need help building a pc around a currently owned Graphics card

DevinsucksatPCs

So i have a RX 6700 XT (on speccy it says 5700 for some reason)

and my pc is really old, i mean outside of the graphics card I used for an update not even a year ago, the rest of the parts we are looking at is 10 years old and I feel is in need for an upgrade

ram is an easy upgrade, but as for processor and motherboards, and the rest of the whole thing. I have 0 idea.

My budget is 2k maximum (since the graphics card is already provided it should be hopefully affordable?

Ian

Greetings. We can assist you with a recommendation. What's the intended use of your PC?

saphalline

10 years old puts your current PC at - what? A Sandy Bridge CPU? i7 2600? Please tell me it is not an FX-4100! 🤣 My goodness, your current PC is limiting your GPU at this point!

At that age, a $2K replacement budget is honestly overkill. A simple i5 10400/11400 would be plenty. A Ryzen 5 5600X would decimate your current CPU! I recommend halving your budget down to $1K and aiming for simplicity here. You already have a GPU, so even a $1K budget is plenty for replacing a 10 year old platform. You can even go all-out with the extra $1K and also replace your mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, EVERYTHING! Heck - get a new gaming chair! 😎

If you are not up-to-date on all the latest PC advancements over the past 10 years, then... uhh... let's see...

Minimum 6-core CPU for a gaming PC in your budget and to pair with that GPU. Like I said, Intel Core i5 10400/11400 minimum, or Ryzen 5 5600X, or an i7 10700 (8-core), etc. All good starting points for your budget.

Minimum 16 GB RAM kit (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200. Ryzen likes even faster RAM, say DDR4-3600 or so.

Nice case with good airflow, preferably mesh in the front, IMHO. Most of the good ones in the $80-120 range include a tempered glass side panel, and many also include RGB (fancy colored lights) fans.

650-750W PSU. 80 PLUS Bronze certified at minimum (Silver, Gold, Platinum are extra). More power might be necessary if you want a CPU with 10 cores or more (and given your GPU power requirements).

Storage has undergone huge changes over the years. Standard these days are M.2 SSDs (solid state drives that are about the same size & shape as a stick of gum) that come in both SATA and NVMe flavors. NVMe is way better but slightly more expensive. Expect to pay ~$120-150 for a 1 TB NVMe M.2 SSD. Definitely worth it, IMHO. 3.5" SATA hard drives are purely for storage these days, and this type of storage is dirt cheap. Expect to pay <$100 for 4 TB.

CPU cooling is very fun in 2021. You got your stock coolers that come with most CPUs, and your 3rd-party air coolers that are big & beefy and have 4 to 6 heatpipes in 'em. You also got your closed-loop liquid coolers with radiators & fans of various sizes, from 120mm (single 120mm fan) up to 280mm (2 x 140mm fans) and 360mm (3 x 120mm fans) and larger! These can get expensive but are definitely worth it for high-end CPUs.

Motherboards... oh boy, motherboards... If you have not seen or held a new motherboard in 10 years, you may be overwhelmed by what is available these days, but the basics are the same. Some boards are "regular" and provide plenty of non OC'ing gaming performance (<$100), some have more bells & whistles and can OC just fine (<$200), and some are extravagant and borderline overkill and can cost $400+. I recommend focusing on features like form factor, OC'ing potential, built-in WiFi or not, multiple M.2 slots - things you can actually use. I find boards around the $200 mark to be more than enough, but YMMV.

Mini-ITX - This is a uniquely small form factor (originally created by VIA, not many people remember that) that allows full gaming PCs to fit into really tiny spaces. Very neato and still quite expensive, unfortunately, but worth a look to see if it interests you. You certainly have the budget for it.

USB. It may sound silly, but advancements in USB over the past 10 years are worthy of mention. USB-C ports are still very much in demand on cases and motherboards for "devices of the future" and the bandwidth for USB 3-class blue ports continues to advance. However, USB 3.0 is no more. The USB Implementers Forum, in their greatly stupid wisdom, decided to re-spec it all into: USB 3.2 Gen 1x1, USB 3.2 Gen 2x1, and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2. Yep, greeeeeeat idea. In any case, USB 3-class ports and devices are insanely fast compared to USB 2.0 and are much more plentiful these days. Grab a modern USB flash drive and see for yourself!

Last but not least, RGB. I mentioned it briefly above, but this "fancy colored lights" technology has really taken hold in the PC realm. RGB fans are VERY common these days. AMD even has stock CPU coolers with RGB! RAM has RGB on it, motherboards have RGB on them, keyboards & mice have RGB, your new RX 6700 XT might have RGB on it - RGB is everywhere! You can opt out of RGB if you wish (also known as "dark" these days 😋) but I like having it because you can almost always turn it off at any time using the various RGB software apps or dongles/controllers and it's really cool inside a case with a glass side panel. You can also use RGB to make all your PC components pulse with the same colors or react to game/music audio or just cycle through the colors of the rainbow in sync. It's possible to spend $1K just on RGB! But it's also possible to just grab a case with a tempered glass side panel and a couple included RGB fans and plug them into your motherboard to enjoy a cheap light show.

DevinsucksatPCs

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/31200#Comment_31200

hardcore gaming, im so sorry for the delay in response i didnt think my note would go through. Forums hardly work for me.

DevinsucksatPCs

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/31535#Comment_31535

https://imgur.com/a/u667VG6

heres a screen shot of my speccy showing everything im running other than the 650 watt battery i have

I hope this helps??

Like seriously, name any parts i need and ill buy them (the goal is to do vr and gaming with them )

Ian

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/32285#Comment_32285

Greetings, for around $2000 I would look at the following or something similar:

https://www.microcenter.com/site/content/custom-pc-builder-amd.aspx?load=f884ba1c-daaa-4533-81df-e21a3c560856

The video card is missing from the pricing, but it would be around 500-550 or so.

Please let us know if you have any questions regarding this!

DevinsucksatPCs

DevinsucksatPCs

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/32305#Comment_32305

So

I have a question

is there a way I can around water cooling? if it wasn't obvious I'm not really tech savvy or the best at maintaining it

would I be able to bring my current case to the microcenter with the current graphics card I own in order for them to use my case and card when they build it for me?

If they do allow it, In case anything happens, I'm willing to pay for the recommended case. issue is, my current case is pretty big and has lots of breathing room. (its as big as my torso and up to my head in height)

I would like to keep my current external SSD and Hard drives if possible ( due to excessive amounts of stuff i have on them).

May I ask just out of curiosity why we are getting a 750 watt over 650 watt battery by the way? I was told that more watts isn't necessarily always a good thing. Again, sorry for all the very novice questions.

DevinsucksatPCs

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/32305#Comment_32305

Also, i would like to keep some current hard drives and solid state drives with all my stuff on them into this new computer as well if thats possible? I think they are around 3.5"

Ian

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/32372#Comment_32372

It's an AIO water cooler, so you don't have to do anything with it after you install it. You can go air cooler if you wanted to.

Yes, you can bring in an existing case and video card in to service.

You can transfer over drives. You would need to re-install Windows and most programs.

750W is to support the video card's requirements.

DevinsucksatPCs

https://community.microcenter.com/discussion/comment/32391#Comment_32391

Ok

i think im good then

Im probably gonna aim for a bigger tower, but outside that, im gonna use the list you gave me buy everything outside of a new drive

Ian

Sounds good! Let us know if you have any other questions!