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?

  • @Drigo@sopuli.xyz
    10•1 year ago

    I have just spend the last couple of months researching myself because I’m in the process of upgrading my rig as well.

    I haven’t seen you mention your budget anywhere, but as I read your comments, I understand this is a bit above what you want.

    CPU: I would get the 7 7800X3D instead. It odtens performances better for gaming.

    Fan: I don’t really like water cooling, but that’s personal opinion. I would get a noctua NH-D15

    Motherboard: the “X” before the numbers, is overkill for gaming, it has lots of “ekstra” expensive features that’s just not that usefull. Definitely find one that start with a “B”. Iam getting the “Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ATX AM5 Motherboard”

    GPU: I don’t play 4k myself, so cannot really give you any pointers. I got a 7800 XT, because it’s super good for it’s value. The biggest difference is, Nvidia cards is best for Ray tracing in games, so if you need that, get a Nvidia. If you don’t care for Ray training, get AMD. Also look up reviews of the GPU fx Gamers Nexus/hardware unboxed is good. And see how the cards perform in the games you want to play.

    RAM: 16 gb is often good enough, but I would go with 32 gb for now. 64 gb is overkill, and can always be upgraded later. The ones you have picked I think is fine, just get the 32 variant.

    Storage: the SSD is good, and 2tb is good. Maybe getting a HDD, if you wants to storage other files that don’t need to be on the SSD.

    PSU: I got the exactly same for my build. A rule of thumb for calculating the PSU needed, put every component you need in PCPartPicker, and take the total wattage * 1.5. But the new GPU use so much power should should add 100 ekstra wattage as a “high-end tax” so fx 550 wattage * 1.5 + 100 = 925 PSU.

    But the most important thing is, research all the comments you want to try, and watch YouTube videos of people that actually tried and tested it. One youtube channel I like is “PC Builder” he explains what components are pretty well, and give actually examples of good parts to buy.