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Everybody considers their budget when buying a PC, right? At least that's what we'd do. Before researching any part of the build, there's always a budget that's decided beforehand. But hang on, how do I discover my budget? I don't even know what I'm planning to do yet with my computer!
If that's the case, you have come to the right place. In this thorough guide, we'll help you discover your budget. If you still have trouble deciding your budget, don't be afraid to contact us! Just be sure to give this post a like and feel free to message us!
1. First Question - What do I want to do with my computer?
The first thing to ask yourself is what you want to do with your computer. Do you want to video edit, photo edit, game at 1080p, game at 1440p, game at 4k, get good frames at any resolution, etc. If you are looking to photo/video edit whilst gaming as well, we would recomment our $2000 PC or above. Video editing and rendering takes a lot of cores in any CPU, which is why we recommend at least 6 cores. If you're gaming at 1440p, we would recommend a higher end PC. For those who would like to keep it simple and stick to 1080p gaming with solid FPS, a solid $1300 setup can do very well (Check out our $1300 build in the products section!).
2. Second Question - What's my Budget?
Sometimes, due to your budget, you are unable to pay for the system you originally wanted to get. For people with low budgets, performance must be sacrificed for certain components - like sacrificing a bit of RAM from 16GB to 8GB, and also a downscale from the Ryzen 5 3600X to the Ryzen 5 2600 (as an example), so you can purchase that 1660Ti or that Radeon 570/580. For those with capacious budgets, the question of 'what do I value in my computer?' will start to stick out. Are you looking to store a bunch of things like movies on a 3TB Hard Drive, or are you going to get a 500GB SSD instead so you can get the Radeon 5700XT over the 5700 (as an example)? For gamers, we would recommend using the 500GB SSD for its pure speed, boot times, but sacrifing storage space. 500GB is enough to store plenty games and short video clips, so sacrificing that to bridge the gap in your graphics card would be a smart decision. If you decide that you are a video editor and you need tonnes of space for movies, clips, games, documents, pictures, etc. getting a hard drive would be smarter. We would always recommend an SSD over an HDD for the SSD's speed and performance. For lower budgets, and ideal setup would be with a lower end graphics card, a 240GB SSD and 8GB of RAM. Check out our $1300 or $750 build to get an idea of how that looks like.
3. Third Question - What should I sacrifice for something else?
In very low-end builds, we would always recommend doing anything for that graphics card, even if that mean less CPU power, etc. We recommend this because a graphics card will make your system run a lot faster, and all the games that you play will be much smoother as well. In low-end builds, still try to avoid those 'blower' style graphics cards - they will get really hot and will perform much worser than it is advertised as.
In high-end system, as above mentioned, it really depends on you. It depends on what you are planning to do with the system, and always ask yourself why. In more high-end builds, it isn't much of a sacrifice. When you have more money, you have more choices. The best $200 AUD or under processor is the AMD Ryzen 5 2600 and there is no doubt about that as i5's are around $300 more, and you're paying a lot more for the same amouont of cores. In higher budgets the i9 has its rival at the same price - the 3900X. So, in higher-end builds, its more about personalisation in the components than enything else.
4. Fourth Question (Final Question) - Am I looking for Performance or Value?
A huge part of deciding a budget and the parts in a computer performance vs value, or also performance for the value. What does this mean? This means how much performance you are getting with value-based parts. This could be achieved in buying a component in a deal or something similar, and value builds tend to coss less but perform well. If you are going for performance, your budget should be more open. If, on the other hand, you are looking for value, looking for deals and a more closed and sensitive budget may help.
Conclusions
Hopefully this blog has helped you in deciding what your budget should be, and what yo really need. As always, be sure to drop a like on this post and if you need any questions answered, feel free to contact us either on Instagram (@designsbymurphyxi), email (designsbymurphyxi@gmail.com) or directly on this website!