Good day everyone! The year is fast coming to a close, before we know it we’re going to be in 2021, it can’t be as bad as this year was, right? *touch wood* ANYWAY, since a lot of us have spent a lot of the year cooped up in our homes, unable or unwilling to go out and spend our hard earned cash, we’ve all got wads burning holes in our pockets… right?
Nah, me either. But, if you’re the type of person who has been smart with their money and have saved some cash up for a rainy day, or just to treat yourself, what could you spend it on? Well, today I’m going to put together a PC build, something that will set you right for a good few years. I have a very strong opinion when it comes to upgrading PC Hardware, it’s always worth saving and spending a little more to get better performance as this performance will save you having to upgrade every 1-2 maybe 3 years and have you only having to upgrade every 5-6 maybe more instead! We do have an ultimate guide on building your own PC!
So, what are the components I’ll be picking and why? I’m going to put together a list of things I would currently buy if I was rebuilding my whole rig right now in the run up to 2021. Bare in mind I saved up and spent around £2k on my last PC 5 years ago, so my aim would be to build a full new rig and maybe repurpose this one for my wife or my son.
- CPU: Intel Core i9-10900, 10 core 20 thread, 2.80ghz base, 5.20ghz max turbo, LGA 1200 chip set. – £445
- MoBo: Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Ultra LGA 1200 socket, PCI-E 4th Gen. – £319
- GPU: ASUS TUF Gaming OC 10GB RTX 3080 – £719.99
- Memory: Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro, 32gb (2×16) 3600mhz DDR4 – £199
- Storage: WD Black 1TB SN750 m.2 2280 SSD – £160 & WD Gold 4TB 3.5” 72000RPM normal drive – £159.95
- PSU: Phanteks Revolt X 1000W 80Plus Platinum – £215
- Cooling: Noctua NH-D15 Dual Rad Quiet CPU Cooler – £85
- Case: Genesis IRID 400 RGB Midi Tower – £100
- Total cost: £2,405
So, why did I pick these parts and are these really parts I would personally buy? There are a few areas you can definitely save a few pounds on and some I definitely wouldn’t skimp on. For example, a 1000W power supply, is it entirely necessary? 1000W no, but 80plus platinum is about as efficient as it gets and because of this, it’s 100% worth paying a little extra for that efficiency.
The CPU & Motherboard are going to be personal preference, I selected these parts because the Motherboard has PCI-E gen 4 which makes it possible to get the most out of the Graphics Card (will get to that shortly) and the CPU is one of, if not, the best consumer chip on the market right now. My last chip was an i7 5820k and honestly, I don’t know if I’d go back to AMD after using this.
Now the graphics card comes from Nvidia’s new line of RTX cards, the 3080 in particular is their “high end consumer card” with the 3090 being a £1,500 beast, the 3090 takes the place of the Titan and is probably not necessary for a regular user. At £719 for the card I picked, you’re getting a solid card with a great aftermarket cooler and good room for overclocking, like you’ll ever really need to do that anyway!
Storage, I went for a pretty good capacity m.2 SSD for the incredible boot times and high read/write speeds, this means playing games you’re going to spend less time loading and more time playing. The mechanical drive is for… well, everything else. All your media, it’s nice to have a high capacity drive for your bits and pieces.
Memory you can basically take your pick, but I went for Corsair as I have used Corsair Vengeance for the longest time at this point, 32gb will be ample for most people and a 3600mhz kit is pretty much as fast as it gets for a consumer kit. And they look banging.
For cooling I could’ve gone for a nice looking all in one air/liquid cooler, but I went for performance and sound instead. Noctua coolers don’t LOOK the best, they do some all black radiator fan combos, but I went for the original silver/beige, the reason for this is because Noctua produces some of the best performing, QUIET radiator/fan combos on the market.
Cas is ALWAYS going to be a personal preference, but when you’ve got all your parts you’re going to want something nice to put your parts in right? I currently use the case I suggested above and as such I would probably rebuild a new rig in this case, it looks great, has a tempered glass side panel, RGB front fans that can be remote controlled and plenty of front IO options. What’s not to love?
Now you’ve got your parts and assembled your new beast, what are you going to use it for? Well, you can now game with the best of them, insane performance levels, giving you the edge in esports titles like CS:GO, Rocket League, League of Legends, mining Bitcoin, even sportsbetting, with this kind of set up you can stream several games at the same time and have the latest update on the odds market, with this hardware and you would have NO problems whatsoever, or, you could use it for video/photo editing. The world is your oyster and you’ve spent your hard earned cash, in my opinion at least, VERY well.
So, what do you think? Do you agree with my parts list? If you were to build your own rig right now in the run up to 2021, is there anything you would change?