Buying a new PC

I started playing Danger Zone on a Mac, specifically a late 2013 27" iMac with a 3.5GHz Intel Core i7-4771 (Haswell), an Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M and a beautiful 2560x1400 27" screen, or as I referred to it: a 6 year old gaming laptop with a really nice screen.  Unfortunately, it really didn't have the horsepower to drive all 3.6 million pixels - even on lowest quality settings.  But it's what I had, it worked, and so I used it - although I received many comments about how low my fps was.

Then AMD announced their Zen 2 processor, which seemed to be like the original Athlon processors - both better and cheaper than mainstream Intel processors.  So I started looking, planning and dreaming.  Ideally I wanted a computer which could play Danger Zone at 1440p @ 144Hz at top quality settings (aka "full pretty") - but I couldn't get good, hard information about the minimum requirements for that goal.  So I fell back on my "thrifty" nature and instead tried to get the best balance between price and performance and hoped it would be enough.

First on the list was the processor - the Ryzen 5 3600 was the clear leader on price vs performance.  It benchmarks at over 2.6 times the speed of the Intel 4771 in the iMac (18% faster in single thread).  Part of me wanted to upgrade to the Ryzen 7 3700X, but it was over 50% more for a couple additional cores (which wouldn't matter for CS:GO) and a very slight bump to single thread performance.

Next was the GPU - and I had to go with nVidia due to the onboard encoder.  I wanted NVENCv6 so that meant a GTX 1650 Super or better.  Again, from a price vs performance perspective it was tough to justify going with anything more than the GTX 1650 Super (which also benchmarks 2.5x the GeForce 780M in the iMac), although in hindsight I probably should have spent the extra $100 to get a GTX 1660 Super for 28% better performance

For the motherboard I decided on the MSI B450M Gaming Plus.  MSI because only they have the ability to flash the BIOS without a processor - and B450 motherboards needed a BIOS upgrade to support Ryzen 3000 (although that probably wasn't an issue when I finally bought).  I went with a B450 motherboard because I didn't see the need for PCIe4.0 - the main advantage of X570 motherboards.  (Plus B450 motherboards were also considerably cheaper.)  The Gaming Plus had all of the features I wanted without lots of stuff I wouldn't.  (I also noticed a lot of motherboards which had more slots etc also had restrictions on which could be used at the same time.)

But no amount of wishing could help me rationalize spending C$2K for a new PC just so I could play Danger Zone at higher fps.  But then my son came home from college - and I had my justification.  He could use it to continue his pursuit of Game Art and I could play Danger Zone when he wasn't using it.  (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.)  So what did I get and how much did it cost me (including tax & shipping)?

C$564.99 ASUS VQ27BQ - 27" 2560x1440 G-Sync up to 165Hz at a reasonable price.

C$303.97 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 - can someone explain to me why the stock cooler doesn't use the standard AM4 mounting bracket?  I also wasn't able to get it to work in PWM mode.

C$258.77 Gigabyte GeForce 1650 Super - cheapest card for this GPU, didn't see the need to spend extra

C$214.68 Intel 660p 1TB M2. PCIe NVMe SSD - It's strange to think how much storage this is; and it's both smaller and faster than a normal SATA SSD.  I paid a little extra for Intel because they have historically made very good controllers.

C$213.57 Microsoft Windows 10 Home - I didn't realize that "USB" meant they sent you a USB via FexEx, so I didn't order it until after I'd gotten most of the components.

C$205.50 32GB DDR4 3200 I bought the cheapest RAM available from newegg.ca when I ordered, although I did spend $10 extra to get the 3200 speed instead of the standard speed.

C$134.18 MSI B450M Gaming Plus Motherboard - I ended up having to drive 150 miles round trip to get this as they are in short supply - there are also at least two different "B450M Gaming Plus" motherboards, although I got the one I assumed I was getting.  I probably could have looked at other boards and might have found an alternative.  I also didn't realize a standard dual slot graphics card covers the slot to the right (looking from the rear) of the PCIe x16 slot.  Fortunately this board has two PCIe x1 slots to the right so I still had a slot for the WiFi card.

C$101.69 TP-Link TX3000E - decently priced, external antenna, and supports the latest WiFi standards (so should support anything my last-gen router can do).

C$100 Thermaltake Core V21 case - got this second hand, although it was an 80 mile round trip to pick it up.  It has a massive 200mm intake fan, so I'm not bothering with any additional fans.  I also like to be able to mount the motherboard horizontally.  I've put the window on top, rather than a vented panel, in case the cats decide to sit on it.

C$67.79 Enermax 500W Gold Revolution Duo - This was the cheapest 500W gold rated power supply from a brand I recognized.  (500W is certainly overkill, but I didn't see the logic to try to get "just enough" and risking "not enough".)  For some reason it was in a velveteen bag in the box.

Because I'd screwed up on ordering Windows, I decided to try to install SteamOS - which was ultimately unsuccessful, and I decided it wasn't worth my time, effort and frustration for something temporary.  Windows, on the other hand, installed without issues.