comes with a 5-year warranty so you can expect long and trouble-free service.

Performance expectations

This AMD ‘Renoir’ APU build will get you gaming straight away. You can play lighter weight titles at reduced settings and 1080p without a problem as well as ‘desktop’ games. You’ll be able to use the GeForce Now service to play more demanding titles right away. When you can get a GPU, this system is capable of gaming in the most demanding games at moderate to high frame rates and is an excellent all-rounder with equivalent performance to a Ryzen 5 3600. For $750, we think this represents the best possible value at the moment. 

2. Intel i5 Rocket Lake UHD 750 build

Intel’s 11^th Generation ‘Rocket Lake’ CPUs have brought the capability of the inbuilt GPU a long way. Using their newer ‘Xe’ architecture, these iGPUs are particularly adept at accelerating transcoding and some video manipulation tasks, but they’ll also turn their hand to light gaming. Performance still isn’t close to matching the Ryzen APU, with UHD 750 graphics about half as capable as AMD’s Vega 8 iGPU – but it will work to an extent. It will of course also allow you to access the Geforce Now service, giving you a PC that will punch well above its weight whilst the stock shortages persist. 

You can choose between the i5-11400, i5-11500 or i5-11600, and even the i5-11600K if you aim to make a very high-performance machine once you can get a GPU. The i5-11400 makes do with UHD 730 graphics, so if you do intend on running games we’d certainly recommend the 11500 or 11600 both of which include UHD750 graphics, a markedly more powerful iGPU owing to 32 execution units instead of 24. The small lift to clock speeds in the higher tier parts will also aid general performance. If you intend on doing more demanding work, you could also consider the 8 core i7-11700 or i7-11700K. Just make sure whichever CPU you choose it isn’t the ‘F’ version – these lack any iGPU at all so the PC won’t be functional! 

Motherboard

For the motherboard, we’ve chosen the Asus TUF Gaming B560M WiFi. This compact but full-featured motherboard allows memory overclocking even on non-K series CPUs boosting the performance of both the CPU and iGPU. There’s inbuilt Wifi, HDMI and Displayport outputs, and good USB connectivity. You can use the 2.5Gb Ethernet or Wifi 6 for connection to online services.

Storage

We’ve opted for the Adata Swordfish 1Tb NVMe SSD for storage for its great value and decent entry-level performance, but you could spend a little more on the Western Digital SN550 or Kingston A2000 if you prefer.

RAM

For RAM, we’ve chosen the matching ‘TUF’ branded memory from Team Alliance, 16Gb in a 2x8Gb 3000MHz configuration. It’s fast enough to let the iGPU perform and can be set to the XMP profile with one click in BIOS, simplifying the setup.

Case

For the case the Cooler Master MB311 ARGB shines through as the best value offering although it does lack USB 3.2×2 on the front panel, you can still access this via the motherboard IO panel. It has good airflow, is supplied with two fans and is easy to build in. We’ve partnered it with the be quiet! Pure Power 11 Gold-rated 600W PSU, an efficient unit with a low noise profile. Again, we’ve ensured there’s ample power to run a GPU when you’re able to obtain one without further upgrades. 

Power Supply

We’ve partnered it with the be quiet! Pure Power 11 Gold-rated 600W PSU, an efficient unit with a low noise profile. Again, we’ve ensured there’s ample power to run a GPU when you’re able to obtain one without further upgrades. 

CPU Cooler

Finally, we’ve added an ID-Cooling SE224-XT Tower CPU cooler, for both lower noise and lower running temperatures, letting the CPU perform to its full potential. 

Performance expectations

This PC will be an excellent general-purpose PC, capable of office work, photo manipulation, media browsing and even light video editing. It will play more basic games and will allow some simple 3D games to run acceptably well at lowered settings. As with the AMD system, we’d recommend making use of Geforce Now for demanding games until such time as you can find your own dedicated GPU – at which point this $750 starter PC becomes a gaming champ and a great way to bridge the gap until you get your own GPU.

So, there we have it: A choice of two PCs that give you a pathway to gaming and all-round use without breaking the bank, or forcing you to pay over the odds for GPU. Enjoy!

*This article is not sponsored by Nvidia GeForce Now and was written independently of any influence from Nvidia*

The post Best Intel & AMD PC Builds Without GPUs – 2 Gaming Builds for under $800 appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

Intel’s latest Rocket Lake CPUs may not have set the world on fire at the high end, but the mid i5 parts offer good value and strong performance. They make a great basis for a mid-range gaming machine and importantly the non F versions include integrated graphics, so you can build a functional PC now and get a GPU when you are able to. The F version will require a discrete GPU for any display output. 

This PC balances cost and performance to get the most value from the i5-11400 or 11400F without overspending. By choosing an appropriate GPU it will perform excellently at all resolutions, allowing high framerate gaming and good performance in demanding AAA titles. It’s also perfectly capable of basic productivity work and general use.

In this guide, we’ll take you through our choices for each component in turn for this Intel Core i5-11400(F) build.

Best Intel i5-11400(F) Build – The Parts List

CPU: Intel Core i5-11400

Intels 11^th generation CPUs, named “Rocket Lake” bring a number of new features to the table. They have native PCIe 4.0 support allowing the use of fast SSDs and the most up to date GPU connection protocol. They also have Intel’s most up to date integrated graphics architecture, the Iris Xe powered UHD 730. The i5-11500 and i5-11600 get the next tier up, the UHD 750 which offers slightly more performance, but sadly they’re still not able to play anything but the most basic of desktop games. Nonetheless, this iGPU allows desktop output, basic games, and accelerates some processes like video transcoding and calculations in Adobe suite products making it a versatile addition to the spec of this PC.
The i5-11400 boosts the per-core performance relative to the older generation Intel CPUs and has 6 cores and 12 threads. This means it’s well suited to gaming and all-round use. The peak clock speed of 4.4GHz enables high frame rate play and ensures good gaming performance.

Alternatively, if you have a GPU and will not use applications assisted by the iGPU, you can opt for the ‘F’ suffix CPUs which are slightly cheaper but forgo inbuilt graphics. This saves a little money. You could also opt for the i5-11500 or i5-11600 which have a slightly higher boost speed and the slightly higher performance intel UHD 750 iGPU. However, the performance difference is not marked and it’s not worth paying substantially more for these CPUs. If you’re considering the i5-11600K, then we’d recommend pairing it with a Z590 motherboard in order to unlock its full potential by overclocking.

The i5-11400 mixes high performance, versatility and great value to be a fantastic choice for your gaming PC.

CPU Cooler: ID-COOLING SE-224-XT

The i5-11400 is supplied with a revised ‘all black’ CPU cooler, and if you’re seeking to minimize costs you can happily use that. However, we recommend using an upgraded tower cooler to minimize noise and keep temperatures down. Lower temperatures ensure your CPU will reach and maintain the highest boost clock speeds it can. The ID-COOLING SE-224-XT is a great option at $35. It performs well with 4 heat pipes and an efficient fan, and the cost is lower than some competitors, and it comes with a tube of thermal paste so you can attach and refit it without buying more. It’s a great buy. 

Motherboard: ASRock B560 Steel Legend

Intel’s B560 chipset complements the i5 non-K CPUs perfectly in a gaming or general-purpose build. They have allowed memory overclocking even for non-K CPUs, which unleashes a good amount of additional potential through reduced memory latency with faster RAM. The primary PCIe slot is PCIe 4.0 compliant, and so is the main M.2 slot although PCIe 3.0 drives will work perfectly well in this slot, providing better value. Whilst boards are still trickling into retail availability, the ASRock B560 Steel Legend is a sound choice from the B560 motherboards available at this time. It has both display port and HDMI outputs if you need to use the integrated graphics as a stop-gap. There’s a reasonable VRM configuration, plenty to get the most from an i5 CPU. Three M.2 slots for SSDs and six SATA ports take care of storage, whilst there’s a dedicated m.2 E-Key slot if you want to add an m.2 WiFi adaptor. It has a USB 3.2 header to ensure the USB-C port on the case is functional. There’s a total of six fan headers to allow a variety of cooling setups, and plenty of RGB control headers too.

RAM: ADATA XPG GAMMIX D20 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16

RAM is the working space of the PC, and 16GB is plenty for gaming and general use. This 3200MHz kit from ADATA, the XPG Gammix D20, is relatively cheap, and fast enough to ensure you’re getting good performance from your CPU. Two 8GB Stick enables dual channel mode which is fundamental to aid performance. The CL16 timings are relatively tight, again helping the CPU perform to it’s best. Just be sure to enable the XMP profile in BIOS when you first set the PC up to take advantage of the speed. The simple black heat spreaders give a discrete aesthetic. This RAM is the price to performance sweet spot for a great value Intel system. 

Storage: Western Digital Blue SN550 1TB

This NVMe SSD from Western Digital, the SN550 1TB, is truly excellent value. It uses PCIe 3.0 so whilst it lacks in benchmark results compared to PCIe 4.0 drives, it’s indistinguishable in actual use and provides responsive versatile SSD space. 1TB is ample storage for the operating system, core storage, and several large games and the M.2 form factor makes it a cinch to fit to the motherboard, with no additional data or power cables required. If you have a lot of data to store such as videos or music that doesn’t rely on fast access, we’d advise pairing this with a 2TB or larger Hard Disc Drive, to obtain the advantages of an SSD in general use and the large space of a hard drive. 

Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow

We’ve chosen the popular and versatile Corsair 4000D Airflow for this build. It’s a modern well-engineered case with great airflow thanks to the ventilated front panel. It’s solidly constructed and easy to build in, with good instructions and accessories supplied. It has USB 3.2 via Type A and Type C sockets on the front, and tool-less panel removal. All the intakes have mesh dust filters which are easy to remove and clean. Whilst it comes with 2 120mm fans pre-installed, we’d recommend a pair of 140mm intake fans like the Arctic P14 PST. These larger fans can be run slower, for less noise but plenty of airflow to keep the system cool. This case accommodates the largest of GPUs and has plenty of space for expansion, as well as a basement to conceal the power supply, cables and hard discs. 

Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 600W 80+ Gold

Power supplies haven’t been immune to supply disruption with prices steadily creeping up and popular units often out of stock. This 600W Semi-modular and gold-rated unit from be quiet! blends the feature set you need with good reliability and an affordable price point. It’s semi-modular so the build isn’t cluttered with cables you don’t need, and uses a quiet 120mm fan. Gold certification means it’s at least 92% efficient. It’s rounded out with a 5-year warranty for your peace of mind. 

The Elephant In the Room: Graphics Cards

We haven’t specified a GPU in this guide. Primarily this is because the market is so unfavourable at this time, any suggestion is going to be out of stock or heavily inflated in price. This PC is well suited to run any GPU from a GTX 1660 Super up to an RTX 3060 Ti, for excellent 1080p to 1440p gaming performance. If you wish to fit a more powerful GPU such as an RTX 3080 or RX 6800 XT for 1440p ultrawide or 4K gaming and can find one, then the only modification required to this build list is a more powerful Power supply, 750W or higher, to support the GPU. So long as you don’t opt for the i5-11400F you can build and test your PC whilst you wait to obtain a GPU and can use it for general tasks, browsing and media consumption as well as some basic games to keep yourself entertained. The addition of a GPU makes this a fantastic gaming PC. 

The post Best Intel Core i5-11400(F) Build for 2021 (Gaming / All-Round Use) appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

Nvidia has released another Ampere GPU and it’s the most affordable yet: The RTX 3060 Ti starts at $399 but make no mistake, this is no entry-level GPU. With performance surpassing the outgoing RTX 2080 Super, this GPU is well suited to 1440p high FPS gameplay. With advanced technologies like RTX cores and DLSS 2.0 for upscaling, it brings high-performance graphics to a price point not seen before. In this build guide, we’ll take you through the best system $1200 can buy featuring the RTX 3060 Ti.

RTX 3060 Ti Gaming PC Build – The Parts List

Graphics Card

At $400 the RTX 3060 Ti is the most affordable Ampere GPU released so far. This new architecture from Nvidia brings a huge step forwards in performance with this $400 card exceeding the performance of the last generations $700 RTX 2080 Super—That’s this generations mid tier card faster than all but the highest end of the Turing GPU offerings from just 2 years ago. This card will approach or exceed 100FPS in demanding AAA titles at 1440p, with even Red Dead Redemption 2 hitting around 80FPS with settings turned up to High. It has the advantage of a lower power draw than the higher end cards in the lineup, with a 650W Power supply being adequate to power it’s 200W demands. This increases the value of this graphics card and reduces the additional spend needed to build a well-rounded system. This GPU forms the core of the best bang for buck gaming system currently available – so we’ll select parts that allow it to achieve it’s potential without overspending.

Related: RTX 3060 Ti vs RTX 2080 Super

CPU

To properly take advantage of the RTX 3060 Ti you need a well-balanced system with a high-performance CPU. This is because the GPU is capable of high frame rates in well-optimised titles so long as the CPU is up to the task. We’ve opted for the Intel i5-10600K in this instance to maintain the value of the build: whilst the Ryzen 5 5600X is slightly higher performance, it’s also more expensive and at present stock is hard to find. The Intel i5-10600K nearly equals it in performance in high framerate titles, but most of the time the GPU will be the limiting factor so there will be no performance difference at all. We’ve paired this CPU with a Hyper 212 Black Edition, which is a great value and capable CPU cooler to reduce temperatures and noise and keeps the total CPU cost to $300.

Motherboard

We’ve opted for this Aorus Elite AC branded Z490 motherboard from Gigabyte for a number of reasons. Firstly Gigabyte offers strong VRM performance across their Z490 range, meaning you can comfortably overclock the power-hungry Comet Lake CPU without excessive heat or instability. The Aorus Elite AC has 12+1 Phase VRM with 50 Amp Mosfets to ensure stable power to the CPU. This motherboard is also capable of taking the more powerful i7-10700K or even the 10-core i9-10900K in future if you wish to upgrade, as well as being forwards compatible with upcoming Rocket Lake ‘11^th gen’ intel CPUs.

The Aorus Elite AC uses a Realtek 2.5G Ethernet controller, whilst many of the competition uses an Intel ‘I225V’ which unfortunately suffers from packet loss in some earlier revisions: Rather than hunt through retailer sites to ensure you don’t get a defective LAN chip, this motherboard avoids the issue entirely. The rest of the specifications are excellent with good USB connectivity, inbuilt WiFi, three M.2 slots and a high quality ALC1200 Audio Codec. This motherboard is a strong pairing with the i5-10600K and will allow the RTX 3060 Ti to really shine. Regarding the lack of PCIe 4.0 functionality: Testing shows that this doesn’t negatively impact GPU performance at all, and neither is the increased speed of a PCIe 4.0 SSD beneficial to gaming or worth the additional costs of those high-performance SSDs. Therefore the specification of this motherboard and CPU is in keeping with the bang-for-buck nature of this build, giving you maximum gaming performance without overspending. 

Memory

This G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB DDR4-3200 CL16 RAM kit is sufficient for all current games. Intel isn’t as RAM speed sensitive as Ryzen, allowing us to take advantage of slightly lower-priced and more readily available RAM. This kit is from G.Skill who is a trusted brand and runs at 3200MHz. It has CL16 16-18-18-38 timings for good performance and a stable XMP overclock with one click in BIOS, and using a dual-stick kit means you benefit from dual-channel operation which maximizes the bandwidth and improves performance. This is a rock-solid RAM kit and provides enough memory at a high enough speed to ensure great performance from this PC. 

Storage

With SSD prices dropping all the time it makes sense to specify a large SSD for the operating system and games. This is a solid choice from Western Digital with their SN550 1TB NVMe SSD, and whilst it may not post the highest scores in benchmarks, our own testing shows it to be no slower in real-world performance (booting and game loading) than much more expensive options. Therefore it’s an ideal drive for a gaming and general-purpose PC. Running this in the primary M.2 Slot keeps a second M.2 slot free for future upgrades, and simplifies both storage and set up with just one drive. 

PC Case

Phanteks have a strong reputation for high performance and attractive cases with great cooling capability. The Phanteks P400A has a mesh front panel allowing maximum airflow into the case, to ensure ample cooling for the CPU and GPU. A PSU shroud keeps cabling neat inside whilst a tempered glass side panel shows off the bits you do want people to see. It’s an ATX mid-tower and has a standard layout for ease of build and maintenance, but there’s plenty of options to mount radiators, multiple fan configurations and additional drives as you need or PC expand with time.  There are alternative versions if you’d prefer: The P400A Digital includes 3 RGB front case fans, and there are white variants too, but this case represents a great starting point and can be configured however you choose.  If you don’t opt for the P400A Digital, We’d recommend adding a pair of 140mm fans of your choice to this case to act as intake, and ensure case temperatures are kept low.

Power Supply

One of the blessings of the RTX 3060 Ti against its higher strung siblings it the reduced power requirements. Whilst the RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 demand much more expensive power supplies, the relatively frugal 250W draw of this GPU mean we can specify a cheaper but still very capable Power supply. With choice restricted and prices elevated owing to supply issues, we’ve opted for the EVGA GD series in 600W format here. This is a new design, refreshed in 2019 and meeting Gold efficiency requirements. It’s non modular, which means all required cables come permanently attached to the power supply. That’s not a problem – in fact it simplifies the build process and if you wish to customise your cabling then extensions are cheaper and easier to find than full custom cables for a modular power supply. This PSU also has the full suite of protection features to prevent damage to itself and your system in the event of any faults. It’s backed by EVGA’s 5 years warranty, to provide you with peace of mind.

Best 1080p 240Hz Monitor for RTX 3060 Ti

The Alienware AW2521HF is a specialist 1080p monitor with 240Hz refresh rate and a very fast response time: This is the perfect monitor to take advantage of the very high frame rates this PC’s CPU and GPU combination will deliver at 1080p. If you’re a competitive player in titles like Rainbow 6 Siege, CoD Warzone, or even Fortnite then a faster framerate can make the difference between winning and losing. This monitor uses G-Sync compatible Adaptive Sync technology to display frames as soon as they’re ready, reducing lag and eliminating tearing. It’s the perfect complement to this system if fast-paced shooters are your favoured games.

Best 1440p All-rounder Monitor for RTX 3060 Ti

The RTX 3060 Ti really shines at 1440p resolution, where it can bring detailed worlds to life in intricate detail. To really immerse yourself in games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Red Dead Redemption 2, we’d recommend this 27” 1440p monitor, the M27Q, from Gigabyte. It uses an IPS panel for rich vibrant colors and includes a 144hz refresh rate and Freesync premium to ensure tear-free high frame rate action. It’s great value and keeps it on-trend with the theme of this PC: Maximising bang for buck around the new value champion, the RTX 3060 Ti. 

Conclusion

Overall, this system delivers an epic high FPS 1080p or all-round 1440p Gaming experience, at just $1200. This is a level of performance we couldn’t dream of at the price only a year ago. Nvidia’s Ampere has brought this within reach, with the RTX 3060 Ti providing a gaming experience you had to spend $800 on the GPU alone to rival in the previous generation. This is an excellent gaming PC at a price you can afford. 

The post $1200 RTX 3060 Ti Gaming PC Build for 1440p Gaming appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

AMD’s RDNA2 launch announcement has put the cat amongst the pigeons in the upper end of the GPU market. Finally, Nvidia has competition on their hands. The entry-level RDNA2 GPU is the Radeon RX 6800. This GPU promises to equal or better the RTX 3070 in 1440p and 4k gaming performance but offers double the VRAM with 16GB instead of 8GB. Retailing at $579 the RX 6800 offers compelling performance for the money. We’re excited that GPUs capable of high FPS 1440p gaming is attainable for less than $600.

In this build guide, we’ve assembled a parts list that seeks to maximise the performance and longevity of the system based around the Radeon RX 6800. We’ve taken care to ensure that the PC will last well into the future without requiring upgrades or expansion. We’ve done this by choosing the current best in class CPU, optimised RAM and 2TB of NVME SSD storage. This PC will provide a top-notch gaming experience for the foreseeable future but packs enough punch to double as a versatile workstation and general-purpose PC as well. Its ideally suited to high FPS 1440p gaming or running a 1440p ultrawide monitor for an enthralling AAA gaming experience. It’s well capable of 4K gaming if you want to bring PC gaming to the living room TV or a dedicated 4K monitor. Let’s run through the parts selection.

Best RX 6800 Gaming PC Build – Our Recommendations

CPU

We’ve opted for AMD’s 8 core part in the new Zen 3 line up for this build, the Ryzen 7 5800X. This CPU has a 3.8Ghz Base clock and boosts to 4.7GHz with ‘Power boost Overdrive’ meaning it has excellent gaming performance. AMD has boasted of a huge leap forwards with their revised Zen 3 Architecture. They’ve enhanced the Cache access for the 8 cores and reduced the latency of the interconnect between cores – traditionally a big performance barrier in the Zen layout. All of this adds up to a CPU that will outperform any current intel CPU in gaming, whilst 8 cores and 16 threads meaning it is both adept at productivity tasks and multitasking but also set to last the course as programmes become more demanding in future. Finally, the RDNA2 announcement offered a few more compelling reasons to opt for an AMD CPU. Combined with the B550 motherboard ‘Smart Memory Access’ gives the CPU broadband interconnect with the GPU VRAM dramatically enhancing framerates at 1440p and 4K. AMD Claim a benefit of 5-10% using this technology, certainly worthwhile. Secondly this CPU is fully PCIe 4.0 compliant allowing faster communication with both the primary GPU and a PCIe 4.0 SSD in future. Overall the $449 Ryzen 5800X is a rock-solid core for this PC and represents best in class technology at a reasonable price point.

CPU Coolers

The Ryzen 5800X isn’t particularly hot running or hard to cool. We’ve chosen a great looking and reliable tower cooler with some added RGB highlights to match the case. This tower cooler – the ID-COOLING SE-234-ARGB, uses 4 heat pipes, and a quiet 120mm PWM tan to draw heat away from the CPU. Its 200W cooling capacity is more than enough for the 105W power draw of the 5800X. It’s simple to install and includes AM4 compatible bracketry. Meanwhile, black anodising and an addressable RGB shroud compliments the styling of the motherboard and case to give your PC a cohesive aesthetic. If you’re not a fan of the RGB, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black edition is an equally capable and more discreet looking cooler at the same price. 

Motherboard

MSI has released a strong line up of B550 motherboards in support of Zen 3 and this mid-range Gaming Edge model hits the sweet spot of performance, features and price. The 10+2 phase power supply circuitry is more than capable of supporting the Ryzen 5800X at full speeds and there are heavy-duty VRM heatsinks to help draw heat away from the components. The MSI MPG B550 Gaming Edge WiFi motherboard incorporates Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth for versatile connectivity but also has a 2.5GB Ethernet port powered by a Realtek chipset. The ALC1200 Audio codec is mid-range but allows for excellent audio output and there’s optical SPDIF as well as five 3.5mm audio outputs. It supports PCIe 4.0 and AMD’s ‘Smart Memory Access’ technology to boost the performance of the RX 6800 GPU. Finally, it has a discreet black aesthetic in keeping with the rest of the build.

Memory

RAM prices have dropped consistently in 2020 and 32GB is now a sensible choice for a high-performance PC build. Our own investigations have shown 3600MHz RAM to be the sweet spot in terms of performance and value on Zen 2 CPU’s. Because Zen 3 CPU’s retain the same IO die and ‘infinity fabric’ as Zen 2 we’re confident that 3600MHZ speed will remain the best value option for Zen 3. Whilst this RAM has slightly slower CL18 timings it’s clock speed that really impacts performance by synchronising the CPU’s infinity fabric and RAM frequencies. This 32Gb Team T-FORCE Dark Za Memory Kit comes with a QVL supported one clock A-XMP overclock profile to get it running at optimal speed so you can be confident of compatibility. The Anodised black heat spreader matches the black aesthetic of the motherboard. In 2x16GB configuration you benefit from dual-channel operation and also leave 2 RAM slots free should you ever need to upgrade capacity in future. 

Storage

Games are getting ever-larger and we don’t want to under specify SSD space for a versatile and powerful PC. That’s why we’ve opted for the Adata Swordfish NVMe SSD in 2Tb capacity. At $200 this is a remarkable value. Whilst it is a mid-range SSD with 1,800MB/s read and 1,400MB/s write it’s plenty fast enough for general use and gaming and it will even handle occasional video editing and other storage punishing tasks with ease. We haven’t chosen a PCIe 4.0 SSD because the much higher cost is rarely justified and the benefits of the additional theoretical speed really aren’t made out for most users. The Adata Swordfish, therefore, strikes the best balance of price, performance and 2TB capacity. It ships with a 5-year warranty and 960Tb total endurance rating as well as inbuilt AES 256 bit encryption.

PC Case

The Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital is an excellent value case including 3 RGB fans and a mesh front panel for optimal airflow. It’s a mid-tower ATX design so it offers plenty of space for components and upgrades but remains more manageable than a full ATX tower. The tempered glass side panel showcases the components within whilst a full suite of dust filters keeps everything clean. Front panel connectors include 2 USB 3.0 sockets and the usual headphone and microphone jack. Build quality is excellent with a PSU shroud, sliding Hard disc trays and good cable management features like tie-down straps and cable channels integrated into the design. A single additional 120MM fan in the top rear position will act as exhaust whilst preserving the 3 fan aesthetic of the front of the case. This Case is a pleasure to build in and look at and provides the airflow to keep everything running cool and quiet.

Power Supply

The total power draw of this system is around 450W peak and we’ve selected a good value and well-specified Power supply to meet these demands. The Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro is a semi-modular design meaning the ATX and EPS cables are permanently connected, whilst you add additional cables to power accessories as required. This build will make use of 2 additional PCIe Cables only to keep the wiring clean and simple. 650W capacity allows headroom for transient loads and also future expansion with a more powerful GPU or additional drives and accessories. It has a quiet operation with a high-quality fan. The PSU uses Japanese capacitors and ships with a 7-year warranty so you can be confident it will last the lifetime of this PC. We’ve been using this Power supply in the Premiumbuilds test bench and have been impressed with its resilience and consistent operation so we have no hesitation recommending it for this build. 

1440P Monitor Recommendation

The RX 6800 is a high-performance GPU and demands a monitor that’s up to task. The Asus TUF Gaming VG27AQ is a 165Hz 1440p IPS panel that benefits from Freesync. The high resolution of this monitor allows sharp images and more detail, really maximizing the power of the GPU for stunning visual fidelity. Meanwhile, it’s able to keep pace with a GPU and CPU that excel in generating fast-paced gameplay. The IPS panel ensures razor-sharp response times and no motion blur, the perfect combination for serious gamers. The panels color accuracy and quality are well regarded in reviews. If you’re planning to make the most of this latest round of GPU’s you really do need a monitor that displays their full potential and the Asus VG27AQ certainly meets the standard. 

Ultrawide Monitor for RX 6800 Alternative

If you’re looking to exploit the power of the RX 6800 for the ultimate AAA gaming experience, or want sims like MS Flight or racing sims to really shine then we’d recommend this 34” ultrawide from LG, the Ultragear 34GK950F-B. The Ultrawide experience wraps around you filling your peripheral vision and immersing you in gameplay. Almost all titles are fully compatible and whilst the previous generation of GPUs required you to spend nearly $1000 to properly drive this demanding resolution we’re now seeing GPUs at under $600 that absolutely excel. This 144Hz panel uses AMD’s Freesync 2 to eliminate screen tearing, smooth framerates and maintain immersion. The IPS panel ensures great colour accuracy and response times. This is a high-end monitor and comes with an integrated USB Hub and a sturdy and ergonomic stand. Reviews praise its image quality and response times. We highly recommend this monitor if you want to take full advantage of the power of the Radeon RX 6800 GPU. 

The post $1800 RX 6800 Gaming PC Build for High-FPS 1440p Gaming appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

Next-gen Radeon and Ryzen are… just on the horizon . Zen 3 and RDNA 2 represent some of the most impressive and affordable generational performance improvements that AMD has been promising for years since the launch of the original Zen architecture. They made a fantastic showing last generation for mid-range GPU performance with their Radeon RX 5700XT, which, understandably, made numerous gamers question whether they really needed to shell out the extra dough for immature Ray-Tracing features from Nvidia’s roughly equivalent RTX 2070 Super. Now, builders are facing an even more challenging question. Will RDNA 2 be worth the cheaper price tag in the face of Ampere’s incredible Ray-Tracing support?

DLSS (deep learning super sampling) was honestly a bit of a joke when Nvidia first developed it. Only a handful of games supported Ray-Tracing, and usually with limited application. Depending on the title and implementation, Ray-Tracing only offered minor visual improvements for a significant FPS penalty no matter how robust your build was. DLSS was initially intended to offset this penalty by rendering games at a lower resolution and upscaling them with Nvidia’s AI technology, but it simply wasn’t very effective. However, DLSS 2.0 has grown into a force to be reckoned with. Games like Control, F1 2020, Death Stranding, Minecraft RTX, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, Anthem, Metro Exodus, Battlefield V, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy XV, and Monster Hunter: World, to name a few, all support DLSS and receive insane performance benefits with anywhere from 20-200% higher FPS by merely having it enabled. Whatever your opinion on any of those titles might be, free FPS is always welcome. That’s not even considering the plethora of upcoming games that will also support DLSS, like Cyberpunk 2077 and Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War.

AMD has discussed RDNA 2’s Ray-Tracing support and their answer to DLSS, but they’ve yet to reveal any official benchmarks compared to Ampere, and, rumor has it, Ray-Tracing may not be the reason you want to opt for Team Red when it comes to the GPU for your next gaming build. Of course, we’ll have to see how things play out when AMD’s new hardware launches over this holiday season, so keep an eye for our latest updates and results!

Regardless of the Radeon RX 6900XT’s Ray-Tracing performance, one thing is certain, AMD is competitive at the high-end again, and for a deep discount. Compared to the $1500 RTX 3090, the RX 6900XT is only going to cost $1000. Translation: for $50 less than the cost of just Nvidia’s top-tier gaming GPU this generation, you can purchase the Radeon RX 6900XT and the Ryzen 7 5800X. We’re going to go out on a limb and say that even if the rumors are true and RDNA 2’s Ray-Tracing performance leaves a lot to be desired, AMD still makes a more compelling offer for the majority of gamers looking to build a new rig this year. Not to mention the uphill battle that Intel is facing in the wake of Zen 3’s reveal!

So, today, we’re going to recommend the best 6900XT build for PC gaming with a budget of $3500. Let’s take a look.

Best $3500 Radeon RX 6900XT Gaming PC Build – The Parts List

Component	Selection	Design	Price
CPU	Ryzen 9 5900X		$550
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-U12A		$99.99
Motherboard	Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi)		$379.99
Memory	G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-3600 CL16		$178.99
Storage	2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus (x2)		$599.99
Graphics Card	AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT		$999
PC Case	be quiet! Dark Base 700		$179.99
Power Supply	Corsair AX1000 80+ Titanium		$399.99
Case Fans	be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140mm		$107.60
		Total	$3495.45

CPU

It’s likely that no matter how clever Intel manages to be with 11^th Gen Rocket Lake, another 14nm process is going to struggle to compete with Zen 3 across the board, especially considering AMD’s incredible power efficiency. The top-tier gaming CPU from the new Ryzen lineup will be the $550 Ryzen 9 5900X. Just over $500 is about the tail end of what most gamers are willing to spend for optimal FPS performance if Intel’s Core i9 series has been any indication.

The 5900X is poised to not only trounce the current gaming champion, the Intel Core i9-10900K but with Rocket Lake maxing out at eight cores, the 5900X should still readily compete against the 11^th Gen Core i9 series CPU as well. The new Ryzen 9 5900X sports twelve cores, twenty-four threads, boost clocks up to 4.8GHz by default, and 64MB of L3 cache. With technologies like Smart Access Memory and the new RAGE mode, an auto overclocking feature, pairing Zen 3 and RDNA 2 should see incredible benefits by opting for the beefy, if not slightly overkill for games, 5900X. The best part is that you’ll have more than enough processing power to tackle the most demanding creative workloads as well as max settings in the latest AAA titles at up to 4K resolution, each with buttery smooth performance.

CPU Cooler

Sitting atop our new 5900X will be the Noctua NH-U12A. There’s nothing wrong with liquid cooling, be it a custom open-loop or AIO unit. If you prefer the look of liquid cooling solutions, and if you’re willing to accept the maintenance and potential points of failure that come with them, you’re welcome to dive right in. However, I personally stand by air-cooling considering the level of performance that companies like Noctua, be quiet!, and Scythe can offer. A well-engineered air-cooler brings airflow and thermal performance on par with even some of the best 240mm AIO units on the market, and the 105W TDP of mid to high-end Ryzen Zen 3 CPUs isn’t exactly demanding. Thus, one of the most recent and well-rounded air coolers from the world’s premier heat sink manufacturers seems to make the most sense for our build today.

The NH-U12A essentially brings the thermal and noise performance of Noctua’s renowned dual-tower NH-D15 in a more compact, single-tower package. A dense fin stack, seven heatpipes, and two NF-A12x25 fans virtually guarantee cool CPU temps and spectacular case and RAM compatibility to allow you the most freedom when selecting the other components for your build. Finally, Noctua’s included NT-H1 thermal compound means you don’t have to spend any extra money to ensure you get the most out of the NH-U12A.

Motherboard

Our motherboard today has 60A Power Stages, a 16 Phase VRM (14+2), support for up to 128GB of DDR4-4800MHz memory, 2x M.2 slots, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5.0, Realtek 2.5G LAN, SupremeFX S1220 Audio CODEC, 8x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (1 is Type-C) + 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 8x SATA III 6Gb/s ports, an integrated I/O shield, Clear CMOS + BIOS Flashback buttons, a POST code readout, onboard Power + Reset buttons, as well as a BIOS Safe Boot + ReTry buttons! We’re talking about the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero (Wi-Fi).

For nearly half the price, the Crosshair VIII Hero readily competed in VRM thermal benchmarks with the Gigabyte X570 Aorus XTREME and the MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE. That’s a respectable showing from a motherboard with teamed power phases, which was more than capable of handling last generation’s Ryzen 9 3950X. If you plan to see just how much headroom AMD has left with Zen 3, there are few better options for less than $700!

Memory

Just because our focus is gaming doesn’t mean we need to restrict ourselves to 16GB of RAM, especially nowadays. With multiple monitors, dozens of programs running in the background, inefficient browsers, and memory leaks, even if you don’t plan on doing any photo/video editing or 3D rendering, 32GB allows you the freedom to use as much of your machine as possible, simultaneously. Further, since DDR4 has matured incredibly over these past several years, pricing for DRAM has dropped considerably, meaning you have access to 32GB kits of high-performance memory for less than $200!

That is where the G.Skill Trident Z Neo 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 memory kit comes into play. While leaving you space to upgrade down the line should you choose to dabble in more intensive creativity/productivity programs, you’ll have ample memory to push your multi-monitor display setup, games, comms programs, and media consumption at the same time without worrying about memory usage.

Storage

Ding dong, spinning drives are dead… For the most part. Unless you have reason to store massive amounts of documents, photos, videos, and project files, solid-state storage is the way of the future. SSDs have come down so far in price, even for high-capacity (2TB) options, that gamers in particular need to consider making them their primary and secondary storage options for their libraries. Next-gen consoles having SSDs as their standard storage devices means that game developers have already (i.e., finally) started to take advantage of the speeds available with solid-state storage to stream assets directly to the GPU. The best example of this process in action is the Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart trailer, where you see the dynamic duo traversing portals to different, incredibly diverse worlds instantly and seamlessly.

Thus, we have chosen two 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSDs for our OS and bulk storage drives. M.2 drives mean no cable management and some of the fastest transfer speeds outside of PCIe 4.0 SSDs. If you don’t play many games at once, utilize cloud storage for most of your general files, or just want to save some money, feel free to pick up only one and worry about upgrading later when you need the extra space!

Graphics Card

The piece de resistance of our build: The Radeon RX 6900XT. Performance comparable to a card that costs $500 more and uses an additional 50W is borderline miraculous, and AMD is rightfully proud. Ray-Tracing aside, RDNA 2 looks to not only be gunning for the performance crown at 4K resolution but also for gamers’ wallets as they offer numbers that some users couldn’t even dream of shelling out for just a short year ago.

The 6900XT comes with 16GB of VRAM, boost clocks up to 2.25GHz, 5,120 GPU cores, 448GB/s memory bandwidth and a Total Board Power (TBP) of only 300W. $1000 isn’t exactly cheap, but again, compared to the $1500 Nvidia is asking for their top-tier SKU, it almost seems tantalizing, even if it ends up bombing in regards to Ray-Tracing benchmarks.

PC Case

Energy-efficient components tend to generate less heat, which means they need less cooling, which means they generate less noise. So, to further maximize the benefits of AMD’s supremely efficient new hardware, we’ve opted for the be quiet! Dark Base 700 ATX Mid-Tower for the ultimate noise optimization.

The Dark Base 700’s modular internals allow for completely inverted ATX builds, riser cards, and storage drive capacity with removable side panels. There’s even a removable panel on the PSU shroud for a bottom intake fan, which we’ll take advantage of in the next section! With two included Silent Wings 3 140mm fans and case-mounted fan controller, thermal and noise performance are great by default. The overall build quality is immaculate with a beautifully machined motherboard tray and exterior, and a tinted tempered glass side panel, making this one of the sleekest cases on the market.

Fans

To fortify our thermal performance and airflow, we recommend picking up four be quiet! Silent Wings 3 140mm High-Speed PWM fans. Two are for additional front intakes, one for the bottom intake below the PSU shroud, which we mentioned earlier, and one is to assist the included rear exhaust at the top of the case. This setup will maximize the performance we get from the NH-U12A and provide ample airflow for all of your components while keeping noise levels down and saturating the included fan controller.

Power Supply

Finally, the delivery of clean and stable power to our enthusiast build will be handled by a Corsair AX1000 80+ Titanium power supply. With the AX1000, we receive full modularity for easy cable management, the highest efficiency rating possible, plenty of overclocking headroom, and a total wattage that should put us in the optimal peak load efficiency range (where your system’s combined TDP equals ~50% of your PSU’s total). The team at PremiumBuilds will always stress just how vital your PSU is to your system. Ensuring a stable and clean supply of electricity to your components should improve their longevity and overclocking results, meaning you should always opt for the best possible option for your power supply. If there are two things you shouldn’t ever skimp on, it’s this and your motherboard. Buying the best you can for each component means that you can use them in builds for years to come, and Corsair’s 10-year warranty means some of you PC parents might be able to hand the AX1000 on to your next generation of enthusiasts!

Closing Thoughts

Ray-Tracing or no Ray-Tracing, RDNA 2 is going to be marvelous, especially if AMD is capable of satisfying their demand even slightly better than Nvidia has been able to since Ampere launched. We might be looking at a typical case of the tortoise vs. the hare, and Nvidia might end up seriously regretting rushing the 3000 series out the door to try and crash AMD’s party. If you’ve got 4K or high-refresh 1440p gaming aspirations, AMD looks like a snack this holiday season !

The post Best $3500 Radeon RX 6900 XT Gaming PC Build for 2021 appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

Today, this one is for the window shoppers and 1%. There might be a handful of builders in the world that genuinely need this level of performance out of a machine, but there’s not a soul who wouldn’t appreciate it.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we must mention the fact that the RTX 3090 can’t yet claim the title of best high-end GPU until the world can get its hands on AMD’s new RDNA 2 cards. Regardless, the RTX 3090, especially our choice today, is guaranteed to sit amongst the top of any and every benchmark you can throw at it. Starting at $1500, the RTX 3090 manages to be even more jaw-dropping than the last generation’s FPS king, the RTX 2080 Ti. However, even with the RX 6000 purportedly achieving boost clock speeds of up to 2.5GHz, those with enough patience or disposable income won’t have many other options for absolutely top-tier performance from their next GPU.

Here at PremiumBuilds, we pride ourselves on maximizing price-to-performance for every curated build we present. However, as evidenced by Jon’s recent RTX 3090 Gaming Build, that doesn’t mean we shy away from systems with a more premium price tag. Further, all of our parts lists are made to be completely modular. So, if you have more or less money to play with, you can pick from some of the alternatives we offer or decide on your own upgrades/downgrades.

Now without further ado, let’s examine one of the most powerful consumer desktop configurations possible (courtesy of this exciting new age in gaming performance)!

Ultimate $5000 Ryzen 9 5950X + RTX 3090 Command Center – The Parts List

CPU

One of our centerpieces today is the Ryzen 9 5950X, available starting November 5^th of this year.  The 5950X is a shoo-in for this generation’s performance champion based on some recently leaked benchmarks and AMD’s internal testing. The generational improvements coming with Zen 3, including a reworked L3 cache to allow each CPU core direct and simultaneous access, should roughly translate to a 20% instructions per clock (IPC) improvement over Zen 2 while maintaining the same 105W TDP (thermal design power)!

Zen 3’s power efficiency and relatively tame thermal performance are a testament to AMD’s engineering, and the genius of the Zen architecture. Opting for a chiplet design, opposed to monolithic CPU dies, developing improvements to Zen, and manufacturing the physical product is easier and faster for AMD and TSMC. This is the biggest reason AMD can deliver on their promises of significant upgrades with each new generation of the Zen architecture.

With sixteen cores, thirty-two threads, 64MB of L3 cache, and default boost clocks of up to 4.9GHz, the 5950X aims for the CPU summit this generation. If Zen 3 has also managed to hide some significant overclocking headroom, where Zen 2, by and large, did not, then AMD is almost guaranteed to take home the trophy for workstation and FPS performance.

CPU Cooler

Today’s build is brought to you by the colors black and white, and our first component is Noctua’s legendary NH-D15 Chromax.Black dual-tower heat sink.

By no means is the NH-D15 the only option for premium air-cooling performance, but it is still one of the best even after so many years. Noctua sets itself apart by almost always opting for function over form, and immaculate build quality, which is why it came as quite a surprise when they finally yielded to popular demand and created the Chromax variants for their most popular models. For the longest time, Noctua held fast against criticisms of their notorious brown color scheme until finally offering blacked-out versions of heat sinks like the NH-D15, NH-U12s, and NH-L9a. Now, anyone who may have used the “ugly” brown color scheme as an excuse to stay away from Noctua products essentially has no reason to snag one of the best CPU coolers of all time.

Aside from the slick new color treatment, the Chromax NH-D15 brings the same 240mm AIO level cooling performance with six heat pipes, two 140mm fin stacks, and two of their renowned NF-A15 140mm fans. Considering the unchanged 105W with Zen 3 compared to Zen 2, even if Zen 3 ends up capable of serious overclocking, there’s virtually no reason to opt for liquid cooling outside of a completely custom open-loop. Air coolers will forever remain a preferable option for most builders with better noise performance, roughly equivalent cooling performance, and minimal points of failure. If you’re excited about liquid cooling, then by all means, but if all you care about is performance and reliability, there is no better alternative to a premium air cooler.

Motherboard

Today’s motherboard is the embodiment of the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” and it keeps with our black and white theme! The MSI MEG X570 Unify returns, as it has been a staple in mid to high-end AMD builds ever since its initial release. The X570 chipset has seen few options as well-rounded and well-designed as the Unify, hence how prolific it’s been as a top-tier pick regardless of who you ask.

The X570 Unify boasts 60A Power Stages, a 15 Phase VRM (12+2+1), support for up to 128GB of DDR4-5000MHz memory, 3x M.2 slots, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5.0, Realtek 2.5G LAN + ALC1220 Audio CODEC, 4x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (1 is Type-C) + 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 + 2x USB 2.0 ports, an internal USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C header, 4x SATA III 6Gb/s ports, an integrated I/O shield, rear Clear CMOS + BIOS Flashback buttons, onboard Power and Reset buttons, and a POST code readout, all of which are stylishly blacked out.

If Zen 3 can be overclocked, a stellar pick for Zen 2 will be even better! The X570 Unify already has incredible VRM performance; thus, with virtually no change in TDP for Zen 3, $300 even will ensure you extract as much power from the new 5950X as possible!

Memory

AMD’s Zen 2 CPUs performed remarkably well in games, but they were really intended to provide unparalleled productivity performance for consumer desktops. This time around, Zen 3 is coming in guns blazing to not only retain their superior workstation performance but shoot for the top spot in gaming as well. With this in mind, we’ve chosen the G.Skill Ripjaws V 64GB (4x16GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 memory kit to ensure you’ve more than enough memory for gaming and tasks like photo/video editing and rendering.

However, if you’re not interested in anything other than gaming, feel free to pick up the 32GB version (2x16GB) to leave an upgrade path for yourself, still have ample memory for gaming and multi-tasking, and save some money!

Storage

Everything keeps getting smaller, and thanks to solid-state drives, all of your data can now fit on something near the size of a pack of stick gum! Enter the $300 2TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD, our OS drive of choice. M.2 SSDs are some of the fastest storage devices available outside of even pricier PCIe 4.0 options. They eliminate the cable management that comes with 2.5” and 3.5” drives, are incredibly easy to install and replace, and thanks to the X570 Unify, you have the option to expand with up to two more down the road.

Additionally, we’ve selected a 2TB Samsung 860 EVO 2.5” SSD for our bulk drive. Our build today is an exceptional workstation, but AAA games are getting more and more storage-intensive. More assets need to be retrieved and faster than ever before. Meaning, unless we see some incredible breakthroughs in spinning drive technology, and soon, SSDs will quickly become a requirement for your favorite new games to run at peak performance. That’s precisely why the next generation of game consoles have chosen to include SSDs as their default storage devices. Sony and Microsoft have each developed proprietary technologies to facilitate the transfer of textures and assets from high-speed solid-state drives to the GPU. This means that consoles might be the best way to experience certain games until developers finally start to take advantage of technology that’s been available to PC gamers for years.

Graphics Card

The EVGA GeForce RTX 3090 24GB FTW3 Gaming; our other centerpiece for today’s build. As with most aspects of enthusiast builds, the RTX 3090 is extravagant, it’s overkill, and it’s supremely expensive.

The base price of an RTX 3090 is $1500, but EVGA offers its signature performance, over-engineering, and design flair to bring the FTW3 up to nearly $1750. With a monster-sized heat sink, triple cooling fans, and stylish RGB shroud, this triple-slot beast will be just as ridiculous as and right at home with the rest of our system.

With boost clocks up to 1740MHz, 24GB of VRAM, and a gargantuan 350W TDP, it’s a good thing EVGA has a rich history of high-performance GPU cooling because this guy will surely need every bit of cooling performance EVGA can muster. Alas, our theme isn’t quite perfect due to the RGB fan shroud, but if you genuinely hate the idea of any lights interrupting the pure black aesthetic we’ve chosen, you can turn them off with EVGA’s LED Sync software as part of their Precision X1 overclocking tool.

It remains to be seen just how competitive the next generation of AMD’s cards is. Still, the performance offered by the RTX 3090 allows for astronomical FPS below 4K resolutions and absolutely remarkable performance at and above it, and with every setting cranked as high as possible.

PC Case

For the sake of contrast, we’ve chosen an incredible black and white case from Fractal Design, the Meshify S2.

The Meshify S2 is a hybrid of their incredibly popular Meshify C mid-tower and Define S2 full-tower cases. With the Define series’ internal design and the airflow centric features of the Meshify, the Meshify S2 is essentially a stretched out Meshify C with enough room to accommodate the chunky RTX 3090 and NH-D15.

With three excellent 140mm PWM fans included (two front intake, one rear exhaust), you can rest assured that your parts are getting enough airflow without having to spend any extra money. The Meshify S2 also sports a tempered glass side panel to provide an unobstructed view of our blacked-out internals and the signature angular Meshify front panel to keep things looking attractive on the outside.

Power Supply

In the interest of efficiency, and considering those of you prone to never turning off your PCs, we’ve chosen to power our build with an EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 T2 80+ Titanium PSU. While you could get away with an 850W PSU for a machine like this (which should draw around 615W under load), we want to make sure we’re as close to the “sweet spot” for PSU efficiency (50-60%) while retaining as much headroom as possible for overclocking and external device connections.

AMD might have kept their high-end CPUs at a reasonable 105W TDP, but the RTX 3090’s 350W is no joke, and overclockers who win the silicon lottery might be able to squeeze another 100W out of it thanks to EVGA. Finally, knock on wood, should anything go wrong, EVGA has you covered with their tremendous 10-year warranty and customer support.

Display

Before capping off our crazy command center, another quote seems fitting, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” The RTX 3090 and Ryzen 9 5950X CPU-GPU combo are more than able to demolish plenty of gaming benchmarks at 4K resolutions, but not all of them. Titles with insane graphical fidelity like Jedi: Fallen Order, Red Dead Redemption 2, Flight Simulator 2020, and Horizon: Zero Dawn still cannot break the 100FPS barrier at Ultra 4K settings even with the RTX 3090. So to guarantee 144Hz+ gaming in nearly every game out there, we suggest you pick up a ViewSonic ELITE XG270QG 27” 1440p 1ms 144Hz (165Hz OC) IPS Nano display.

Despite the insane numbers that are possible nowadays, the most popular resolution is still 1080p. 1080p’s continued dominance is due, primarily, to the performance overhead, hence why we’ve chosen a fantastic middle-ground with 1440p. With 1440p, you still get to enjoy more pixels and screen real estate over 1080p, but without hampering yourself in the most GPU intensive games. Because the RTX 3090 is capable of pushing 4K resolutions so hard, 1440p ensures you’ll hit the refresh rate cap of 144Hz/165Hz, and stay there.

A final note, we recommend not using the OC feature to push the refresh rate of the ViewSonic ELITE to 165Hz. Not only is there a point of diminishing returns in perceived smoothness for the majority of gamers between 120-144Hz, but overdrive/overclocking functions for most displays increase the refresh rate at the cost of additional motion blur, visual artifacts, and “ghosting.”

Closing Thoughts

To sum up this generation’s hardware? Just, wow. If this is the sort of machine we can build today, then we cannot wait for whatever tomorrow holds. As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading!

The post Ultimate $5000 Ryzen 9 5950X + RTX 3090 Command Center for 2021 appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

AMD’s Ryzen CPUs have come to redefine what we expect from a processor in terms of performance and value. Using higher core counts to achieve versatile CPU whilst pricing them competitively saw AMD build a strong market. They still excelled in-game though, with more than enough performance for all but the most demanding competitive players. This month AMD made a bold statement with their Zen 3 release. They’ve announced that they’re out-performing intel across the board but especially in gaming which was traditionally Intel’s strongest suit. The six core ‘Ryzen 5’ CPUs have always been the mainstay of this line of products and the 5600X looks like it will continue this trend offering top-drawer gaming performance and versatility too. In this article, we’ve built a PC that takes full advantage of this $299 high-performance processor. This PC will excel in high FPS gaming, but also has a powerful enough GPU to allow glorious AAA titles to shine at 1440p. However, the strength of the 5600X will be in its value, so the build is carefully balanced to keep performance high but costs under control. Every part represents the best value component for this class of build, so let’s dig in!

Best Ryzen 5 5600X Gaming Build – The Parts List

CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X

AMD claim to have made big strides with this generation of their Zen Architecture. The CPU core layout has been redesigned for better access to the cache memory on the CPU and reduced memory latency overall, as well as slightly higher clock speeds. The Ryzen 5 5600X is a 6 core 12 thread CPU with a boost clock of 4.7Ghz, 300Mhz higher than the outgoing Zen 2 parts. It still uses AMD’s ‘PBO’ technology that opportunistically raises boost levels to take advantage of thermal and power delivery headroom and maximise the potential of your chip. All of this adds up to a CPU that should exceed the capabilities of the current gaming value champion, the $279 Intel i5-10600K but at a much lower power draw. This CPU will excel in fast-paced shooters and more complex titles alike, whilst the six cores mean it’ll be perfectly capable in tasks like occasional video editing or photo processing. It supports the latest specifications such as PCIe 4.0 so you can adopt these technologies as they mature. The Ryzen 5600X is set to become the standard core of mid-range gaming systems owing to its touted performance advantage and lower platform costs over an equivalent Intel CPU.

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition

Whilst AMD includes a stock cooler with the Ryzen 5 5600X, it’s a noisy affair and not really suited to getting the most out of the CPU. We’ve opted to include a more appropriate aftermarket cooler for the 5600X, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition. This tower cooler uses a 120mm fan and four heat pipes to pull heat away from the 5600X with minimal noise. Lower temperatures equate to higher boost clocks and the ability to sustain them for longer, improving the performance of your CPU. With PBO on hand to take advantage of a better cooler, the $35 outlay is easily justified for both performance and quality of life via lower noise levels. 

Motherboard: Gigabyte B550M AORUS Pro

There is no motherboard revision for the Zen 3 CPUs and they will all work on B550 and X570 motherboards –although has the specification of the CPU is unreleased, if you buy prior to the CPU release you may have to flash the BIOS to gain compatibility. In terms of Value B550 is more than enough for almost all gamers. This chipset offers PCIe 4.0 support for the GPU and one NVMe SSD, along with a full suite of CPU and RAM overclocking facilities and multitudes of USB connectivity options. We’ve selected the Gigabyte AORUS B550M owing to its well-judged balance of features and pricing at just $130. It has a strong voltage delivery configuration with 10+3 phase design to ensure that the Ryzen 5600X is able to perform optimally and boost to those high clock speeds. There are two M.2 slots with the main slot offering PCie 4.0 compatibility direct to the CPU. The audio codec is a high-quality ALC 1200 chip, and gigabyte Ethernet is plenty for almost all home settings. There are 5 fan headers and a suite of 6 temperature sensors to allow you to monitor the thermal performance of your build and tweak adjustments if needed. Overall this motherboard is an excellent backbone to the system and keeps costs down with an attractive $130 price point.

RAM: Crucial Ballistix RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16 Memory

Whilst we will have to wait for performance testing of RAM on Zen 3 CPUs, what we know about the design allows us to make informed decisions. The IO chip that acts as an interconnect between the CPU cores and the outside world remains unchanged, axnd it’s this that dictates the infinity fabric speeds and optimal RAM specification. Therefore it seems very likely that 3600Mhz RAM with tight CAS timings will be optimal, and given our testing it will certainly remain the price to performance sweet spot for this new processor with 3600MHz RAM being relatively affordable. We’ve chosen this Crucial Ballistix 2X8GB kit with RGB highlights for a little extra visual flair. It offers good timings and uses Micron E-die chips which are high quality and overclock well if you want to try your hand at optimising speeds and timings further. 16GB is plenty of RAM for almost every game, and there are 2 slots left free for a hassle-free upgrade should you need more RAM in future. 

Storage: Western Digital SN550 1Tb NVME SSD

2020 has been a great year for SSDs and we’ve seen storage prices drop making high capacity SSDs affordable for all. There’s also been competition for performance however the benefits for gaming and general-purpose PC’s really aren’t made out. There’s minimal difference in boot or loading times and only really specialist usage cases need to consider the higher performance SSDs for tasks such as high-resolution video editing or manipulation of large files. We’ve used the Western Digital SN550 in our test bench for over 3 months now and remain impressed with its performance. This SSD offers 2400MB/s sequential read and 1950MB/s write speeds and uses 3D TLC NAND for good endurance and sustained write speeds. It lacks DRAM but doesn’t let that put you off: WD uses an SRAM cache combined with their proprietary controller to ensure performance doesn’t suffer.  It ships with a 5-year warranty and at $105 represents excellent value for money. 

Graphics Card: Nvidia RTX 3070

We’ve gone out on a limb here because this is an unreleased GPU featuring in a build for an unreleased CPU – however, we’re confident that the October 29^th release of the RTX 3070 will be the best price to performance offering for a mid-range PC. Listing at around $499 the RTX 3070 has 8GB VRAM but Nvidia tout performance equalling the RTX 2080 Ti. We’ll have to wait and see exactly how that stands up to scrutiny but nevertheless, we can expect at least RTX 2080 Super class performance at a much-reduced price. This combines with Ray tracing and tensor cores to leverage AI technologies. Chief amongst these is DLSS 2.0, a super-sampling process whereby AI is used to upscale images using a library of super-high-resolution 16K renders from games. This allows for dramatically improved visuals and performance and is a game-changer in the way GPUs process in-game graphics. At $500 this GPU represents the current best in class 1440p solution, with ample power for the most demanding titles. Be warned: Demand is likely to be high and supply limited, so get in the queue early to secure yours!

PC Case: Cooler Master MasterBox MB311L ARGB

We’ve opted for a slightly more compact mATX form factor for this build and chosen the excellent value Cooler Master MB311L. This case comes with 2 pre-installed 120mm Fans with RGB lighting behind the mesh front panel. The PSU shroud hides the uglier bits of the build whilst a tempered glass side panel displays the rest of the components to best effect: Your RGB Ram and the motherboard heatsinks will look great. We’ve also opted to add another 120mm fan matched to the front to act as an exhaust. Meanwhile, there’s a pair of additional front panel USB ports and the usual flexibility of a drive cage in the ‘basement’ of the case. At $60 this case is a great way to keep costs lower without reducing performance, and also keeps the size of the PC manageable being mATX mid-tower format.

PSU: Antec Earthwatts Gold Pro 650 W 80+ Gold

The PSU market is still reeling from supply troubles in 2020, but this unit from Antec represents a great buy. With 650W output and Gold efficiency rating it’s more than up to the task of powering the efficient components in this build without overspending. It’s semi modular so you only need to use the cables essential to the build, keeping clutter to a minimum. We use this PSU in our test bench and can vouch for its capability and stability as well as quiet operation and good build quality.  It uses high quality Japanese capacitors and ships with a 7 year warranty for your peace of mind. This PSU is an excellent choice for a mid range gaming build and rounds out the components for the PC itself.

Recommended Monitor: Gigabyte G27QC 

A PC of this calibre demands a monitor capable of showing its capabilities to best effect. Gigabyte has recently released the excellent G27QC at a very attractive $280. This 1440p QHD monitor has a 165Hz refresh rate and uses Freesync premium adaptive sync to eliminate screen tearing and give a smooth consistent gaming experience. 165Hz allows lighting quick reactions in first-person shooters, whilst the monitor has fast response times and low input lag so it’s crisp and responsive. The VA panel gives vibrant colours and deep blacks. This monitor is specified to excel in almost all gaming situations and take maximum advantage of the high refresh rates that this Ryzen 5600X and RTX 3070 gaming PC is capable of. 

Conclusion

This PC uses carefully selected parts to allow the Ryzen 5600X to achieve its full potential. It will give exemplary performance across a broad range of titles for years to come. We hope you’ve found this build inspirational, and we know you’re as excited as we are about the new Zen 3 CPU’s and Ampere GPU’s on the horizon. 

The post $1400 Ryzen 5 5600X Gaming Build – The Best Value PC Build for 2021? appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

It is quite rare that a new CPU generation hits around the same time as a new GPU generation. We’re of course talking about AMD’s Ryzen 5000 and Nvidia’s RTX 3000 series which both push the boundaries of gaming performance to never before seen levels. The leaps in both processor and graphics performance warrant a great time to build a PC for the next 3 years+ depending on the specs you’ll be getting. Today we will be recommending a high end build around the $2000 price point which packs the highest levels of gaming performance at the end of 2020.

You heard it right, this build can achieve an average of 30 to 35% better FPS than the previous best $2000 gaming build which featured a Ryzen 7 3700X and an RTX 2080Ti; that’s a huge leap at the same price point and consumers like you and me can now enjoy it. The new Ryzen 7 5800X series is an enthusiast’s dream with gaming performance levels exceeding even the Core i9 10900K. These gains on the Ryzen 5000 series come from the huge 19% uplift in IPC, single core performance and core to core latency improvements. In short terms, the 5800X is a beast that sets a new standard in gaming performance.

On the graphics side, we got the RTX 3080 which is the newest effort from Nvidia to push the boundaries of high resolution and high refresh rate gaming performance. With an overall FPS uplift of around 30% above the outgoing RTX 2080Ti model which was the previous top performing single GPU on the market, the RTX 3080 establishes itself as one of the most thought after GPUs at its $700 launch price.

The Ryzen 7 5800X and the RTX 3080 are the highlights of this build but we’re going to follow up with the surrounding components in order to offer you a strong build in all other areas such as storage, cooling and memory capacity. Here’s the specs needed for the system:

Ryzen 7 5800X Gaming Build – The Parts List

CPU: Ryzen 7 5800X

AMD used their October 8th presentation to give us a rather detailed look at their Ryzen 5000 portfolio with the Ryzen 7 5800X launched as the single 8 core / 16 thread model and available on November 5th on shelves worldwide. Their performance improvements surprised everyone and thanks to the architecture overhaul, gaming FPS is a great advantage on the Ryzen CPUs which now are marketed as the best gaming CPUs out there with a 5% or higher margin when compared to competing Intel CPUs. This is a great achievement because gaming performance was still lagging behind the Intel CPUs for the past three Ryzen generations.

Not anymore though. Its safe to say consumers are warmly welcoming this gaming performance uplift with the new Ryzen 5000 series. The Ryzen 7 5800X for example welcomes a 25% average advantage over the outgoing Ryzen 3000 XT models which happened due to the 19% IPC performance uplift and latency optimizations; such a leap in one generation just for gaming performance is impressive and we foresee a very high demand for the new CPUs.

In this build, we still could’ve used a last generation CPU such as the Ryzen 7 3700X and the price would’ve been around $150 cheaper but if we’re going to build a highly capable build that can demolish any resolution at high refresh rates, then there’s no better pairing than that of the Ryzen 7 5800X and RTX 3080 thanks to their stunning performance and good performance per dollar. We’re not going to say this build is affordable for everyone but instead, we’re going to say that bleeding-edge performance has gotten much cheaper with these two new generations of high-performance processors and graphics cards.

CPU Cooler: Dark Rock Pro 4

The Ryzen 7 5800X keeps the 105W TDP of his predecessor, the Ryzen 7 3800X and thus, is as easy to cool. All the CPU coolers that did a great job cooling the latter will up to the task with the 5800X. For a $2000 build that’s aimed at the enthusiast gamer we’d like to recommend one of the best air coolers on the market. The Dark Rock Pro 4 is a dual tower air cooler built using beQuiet!’s solid mantra of “no compromise silence and performance”. You can expect silent utilization during any load and ample rooms for overclocking if you are tweak-happy with the processor.

The heat sink consists of a huge dual tower design with seven 6 mm heat pipes while using 2 x SilentWing fans, one 135 mm and one 120mm, that are virtually inaudible during both idle and load environments. The great combination of performance, quality, value and design makes the Dark Rock Pro 4 an exception offering at its $90 retail price. Mounting this huge cooler is made easy by the simple instructions and the ample room you have in the Lian Li LANCOOL II-X case that we’re featuring in this build.

Motherboard: ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (WiFI)

The gamer inside you will not need the extensive extra features of a very high-end X570 motherboard and this is why the ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus Wi-Fi is such a great fit for this gaming build. Its VRM design is shared with the much more expensive Maximum XI Hero motherboard and at this price point, its one of the most capable motherboards that can run any Ryzen 5000 chip even with heavy overclocking thanks to its strong hardware features.

With a stellar BIOS layout and frequent updates, you’ll feel like the X570 will leave nothing to be desired. Features include the PCIe 4.0 standard which will aid our RTX 3080 and storage device to stretch their wings, 14 Phase VRM, 128GB 4400MHz support through the 4 RAM slots, 2x M.2 slots one of which is passively cooled and a great Realtek ALC S1200A Audio CODEC. The TUF is also pretty generous with its I/O; the 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (1 x Type-C) + 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and 8x SATA 6Gb/s ports are most likely enough for any gaming enthusiast or streamer out there. For new AMD builders getting ready for their first gaming machine, the TUF Gaming X570-Plus WiFi is a great option that doesn’t break the bank and offers all the key features and configurability of AMD’s AM4 platform.

Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16

With DDR4 slowly approaching the end of its life and thanks to the high level of competition in the memory market, we can afford to splurge towards the 32 GB of RAM. Many would argue that 16 GB is enough for a gaming build and that is very true with mainstream and high end builds; you are not going to exceed 10-12 GB of memory usage in any of the latest titles but you are going to cut it close with the 16 GB. If you’re one of those PC users that like to keep open tons of applications or browser tabs or even someone who would like to use their PC as a rendering and editing machine then 16 GB would induce a bottleneck into this great gaming build and we would like to avoid it at all costs. It’s very cheap to do so with the extra 16 GB of high-performance system memory.

This build is also crafted to last you for many years and 32 GB of RAM will surely take care of your needs for its full lifetime. The low 8.889 memory latency of this G.Skill DDR4-3600 CL16 RAM kit will also aid overall performance and snappiness of your system and will pair well with the Ryzen 7 5800X. If you like tweaking then you will be able to tune this memory kit’s clocks and CAS latency to even higher performance levels in order to bring even more improvements to the Infinity Fabric speed of the Ryzen CPU. The Dual Channel (2 sticks) nature of this RAM kit is also mandatory in order to benefit from the full bandwidth of the AM4 platform. We like this kit very much thanks to its performance and affordability but you can also check our articles on different RAM kits if you’d like more options to choose from at different price points.

Storage

Its mandatory that such a fast gaming system will need to run on a solid piece of storage in order for you to enjoy lag free application opening, installations and game loading. We will be going with a storage combination between a very fast PCIe 4.0 NVME device in the form of the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 500 GB and a 1 TB Crucial P1 M.2 in order to have the OS and most frequently used applications on the main Sabrent device while the more rarely used apps and general file storage can sit on the Crucial P1. This way, we are ensuring great speeds and enough capacity without breaking the bank. If these two devices don’t offer enough capacity for your needs then feel free to upgrade to bigger M.2 sizes.

Storage 1: Sabrent Rocket 4.0 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME

The OS drive will be powered by the Sabrent Rocket 4.0, a rather new drive that uses the Phison E12s controller, a 96 layer TLC flash by Micron and the new PCIe 4.0 interface in order to ensure snappiness and a performance edge to your transfers and file access. The DRAM chip is there to offer a massive performance uplift for random writes; it brings a very fast temporary storage for the drive’s internal mapping tables so that it doesn’t slow down during sustained load. The device is also very hard to throttle because even though it heats up, the slow downs are well masked and avoided by the inclusion of a copper foil over the M.2 drive that acts as a heat spreader thus handling the extra heat. Sabrent is claiming this foil helps the drive run at max speed 4 times longer than without it.

Storage 2: Crucial P1 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME

We will also be using a very popular M.2 drive that may be not as fast as the Sabrent but it offers a very good value for capacity. The Crucial P1 provides excellent value for people that need very fast and cheap storage. The only occasion where this drive slows down is when you’re doing transfers bigger than 50 GB at a time because of its limited QLC cache. That will happen almost never in everyday use and besides that, the drive is lightning fast; it features speeds of up to 2,000 MB/s read and 1,700MB/s write – much faster than your usual SATA SSD. If you are in need of even more capacity on your system then a 2 TB version of the Crucial is also available at a very competitive price.

Graphics Card: RTX 3080

The RTX 3080 delivers very impressive performance especially when it comes to higher resolutions like 4K. The generational improvement over the RTX 2080 Super and top-end RTX 2080 Ti is very welcome for people that want to experience more with more graphically intensive games and Ray Tracing. Real-time ray tracing is running smoothly on a single RTX 3080 and what’s more impressive is that the card is around 25% better in rasterization when compared to the RTX 2080Ti while being a lot cheaper, at $699 launching price. Third-party cards may retail for a slightly more expensive price though.

This card is an excellent performer in any of the new Triple-A, VR and eSports titles and does it at a respectable but slightly high TDP of 320W – this is why we’ll be including a great PSU to go with the build; we want to ensure your system and gaming experience won’t be affected by any spikes in power consumption. Nvidia has set the bar very high for AMD to catch up with their new RX 6000 series but until then, the RTX 3080 is the card to have for gamers if you can get one. With its 10 GB of GDDR6X memory, any current title should be able to run at max settings without the worry of going over the max memory.

Thanks to the Ryzen 7 5800X in the system, the RTX 3080 will be able to spread its wings and perform very well not only in 4K but also in 1440p or even 1080p high refresh rate games where previously, many CPUs would bottleneck such a high performing graphics card.

PC Case: Lian Li LANCOOL II-X

The Lancool II belongs to Lian Li’s mainstream lineup but there are lots of impressive features about it. The chassis is designed from scratch in order to ensure easy building, cable management and maintenance, the aesthetics are very nice with premium looks and the thermal characteristics are great with the additional included fans in our build. Lian Li has managed to pack a lot from their more expensive lineups in a design and feature set that doesn’t look like its compromising much. They have taken every popular priority that consumers are asking for in a high-end case and stripped everything else that is rarely needed. For the $90 retail price, the case is definitely fit to home a high end build such as the one we’re designing.

This ATX case also comes with a lot of extra features that are cost options. Hot swappable drive bays, USB Type C I/O and a vertical GPU mount are some of them with a ton of additional accessories and customization possible. The stock configuration is easy to build in thanks to its dual-hinge doors, many tie-down points and PSU shroud. The cooling for the case is not great when using just the three included fans and that is why we’re going to use a third party pack of Cooler Master SickleFlow 62 CFM 120 mm fans. You can do a setup with intake fans at the bottom and front and exhaust fans at the back and top in order to ensure equal pressure and sufficient airflow for your components. The additional three fans are not mandatory but you’ll obtain a much cooler and silent system if you decide the $49 on the additional fans.

Ultimately, we are big fans of how Lian Li has built the Lancool II-X as a fantastic blend between aesthetics, price and performance and that is why we’re sure it will go very well with the rest of the components in this build.

Power Supply: EVGA SuperNOVA G1+ 750 W 80+

The total max power draw of this Ryzen 7 5800X gaming PC build sits around 450 to 550W during a 100% CPU and GPU utilization under render loads. That is a very rare occurrence but we’ve prepared the build for that with the EVGA SuperNOVA G1+ which is a very high tier PSU from a world class trusted brand. The PSU can easily handle any power swings during the diverse loads you’re going to put the system through and will do it silently and stress-free.

Being a fully modular power supply, the G1+ will allow you to just use the cables that you really need for this build. Building this way you’re going to leave the case uncluttered and ensure a more easy way to do maintenance or upgrades on your full build; storage, RAM swaps or regular cleaning has never been easier with such good cables and case layout. Their cables also have a premium bend feel to them and thanks to their dark sleeving, you can arrange them inside the Lian Li case in order to obtain a very clean look. The RTX 3080 graphics card comes with a bundled 12 pin power connector that you can use for the PCIe cables but EVGA also takes care of this with their own version of the 12 pin connector. If your G1+ has been manufactured before the RTX 3000 series then EVGA will send you the added 12 pin connector for free; this is proof that EVGA cares about the latest needs for their customers.

The G1+ ranks S tier (the highest tier) in popular PSU ranking lists for its excellent protections against surges and excellent build quality; at the $120 price point, we’re finding the G1+ perfect for this enthusiast gaming build and any upgrades that you may be inclined to add in the future.

Bottom Line

Let’s focus a little on the price you’ll be paying for this build and the performance you are extracting from it. Less than 1 month ago, $2000 would have got you a Ryzen 7 3700X & RTX 2080Ti PC which indeed offered a great amount of performance but now, with the Ryzen 7 5800X & RTX 3080 overall performance at this price point is an estimated 30 to 35% better; this is a huge leap in value for money in just one CPU & GPU generation and its why we’re so excited for this build. The most amount of money in this build is going towards the CPU & GPU which amounts to ~$1150; before this, the 3700X + RTX 2080Ti would amount to a whopping ~$1500. The $300 saved from past generation’s components to the 5800X + RTX 3080 was used to spec the build with more high-end additional components such as the X570 motherboard, beQuiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 air cooler and greater storage performance.

The build offers class-leading gaming performance at any resolution and refresh rate. If you are looking for a monitor to pair this build with, our colleagues have drafted a list of the best monitors for such a Ryzen 7 5800X + RTX 3080 build. We are thrilled to recommend this build as the best $2000 gaming PC that you’ll be able to build at the end of 2020 and if you have any additional questions, we’re happy to answer in the comment section below; the FAQ can also help you with more general questions. Happy building!

The post $2100 Ryzen 7 5800X Gaming PC Build for 2021 appeared first on PremiumBuilds.

AMD’s initial Zen 3 lineup has finally been revealed, and it may very well have the new gaming CPU champion among its ranks! The Ryzen 9 5900X is shaping up to be a serious contender for gaming enthusiasts and users in need of some powerful productivity performance. Across the board, Zen 3 processors enjoy the benefits of AMD’s new architecture and unified L3 cache and core complexes (CCXs). These two changes allow for boost clocks up to 4.9GHz, and up to eight cores to share simultaneous access to 32MB of L3 cache within a single CCX.

Translation: Zen 3 brings a 19% boost in instructions per clock (IPC) and, according to AMD, a 26% performance uplift over Zen 2, all while remaining at or below the TDP of Zen 2. Even if you’ve recently procured yourself a Zen 2 processor, Zen 3 offers compelling upgrades to what could be the best CPUs on the market for quite some time. Furthermore, if Zen 3 is capable of even slightly more overclocking than Zen 2, Intel may have a rough time even trying to compete in gaming performance, which they’ve been clinging to for so long.

The fact of the matter is that AMD has had Intel’s feet to the fire for nearly two years, and it’s only been getting hotter. Thanks to Team Red, there has never been a better time to upgrade your current system or build a brand new one. While we may not yet have an idea of what’s in store for their upcoming Big Navi Radeon GPUs, Zen 3 is a safe bet to make while we await new technologies like DDR5 memory, Quantum Dot displays, and a process from Intel smaller than 14nm .

Best $2600 Ryzen 9 5900X Build – The Parts List

CPU

Today’s crown jewel: The Ryzen 9 5900X. Poised to sit atop most gaming benchmarks with its older brother, the 5950X, the $550 5900X is likely the more sensible option for the majority of builders to still crush performance in multiplayer arenas as well as in scrubbing through chunky timelines. With 12 cores, 24 threads, a 105W TDP, a 4.8GHz boost clock, and the improvements offered by AMD’s Zen 3 architecture, the 5900X earns its slight price uptick in our book.

Zen 3 will be the last series of processors to drop into the AM4 socket (barring any refreshes), so if you’re looking to make the most of your build and avoid upgrades for the next several years, it might be wisest for you to save up and spring for a Ryzen 9. Worst case scenario, AMD refreshes the 5000 series sometime next year, and your build ends up a half step down from the top! You’ll still have a beastly processor with incredibly tame thermal performance. Unless Intel can work some genuine technological wizardry, there’s not likely to be much competition in the CPU market from the elderly 14nm process.

CPU Cooler

Again, here’s to AMD and their ability to keep TDPs very much inline despite the beefy performance uplift with Zen 3. With such a relatively low 105W power draw expected from the 5900X, most users’ best bet will be air cooling, and when it comes to air cooling, there are few better options than Noctua. Today we’ll be recommending the Noctua NH-U12A, a nifty little heat sink that’s capable of competing with the monstrous NH-D15 dual-tower unit within a few degrees while also ending up a few decibels quieter.

With two of their specialized NF-A12x25 Sterrox© bladed fans, seven heatpipes, and a compact fin stack with an impressive amount of surface area, the NH-U12A has the cooling capabilities of even most 240mm AIOs in a 140mm single-tower. Unless you’re dead set on liquid cooling, there are very few other air or liquid coolers that can compete with the thermal and noise performance on top of this level of hardware compatibility. You shouldn’t have trouble fitting this beauty in nearly any compact, mid-sized, or full-sized ATX PC enclosure.

Motherboard

Now, if we’re still talking regal headwear, the MSI MEG X570 Unify is the crown that holds your 5900X gem. At this stage, the X570 Unify is one of the most tried and true AM4 motherboards released to date. While you might see some new entries from companies like Asus with the new ROG Crosshair DARK HERO and STRIX B550-XE, the X570 chipset is going to be the best home for your new Zen 3 CPU. Updates and refreshes are always welcome, but that doesn’t suddenly deprecate the long-standing benchmarks for build quality and performance, which the X570 Unify most certainly is.

The MSI X570 Unify boasts 60A Power Stages, a 15 Phase VRM (12+2+1), support for up to 128GB of DDR4-5000MHz memory, 3x M.2 slots, Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5.0, Realtek 2.5G LAN + ALC1220 Audio CODEC, 4x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (1 is Type-C) + 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 + 2x USB 2.0 ports, 4x SATA III 6Gb/s ports, an integrated I/O shield, Clear CMOS + BIOS Flashback buttons, onboard Power/Reset buttons, and a POST code readout for $300. For the most part, there’s not too much reason to look outside of the X570 Unify for mid to high-end Ryzen builds nowadays. MSI essentially created the perfect AM4 motherboard at damn near the perfect price. While it may not exactly be cheap, you’re buying one of the sleekest and most well-rounded options on the market with extremely competitive VRM performance and stellar component/build quality. (Plus, it’s a nice change of pace to have an option without the superfluous RGB lighting that’s all too common nowadays ).

Memory

For our system memory, we have chosen a G.Skill 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4-3600MHz CL16 kit, which should be available for about $145. Not the bleeding edge of memory performance, but as Jon discovered in the PremiumBuilds Test Lab for Zen 2 memory performance, there is a point of diminishing returns. Thus, 32GB of 3600MHz DDR4 allows us speeds that are plenty fast enough for gaming, with enough capacity for serious multi-tasking in addition to some relatively hefty productivity workloads. Whether you’re gaming with dozens of browser tabs and other programs open on your second display, or if you end up needing to do a bit of photo/video editing, 32GB in a 2x16GB kit gives you room to breathe and the opportunity to upgrade in the future should you so choose.

Storage

The end is nigh for spinning drives in gaming machines, folks, especially if the next generation consoles are any sort of barometer for the future. Game developers are beginning to actually take advantage of storage transfer speeds for things like streaming game assets directly from the drive. In fact, consoles might even perform tasks like that better than PCs for a while, thanks to some proprietary hardware that’s been developed to facilitate such operations. Regardless, you’re going to want to consider not only investing in SSDs for most of your storage (especially for games) but also setting aside some money for PCIe 4.0 SSDs as they continue to mature and come down in price.

That said, we’ve chosen two storage devices for today’s build: a 1TB Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD for your OS and favorite games/programs and a 2TB Samsung 860 EVO 2.5” SSD for your bulk library storage. There’s not much to say when it comes to SSDs; there are many fantastic options, but the most fantastic tend to come from Samsung. Programs, and especially games, seem to be getting bigger and bigger, so not only do you want the fastest storage devices possible, but you want as much space as you can get for a reasonable price. Thankfully, SSDs have long since fallen from their astronomical highs a few years ago and only start to get ridiculously priced past 2TB or with PCIe 4.0 support. However, if you’re concerned about price, or perhaps just don’t need quite so much space, consider dropping the additional 2.5” SSD and investing that money in a stack of premium case fans or some new peripherals!

Graphics Card

Consider this the halo above your aforementioned crown, the EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming. (IMPORTANT NOTE: We strongly recommend holding out on purchasing any 3000 Series RTX cards for the moment. There’s a good chance that Nvidia is planning to release updated 3070s and 3080s with double the total VRAM to compete with AMD’s upcoming Big Navi Radeon cards).

The 3080, despite Nvidia’s slightly troubled launch thus far, is a truly magnificent specimen, and the EVGA 3080 FTW3 Ultra Gaming pushes it to the bleeding edge. Where the reference TDP for an RTX 3080 is a mindblowing 350W, the EVGA FTW3 can easily hit 420W () with enough metal and fan speed to spare. EVGA has done a phenomenal job in taming this particular power-hungry beast and has undoubtedly crafted one of the most competitive third party overclocking cards to date. If ever you were considering gaming at 4K but held off due to concerns of performance? The one-two punch of a 5900X and RTX 3080 should properly dash any last reservations and will scream through any gaming benchmarks you can throw at it. If you plan to game at less than 4K? Forget about it; you’ll be stomping on 2080 Ti performances all day, and at a massive discount. Just a final reminder, do your best to hold off until Nvidia confirms they’ll be releasing an updated version with 20GB of VRAM!

PC Case

Next, we’ll look at the bones of your new beautiful beast: the Lian Li LANCOOL II-X ATX Mid-tower. Lian Li has been responsible for some great enclosures over the years, and the LANCOOL II-X is no exception. Simple, clean, a tasteful amount of RGB, and the premium build quality and materials many of you might be familiar with.

The Lancool II has hinged tempered glass side panels, cable shroud panels to hide your nest on the underside of your motherboard tray, a shrouded PSU and hard drive basement, well-thought-out cable management throughout, not to mention excellent ventilation and a reasonable amount of RGB lighting for the front panel. If you’ve been struggling to pick out your next case, or maybe you’ve grown just a little weary of my incessant Fractal Design recommendations, then the Lian Li LANCOOL II-X is an outstanding choice.

Power Supply

To wrap things up for our 5900X build, the PSU: the EVGA SuperNOVA G3 850W 80+ Gold. Your power supply is the most crucial component of your computer, and we’re just now starting to come out on the other side of severe availability issues due to recent global events. Prices are beginning to normalize, and the more reliable picks are becoming more readily available.

Enter the SuperNOVA G3 850W. EVGA has earned its reputation for more than just GPUs, with many of their power supplies being the affordable go-to choices thanks to their excellent build quality, performance, and warranty/customer service that’s second to none. For clean and stable power and stable power where you need it most, EVGA is always an excellent option!

Closing Thoughts

Zen 3 has raised the bar for consumer electronics relatively high from the looks of AMD’s initial lineup. With so many new technologies on the horizon, we can’t help but reiterate that there won’t be a better time to upgrade your machine or build a new one after Zen 3 finally launches this winter. Today’s build should get you pretty close to the cream of the crop for a reasonable sum and leave you plenty of breathing room to upgrade down the road. Are you planning on buying a Zen 3 CPU? Are you excited to see what kind of performance you can squeeze out of the new RTX cards? As always, be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments down below, and thanks for reading!

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