I'm putting together a high-end gaming-only PC for demanding games such as Baldur's Gate 3, Expedition 33, Crimson Desert, and similar releases. Here's the parts list I'm considering: a Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, GeForce RTX 5090, premium ASUS motherboard and liquid cooler, 64GB of DDR5 memory, a 4TB NVMe SSD, and a 5120×2160 165Hz OLED ultrawide monitor. I was also considering an ASUS Dark Hero or Glacial motherboard, but I'm unsure whether those upgrades would provide any real gaming benefit. Is this already beyond the point of diminishing returns, or are there any worthwhile changes I should make? This is only my second build, so I'd appreciate advice about compatibility, value, and less obvious considerations.
4 Answers
The expensive ASUS components are where I’d look for savings. The flagship motherboard, premium AIO, and ultra-high-end SSD do not improve frame rates. A good B850 motherboard, a capable mainstream cooler, and a quality 4TB PCIe 4.0 drive would deliver essentially the same gaming experience for much less. The SSD in particular appears dramatically overpriced for gaming, since faster benchmark numbers rarely translate into meaningful game performance improvements.
This is essentially a 4K ultrawide rather than a traditional 5K 5120×2880 display, and the RTX 5090 is already well beyond the point of diminishing returns for gaming. The CPU is also an excellent choice, but a premium motherboard will not increase gaming performance. A less expensive B850 board should be perfectly adequate. Since this is meant to be an all-out system, 64GB of DDR5 is reasonable, though 32GB is still enough for most games. The monitor’s resolution will put most of the workload on the GPU, so a slightly cheaper CPU would also perform similarly in many situations.
The 9950X3D2 is not likely to offer a noticeable gaming advantage over a 9800X3D, especially at this resolution, where the RTX 5090 will usually be the limiting factor. You can use a cheaper processor and still get excellent results, although keeping the higher-end CPU is fine if the budget is flexible. Just verify the graphics card’s actual availability and price—some listings show unrealistic prices for cards that are not genuinely in stock.
At this resolution, faster RAM or a more expensive motherboard would be mostly theoretical gains. Stability and reliable memory settings matter more than chasing tiny specification differences.
Overall, the build is already maxed out for practical gaming purposes. The only clearly questionable part is the 4TB SSD if you do not actually need that much space. Keep the 5090 if you want the best possible performance, but consider redirecting the motherboard, cooler, storage, and ASUS branding budget toward games or future upgrades.
The display is 5120×2160, so it has about 1.3 times the pixels of 4K—not two 4K screens combined. It is still an extremely demanding ultrawide resolution.