Build Advice Fortnite PC: First ever build for 11 year old

Greetings nerd hive mind.

One of my best friends has finally been persuaded by his son to go for a gaming pc.

Something that you reading this and me writing this will have in common is that we are the go-to computer people for our friendship circle, so naturally dad turned to me for build advice. However, one thing we probably don't have in common is that I'm not a gamer. I'm out of my depth. In fairness this has mainly been my fault because about a year ago I handed down an older system of mine (Phenom 955, GTX480) to the older brother, so obviously now the younger brother needs one of his own. Apparently, if you're 11 then the two most important things that computers can be used for are Fortnite and Minecraft, with a slight preference for Fortnite.

Dad needed a budget to stop panicking, so I rather picked a number out of the air and suggested that £500 might do it (with the caveats that I have some free parts, see below) does this seem feasible? Less is better! There's really not a lot of money generally and £500 is a LOT of money for some people. The boys are keen to make this a family affair, so we'll be building it together and they've asked me to teach them so they can upgrade their own systems next time. For this reason and the budgetary constraints I'm VERY open to second hand parts, ebay trawling and bargain-hunting.

Budget: absolute MAX of £500. £300 ideal.
Main uses of intended build: Fortnite at 1080p (for an 11 year old!) As reference I'm told that it runs 'ok' on the Phenom/480 system. I'm sure it doesn't really but I assume that they simply have lower requirements for 'playable' than I do.
Parts required: Mobo, ram, gpu. Perhaps a case. Ideally an SSD.
Previous build information (list details of parts): There is no previous build, but I can provide a PSU, hard drive, keyboard and mouse and maybe a case. The PC will be connected to a 1080p 32" TV, so monitor is taken care of. I also have a big box of spares for things like fans and cables.
Monitor resolution: 1080p
Storage requirements: Is it doable to get an SSD? I have a 1.5TB HDD for storage.
Will you be overclocking: Can do if needed, although as this is going to a kid who doesn't have much expereience (yet!) I'd be looking for something really, really stable. It's going to ruin the PC experience for him if it isn't at least as usable as a console.
Any motherboard requirements (no. of USB, Xfire/SLI, fan headers): Nothing specific, there's even ethernet to the room.


I have looked for builds specifically geared to that game, but they're all more money than we can spend. I accept that there may have to be compromises to detail/resolution whatever to come in below budget. If you have any specific parts in mind then please let me know. Or some general tips about building around that use case? Hell, if you want to shamelessly shill your own for sale hardware then I'm game for that too!

There's plenty of new bundles out there using AM4 with 8GB of ram on a brand-name mobo for ~£250. That leaves £250 for a GPU. That's a decent start, but it's the top of our budget and all brand new. Are there any good deals on last-gen hardware?

Thanks in advance.
Jack

 

Fortnite at 1080p does indeed pretty much run on a potato.

Below should net in the region of 60 - 100 fps depending on quality settings.

However, there is a problem... Fortnite isn't really representative of gaming performance, other games will run quite a bit worse, so going used but with higher performance parts looks like the better option when considering that Fortnite is only one of a million games.

Cpu, Mobo, Ram, Gpu, Case and Ssd all new, all in stock at a single store and £500:

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x PowerColor Radeon RX 570 Red Dragon 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £119.99
• 1 x Intel Core i3-8350K 4.0GHz (Coffee Lake) Socket LGA1151 Processor - Retail= £139.99
• 1 x MSI Z390-A PRO Intel Z390 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £109.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan TUF Gaming Alliance 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-25600C16 3200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Blac= £59.99
• 1 x WD Green 3D NAND 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive (WDS120G2G0A)= £21.95
• 1 x Bitfenix Nova Midi Tower Case - Black Window= £36.95

Total: £501.16 (includes shipping: £12.30)


​

 

CPU MOBO RAM CASE £222 https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/zwvZf9

PSU £39.98 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aerocool-Integrator-Efficiency-Mainstream-Systems/dp/B00JKVHL84/ (have used three 600w and a 700w of this now and it’s quiet and stable, good value)

480GB SSD £52.99 https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-PLUS-Sata-Inch-Internal/dp/B01F9G46Q8/

That’s only £314.97

I built basically this rig this week on this same spec albeit with a SM951 I had spare instead of the Sandisk.

I also managed to get a 970 Amp Extreme for £80 secondhand on these fine forums and I figure that will still liquify Fortnite for a few years.

I also spent £60 on this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Redragon-K552-BB-UK-Mechanical-Inclusive-UK-Layout-Keyboard-Mouse-Mousepad-Headset-Combo/dp/B07CMM6BK3/ although it’s on special at £43 today; the keyboard actually seems decent and I’d rather not just put them on basic crap to start with.

So running total is about £440 or £395 if you don’t need the keyboard combo, I’m assuming not.

Alternatively go with the RX570 mentioned in the post above for £120; total looks around £435 but then everything is new and I’m warranty.

I’m hoping the ten year old future Fortnite player I’m building mine for appreciates it!!

You could buy a 2200G but the 3200G is around a tenner more at most

 

Thanks for all the help so far guys. I'm off to do my own research just now, but if someone feels like explaining it for me in idiot language: what are the gaming advantages of Ryzen over AM4 if I'm NOT using the inbuilt GPU and have an external card?

 

There are no gaming advantages of Ryzen, just price and core/thread advantage, Intel is always better if you can get an 8 thread chip.

I would not recommend any new build for gaming being less than 8 threads capable, as of course whilst it's just fortnite now it will be others in time, I am always seeing more than 50% CPU usage on my daughters 8 thread CPU. So if you bought a 4 thread you may find you'd be maxing it out frequently.

Her machine was built for a similar purpose and just went with the onboard GPU of a Ryzen 2400G (bought second hand or would have been 3400G)

This onboard GPU is not really suitable for 1080p on big AAA titles without time spent tuning settings, but it will handle fortnite, minecraft with relative ease as these don't push boundaries, it does run most titles well if you don't mind low settings though, I have played Crysis 3, Far Cry 5, Tombraider, RDR2, Soul calibre, Gears 5 and all the Forza titles on it with pretty good near 60fps@1080p by tweaking settings and the games sit somewhere between Low and Medium quality so not unlike a console, pretty respectable. RDR2 require a resolution scale, so did soul calibre because it really needs to hit 60fps but still looked good, Impressive for something that cost less than £200 for board/Cpu and RAM.

One advantage of Ryzen is the free StoreMI tech meaning you can merge a small SSD (256Gb max) with your existing slow HDD and it will manage the data such that you get some pace from the storage, I have set this up on my daughters machine and it is impressive.

So copying Zoons setup and changing bits a bit

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/rNwyk6

Includes
3400G for 4c/8t (could save some dough picking up 2400G) cpu won't OC much but GPU will go to ~1600.
256Gb NVMe for fast tier on StoreMI (basically set system up on NVMe, add your old 1.5TB drive install StoreMI to create one accelerated 1.75Gb big drive
16 GB of crucial 3200 this will clock reasonably well and can run tighter timings. I have mine runing CL14 3400. on 7nm Ryzens people have these running 3700+ 3400G is 12nm though so your mileage may vary as is always the case with overclocking.

Example of 3400G running fortnite at 1080p, test system is not overclocked and running slower RAM, so if you are happy OCing, it would be quicker.



You'll notice 50% cpu load, so that is 4 thread maxed out at least, now and again it hits 75%, that will be stutter on machine with only 4 thread.

Another such example with 20 games @1080p

 

I put the 3200G in because there’s an impressive IPC boost over the 2200G. In fact it’s worth taking the 3200G over a 2600 due to the IPC boost even though the 2600 is 6c/12t.

In a budget conscious build the 3200G is still a bloody excellent CPU and it could easily be upgraded for more cores/threads in a year or two if it’s desperate. I wouldn’t hugely think it is.

I’m definitely saying to spend the money on a graphics card and ignore the built in GPU but they don’t make a Ryzen non G at that price point. Unless you find a 2600 second hand for £50-£60 in which case that’s a contender.

 

No its not 3xxxG are not 7nm cores, so there is meagre 2-3% IPC boost, you would be better off with a proper 3xxx non G chip if ultimate CPU performance is your thing. Part of the reason I picked up a cheap 2400G because the bit that matters the iGPU is broadly the same performance as 3400G 12nm part when overclocked and for the CPU even Ryzn gen 1 can handle anything you throw at it.

2xxxG is Gen 1 14nm Ryzen
3xxxG is Gen 2 12nm Ryzen

3xxx non G chips are 7nm Ryzen, confused yet

For low end system any of the multi core CPUs will be fine as the low end GPUs will always hold your CPU back when gaming.

So yes spending money on a dedicated GPU is better for someone serious about gaming but for an 11 year old it may not be entirely necessary Vega 11 mobile is quite handy for light stuff.

 

I’m very confused.

I know my friend was comparing the 8c/16t 2700 against the 6c/12t 3600 and the latter benchmarks faster overall!! So he went that way!

 

Oi my head hurts.

Nonetheless I think the 3200G is an attractive option at the low end for now and the platform should take the 4xxx chips later when they come out or whatever they get called. I’m happy with the choice I made here and the 970 GTX it’ll be paired with will keep my friend going for a good long while I reckon!