Christmas is coming, and I'm thinking a family PC is on the cards from santa.
It would need to run minecraft and Lego city undercover and that sort of thing.
I already have a spare TUF 750W bronze rated power supply (that I bought one time I was troubleshooting).
I will also probably upgrade my RX5700XT graphics card so put that in this build (suggestions welcome for a good bang for buck replacement that's good for a server running Mint and ollama (needs high VRAM) as well as used for gaming).
Everything else would be new. Suggestions for monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers too please!
Let's aim for a ballpark of $1000USD (I'll be purchasing in New Zealand).
Thanks in advance!
Thanks for the build!
Correct
Thanks for the suggestion! The one I looked up says it needs an 850W power supply! I think mine might be 650W so might have to plan it out a bit, make sure it will fit, has enough power, etc. I was hoping to minimise the down time for this PC as it's an active server.
Only as the other reply suggested the 9800X3D and the comments on there suggested the 7800X3D for the better value, but I think locally the prices aren't too different so maybe I'll go with that 9800X3D if it's good bang for buck.
Interestingly I have trouble finding many of your components locally. How does this look? What should I be looking for in a CPU cooler? What about the motherboard, is the cheapest fine? I've gone for 2TB drive as I think it's worth the extra space if three kids will be sharing it, especially with their own profiles.
That's a perfectly reasonable list, the only change I would do is change the cooler to the Thermalright Peerless Assassin, I think it would be worth the extra ~26NZ$. If that breaks the budget, here's some alternative case options that should save enough money to make up for it while retaining similar design and features to the one you linked. I wouldn't try to save any more money on your other parts since that will affect performance (maybe not the motherboard but there's not much room for you to go cheaper there, or really with much other than the case)
https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/product/gBzp99/lian-li-v100r-atx-mid-tower-case-v100rx
https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/product/ttBzK8/msi-mag-pano-m100r-pz-microatx-mid-tower-case-mag-pano-m100r-pz
https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/product/ckBzK8/antec-c3-argb-atx-mid-tower-case-0-761345-10029-8
Thanks, the budget is loose, happy to make that swap. I wasn't picky about the case either, just picked one at the cheap end, available at my preferred store, and went for one with all the RGB because I figured the kids will love it haha.
Thanks for the help, I will use it as the plan and work on getting things as they come on special as we head towards Christmas.
That's a cool keyboard you put in your original parts list, maybe I'll keep it for myself 😅. For the mouse/keyboard, is there anything to look for in particular, or cheapest is fine?
I'll admit I'm quite novice when it comes to evaluating peripherals, so I went with pretty much the cheapest full size mechanical keyboard they had listed. Unfortunately PCPartPicker doesn't seem to have any mechanical keyboards in close to equivalent pricing listed for NZ.
Given the pricing and that it's for kids, the cheapest from a brand you recognize will probably be fine. I don't know that spending more money will make much of a noticeable difference until you spend quite a bit more money. In my opinion, a lot of it is just personal preference, like the keyboard size/layout, wired or wireless, backlit or not, any extra shortcut keys, things like that.
For the mouse I went with what I recognized as a frequently cited best cheap/budget mouse. Something like this might be the closest available equivalent. Again, I feel like a lot of it comes down to personal preference. I don't know that it will matter much in your use case, but I know people look for things like high DPI, high polling rate, light weight, being able to switch DPI on the fly, additional buttons. Trying to stay within the equivalent budget of what I selected before, again I would say the cheapest from a brand you recognize will probably be fine, you're not going to get many bells and whistles without spending a fair bit more.
Yeah I think that's a fair assessment. Get the kids the cheapest stuff, upgrade them as and when it becomes clear they aren't good enough.