I'm planning my first gaming PC with a budget of roughly £1,300, not including peripherals. I'll mainly be playing multiplayer games such as The Finals, Apex Legends, and Counter-Strike, with some single-player games occasionally. After doing some research, I put together the parts below and would appreciate feedback on compatibility, value, and performance. In particular, I'm unsure whether the RX 9060 XT is the right graphics card for this use case or whether spending another £100–£200 on a stronger GPU would be worthwhile.
The current build is:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X — £164.99
- CPU cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE — £38.38
- Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi — £130.97
- Memory: 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 — £329.99
- Storage: Crucial P310 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD — £148.94
- Graphics card: Gigabyte Gaming OC Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB — £431.99
- Case: Montech XR — £49.99
- Power supply: Gigabyte P850GM 850W Gold — £62.94
The listed total is £1,358.19, although I'm open to changing parts to improve performance or bring the price closer to budget.
4 Answers
I would replace the Gigabyte P850GM with a reputable 650W–750W model from a well-regarded range, such as the Corsair RM series. The wattage isn’t the main issue; power-supply quality and warranty matter more. A good 750W unit will comfortably run this build and leave enough headroom for most upgrades. I’d also consider Sapphire or XFX for the Radeon card, depending on pricing and cooler reviews.
I’d look carefully at the graphics-card upgrade options. If you can find an RX 9070 GRE for around £70 more, roughly 25% extra performance could be worthwhile, while an RX 9070 for about £120 more would be a much larger jump. That said, the 9060 XT is already a sensible match for competitive shooters, so the upgrade mainly matters if you expect to play more demanding single-player games at 1440p.
There are two places where the prices look unusually high: the memory and the SSD. £330 for 32GB of DDR5 is far too much, and you should be able to find a similar 6000MT/s kit for dramatically less. You can also save money with a cheaper 1TB NVMe drive; gaming generally won’t show much practical difference between a decent PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0 SSD. Put those savings toward the GPU if you want more single-player performance.
The build should be very strong for high-refresh-rate competitive games, and the 16GB RX 9060 XT is enough for the titles you listed. Since those games are often CPU-limited, prioritising the processor makes sense if you’re targeting very high frame rates. A Ryzen 5 7500X3D could be worth considering, although the 9600X is still a capable choice. The 850W supply is more than this system needs, but it does leave room for a future upgrade.
If your monitor is below 240Hz, the 9600X is probably already plenty for a smooth experience. I’d only prioritise the X3D chip if you specifically want the highest possible competitive frame rates.
A quality 750W unit is plenty here. You don’t need to spend much more for one with better components and a longer warranty, and that’s a better place to spend money than keeping an oversized budget PSU.