First time building a pc, what could I get with a $2k budget? (From the US)

Posted by coalrexx@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 4 comments

Hi all, I’m finally planning on building a pc for the first time, mostly for gaming and editing videos, and I was wondering where where I could begin for looking for components? I’m planning on having a maximum budget of $2k (maybe a bit more, for sure no more than $2.5k) and I know the prices of some parts are pretty expensive right now but could that budget still be enough to get something decent? And could I also get away with buying some parts used? I know I’ll also have to figure out how to put together the thing and that’s going to be a whole other can of worms, but for right now I’m just worried about what parts I need and how much I might end up spending. But I’d appreciate any advice for this since it’s going to be my first time building a pc at all😅

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Vegetable-Matter3953@reddit

Do you have any Microcenter in your area? Maybe I can give you some suggestions and make a list accordingly to that.

I mean without looking I can suggest you this :

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/nDdL2k

Buy the CPU and motherboard from MSI. You can get the cpu as tray variant much cheaper together with the motherboard and you even get a discount if you buy the motherboard on the msi website addionally. (I didn't add the discount on the list but you gonna see it yourself)

Motherboard wise it is a solid decision, it has so many features and is optimal for the price you pay. I can list you them if you want.

GPU :

https://www.zotacstore.com/us/open-box/geforce-rtx-40-series/geforce-rtx-4080-super-amp-16gb-gddr6x-openbox

4080 super is as good as a 5070ti and on raster even better , it costs much less than a 5070ti is much more worth getting. My friend got this one aswell. It is flawless and runs cool and is silent. You get the box stuff aswell , just the packaging is some generic one. You even get a gpu stand included.

Case , AIO are price to performance good stuff. The PSU is a A Tier psu , it has good quality components, is silent and is worth the price.

RAM wise I chose some basic 6000 cl30 kit , used this kit in the past few times, solid Hynix dies.

The SSD is this one because it is the only proper one I could find quality and reliability wise for 2 TB and it's one of the best ssds anyways so I think its worth the investment.

(Offtopic I think you don't pay for extra tax on the MSI website even because a friend bought in the past few stuff there and didn't pay tax , I assume it makes it even a better deal even).

If you want it for 2k you can downgrade the cpu to a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, the ssd to 1 tb and maybe downgrade the gpu to rx 9070xt but imo for the stuff you get , the investment is worth the money.

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coalrexx@reddit (OP)

The parts and specs and what each part does is what I’ve done research on the most, I’m just confused about which brands to pick from for each parts. I know some certain parts work better together with others so I think that’s where the confusion is coming from if that makes sense. Like basically just picking the right parts is what I’m trying to say lol. This list looks pretty good though and a bit over budget but I can work with it, idk if 16gb for the GPU might be a bit much or if I could maybe m get away with 12gb one. Nevertheless I do appreciate the recommendations and I’ll def look into these

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Vegetable-Matter3953@reddit

Brand doesn't matter a lot, the features matter more in my eyes. Otherwise, you'll overpay for things just because you're brand focused. The software and RGB are simpler, but nobody uses that stuff, and SignalRGB is better anyway. But I do get your point. Ah yeah, like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D matches the 4080 SUPER more than the 5070 because you would be overspending on the CPU instead of focusing on the more important part for your needs and because you use a stronger GPU when you buy the 4080 Super, you can push the CPU more. SSD wise, as an example the one I chose , PCIe 5.0 is needed to make the SSD run at max speed, which the motherboard I chose does, so you can push that to the max too. Just some basics.

The hardware itself matters, of course. I can't tell you where to look, but I can explain why I chose certain things as an example.

12 GB is getting to be the lowest option these days or at least it will be soon. I would honestly use the opportunity to get a proper one for the coming years. Besides that, VRAM is not everything, power also matters remember that. A 5060ti 16 GB is still worse than a 4070 or 3080, even though it has 4 GB or 6 GB more VRAM. I am still running on a 3070ti that is as good as a 5060ti but the 8 gb is the biggest limiter for me tbh, then the power too.

If you need help or explaining just ask me btw.