Been out of the loop for a while. Building a box for gaming. Questions!

Ok, I have been out of the PC building loop for a bunch of years, but I just got a new Thermaltake Xaser case and 600w PSU from my buddy for free. What are some good motherboards (besides ASUS) that won't break the bank. I am looking for something I can build for MS flight sim 2020 and Forza.

 

What CPU were you thinking about using? Were you thinking about overclocking? Possibly not with a 600 watt PSU. Choice of CPU will affect the choice of MB - Z390/Z490 for 9th or 10th gen CPUs; B450/B550 or X470/X570 for Ryzen CPUs.

 

No on the oc. I'm past that. I'm open to anything price conscious and still play the games I want

 

I think I am partial to Intel processors. I have had better luck with Intel than amd in the past.

 

Here are some suggestions. I would recommend going to PCPartpicker.com and build your system. You can pick and choose based on price and performance needs. My thoughts below were to give you best CPU value for as long as possible. If you were to change your mind and try to overclock, the Z390 motherboard would be best. There are lower end boards but they would not have the VRMs necessary should you later change your mind. Don't forget about a GPU card. Probably an RTX 2060 or 1650Ti maybe good enough.

i7 9700K
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HHN6KBZ?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

MSI Z390-A MB
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07J6Z9KJ2?tag=pcpapi-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1

With this motherboard you will need a wifi card (USB or PCIE_

 

I don't know what specs are needed for those games but, what do you want to use it for? NAS? Router? Browsing? DVR?

As to the games it's mostly going to be a GPU function over CPU demand. RAM is always a good thing to have to speed up things over a higher end CPU / GPU.

For a non-gaming setup a 8700K / 16GB runs contently multi purpose system for me even when transcoding video files it just hums along w/o a GPU in it.

600W PSU should get you just about anywhere with a single GPU in the 2K series if you want to drop that kind of cash on a single component.

Obviously the foundation is the MOBO / CPU (Intel has GPU / AMD needs GPU) / RAM / PSU / (drive) since that's what gets you off to the races of being able to power on and do something.

 

What PSU did you get? A recommend a Platinum or Titanium certified PSU, mostly because this gen of GPU's and CPU's are power hungry. The GPU can easy consume 350W and a CPU can easy consume 150W so you have 500W in CPU + GPU alone so you need a PSU that can deliver at least 600W under full load, but power supply are not 100% efficient under full load (mostly around 90%). I'd say 750W power supply Platinum certified as minimum for today's high-end gaming PC.

I recommend also, if you go AMD either on CPU or GPU then you better go for the full combination AMD GPU + AMD CPU to get Smart Access Memory and boost your gaming performance in a 5-10%. In this scenario I'd take a GPU RX 6800XT and a CPU Ryzen 9 5900X. The problem here is you'll have to have patience because there is no much stock on the AMD CPUs at the moment and the GPUs are not yet released.

If you go Intel, I recommend one of the following MB (price range $150-200):

• MSI mpg z490 gaming edge wifi
• Gigabyte Z490 Vision-G

And a CPU Intel 10850K. Same performance as the 10900K in gaming but $100 cheaper. And the RTX 3080 is the best performance/$ of Nvidia in this gen IMO. A second hand RTX 2080 Ti for $600 or less is also a good deal. Stay away from the RTX 3070, lol

RAM, the best performance/$ is the 2x8 GB kit Viper 4 Blackout DDR4 4400MHz ($120)