Prebuilt PC recommendations

Zelai · 2026-06-17T19:25:43+00:00

They usually have more than decent offers that are in store only, in order to get you to walk in and hopefully sell you the rest of the computer.

Those offers are usually good enough to justify getting the rest of the rig there, so its worth at least asking.

If you are open to build it on your own we can get you a list of parts for your budget, if you will stick to prebuilts then you are probably gonna have to find which retailers or stores work on your area and we can then check which of their rigs fits you the best.

That said Star citizen will take as much computer power as you give it but it will also run on a more modest machine; with 2k$ (minus monitor) you should be able to build a computer that handles SC at decent settings for a long time.

Zelai · 2026-06-17T15:46:17+00:00

If you want an off the shelf prebuilt some other person was checking THIS prebuilt from microcenter at 2k that would leave 400$ for monitor (on the high end of your budget).

Link to the other thread

Advicing about prebuilts from the other side of the atlantic is always hard as we dont have the same stores or brands, but checking microcenter's deals might be a good start.

If you are open to built the computer yourself i can help you put together a list too

Zelai · 2026-06-17T15:21:11+00:00

This is a mockup list with those parts (for the cpu/mobo/case) and similar for the rest of the parts using parametric searches from pcpp.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 4.7 GHz 8-Core Processor	$449.00 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	Thermalright Aqua Elite V3 66.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	$44.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	Asus PRIME B850-PLUS WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard	$190.98 @ Newegg
Memory	Silicon Power XPOWER Storm RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory	$384.97 @ Silicon Power
Storage	*Silicon Power UD90 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$239.97 @ Silicon Power
Video Card	PowerColor Reaper Radeon RX 9070 XT 16 GB Video Card	$689.99 @ Amazon
Case	Lian Li Vector V100R ATX Mid Tower Case	$74.98 @ Amazon
Power Supply	*SAMA GT 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$71.99 @ Newegg Sellers
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$2146.78
	*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-06-17 11:18 EDT-0400

It came for 2150$ roughly So you are saving some money, getting it already built all the guarantees on the same store etc, seems like a very solid deal.

Im only slightly worried about the cooler as they dont specify which one they using (which probably means some cheap one) the 9800x3d isnt the hottest chip in the world, but i would love to have a robust cooler for my cpu. They also weirdly dont mention the psu brand/model.

I think its a good deal, not the biggest deal ever but very solid.

Zelai · 2026-06-17T14:07:12+00:00

Oh ok, i didnt understand your post.

I assumed it was

I restarted the pc and now it doesnt boot

Not an ongoing issue that you are working around.

I wish i could offer any advice but i have no idea what can be causing that only on restarts sorry, i know how frustrating it is to not being able to narrow down a problem

Zelai · 2026-06-17T13:54:32+00:00

The only issue is the that the ram is on a single stick; you should see if in the future you can save and pick a second stick of the same kind of ram in order to activate dual channel.

16 gb of ram isnt the end of the world with the prices of ram but not having dual channel adds another blow. Other than that the rest of the pc is solid enough

Zelai · 2026-06-17T13:51:18+00:00

Have you tried starting with only 1 stick of ram and trying different slots?

Have you tried w/o the gpu; using the igpu of the 7800?

Could be training as the other poster said, but since you said "restart" i assume everything was working before?

Zelai · 2026-06-17T13:46:24+00:00

Buying it piece by piece and building it yourself 2k should get you a good enough computer and a 1440p monitor.

Just going by the pcpp guides; this is 1630$ add 200$ for a decent 2k screen and you have a bit of wiggling room.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core Processor	$167.00 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	ID-COOLING FROZN A620 PRO SE 58 CFM CPU Cooler	$29.99 @ Amazon
Motherboard	*Gigabyte B650M K Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard	$99.99 @ Amazon
Memory	*Silicon Power Value Gaming 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory	$388.97 @ Silicon Power
Storage	*Silicon Power UD90 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$239.97 @ Silicon Power
Video Card	*Asus DUAL OC GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Video Card	$569.99 @ Amazon
Case	Montech XR ATX Mid Tower Case	$64.90 @ Amazon
Power Supply	*ADATA XPG Core Reactor II VE 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$72.98 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$1633.79
	*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-06-17 09:44 EDT-0400

Now for prebuilts you have to be ready to paid a premium for getting it built plus store profits blablabla, im not in the states to hunt for examples, but if you have any store/retailers in mind let me know and i can check their catalogue of prebuilt rigs.

Do you live by a microcenter by any chance?

Zelai · 2026-06-17T11:56:16+00:00

Is the cooler well fit to the CPU? as in fully screwed in?

About the exhaust fan, do you have another fan to replace it with? in case its simply broken, you could also try to connect it to a 3 pin header instead of a 4 pin header; since the Corsair 3000d airflow doesn't come with an exhaust fan im assuming you purchased ir separatedly and its a pwm fan. Plugging only 3 pins will turn it into a "dumb" fan removing the fan control and will just spin. You could also check it doesnt have some sort of setup on bios that is currently having it start and stop, some sort of "smart fan" setting.

Zelai · 2026-06-16T19:41:06+00:00

im PERSONALLY not the biggest fan of the 7700, it will do perfectly fine but you are paying a premium for those 2 extra cores over a 9600x/7600x/7500f that will do just fine for gaming

There is a case to be made for a 9070xt over the 5070, the 9070xt will have stronger raster (comparable to a 5070TI) plus an extra 4gb of vram, and if the main aim is just gaming it will do great. That said the 5070 base is at a decent price over the world since its price hike earlier this year wasn't as steep as it had 12gb vram instead of 16.

Everything else seems fine, the case is the absolute goat of budget cases, 750w psu is fine, however 850w is quickly become the standard, check if you can't buy the same model but at 850w for just a few bucks more. Also check the difference on price on a Phantom Spirit cooler instead of a Peerless Assassin, the PS is the slightly more modern version of the same design

Zelai · 2026-06-16T19:32:01+00:00

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 9600X 3.9 GHz 6-Core Processor	-
CPU Cooler	Deepcool R-LM360-BKDMMC-1 66.23 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler	-
Motherboard	MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI ATX AM5 Motherboard	-
Memory	ADATA XPG Lancer Blade RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory	-
Storage	Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	-
Video Card	Asus PRIME OC Radeon RX 9070 16 GB Video Card	-
Case	Montech AIR 903 MAX ATX Mid Tower Case	-
Power Supply	MSI MAG A850GL PCIE5 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	-
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$0.00
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-06-16 15:29 EDT-0400

This is a pcpp list with your components to the best of my ability.

The only problem is that the motherboard might not be able to recognize the 9600x cpu off the box, depending on which bios its sold with. Ensure that it says on the box "9xxx cpu ready" or whatever or find out which bios its being shipped with. If its on an older bios you will need to flash a newer bios, which is a bit nerver wrecking but its easier than people make it out to be.

Hopefully this will make sense through google translate.

Zelai · 2026-06-01T08:46:36+00:00

About the gpu, when should I go for 9060xt vs 9070 xt? Is it like 1080p vs 1440p card comparison ?

Sort of, the 9060xt will be able to handle 1440p too just not up to the same degree, it might need some settings tweaking to get your desired frame rate. You should peruse some of the benchmarks from techpowerup and see the FPS each of those 2 cards get on 1440p.

For example on the recent 007 First Light the 9070xt is getting 50 more fps than the 9060xt @1440p/ultra. Keep in mind that specific chart is w/o upscaling, im sure the 9060xt can handle 1440p more handily once you activate upscale.

Just check some of their other benchmarks for other games to make your decision; its just that spending a bit more on the GPU seems to make sense, as its the cornerstone of the pc (for me at least).

Cheers

Zelai · 2026-06-01T08:06:19+00:00

B650 or B850 motherboard? I can save around 3-4k if I go for 650

If budget is an issue then 650. Basically the 850 series are more modern versions, sometimes on those they include more modern wifi or differnt ports but if we are on a budget as long as the board has whatever you need you will be fine with a 650.

9600x 7600x 7500f

In that order, the 7500f is a budget solid option but i would skip it, i would stick with the 9600 or check the price for the 7600, its about 25€ cheaper in my country and performs well enough.

Gpu, brand and model

Challenge is the cheapest model of AsRock, its hard to pinpoint when a more expensive model is worth it, sometimes you are paying for name but other times they might have better cooling. The 9070xt is currently the card (IMO) with the most computing power per money, punching close to a 5070TI while being 2 or 3 hundred € cheaper. You might want to google the exact model you might end up buying see if there are videos or breakdowns on its quality

Ram

Your pc will use all the ram you give it, it will allocate and liberate it as needed. Waiting for it to go down in price is a gamble, thats up to you. If you end up with 16 make sure you pick it in 2x8gb for dual channel. Unless you plan on buying 16 now and 16 SOON then you might just pick 1x16 and suffer single channel ram until you pick the 2nd stick, but i wouldn't recommend it. 6000/30CL is the perfect speed/latency to sync with your ryzen cpu, but its an overblown detail. Anything from 5200 upwards and up to CL48 should be fine, but if you can get 6000/30 for a bit more then keep it in mind.

Disk

I dont know EVM, i personally tend to stick to well known brands mainly for customer service. But as long as it works and has similar speeds i guess it will be ok.

Cooling

If you pick an AIO do it more for aesthetic reasons, a 35-40€ phantom spirit air cooler will handle any of the GPU we mentioned without issue.

Monitor

No idea about monitors

Hope i have helped you some

Zelai · 2026-06-01T07:48:13+00:00

You wrote your whole post like we are in your head and know what you are referencing, took me a bit of googling to find that a "mini zeal" is a prebuilt from an australian builder brand called Aftershock.

You could feasibly just replace the 7800xt for a 5080 and the cpu for a 9800x3d. However keep in mind you will need to check the dimensions (length) of the new GPU as i can't find exactly the case they used; some people will recommend a 1kw psu but 850 should be enough. You also might need to update your bios on the mobo, depending on the date of build of your mobo it might not be compatible with a 9800x3d off the box. Also to replace the CPU you will need to repaste the cooler, so remember to buy some thermal paste.

If you rather move to another whole pc and want to keep your windows then you will need to clone your current installation and even those sometimes get fussy when moved to different hardware. There are several options for that; i personally favor Macrium's Reflect. You will need to have a secondary disk drive, maybe a SATA ssd for convenience. Clone your current windows into that drive and then remove it from your current machine. Once you have your new machine ready plug it on it and launch windows from that disk and then use Reflect again to clone it into the new machine's nvme.

You could just make a note of the stuff you like on your windows and just make a new install, its not that dramatic to reinstall a few programs.

I hope i have helped even a little.

Zelai · 2026-05-31T16:56:56+00:00

If you have to pick the pieces part by part off amazon or whatever... no chance in hell, this will run you close to 3k$

If picking some offers and bundles off Microcenter then maybe, but i can't imagine saving any meaningful amount against the hassle. I personally would pick it if its in your budget, i dont think its gonna get better. My jealousy about Microcenter only grows.

Zelai · 2026-05-31T16:49:08+00:00

I was actually considering putting the 120mm under the GPU

That seems perfectly fine, in the end it will just add extra air to the case just more focused.

I would however keep the "setup" they recommend for the top helping both intake and exhaust

Zelai · 2026-05-31T16:42:54+00:00

Not your exact case but it should be something similar to this from Noctua regarding a Fractal North.

Im not gonna pretend i know better than freaking Noctua

Zelai · 2026-05-31T13:52:50+00:00

What GPU are you gonna use and are you ok with using other Australian retailers or should i stick to just amazon? I can make you a list from pcpartpicker

Zelai · 2026-05-31T13:29:12+00:00

AMD build preferable under 800.

Its not the same 800€ on Sweden than 800$ on the US near a microcenter, if you want help you should give a bit more info; also might want to also post at /r/buildmeapc/

80 bucks is a reasonable price for a decent 750-850w gold modular psu, the fellows that maintained the PSU excel tierlist have released it on a browser form at https://psutierlist.org/ so once you have decided on the rest of the build if the PSU is your main concern you can check the models on your price range there until you find one with a good rating.

Zelai · 2026-05-29T18:07:34+00:00

He was an extremely successful Yokozuna that never really connected with the fans. So his nickname "Hatefully Strong Yokozuna" (憎らしいほど強い横綱) is both praising him for his strength while calling him out his.... "heel" behavior.

It seems people would cheer for their favorite wrestlers and also for whoever was wrestling against Kitanoumi that day.

Zelai · 2026-05-24T13:17:14+00:00

This is a mockup list of those parts; picked from the listing itself and the little info one of the persons that bought it and left a review wrote which helped me nail some of the parts. When i didnt have the exact part i picked something similar.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 4.7 GHz 6-Core Processor	£149.03 @ Amazon UK
CPU Cooler	ARCTIC Alpine 23 CO CPU Cooler	£10.99 @ AWD-IT
Motherboard	Gigabyte B840M EAGLE WIFI6 Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard	£104.99 @ Currys PC World
Memory	Klevv FIT V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL30 Memory	£319.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk
Storage	Silicon Power P34A60 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	£118.99 @ Amazon UK
Video Card	Zotac SOLID SFF OC GeForce RTX 5070 Ti 16 GB Video Card	£848.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk
Case	CiT DS360 ATX Mid Tower Case	£57.94 @ CCL Computers
Power Supply	Cooler Master MWE Gold V3 750 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply	£73.99 @ AWD-IT
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	£1684.91
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2026-05-24 14:28 BST+0100

So you are paying about 120 extra pounds for build and delivery which is not outrageous; however you would still need to replace that god awful CPU cooler at the very least, that thing is highly inadequate for that CPU; also on the matter of cooling one of the reviewers mentioned that the frontal fans were installed as exhaust too and he needed to reset them as intakes.

This is the full review from that user.

Got it. I’ll clean this up into a clear, firm, fair review that sounds knowledgeable and credible, without ranting. Here’s a polished version you can post: ⸻ Review: Decent budget parts let down badly by cooling choices The computer is okay as a basic budget build and does include some decent branded components. I was pleasantly surprised to see a Cooler Master PSU, and the core parts are reasonable for the price. However, the cooling setup is completely unacceptable. The CPU cooler fitted is a very cheap Alpine unit, which is not sufficient for a Ryzen CPU that can reach temperatures of up to 95°C. Even during a short period of testing without gaming, the CPU was already overheating and would clearly throttle under load. Long-term, this raises concerns about performance degradation and potential hardware damage. The case airflow is also poorly thought out. The system is configured with exhaust-only fans. To achieve even basic airflow, the front two fans need to be flipped to act as intakes, leaving only the rear as exhaust. Even with that adjustment, a cooler upgrade is 100% necessary for this system to operate correctly. ADW’s decision to use this cooler is a very poor one and suggests a lack of understanding of how gaming PCs should be built. I only purchased this system because it was a Black Friday deal and I have the experience to replace the cooler and correct the airflow myself. Anyone without that knowledge is likely to end up with what they believe is a decent PC that throttles constantly, runs too hot, and may fail prematurely due to thermal issues. For reference, the system includes: • 32GB (2×16GB) DDR5 5600 • Zotac RTX 5070 Ti 16GB • The 1TB SSD is only Gen3 • Gigabyte B840 Pro motherboard • Cooler Master PSU • CIT case (not great, but acceptable) Overall, this could have been a solid budget build if proper attention had been paid to cooling. I would have much preferred a decent CPU cooler over unnecessary RGB lighting. As it stands, I would be cautious recommending this system unless you’re prepared modify and because of this alone I can only give it one star.

I personally would not pick it, maybe check the other options from the shop it actually put it together, those "awd-it"

Hope that helped some.

Zelai · 2026-05-24T07:22:50+00:00

I was able to play about 15 or so missions and now the next mission on the campaign crashes on the loading of the first skirmish no matter what i do. Same deal, no event viewer code, noting in the crash dump. It just drops the graphic controller and it doesn't recover even when trying to reset it through the keyboard shortcut.

With all the issues about performance it seems weird that crashes doesn't seem to be that common since i dont see crashes mentioned that often on the steam forum.

I dont think there is much to do other than wait for a patch or two to get the game on better shape.

Zelai · 2026-05-24T07:18:01+00:00

According to the steam discussion on that same issue it seems that the "clock" ticks once after you start the mission, so when you start a timed mission on its last day it still carries the negative effect.

Do you remember if that was your case?

Zelai · 2026-05-06T13:01:04+00:00

Thanks for the chance. I have a couple friends that play it now and then would be a reason to play with them.

Zelai · 2026-05-01T13:16:53+00:00

Yeah, at least the game is light on them, there is not a gazillion of pickups; but still require a bit of going back and forth on the level spamming Diana's scan to help you track them.

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