If you are sticking with flash storage you have loads of ITX case options. I didn't see anything about gaming, but you may want to hold off on the PSU in case you want to go SFX or SFX-L
Ok, next dilema... graphics card. My initial thoughts were between a GTX1060 (£240ish) or 1070ti (£380ish). The thing is I know the 1060 will be good enough right now for what I play but is it worth paying the extra for the 1070 given that a) I'll likely be buying a 1440 or higher monitor, b) I expect the 1070 will last longer before being upgraded and c) I'm keen to explore VR down the road. Whilst I feel I'm future proofing a bit more with a 1070 and making higher resolutions available I can't shake the thought that the cost of a 1070ti = a 1060 & 16GB RAM.
Tbh a lot is going to depend on who has what on sale... you might be able to grab yerself a bargain the various sales... you also may not.
Actually I've just seen the Overclockers deal on the Vega 56. Looks like 1070ti performance for £300 no? Albeit with a bigger power draw. Anyone got a good reason for me not to because my finger is getting itchy!
Bought it! Typical me - utterly convinced I'd buy one thing then switch at the last minute and buy something else!
If you want the included games the card is basically £150, which is really a great price for it... plus it brings freesync monitors into play and those are much cheaper than the G-Sync equivalents.
Also tempted to buy it. It means I'd be able to max out just about anything on my 1440p freesync monitor. I'm not desperate for those games but I'd play them and probably buy them in a Steam sale.
Cooling - air or water? I'm wondering whether to go with an air cooler or an AIO water cooler for circa £50. Based on the assumption of a Ryzen 5 2600 with a slight overclock and a Fractal Design Mini C mATX case with mITX board what would you recommend? PSU What brand and wattage of PSU would you recommend? As above, it's going in a Define Mini C and needs to power a Vega 56. I think the Vega has 2x8 pin (if that matters). The Sapphire website suggests 750w but that seems a bit overkill in my opinion - but then I wouldn't be asking here if my opinion counted as fact
While there would be no problem fitting an AIO into the case you also won't need a whole lot of cooling for a Ryzen 5 2600, so I'd go with a Coolermaster 212. In no particular order, Be quiet, EVGA, Seasonic, Silverstone, Corsair and Superflower, definitely won't need 750W, even 450 - 500W would be fine... but to have some more wiggle room for potential future upgrades I'd look around the 600W range.
This might be a stupid question but with CPU coolers - either air or the radiator of an AIO - do the fans push air back through the heatsink/rad or pull it out?
Push, typically, and if you have two they're arranged with one pushing and the other pulling towards the back of the case where the air is exhausted. There are exceptions, of course: some split tower coolers come with a single fan in the middle so it's pulling through one stack and pushing through the other, while others have both fans in push configuration and have the air collide in the middle to get forced out of a gap in the two towers.
Personally i'd take a £50 air cooler over a £50 AIO 500/550W will be fine - Corsair, BeQuiet are my preferences.
Being quiet is very welcome. I've also never had any form of water cooling before so it's a bit of a novelty for me too.
The Asrock board says it supports 2933MHz RAM in both banks if it's single rank DIMMs. What's this then? Dual rank DIMMs in both banks limits the speed to 2400MHz. I've been eyeing up G.Skill Ripjaws 3200 with the intention of running it overclocked.
Ideally to maximize the potential you'd want Samsung b-die low latency stuff like this: https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team...3200mhz-dual-channel-kit-black-my-08l-tg.html However there are some cheaper options... https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team...-channel-kit-black-grey-tdged4-my-09p-tg.html And it'll probably do lower latencies than advertised either way.
I appreciate the argument but the saving of £81 over the Samsung stuff is huge. In real world performance how would the G.skill timings (16-18-18-38) affect FPS in a game for example?
