I haven’t built a gaming PC for over fifteen years; I defected to PlayStation in '08 when the constant upgrading got too expensive to really justify, but now I’m looking to come crawling back.

I am finding it easy enough to find build ideas for very capable (and expensive) machines but I am that out of touch with “what’s good” that I no longer have any idea of what would be “good enough” (to play most modern games at “high” settings and at 60fps).

Basically, I would like help in avoiding an attempt at going back to my old ways and building some kind of pie in the sky setup like this:

CPU AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D

CPU fan NZXT Kraken 360 RGB

MB Asus Prime X670E-Pro WiFi 6E

GPU Gigabyte Aero GeForce RTX 4090 24GB

RAM G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series 64GB DDR5-6000

SSD Samsung 990 Pro 2TB

PSU Corsair RM1000x Shift 1000 W

Perhaps the could serve as a starting point - what could you cut from the above build and what would you substitute?

  • NekuSoul
    19•1 year ago

    Simply going one step down from buying every “halo” product would already do wonders for a significant price/performance increase.

    That said, when building a new PC I usually start with the recommendations listed at Logical Increments, which has a neat table sorted by budget. Anything at or above the “Suberb” should give you what you want at 1440p.

    I’d also very much recommend a high refresh rate monitor, preferably 1440p, which has either GSYNC or FreeSync with a good variable refresh rate range. It really helps with maintaining a smooth presentation as you aren’t forced to keep your game running at a fixed framerate anymore.