$2000 / £1500 PC Build
Processor (CPU) Intel Core i5 11600k 3.90GHz
Graphics Card (GPU) NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3060ti Founders Edition
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO SL 3600 MHz DDR4 C18
Hard Drives 1TB Samsung 980 M.2 (2280) PCIe 3.0 (x4), NVMe SSD
Motherboard ASUS Intel Z590 TUF Gaming WiFi PLUS
Power Supply (PSU) 750W - Corsair RM750X Modular 80+ Gold Power Supply
All in one CPU Water Cooling (AIO) Corsair iCUE H150i ELITE CAPELLIX Liquid CPU Cooler
Case Cooler Master H500M
Monitor Gigabyte 27” G27F-EK 1920-1080 IPS 144Hz 1ms FreeSync/G-Sync Compatible
This is my most recent client build which I built in August 2021. The client has never owned or built a gaming PC previously but they did gave me an idea of games and programs they required the PC to run. They were looking for something on the level of an Intel Core i5 and an AMD Radeon RX 570 but they were pretty flexible on the parts however cost would have to be reasonable totally around £1500 (not including the price of monitors). They were also looking for the PC to be able to games on 1080p screens but also use it for work / studies. I have not done so many client builds in the last couple years mainly due to the inflated price of the parts, however in this case I was able to get the parts at MSRP or less to make quite a nice beginner build for the client.
The list of games they were looking to play were - Genshin Impact, League of Legends, Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone.
The list of applications they were looking to run were - BlueStacks, GIMP, OBS Studio, Office, QSEE SuperLite, Visual Studio Enterprise 2017
The first thing I need to know is what case I was building the PC in and I got the client to chose was the case as they would be living with it. They chose the Cooler Master H500M, I needed to know what case as this would determine what size motherboard would fit into the case and also what size cooling system would also fit.
The client is studying computer science / programming which means that even though all the list of applications given by the client would work fine with AMD Ryzen chips, AMD does not always play nice with all applications and the client did not know of all the applications they would use during their future studies. So I chose an Intel chip as I felt comfortable that they would not have any issues. I went with the i5 11600K firstly as for the needs and the level of PC being built the i5 would be perfect and I went with the 11600K over the 10600K as it was on sale as was only about £20 / $27 dollars more (12600K was not yet released).
As the case would fit ATX boards and for the most part they have more functionality I looked at few different brands of boards but ended going with the ASUS Intel Z590 TUF Gaming WiFi PLUS board as it was the best at the time in terms of bang for buck. One thing I did however miss on this is that it had one USB 3.0 to case connection and one USB 2.0 to case connection. Although this would normally would not be an issue, the Cooler Master H500M has 4 USB connections on the top with 3.0 written under all of them. The client however luckily was not too fussed. I did however learn to double check everything so that simple mistakes like this don’t happen in the future.
With the list of games provided and ray tracing was not a requirement for them either AMD or NVIDIA graphics cards would work fine and at the time of buying the part it was really hard to get a hold of any card from anywhere however I was lucky enough to get a hold of an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3060ti Founders Edition through a drop on Scan Computers. It was the first thing I bought as I wanted to make sure I was able to build the PC all in one go so the client was not waiting ages for a graphics card to arrive.
So lets talk about the CPU cooler, I went with the Corsair H150i ELITE CAPELLIX AIO liquid cooler in white and I know a 360mm triple fan AIO is complete overkill for an i5 11600K however it was discounted to the price of good air coolers and also smaller AIOs so it only seems worth it as it could be used in the client future builds if they ever wanted to upgrade. I did have a slight snag with the cooler when installing; when fans were stacked on the bottom of the radiator and then trying to attached that combo to the top of the case did not quite fit with the motherboard I/O heatsink in the way; to fix this I had to put the fans on top of the case, luckily there is glass cover that goes on top with mesh on the sides, which meant it did not look out of place and actually looked quite cool with the RGB fans. As for it being white, the black coloured version was not on offer.
When it came to choosing the memory, I went for 32GB and the cheapest I could find which has a latency of 10ms or less. That turned out to be the 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO SL 3600 MHz DDR4 C18 in white. Again another product where the black coloured version was not offer however in this case it did match the AIO and the fans which I think turned out quite nice with the black case and the white accents on the memory and AIO / fans.
The last two pieces of the puzzle were the storage and the power supply. Both pretty simple choices, 1TB Samsung NVMe SSD Storage for super fast read and write speeds and a 750W Corsair power supply, slight overkill for the current parts however not much cost difference and a better investment for any future upgrades.
The client was also looking at a duel monitor setup and the world of monitors was a bit of a minefield as there are 3 main different types of monitors, VA, TN and IPS, plus different resolutions, response times, refresh rates and everything getting solid as more and more people are working from home due to the covid situation. The monitor that I recommended is that Gigabyte 27” G27F-EK 1920-1080 IPS 144Hz 1ms FreeSync/G-Sync Compatible. I chose this one because it was G-Sync Compatible which means the client won’t see any screen tearing. The colour on this screen is pretty good so it won’t look too different to what the client is currently used to. I also chose it as the client wants to play online FPS games for which the 144hz and low response time makes it a good choice.
I do like sharing my builds however with the recent price inflations and difficulty to get parts (especially graphics cards) I haven’t done many builds in the last couple years. Lets hope the situation changes in 2022, I hope to however share some mock up builds going forward even if I can’t do an actually build this year. What did you think of the build? Would you have built it differently? Let me know in the comments below or on Instagram, Twitter or Tiktok. Also if you like this article or want to see more on PC builds orr gaming then follow me on Instagram, Twitter or Tiktok to see more and also to know when new articles come out.
