Please help me select parts for a "competent" gaming PC
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?
So, the trap of modern game setups is that there is a lot of super high powered hardware out there- but unless you're driving 4K monitors at 120hz+, or striving for super fast 360hz+ refresh rates for competitive gaming, you don't need any of it. And people often get too caught up in the flashy new latest-and-greatest to recognize what's a good deal and what's just showing off.
Define your use case. What's your desirable budget? What kind of games do you want to play, do you want to do VR, what kind of display do you plan on using. Because while it's easy to drop $2800+ on hardware these days (like I did), it is still very possible to end up with a $900-1k machine that is super capable at 1440p and can run most all games you throw at it for at least another 5 years. Dpending on what exactly you want to do with it, prioritizing certain areas of hardware over others will pay off.
I agree. I think 1440p+HDR is probably the way to go for now. HDR is FAR more impactful than a 4K resolution and 1440p should provide a stable 45ish FPS on Cyberpunk 2077 completely maxed out on an RTX 3080Ti (DLSS Performance).
And in terms of CPU, the same applies. 16 cores are for the gentoo using, source compiling folks like me. 8 cores on a well binned CPU from the last 3 generations goes plenty fast for gaming. CPU bottlenecking only really show up at 144fps+ in most games anyways.
Yes, HDR and higher framerates are a lot more beneficial for gaming these days than it is to go to 4K. HDR typically doesn't have much performance impact at least, that's just down to monitor support.
4K performance becomes relevant if you want to do VR though because of the dual-eye resolution.
Meanwhile I game almost exclusively on my Steam Deck nowadays.
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.
Thank you for the link; will take a look at that as well.
This is what I use when creating baselines for different price-points:
https://www.logicalincrements.com/
If you feel like you'll need more RAM or a bigger SSD then that's a simple thing to do but this will give you all of the components you need for a solid system at whatever your price point is.
That said, the "Great" range and up will play pretty much anything. You can even play pretty much any game on the "Good" range and up. So if you are looking to save money, I'd say the "Great" range will last you a good 5 years right now at least.
First, you want to play on high/60fps but at what resolution? Paying over 1700$CAD for a RTX4090 GPU seems overkill while a RX6800 or a RX7700/7800 would let you play at 1080p/1440p at high settings at a fraction of the price.
SSD is fine.
PSU could be reduced to 850W.
64GB RAM is overkill for gaming right now but potentially useful in the upcoming years.
Bottom line, you could save here and there and still have a capable AM5 machine.
If you want value for your buck, build yourself an AM4 machine. Yes, AM5 is out now but your rig could still last you many many years with the right AM4 components.
Agreed with the above, especially need to pay attention to your resolution to figure out GPU needs. To add to this, you would probably be fine with a 7800X3D, unless you really need the extra CPU cores for non-gaming related tasks.
For reference, I have a 5800X3D, 32GB RAM, 970 1TB SSD, and a 6700XT, and I'm playing 60+ FPS on high on most games at 3840x1600. Nowhere near the budget you're looking at. That being said, AM4 socket is EOL'd, so stick with the Ryzen 7000 series if you want AMD.
The samsung 990 is fine, but a bit overpriced. Something like this sabernt is also a high quailty gen 4 drive, and running under $100 for 2TB with a heatsink.
Id actually recommend going for the 4TB of that same model for $210. By far the most bang for your buck.
Sorry, I should have specified; I already have the 4K monitor that I would like to use.
Yeah that changes things a bit. What type of games do you plan on playing? 4K or not, if you're playing eSports or strategy games, it still will be overkill. My wife's rig is a 5800X (not 3D), and a GTX 1070, and she plays SIMS 4 and Diablo IV at 4K 60+ FPS.
Another data point: I have a Ryzen 5900x and an RTX 3080. In BG3 I average 80-90 fps with 1% lows over 60fps on a 4k screen with ultra settings and DLSS quality setting.
I’ve got my eyes on AC Mirage.
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.
Super helpful; also thanks for the channel recommendation.
Second the PCPartPicker recommendation. You can also share your build ideas with people via that site, very useful.
What I usually tell people is "set a budget". You can always fall in to the trap of $20 more here, $40 more there...etc and explode your budget.
If you can keep moving the needle, you can keep dumping more into better components in different areas.
Use PCPartPicker to make sure everything is compatible, check the price history to see if there's a similar component available for cheaper or if you're getting a good value, and make decisions on what is necessary. Also, pick a date. You can hang around for MONTHS waiting on a certain part to hit a price drop.
Going back through your specs...bro a 4090 costs basically the same as my whole PC that's running games at 120 FPS+ on a 4k monitor with no issues.
Check out combo deals on Newegg for Mobo+RAM+CPU, or Microcenter if you have one nearby (I don't). Your biggest factor for gaming will be the GPU. You can run 60+ FPS on a 1080P monitor on 5 year old midrange GPUs. If you need 4k res, ask on PCPartPicker forums.
The above build (with a suitable NZXT H7 case) can be built for around £3,800; such a generous budget might be doable but deep down I know this build is over the top and that I cannot really justify ploughing that much into something like this. Thank you for the PCPartPicker recommendation; I will try that.
I got mine for just under $1800 US early this year, with just online deals available at the time, no waiting for better pricing (honestly PSU prices were INSANE at the time and that made a difference). I wouldn't change a single part today. It does everything I need (including video editing/rendering)
Sub the 7950x3d for a 7800x3d, and swap the GPU for a 4070 or 7800 xt. You can likely swap the MB, but I'll let someone else speak to that one.
Where I would spend money is with two NVMe drives. A 1TB drive for the OS and a 2TB game drive. You can add a spinning HD for mass storage if needed.
If you really want to save some money, go with an x570 MB and a 5800x3D. But I'd stay with the GPUs from this gen. Downside is you have no room for upgrades down the line.
For reference, I have an x570 MB, 5800x3D, and a 6750xt GPU. I'm not having issues running games.
Definitely agree that 7800x3D is better value for gaming. Depending on the games played and choice of GPU, the 7600 could provide an even better value option. The 4090 is the only offering from Nvidia that makes sort of sense IMO (and only if you want to spend a lot for the best) with 7900 xtx > 7900 > 7800 the better choices in order of higher to lower performance and lower to higher value.
That being said, all the components are way overkill for 60 fps at 1080p. If you are not going to capitalize on the performance with a higher framerate and resolution monitor, there really is not a need for this tier of components at all. A used B550/B450 board and a 7600 could easily drive modern gamed with lower settings at 60fps/1080p at a fraction of the price.
Let me be the Linux evangelist here and say: consider AMD for GPU, they aren't bad.
https://www.logicalincrements.com/articles/graphicscardcomparison
Not OP, but as a person who wants to switch to Linux but is worried about being able to play the games I like (and doesn't generally use Steam), is Nvidia bad for Linux gaming? I've heard good things about AMD's Linux compatibility but I have an Nvidia.
I have an Nvidia GPU and I use it with Linux, even with Wayland, but it's still not quite there yet, and because all the fixes have to come from proprietary Nvidia driver changes, nobody really knows when/if everything will be fixed. AMD has been much better with support and switching to AMD for your next.card will save you a lot of headaches.
Linux fanboys like to hate on Nvidia, but their GPU's usually work fine on day one and have performance parity with other OS.
What isn't good is that they don't support some newer features that work on the open-source drivers from AMD and Intel, namely Wayland. But even that's constantly getting better and won't be a problem for long.
Also, the proprietary drivers made some problems a few years ago that resulted in a black screen after the update. But as I said, that's been years ago and was simple to fix.
Now I've talked about those Linux fanboys like myself and do recommend AMD GPU's over Nvidia. It's great that they work ootb without having to install drivers, but that's only for gaming. E.g. machine learning apps like stable diffusion make the AMD driver situation way worse than Nvidia.
Don't let yourself be discouraged by overly dramatic comments! Try it for yourself and it'll probably be fine.
Agree, most mainstream distros have it all handled for the most part and it normally "just works".
Now, myself on Gentoo testing on the other hand... Sometimes I shoot myself in the foot and forget to rebuild my kernel modules and wind up needing to chroot to fix things - all because I have an NVidia card.
Well, for a practical example, my Ryzen 5 5600x and Radeon 6600xt combo is juuust out of the running for games coming out right now, I'd say. The VRAM limitations at 8GB are becoming apparent and there's been a few instances where the 5600x struggles in games that hit CPUs hard. But I'd say that's because there's been an oddly big jump in system requirements, recently.
Because devs don't optimize for PC and get away with it by listing absurd minimum requirements.
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That’s what took me out of PC gaming; that and a price increase (possibly crypto related, possibly financial crash related).
Yeah. We don't know your budget, but if you are just playing at 1440p, you could cut down to a Ryzen 5, a 4070, and 32gb of ram easily.
Resolution (1080, 1440, etc) will be critical for your high and 60fps qualifier. Is RTX a deal breaker for you? Are you looking to produce content (or edits videos, 3d rendering, stable diffusion, etc)?
Without knowing any of that I can still identify CPU, ram, and GPU you listed are overkill for gaming purposes.
Edit: Gamers Nexus YouTube and Website is a great for getting rundown of current gen hardware and their capabilities. They typically give really good recommendations based on value instead of just raw performance.
I have little doubt that the above setup is overkill for my purposes. My difficulty is that I am so far behind and out of date in my knowledge of what constitutes a decent baseline specification that I am having to approach this from a position of embarrassed ignorance.
A couple of folks have recommended PCPartPicker so I will give that a go.
Short answer: good plan. Check PCPartPicker. Your build is definitely overkill for most people, and you can easily get away with consistent 4k gaming for much cheaper.
What resolution are you going to be gaming at?
If you're only at 1440p60 or something then you can cut the GPU down for sure.
if like, you aren't too attached to the look of them, you could save a bunch by using an air cooler instead of an AIO water cooler, they don't actually perform better than decent air coolers.
Don't know how many AAA games you plan on playing, and I genuinely no expert, but 90% of the games I play are 3-5+ years old and my Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (or is it 2050? I always forget. Lol) works just fine as a GPU.
With anything in line of that build; a VR headset. Although I'd wait until the Deckard is officially announced/released before actually buying.
I’ve never actually tried VR; a friend has offered to let me try their console VR at the end of the week so I’ll be taking notes.
The main thing you'll want to look for is resolution/pixel density and the refresh rate of the headset. bonus if it can support foveated rendering. I have the Reverb G2 which has a very high display resolution but is only 90hz, for some it's just not good enough. I find it okay, but it being WMR is an issue for my wants, which is the Index Knuckles. The hand tracking just feels so good and is worth it for the games that utilize it - they're also just more comfortable than the stock G2 controllers are. It's a mixedVR setup I run, but it works with most of the games I've played (quite a few VR titles)
If there were a SteamVR headset that were consistent $349 on sale with the specs of the G2... alas.
Games wise I would look at the ~5 popular genres, which would be flight simming/racing, in-VR but not VR games (Tetris effect, Moose Life, KOTH emulators in VR), rhythm based (highly recommend pistol whip), and your action games, shooter and swordsy.
Some solid overall games Duck Season, Boneworks (or Bonelab, now. These 3 are all made by the same people), Superhot VR, REZ Infinite, Stride, Pavlov VR, Arkade, Naked Sun, King Kaiju, Holoball. If you like zombies, Arizona Sunshine and Saints & Sinners (Walking Dead) are fun. Bandit Point is a pretty good tower defence ish, and hyper psychic gauntlets is a little more laid back but still fun, though maybe on a sale, along with Vertical Shift. Can't not mention Blade & Sorcery, Gorn, Half-Life Alyx, pretty much sacrelidge. There's also a few asynchronous games, Phasmophobia but also Vox Machinae I learned recently as well as Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - particularly great for 3+ friends. Sim and arcade sim styles VR Regatta, VTolVR, V-Racer Hoverbike, Star Wars Squadrons, Elite Dangerous.
If you like creative hobbies I also recommend any music based program, Paradiddle for drumming, VInyl Reality for DJing (your own music on a hard drive), SynthVR for an extensive modular synth, Electronauts is more scaled back but with more than synths in mind. Vermillion for painting in VR and OpenBrush for VR paintings. There's SculptrVR as well.
I mentioned Pistol Whip which is basically musical John wick simulator - there's also beatsaber which everyone recommends but it's always $30 and honestly, its pretty mediocre... imo of course, lol. It's strength is the insane amount of user content but I found myself enjoying almost every single variation of BS. There's audioshield, synth riders, and against which of them was my least favorite. Of them all though, PW just keeps me coming back for more - but they're all fun.
Finally for games - on PC there's a number of emulated VR games like Metroid Prime or Mario Sunshine that are worth trying. Indie Weird VR games are usually the best ones. Oh, and there are games that are more experiences than they are games, sometimes this is good, sometimes it's a scam. I'd say the barometer is somewhere along the lines of Hellblade Senua Sacrifice VR - good experience if you know what you're getting into, better than flat. VR meditation or drug trip experience - eh, less so. Subnautica is also worth a shot.
Anyway, you won't be able to play many of these on console VR but I'm sure some are around. If you ever do foray into VR I recommend checking out some games, the general genres you encounter and see if they're for you. VR is in a bit of a weird space right now but there are still lots of awesome games, it's just a matter of measuring which era they're from and how developed they were. 2016 Vive games aren't always bad, but they aren't always fleshed out. That doesn't mean that 2020 VR games are any better, though... lol.
The last thing I'll mention for real is programs to integrate things into VR, you can turn many games into 3D-like games with VorpX or mods, but it can take some finagling (and money sometimes). VorpX is ok. I'm more interested though in overlays, as that allows you to bring panels into VR. My favorite thing during lockdown was setting up Elite Dangerous, running SCRCPY to mirror my phone on my PC, and that window captured with XSOverlay (or OVR Toolkit). Let's you have your phone in VR. Pop up another window for streaming and maybe one more for discord and baby we are living in the year 3000 in 2020 - VR space flight simming with floating windows for phone, media, and social... those were the days... stupid real life.
Hmmm c/build_a_pc ?? 🤔
I was part of the hardcore build it yourself crew for years and years, but I find now that for the last 10 years or so now, and especially with the death of places like Fry's and all the bullshit Newegg pulled, it's way easier and cheaper to buy a pre-built box that's maybe 90-95% there, then tweak what you need to tweak.
Get that manufacturers warranty and forget trying to part it out yourself.
$3,500 here.
https://www.magicmicro.com/14443-13/?gclid=CjwKCAjwgsqoBhBNEiwAwe5w0-_ZgYLWExSn5qI8px0IsfY6YxDieItNckeje3agVUSZTF_OilVppRoC8nsQAvD_BwE
I’ve certainly been tempted by pre-build (thank you for the link) but with parts costs (gradually) coming down some are becoming less competitive.
A steam deck works well enough for most games if you want something handheld but dockable into a full computer. Gives you that sort of console feel without a console ecosystem.
High settings for most modern games jump from game to game. I was able to keep high settings with a 1080 and a Ryzen 7 with 64 gb of RAM. I think 16-32 GB ram should be fine but I am also a game developer so I use extra RAM for debug. Nvidia sent me a 3080 for testing last year and I just installed it.