I have the opportunity to buy a used AM5 system whose parts were purchased about a year ago. The seller values it at roughly €1,000, and I offered €700. The build includes a Ryzen 7 9700X, be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 cooler, ASRock B850 LiveMixer WiFi motherboard, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 CL30 memory, a 2 TB Lexar NM790 NVMe SSD, integrated Radeon graphics, a be quiet! Straight Power 12 750 W Platinum PSU, a Fractal Design North case, and an additional 140 mm fan. It does not include a dedicated graphics card.
My current PC has a Ryzen 5 5600X, a B550 motherboard, 32 GB of DDR4-3200 memory, an RTX 3070, several SSDs and a hard drive, a 750 W PSU, and a newer case and CPU cooler. I mostly play GTA IV, PUBG, Call of Duty, Counter-Strike 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, and similar games. I currently play at 1080p but am considering an OLED 1440p monitor and prefer using high settings rather than low settings.
I have up to €900 available. Would it make sense to buy the AM5 system, sell my current PC for around €600–750, and then purchase a Radeon 9070 XT? Or would I be better off keeping my current system and upgrading the graphics card or storage instead? Is the Ryzen 5 5600X enough for a 9070 XT, or would it significantly limit performance?
2 Answers
The more direct gaming upgrade is probably to keep your current platform for now and put the money toward a graphics card. A 9070 XT would be a major improvement over the RTX 3070 for 1440p, while you could sell the 3070 to recover part of the cost. The Ryzen 5 5600X may limit the card in some CPU-heavy games, especially at very high frame rates, but at 1440p with demanding settings the GPU will often remain the main limit. You can upgrade the CPU later if benchmarks show that it is holding you back. Extra NVMe storage would also be a more practical purchase than buying the complete AM5 system at €900.
At €900, the AM5 system does not look especially attractive because it has no dedicated GPU and you would still need to spend a lot on graphics performance. Your €700 offer was reasonable, and around €750–800 would probably be the upper end I would consider. The expensive parts are mainly the CPU, motherboard, memory, and SSD, but a Ryzen 7 9700X is not necessarily the best value choice for a gaming-focused upgrade. A Ryzen 5 9600X or an X3D chip would make more sense depending on pricing. If you can get the system cheaply, it gives you a modern platform, but it is not a necessary upgrade from your current PC by itself.
That was my concern too. I was hoping the seller might accept €700, and €800 still seemed potentially reasonable, but €900 felt high enough that I wanted another opinion before buying.
I was wondering whether the 5600X would hold back a 9070 XT, but it sounds like it should still be a sensible temporary pairing at 1440p, especially for visually demanding games.