Of all the times to upgrade, why did it have to be now? I have an old AM2 system with a Radeon R5 340X hold-me-over that I'm looking to finally replace. Of course, trying to get a decent video card now is insanely difficult. I'm looking to get either a RTX 3070, 3060 or a Radeon 6700 XT when it gets released (Thanks for the heads up Don). The rest will probably be a Ryzen 5 3600 CPU and 16 gb of RAM. I already have a 1TB NVME ssd and a 1920x1200 monitor. The way I see it, I have a few options: I live near a Microcenter and know what days they usually get trucks. I can wait in line before opening one of those days each week. I also plan on getting there extra early for the 6700 XT release. Plan B is to go with a prebuilt system. I have an IT friend that can get me a 25% discount through Dell. To get a 30xx card with Ryzen, it would have to be an Alienware system. I know Dells leave a lot to be desired, but 25% off would make the price almost reasonable. https://www.dell.com/en-us/member/s...rationid=6ffb379b-9981-4f73-906d-02e1815da0c7 25% would make this ~$1330 As far as others, Best Buy recently had this in stock. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/cyberp...tx-3070-1tb-ssd-white/6434646.p?skuId=6434646 This will be a gaming system, but I'm not really deadset on what games I'll play. Probably Hitman 3, PUBG and GTA 5.
The lack of an ssd breaks it for me for the alienware. start hunting, you’ll find the parts you need. I’d open your nets to catch any 30xx card, as the 3070 and 3080 aren’t much more... my only real regret with my current rig is that I didn’t go ddr4 on my ram. Ssd made a big difference in boot speed and overall feel of the computer
If you pop on ebay, you can grab the 3070 by itself for about $1300. Things are fucky. So if you are happy with the Dell build, indeed thate would be the best way to go these days... otherwise it's bedlam. It's difficult and expensive to find AMD processors (the 5600x is almost always out of stock) and forget about justifiable costs for video cards. For presidents day I saw a lot of threads going about buying prebuilt systems and then selling the cards to pay for the rest of the systems. Can always wait to see if you can get that 6700 XT, which would be baller, or failing that, the Dell system isn't bad!
I'd say prebuilt if you value your time. If you want a graphics card at anywhere near MSRP you're going to have to basically win the lottery, make your own bot, or camp at Microcenter. And the lack of SSD on the Alienware is a cheap fix.
I built my rig off of https://www.logicalincrements.com/ - substitute anything you can get the better price of off from microcenter. Wasn't too difficult to put things together - though figuring out the with an AMD is different than the instructions (which are for intel CPUs only because reasons). You'll probably be able to be a little under their budget amounts given how much cheapers CPUs are at Micorcenter than online
I didn't include a SSD from the Alienware build because I already have an 1 TB Intel PCIe SSD. The choice of RAM probably needs some tweaking too, but I'm just thinking of the basics now. I also have a PSU I might reuse if I build my own. Corsair HX750. Its 6 or 7 years old , but its run a really weak GPU (weaker than what I have now) for most of its life. Other than price, are there any reasons I should avoid Dell / Alienware? I know their customer service is pretty terrible. I also don't expect their shipping times to be anywhere near accurate either. I've heard complaints from the Reddit crowd about airflow, but Reddit is often just a circlejerk. My plan right now is keep waiting at Microcenter. If I get tired of that, then its on to a prebuilt.
The price is fine considering you can't really lay your hands on a video card otherwise, unless you get lucky. DR4 3200 is the appropriate speed for AMD chips. The infinity fabric between core clusters scales well with memory, but 3200 is the place to be until you decide you're going above 3600. Ultimately you get a warranty and one throat to choke, but if you can't get a graphics card (or nary a processor) otherwise, I hate those cases... but it's not a bad system for the money, at all.
My son's Dell G5 gaming laptop has worked well for three years now. I'd have no issue getting another Dell product. Why I am not upgrading my PCs now: I bought a used XFX RX 580 8GB card for $100 (shipped) and an AMD Ryzen 5 2600 for $115 less than 18 months ago. Since that computer is sitting doing nothing until my son returns to school in fall, I decided to sell off those parts. The video card went for $415 and the CPU for $126. That is quite simply, nuts. I do have to hope that sanity returns to the market someday, but I can wait for prices to drop or to get lucky in the GPU lottery.
Well on my fourth try and after spending 4 hours waiting in the rain, I finally got a 6700XT... for more money than I wanted to spend because of the big markup between reference and vendor designs. For almost the same amount of money as I spent, I could have (theoretically) gotten a 3070. But a majority of me is happy that my wait is finally over. Like Don said, there is a value to time. To paraphrase someone else: you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes...