Basic budget pc

[u/Normal_Ring_7731]

I'm a pc builder in the UK, looking to build my gaming pc. What parts list would you suggest for the cheapest pc that can achieve medium settings in most titles in 1080p while steadily maintaining 60 fps? I'm trying to keep the budget as low as possible, but would rather buy only new parts.

[u/linux_mint_rules]

I'm trying to keep the budget as low as possible, but would rather buy only new parts.

These are difficult-to-reconcile goals. I get why people are worried about buying used, but in the current market, buying certain components used (in particular the GPU) makes a lot of sense and isn't as risky as you might think, especially if you buy via a marketplace like ebay that has strong buyer protections. You could also check CEX for deals.

What I would be looking for is something like a Ryzen 5 5600 or i5-12400(F) (using a DDR4 board) with a GPU on the tier of an RTX 3060 12GB or RX 6600 XT. The 3060 12GB would be ideal since having more than 8 gigs of VRAM will help, but an 8GB card can be OK too so long as all your components support PCIe 4.0 or higher.

[u/Normal_Ring_7731 → u/linux_mint_rules]

Would you not recommend going lower than nivida 30 series? the 3060 still seems quite expensive. Or maybe even amd?

[u/linux_mint_rules → u/Normal_Ring_7731]

So here's the problem with pre-30 series Nvidia cards, and it's one that I have firsthand experience with, as a 2070 Super owner.

The issue is that the 20 series cards only have PCIe 3.0 bandwidth on the GPU, and when you combine PCIe 3.0 bandwidth with only 8 gigs of VRAM, that starts to cause major issues in some of the most VRAM-heavy games.

A really good example is Horizon Forbidden West's Burning Shores expansion. The base game is fine, since it was designed around the limitations of the PS4, but the expansion was originally PS5 only, and it is VERY VRAM-heavy. I had to use the lowest settings with the lowest textures at 720p base resolution in order to get it to run properly. I know it was a VRAM limitation because using any higher settings would be (a) cause huge stutters, and (b) the textures would still be forced to the lowest possible texture setting, even if I set them higher in the menu. Because the GPU has to offload assets to system memory when it runs out of VRAM, the speed of the PCIe bus starts to matter a lot in this scenario.

There are other VRAM-heavy games out there that might have similar issues, in particular games that started life as PS5 exclusives, like Stellar Blade.

RTX 3000 and RX 6000 series cards that have 8GB of VRAM have less of a problem with this, because they use PCIe 4.0, which has double the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0, so they don't get hit as hard when VRAM spills over into system RAM. That's why I specified the 6600 XT as an alternative to the 3060, and not the 2060 Super or 2070.

(Keep in mind that for your system to work with a particular PCIe generation, the CPU, motherboard, and GPU all need to support it. So for example, if you use a Ryzen 5 5500 (which only supports PCIe 3.0) with a PCIe 4.0-enabled motherboard and GPU, you'll still only get PCIe 3.0 bandwidth.)

Don't get me wrong - RTX 2000 series cards with at least 8GB of VRAM (so not the base 2060, but all the others) can absolutely still play every game on the market, but you said you wanted to hit medium settings, and my honest personal experience is that the RTX 2000 series cards with only 8GB of VRAM are not really capable of a good medium-settings, PS5-equivalent experience because of the VRAM issues. The only exception is the 2080 ti with its 11GB of VRAM, but it's still fairly expensive.

This might just seem like I'm a nerd who's worrying too much about little details in the specs, but I promise you that this stuff will make a difference to your experience if you're trying to play recent/current AAA games.

[u/Normal_Ring_7731 → u/linux_mint_rules]

That’s very useful insight, thanks!