Gaming PC Build

[PC-Newbie]

Hey All
What spec system would you recommend for a game like Fornite?

Currently planning on building a system but seen good and bad reviews for both AMD / Intel so choosing a motherboard and CPU has become a bit stressful.

Any advice is greatly appreciated,

 

[Zoid]

Hey All
What spec system would you recommend for a game like Fornite?

Currently planning on building a system but seen good and bad reviews for both AMD / Intel so choosing a motherboard and CPU has become a bit stressful.

Any advice is greatly appreciated,

We're happy to help! Fortnite can run on a wide range of hardware, so it's not going to be hard to build a computer for it, depending on your expectations.

What is your budget (and does it need to include a monitor and other peripherals)?
Are there any other games you want to be able to play now or in the near future?
Will you be doing anything else besides gaming on this computer?
What resolution and refresh rate are you hoping to play at?

 

[PC-Newbie]

Thank you 🙂

Budget would be £350/400 for the tower,

Probably just be Fortnite for a while and will also use it for internet / inkscape / word processing etc,

I have no idea about refresh rates and resolutions 🙏 my old pc is running at 1280x1024 but it's a square monitor so I will need a monitor

 

[PC-Newbie]

The link isn't working for me 🙁

 

[Zoid]

Thank you 🙂

Budget would be £350/400 for the tower,

Probably just be Fortnite for a while and will also use it for internet / inkscape / word processing etc,

I have no idea about refresh rates and resolutions 🙏 my old pc is running at 1280x1024 but it's a square monitor so I will need a monitor

Building a computer for under £400 is probably going to mean either buying second-hand parts (which can be a good option if you have a good market for those and aren't too risk-averse), or building a system with an APU such as the Ryzen 5 3400G. A Ryzen APU would have no problem playing Fortnite at 1080p if you lower the settings, but it will struggle in more graphically demanding games.

If possible, I would recommend saving up a little more to buy a system with a dedicated GPU like this:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 3.6 GHz Quad-Core Processor (£93.98 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M DS3H Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard (£63.49 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Patriot Viper 4 Blackout 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 CL16 Memory (£51.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Kingston A2000 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£44.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 570 4 GB NITRO+ Video Card (£119.36 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P300A Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case (£49.99 @ Currys PC World)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 11 CM 500 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply (£73.56 @ More Computers)
Total: £497.34
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-10-14 13:42 BST+0100

A system like this, while certainly a modest build, would enable you to play any game you want at 1080p, although you'd need to go for lower settings in the most graphically demanding ones. Still, it would be a good entry level gaming build.

 

[PC-Newbie]

Are Ryzen 5 CPU's better than Ryzen 3 CPU's? regarless of which number i/e 2600/3300 etc,

Thank you guys for all your help, I did ask on another forum and first 4 replies were about why I wanted to build instead of just buying, all in good faith I guess but I had the feeling they were not willing to give any advice until I'd explained the reason lol

 

[Zoid]

Are Ryzen 5 CPU's better than Ryzen 3 CPU's? regarless of which number i/e 2600/3300 etc,

Thank you guys for all your help, I did ask on another forum and first 4 replies were about why I wanted to build instead of just buying, all in good faith I guess but I had the feeling they were not willing to give any advice until I'd explained the reason lol

Generally the higher the number, the better the CPU (and the higher the cost), but the real answer is it depends.

When you're looking at CPU model names like "Ryzen 5 3600X", the "Ryzen 5" is the brand family name, the "3xxx" is the generation, the "x600" is the SKU, and the "X" is the suffix modifier. It's very similar to Intel's naming convention.

The most notable difference between Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5 is in core count. The Ryzen 3 3300X is a 4 core / 8 thread processor while the Ryzen 5 3600X is a 6 core / 12 thread processor. There are other differences, like amount of cache, but core count is the one that will make the biggest difference most of the time. If you pit a Ryzen 3 and a Ryzen 5 against each other in a task that only uses 4 processing threads, the difference in performance will be small. But if it's a task that can scale up beyond 8 threads then you'll see the Ryzen 5 widening the gap.

You do have to be careful comparing processors across generations. Each processor generation benefits from performance improvements over the last, and IPC (instructions per clock) improvements are important for a gaming CPU. So you might be tempted to buy something like a Ryzen 5 1500X instead of a Ryzen 3 3300X, but you might find that it performs worse in games even though it was a "higher tier" CPU when it released.