#First time buying a PC, not sure where to start

20 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

icy sable
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As the title says, I’m completely new to PC’s until 2 days ago and was hoping for advice or help putting together a PC from PCSpecialist.

I’ve been using a laptop which recently stopped working at the start of exam season. A friend recommended going for a PC as I don’t take my laptop out my flat either way. I did some research on what I was looking for and I’m realising putting together a PC, even if it’s just choosing from all the options offered on PC Specialist is confusing on such short notice. If anyone could offer advice or help put together an idea of what I’d be picking, it’d be much appreciated.

The budget would be preferably up to £800 but I’m willing to go to £1000. I’d also want to put together something that allows me to switch parts and upgrade the CPU or GPU etc down the line.

The PC would mainly be for work / studying, surfing and streaming. Gaming isn’t as likely but some specs to support basic gaming is a bonus. I’m currently a Finance / Risk Management student and that includes doing some programming. Although I would want something that could do well with having a bunch of tabs open all the time or handle using Data Science software at some point (plus we have some machine learning modules coming up).

So far I’ve come up with the following (very limited) information / requirement:

• Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 or 7, not sure which exact one or generation I would require (can always upgrade?)

• Motherboard: too many options but something that has space for upgrading

• Memory: 16 GB RAM minimum or 32GB would be better

• Graphics Card: 8GB Nvidia RTX 3050 vs 12 GB RTX 3060 vs 8GB RTX 4060 (or Ti) or any others, which one would suffice and be within my price range?

• SSD: 512GB or 1 TB (I use google drive quite a bit but better safe than sorry)

• No second SSD (sticking to default options here unless otherwise needed)

• Power and Cooling section: I’m unsure whether the default will need changing

Any help or advice is appreciated.

elder trellis
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im not entirely sure on the data science aspect but for 'basic gaming' youd be looking at a 12GB card nowadays, but i had a brief look to see if i could fit anything at all in your budget and was simply not possible. youd be roughly looking at £1k and above but i might have been looking in the wrong areas. if you were able to up your budget to say 1.5k then that would give more room to work with

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nvidia cards are stupid pricing imo, and you get more bang for buck from AMD cards, for example the 3060 12gb at 1080p medium averages 110fps whereas 6700XT gains 160fps

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if you're looking into gaming too you'd need a separate SSD for that as it will significantly slow down your boot drive, and given how large games are getting you need all the headroom you can get

icy sable
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Thanks. If I were to remove ‘basic gaming’ from the requirements, would it still be possible within the original budget. And in that case would I still be able to upgrade at some future point with the GPU.

My main concern right now would be a PC that can get me through uni without crashing when having too many tabs at the same time etc. Something that I can always upgrade later?

elder trellis
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if you're wanting multiple tabs at one time then 32GB RAM is a must

elder trellis
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under £1k but honestly at that point i would try and save up to include the GPU as it would save hassle later down the line, but if you order without a GPU you are able to add it as an upgrade in your PCS account in the future

icy sable
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Would that be the same case for CPU as well where I could upgrade eventually.

I’m not sure how the ranking for CPU’s goes but having lower cores and more cache, does that benefit in some way as some of the AMD PC configurations with integrated graphics do seem reasonably priced when messing with the options for example below

https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/computers/amd-am5-pc/

PCSPECIALIST - Configure the AMD Am5 PC to your ideal requirements.

PCSpecialist is an award-winning manufacturer of high quality custom PCs & Laptops. Configure the AMD Am5 PC to your ideal requirements.

elder trellis
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you've just sent the link to the wrong thing, if you click on the 'proceed' button, then 'continue' and scroll down to 'post to forum' and copy the link at the bottom, ill have a look in a little bit

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internet having issues rn so browser literally just stopped working

elder trellis
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intel is more beneficial for things like productivity side of things

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14600k has an iGPU however if you want performance straight out of the box incase you do want to do some gaming at the same time then the better option is to get a GPU as itll be worth your while

icy sable
icy sable
icy sable
elder trellis
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ah i see, im not too sure about CPU upgrades as i personally dont own a PCS PC however youd be more worried about the GPU upgradability than anything else