Buying a new gaming PC - HELP!

[Tomi]

My current computer has served me well for the last eight years or so, but it's really starting to show its age now, so I think it's about time I got a new PC. However, I'm hopelessly lost when it comes to computer parts these days! I'm looking for a budget gaming PC that would be able to run all games right now on fairly decent settings at least (I don't care if everything isn't maxed) and found this pre-built PC from a reliable seller. I would really appreciate it if someone could have a look at the following specs, and tell me if this is a good deal or something that I should avoid.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700 3GHz
Motherboard: MSI Tomahawk B350
Memory: 8Gb DDR4 Kingston HyperX (2x4Gb)
Hard drive: Kingston 240Gb A400 SSD
GPU: Asus Strix Gaming RX570 Radeon 4Gb (HDMI, 2xDVI and Displayport)
Power Supply: Chieftec 700W ATX 80+ power unit
other stuff: SilentiumPC RG2 chassis + DVD-RW + Windows 10 Home 64bit

The CPU seems like an ideal budget choice according to my google research. I have absolutely no idea about different motherboards and power supplies. I'm not sure about the hard drive - 240Gb isn't much these days, but at least I'd be forced to delete all sorts of useless junk every now and then, which isn't a bad thing. The GPU sounds like another budget choice according to some reviews, but would I be better off spending a bit more to ensure that I won't have to buy another PC in three years from now?

This whole thing above costs 700 euros, and that's probably crazy expensive for this setup in most countries, but computer parts apparently are pretty damn expensive over here in Finland... This was one of the cheaper options available. I could afford to spend a bit more (not much more though), but I'm not that dedicated to gaming these days - I'll be happy if something like Kingdom Come: Deliverance runs on somewhat satisfying settings, I don't need to have all the bell and whistles enabled.

[Nameless Voice]

Caveat: my hardware knowledge is about a year old, as that's when I bought my current PC and looked into these things.


I'd recommend building your own PC yourself if you are up for it. You'll get a better spec for the price and can choose all of your own component.

AMD Ryzens are pretty good, I have one myself and have no complaints.
You want 16GB of RAM at a minimum.
The 240GB SSD will probably be a little small. You'll be able to put Windows on that, but won't be able to put many games on there for faster loading (I personally have a second SSD for games.)
You'll need a HDD as well. Bear in mind that most new games are 20-60GB these days.
The graphics card... depends heavily on how much money you want to spend. Tom's Hardware's Best GPUs for the Money guide is usually a good place to start to get a quick idea.
For the PSU, I'd make sure to get a reliable, well-known brand. I haven't heard of Chieftec, so I'd suggest getting something else. Hiper are normally well-regarded (or, at least, they were when I bought mine 11 years ago. It's still going, and so I've have had no reason to replace it.)

Isn't a DVD a bit old-fashioned? Wouldn't you want a Blu-Ray drive? Though no one really uses optical drives much any more anyway.

[Tomi]

Thanks for the advice, NV!

I had a look at a "price calculator" on the seller's website to see how much I would save money if I built the PC myself... I entered all the components listed above, and it turned out that buying the components separately is about 200 euros more expensive! I found that a bit odd. But the prices of the components seem about the same elsewhere too, so I'm currently very tempted to buy the pre-built package... Hopefully it can be modified a bit, according to your recommendations!

16GB of RAM at a minimum? Any specific reason for that, other than "more is always better"? I'm just asking because most computers at this and even the next price range have just 8GB.
As for SSD and HDD... I'll see if it's possible to fit in another SSD, or a bigger HDD at least, because one 240GB SSD alone really isn't much indeed. I wonder why a HDD isn't included in the first place.
The RX570 graphics card does sound like a good budget choice, so I'm quite happy with that.
The Chieftec PSU... Yeah, I'm a bit worried about that now, because it doesn't seem like a very well-known brand at all, and it's hard to even find reviews about their products. I don't know if I'll let that crash the whole deal though. Hmm.

Oh, and the DVD drive is an optional thing, but I thought that it would be nice to be able to access my old games that are on CD/DVD, and to rip my CD collection into mp3.

[McTaffer]

16GB of RAM at a minimum? Any specific reason for that, other than "more is always better"? I'm just asking because most computers at this and even the next price range have just 8GB.

8GB would probably be fine for right now, but you're probably going to find yourself upgrading again soon if you go in that direction. The laptop I was using before I upgraded to my current PC had 8GB, and that was okay for running stuff that was released in the time I bought it (4 years ago or so). It did tend to struggle a bit if you overloaded it though, an I remember having some issues running Fallout 4 in particular. IMO future proofing it with 16GB of RAM will mean you spend a little more now, but it'll save you some money and hassle in the future.

[Tomi]

I see. Thanks McTaffer.

The B350 Tomahawk motherboard seems to have four memory slots, so I suppose I can just plug in another RAM chip later...? Is it better to have one 16GB chip instead of four 4GB chips, or is there any difference?
I think there should be space for another HD too, so I think that sorting that out will be my #1 priority if I decide to go along with this package. Apart from the price, is there any reason at all why I should choose a HDD instead of another SSD?

[Pyrian]

Is it better to have one 16GB chip instead of four 4GB chips, or is there any difference?

Aside from the fact that in the former scenario, you can add even more memory - not really.

[voodoo47]

two 8GB sticks in a motherboard that has four slots = easy to upgrade to 16GB later.

[Pyrian]

two 8GB sticks in a motherboard that has four slots = easy to upgrade to 16GB later.

Very easy, lol.

[Nameless Voice]

IIRC you want to have a matched pair of memory sticks, not a single stick. It usually costs less, but it's faster because it can interleave usage between the two of them.

Hard disk vs SSD - the hard disk is much, much cheaper per terabyte. SSDs are much faster.
Other than that, SSDs have a limited number of times that each byte can be written. It's quite high at this stage, but it means that they are less reliable for constant overwriting than hard disks. I'm not sure if it's even still a real issue with current SSD technology.
Meanwhile, SSDs have no moving parts, so you can freely spin them around while they're on without damaging them - which is more useful for laptops than desktops.

I wouldn't recommend getting an SSD for large-scale storage of files that you don't access very often, though, given the price difference. They're mostly good for operating systems, programs, and games.