Looking to buy something fairly specs-y

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I'm looking to buy a new computer. My old AMD Ryzen 7 1800X eight-core processor, and 1080 Ti just don't cut it any more.

I'm looking for some target specs - motherboard, GPU etc. I'm in the UK and I'm looking for something that will last. I guess I'll be spending £2-3k then.

Any suggestions on specs, and where to buy?

Current machine was put together by Chillblast and to be fair, it's done a decent job.

Ta!

 

[Thalstan]

First off, nothing lasts.

Also, your target price is probably too low.

A 3080Ti for instance is 1100-1200 dollars US (to convert to pounds, multiple by .8...but that's the price here in the US, not sure how prices change in the UK)

So...what's your target time to replace once you get this computer? One year, three, five, seven?

Are you willing to upgrade your video card in the future?

Do you want to spend the money now to make it more of an upgradeable machine, or pay it later?

Anyway, my thoughts for a 5-7 year PC
1) Your motherboard should be PCIe 5.0 or better
2) get a NVMe M.2 Drive. You want at least 4.0, if not a 5.0 drive. Make sure you size it so that you can put everything you want on it.
3) Make sure you have a few other expansion M.2 Drive slots for future drives available on your motherboard
4) next Gen Nvidia cards are coming this year (Rumors are months away), and there is also a big rumor that they will be power hogs. I mean 600 W power hogs.
5) 1200W power supply. Don't cheap out here. Get a good one.
6) Get a good case. With 600W of consumption, that card is going to get HOT. You want good venting to get that air OUT.
7) I still believe in the all-in-one liquid cooling units. Make sure you install it in the proper orientation
8) if you are not playing DVDs on your computer, you don't need a DVD player on your computer.
9) No matter if you go Intel or AMD, get the latest gen CPU. The 12 series is a lot better than the 11 series, but you need windows 11 to run it optimally. You don't need the extreme high end versions, but i7 or i9 or AMD equivalent is good where you should be aiming
10) upgrade your video card after two generations. So the 60 series if you get the 40 series in a few months.

you are probably looking at 4-5k at this point. Not sure how inflation is hitting you over there, so it might be even more. To save money, you can probably drop down to the 3070/4070 series, but the performance from the 3070ti isn't that much better than your current 1080ti

Now the hard part. Unless you are completely in the need for a new machine, wait. The new processors and video cards come out in a few months time. Waiting a few months now gives you another year of future use.

 

[vahadar]

I built a PC in November 2020, not high end one, to last around 4-5 years for what I hope is the time needed before beta (2024-2025). 5600x Ryzen, Gigabyte rtx3070 OC (performance slightly superior to a Nvidia rtx2080ti), 64gb ddr4, 970 Evo 2tb on 4.0, 2tb HDD, 280gb optane 900p.

I'm not playing in 4k but 2k, so if your goal is to last with the budget you mention, that is what I spent from scratch to make the PC (tower + 2x32'' display + sticks/throttle was altogether around your 3k GBP budget).

At the time prices were higher than now, so you can most probably get a better CPU and graphic card (Ryzen 5800x/5950x + 3080/3080ti).

I'm running SC on ultra around 50 FPS on average (can jump to 100+ depending on location and server).

If you are not looking for a beast of a machine, but enough fps to run games very decently, and depending on what you can keep from your current machine (display/case I guess?) your budget will do fine and last a few years.

 

[minor_accident]

Up until recently, I've been running off an MSI i5 laptop, 32g RAM, 1TB NVMe, and 1050Ti. It still runs fine. Now SC is installed on an MSI laptop (i7, 32g RAM, 1TB NVMe, 3060Ti) the VA bought me for career-change school. I haven't really noticed *that* much difference. As of right now, I'm not convinced a monster machine is really needed unless you want to future-proof.

That said, I've always crept behind in hardware, buying a year or two old. It's hella cheaper, and works fine unless you're running a super high-tech unicorn game that's been out for 3 minutes.

 

[Sirus7264]

First off, nothing lasts.

Also, your target price is probably too low.

A 3080Ti for instance is 1100-1200 dollars US (to convert to pounds, multiple by .8...but that's the price here in the US, not sure how prices change in the UK)

So...what's your target time to replace once you get this computer? One year, three, five, seven?

Are you willing to upgrade your video card in the future?

Do you want to spend the money now to make it more of an upgradeable machine, or pay it later?

Anyway, my thoughts for a 5-7 year PC
1) Your motherboard should be PCIe 5.0 or better
2) get a NVMe M.2 Drive. You want at least 4.0, if not a 5.0 drive. Make sure you size it so that you can put everything you want on it.
3) Make sure you have a few other expansion M.2 Drive slots for future drives available on your motherboard
4) next Gen Nvidia cards are coming this year (Rumors are months away), and there is also a big rumor that they will be power hogs. I mean 600 W power hogs.
5) 1200W power supply. Don't cheap out here. Get a good one.
6) Get a good case. With 600W of consumption, that card is going to get HOT. You want good venting to get that air OUT.
7) I still believe in the all-in-one liquid cooling units. Make sure you install it in the proper orientation
8) if you are not playing DVDs on your computer, you don't need a DVD player on your computer.
9) No matter if you go Intel or AMD, get the latest gen CPU. The 12 series is a lot better than the 11 series, but you need windows 11 to run it optimally. You don't need the extreme high end versions, but i7 or i9 or AMD equivalent is good where you should be aiming
10) upgrade your video card after two generations. So the 60 series if you get the 40 series in a few months.

you are probably looking at 4-5k at this point. Not sure how inflation is hitting you over there, so it might be even more. To save money, you can probably drop down to the 3070/4070 series, but the performance from the 3070ti isn't that much better than your current 1080ti

Now the hard part. Unless you are completely in the need for a new machine, wait. The new processors and video cards come out in a few months time. Waiting a few months now gives you another year of future use.

atm on newegg 3080ti available at 1099 available as of 7:56am jst

 

[Starscribe]

Thanks for the replies - hugely helpful.