As STW is seemingly the home of middle-aged IT professionals… I’d appreciate some advice as I’m totally out of my depth
As I work from home 90% of the time these days, I’d like a desktop with a little more grunt/cooling to allow for some recreational gaming and 3D modelling work (Inventor, Revit etc). Ideally something that won’t be over the hill in the next 2-3 years. Budget is £2k
I have a 10% discount code at Dell and can claim back the VAT, I can also tweak the spec to add RAM and upgrade the CPU, Dell options:
Option 1:
AMD® Ryzen™ 9 5900 (70 MB total cache, 12 cores, 2 threads, up to 4.70 GHz Max Boost Clock)
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080, 10 GB GDDR6X, LHR
32 GB, 2 x 16 GB, DDR4, 3200 MHz, XMP
1TB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (Boot) + 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s (Storage)
Lunar Light chassis with High-Performance CPU Liquid Cooling and 1000W Power Supply
£1530
Option 2
AMD® Ryzen™ 9 5900X (70 MB total cache, 12 cores, 24 threads, up to 4.80 GHz Max Boost Clock)
Windows 11 Home, English, Dutch, French, German, Italian
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080 Ti, 12 GB GDDR6X
32 GB, 2 x 16 GB, DDR4, 3200 MHz, XMP
2 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD
Lunar Light chassis with High-Performance CPU Liquid Cooling and 1000W Power Supply
£1860
Option 3:
12th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-12700KF (25 MB cache, 12 cores, 20 threads, 3.60 to 5.00 GHz Turbo
NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 3080, 10 GB GDDR6X, LHR
32 GB, 2 x 16 GB, DDR5, 4400 MHz, Dual-channel;
1 TB, M.2, PCIe NVMe, SSD
750W Platinum PSU, Light,, Liquid-Cooled CPU & Solid Side Panel
£1870
Alternatively I could pick up something elsewhere, any suggestions welcome – I’m totally out of my depth with this stuff.
Option 2 for me. Big Ryzen fan and imo the better all round chip. If you were purely gaming focused then Intel would be the better choice.
The 3080ti will be good for many years also.
Would love to be able to make such a purchase - very jealous 🙂
It's a dell alienware system, watch out for it being a proprietary parts/connector strewn nightmare if you ever want to upgrade it.
Good point, to this point I've never felt the need to upgrade a PC (wish the same applied to bikes) - I'd rather buy the right PC from the start and just be done with it.
Your budget will build something very decent.
I could go on about this.. but to save time,and space an this thread
Just look here and have a good old read through the posts... Arm yourself with a bit of knowledge etc.
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/community/new-to-pc-gaming-upgrade-advice.172/
It’s a dell alienware system, watch out for it being a proprietary parts/connector strewn nightmare if you ever want to upgrade it.
Yeah your much better off going full custom build at this budget.
Even if you don't want to put it together personally, most good retailers will build what you want for you for a nominal fee.
I think CCL charge about 25 quid to put together a basic but custom machine, for example. Might be a bit more if you want fancy water cooling, led displays and Led lights that dance to the music and all that jazz...
... as it's more complicated to put together and test it and provide a warranty.
Scan are worth looking at if you don't want to build your own. Their 3XS systems are excellent.
Of the ones you've listed and with the budget you have then option 2 all the way.
Yeah your much better off going full custom build at this budget.
I very much doubt you can buy a RTX3080Ti on its own for less than £1500 and a 5900X cpu is £400+.
2 years ago the advice would have been to buy components and build yourself, you would have got way more for your money, but that's no longer the case. The only thing I would consider is making sure the power supply is up to scratch. 1000W should be good for all the components but if it's less than Gold rated and from a known manufacturer (Corsair, Cooler Master, etc.) then you could end up with things going pop. I know this from experience with a Bronze rated PSU from Gigabyte).
EDIT - I found a 3080Ti for £1280, but you'd still be WAAAYYYY over the £2k mark if you were building that up with a 5900X, 32GB RAM, 2TB drive, etc.
I wouldn't bother with a 3080ti upgrade, it's completely overkill unless you plan on playing something like CP2077 in 4K.
I'd be very cagey buying from dell as said above they're the masters of annoying proprietary parts. I'd pay special attention to reviews of the case as well from a cooling point of view, most full builds lack cooling in my experience.
Also check the AIO CPU cooler is from a good brand as a cheap once is noisy/likely to fail just after warranty ends with potentially disastrous results. Same applies to the power supply, you want a gold rated one from a known brand at the least.
Out of the three I'd go for option 1 and maybe chuck some extra case fans on from the start.
Normally I would suggest a custom build but GPU prices are insane right now. If you can get one for a decent price (an FE card from Scan is your best hope) I would fully recommend that.
Also budget for a good monitor, a rig of that power is useless if you haven't got a monitor that challenges it. I'd suggest 1440p 144hz or 4k 60hz depending if you want quality or frames. You could probably play most games on 4k 144hz as well but high refresh monitors are still crazy money.
This is a fairly recent review of an alienware system,
Quote from the reviewer "Interestingly, the inside of this Alienware is the same as the Dell XPS. This system is basically a huge plastic XPS with better airflow and a robot vagina."
He doesn’t love it then.
In summary:
- Alienware options appear to sacrifice build/design and cooling in favour of high spec CPU/GPU easier to market.
- GPU prices are crazy, spec something lower in the range from a reputable specialist
Option 2 of those that you've listed (but only if 4k gaming might be on your to do list). As others have said Alienware is over-priced and whilst pre-Dell they were quite innovative and well engineered they're more just a standard PC in a weird case these days (but possibly still with some annoying proprietary bits). If it were 30+% off in a sale it would probably be worth it but there's better options out there if you're just getting a 10% discount.
