41-50k Noob pc builder Any help?

[tucana]

I don't understand the trend of listing mid-high range motherboard with a low range processor. Even the most basic motherboard chipset supporting Ryzen 5000 series can run processor up to 5800x without any issue. It's simply a waste of money to have good motherboard but not good processor to take advantage of it.

Having good motherboard was kind of a requirement back in the days as good VRMs were needed to overclock the processors and/or sustain full load for longer duration of period but things have come a long way since then. These days even the most basic motherboards come with something like 6+1+1 VRM setup which has smoother load distribution and most cabinets are not air starved metal boxes anymore so there is a constant airflow going through the VRMs keeping them cool.
The only use case for a low end processor + high end motherboard that I can think of is in case you will be upgrading the processor soon or if you get the combo as a good second-hand deal.


You will definitely feel that 500GB storage of yours getting full after installing windows + a few games. Lets do some rough maths. 500GB SSD will actually have usable storage of 465GB-476GB out of which 50-60GB will be used by windows OS itself. Minus 10-20GB for additional softwares that you might want to keep on your PC. Minus 200 GB for 4-6 games. You said you play red dead redemption right? Well if you are talking about the 2nd one thats 150 GB alone. You are barely looking at 200GB of space left that is assuming you don't keep any media files like movies on your PC. Get a 1TB SSD trust me.

SLC drives are the best but also the most expensive so it's okay to go for MLC or TLC or for such tight budget like yours even QLC (which is what Crucial P3 plus has).

Valid and with the amount of bloat windows 11 comes with i cant see myself getting a 500gb now. I do usually run chris titus’s scrpits for debloating but yes as you said there are fewer games below 100gigs now than before.

On the motherboard end also i am seeing some deals on 620m boards. I was thinking that with an entry am5 Cpu like 8400f could leave me some room for upgradability down the line. I still need to keep it all under 60k for this build.

But do let me know if I’m wrong.

 

[YeAhx]

allow me to clear your misunderstanding. as stated above "for reference", no one is advising the OP to get exactly what is listed. everyone else who contributed in this thread also knows that the chance that the OP will get the specifically advised parts is a variable.
focusing on the specifics you've quoted, i advised on getting an r5 5500 as it costs less but performs basically the same across the board which will save money for other parts. again, as stated "for reference", i went to mdcomputers site and put together a list of parts which would be close to the stated budget on a whim so the OP could get an idea on building a PC around the r5 5500.
as for "the trend", i don't know either. as far as the board is concerned, am4 is known to be a platform which supported upgradability as amd is releasing new cpus for it, even now a new range of am4 cpus are bound for release. a mid range kinda fits in the picture as i was guessing the OP would want to upgrade the cpu in the future since the upgrade path for a 12th gen intel is kinda limited compared to maybe a 5700x3d or a 5800x3d in regards to gaming which the OP has mentioned in his post. yes, you're right that even entry level boards can work with most supported cpus. let's be real, this is suppose to be the OP's first build and wants new parts, you have seen the aesthetics of a mid range and entry level boards, right? with the more populated i/o ports along with looks and appeal work wonders in buying parts for most people, right? i'm not hoping the OP is the sweatiest kind of pc builder who opts for saving money alone, so , making an educated guess would be an affordable mid ranger within the budget. which could even be cut down to a microatx stated above to save even more.

I just wanted to make it clear that OP should focus more on processor and GPU instead of worrying about motherboards are many first time PC builders do. Motherboard looks big and colourful thus attracts disproportionate attention towards it that's all. Wasn't the newer AM4 processors that you are talking about already out? XT series right? None the less a newer platform will be better in general. One thing I agree with you on is that mid-high range motherboards do sport better I/O and also better audio chipset which if you are an audiophile will appreciate and notice the difference (although at some point you will be running DAC/dedicated sound card setup completely ignoring integrated audio chipset quality).

On the motherboard end also i am seeing some deals on 620m boards. I was thinking that with an entry am5 Cpu like 8400f could leave me some room for upgradability down the line. I still need to keep it all under 60k for this build.

There are two good A620M motherboards both with pros and cons but the biggest issue would be that they won't come with updated bios that's need to run 8400f out of the box. What you can try is to call the place where you will be buying the motherboard from and ask them if they can upgrade the bios to latest before shipping. Basic googling told me Asrock A629M-HDV has 2 NVMe slots but bad VRM and I/O whereas MSI PRO A620M-E has only 1 NVMe slot but adequate VRM and I/O. So if you are going with 1TB NVMe SSD might as well just stick with MSI here.

Below is what I could come up with but I really feel like Ryzen 7600 with RX 6600 is bad combo. GPU is simply too weak to fully utilize the processor. Ryzen 8400f is also not that good compared to 12400f which is cheaper which in turn means you can upgrade the GPU further.
I have posted both builds below.

 

[tucana]

allow me to clear your misunderstanding. as stated above "for reference", no one is advising the OP to get exactly what is listed. everyone else who contributed in this thread also knows that the chance that the OP will get the specifically advised parts is a variable.
focusing on the specifics you've quoted, i advised on getting an r5 5500 as it costs less but performs basically the same across the board which will save money for other parts. again, as stated "for reference", i went to mdcomputers site and put together a list of parts which would be close to the stated budget on a whim so the OP could get an idea on building a PC around the r5 5500.
as for "the trend", i don't know either. as far as the board is concerned, am4 is known to be a platform which supported upgradability as amd is releasing new cpus for it, even now a new range of am4 cpus are bound for release. a mid range kinda fits in the picture as i was guessing the OP would want to upgrade the cpu in the future since the upgrade path for a 12th gen intel is kinda limited compared to maybe a 5700x3d or a 5800x3d in regards to gaming which the OP has mentioned in his post. yes, you're right that even entry level boards can work with most supported cpus. let's be real, this is suppose to be the OP's first build and wants new parts, you have seen the aesthetics of a mid range and entry level boards, right? with the more populated i/o ports along with looks and appeal work wonders in buying parts for most people, right? i'm not hoping the OP is the sweatiest kind of pc builder who opts for saving money alone, so , making an educated guess would be an affordable mid ranger within the budget. which could even be cut down to a microatx stated above to save even more.
if i'm wrong about that, the OP could get one of those ECS brand A320 board to save money. (and no OP, i'm not making a point to make you buy the r5 5500, i'm just stating the obvious on why such parts were recommended, you can buy which ever you want)

As stated just a noob thats why i keep getting in this dilemma between budget build vs upgradability. I’ve been also hearing that it might be soon that major ram manufacturers might pull the plug on ddr4 memory standards. So ddr5 looks attractive in 2025 and going forward. Thats why i changed my config to be based around am5 to kind of get the best of both worlds. But this again begs the question on processor now . 8400f looked better on paper than 12400f but is around 12k on a good day but would that be a bad choice to pair with rx 7600?

I just wanted to make it clear that OP should focus more on processor and GPU instead of worrying about motherboards are many first time PC builders do. Motherboard looks big and colourful thus attracts disproportionate attention towards it that's all. Wasn't the newer AM4 processors that you are talking about already out? XT series right? None the less a newer platform will be better in general. One thing I agree with you on is that mid-high range motherboards do sport better I/O and also better audio chipset which if you are an audiophile will appreciate and notice the difference (although at some point you will be running DAC/dedicated sound card setup completely ignoring integrated audio chipset quality).


There are two good A620M motherboards both with pros and cons but the biggest issue would be that they won't come with updated bios that's need to run 8400f out of the box. What you can try is to call the place where you will be buying the motherboard from and ask them if they can upgrade the bios to latest before shipping. Basic googling told me Asrock A629M-HDV has 2 NVMe slots but bad VRM and I/O whereas MSI PRO A620M-E has only 1 NVMe slot but adequate VRM and I/O. So if you are going with 1TB NVMe SSD might as well just stick with MSI here.

Below is what I could come up with but I really feel like Ryzen 7600 with RX 6600 is bad combo. GPU is simply too weak to fully utilize the processor. Ryzen 8400f is also not that good compared to 12400f which is cheaper which in turn means you can upgrade the GPU further.
I have posted both builds below.
View attachment 226583View attachment 226587

True ive been so confused on the motherboard aspect each have some drawbacks or another in this range. Also i see you have mentioned an aftermarket cooler in the above builds. Is it necessary for these builds or would the stock cooler do the trick ?

 

[YeAhx]

As stated just a noob thats why i keep getting in this dilemma between budget build vs upgradability. I’ve been also hearing that it might be soon that major ram manufacturers might pull the plug on ddr4 memory standards. So ddr5 looks attractive in 2025 and going forward. Thats why i changed my config to be based around am5 to kind of get the best of both worlds. But this again begs the question on processor now . 8400f looked better on paper than 12400f but is around 12k on a good day but would that be a bad choice to pair with rx 7600?

Do note DDR5 RAMs are twice as expensive as DDR4 and motherboards are also slightly more expensive in general for DDR5. So for budget conscious people DDR4 is still a solid choice.
Between 8400F vs 12400F both will perform same so might as well go with 12400f as its cheaper by almost 3k INR and you will also save more by going DDR4 this way.

True ive been so confused on the motherboard aspect each have some drawbacks or another in this range. Also i see you have mentioned an aftermarket cooler in the above builds. Is it necessary for these builds or would the stock cooler do the trick ?

Stock cooler will do the trick but since there was space in budget for this cheap cooler I went ahead and added it. You can skip it and buy it later if the stock cooler turns out to not be sufficient. Honestly speaking you won't be stressing the CPU that hard anyway because GPU will be mid range one. Only when GPU is able to outperform CPU is when CPU coolers matter more because then "basically" speaking GPU will be asking for CPU to do calculations faster than it can keeping it bottlenecked. Hope you get what I mean.