I originally planned to spend about $1,300 on my first gaming PC, but choosing the parts brought the total closer to $1,400. I'm hoping to find ways to save roughly $100 or improve performance without increasing the budget. The current build uses a Ryzen 5 9600X, Peerless Assassin 120 SE cooler, RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, 16GB of DDR5-5200 memory, an MSI B650 Tomahawk WiFi motherboard, a 1TB Patriot P400 Lite SSD, and a 650W MSI MAG power supply. I mainly want to play Rainbow Six Siege, Rocket League, and Minecraft at 1080p to 1440p with around 120–144 FPS, along with occasional more demanding games such as ARK. I'm new to PC building, so I'd appreciate advice on where the money could be better spent or which parts could be downgraded safely.
5 Answers
The regular Ryzen 5 9600 or even the Ryzen 5 7600X may be better value than the 9600X. Also check different manufacturers for the graphics card instead of automatically choosing the first 5060 Ti available. The RX 9060 XT is another option if you don’t need NVIDIA-specific features such as DLSS or CUDA.
For a gaming-focused build, you could replace the 9600X with a Ryzen 5 7500F and likely save around $40–$60 without giving up much gaming performance. You could also compare the RTX 5060 Ti against the RX 9060 XT, since the Radeon card may offer better performance per dollar. Those changes should bring the build closer to the original $1,300 target.
The 5060 Ti 8GB looks like the weakest value in this list. An RX 9060 XT 16GB could cost less while offering similar raw performance and more VRAM. If your budget can stretch slightly, a Radeon 9070 GRE would be a much stronger option for 1440p and could be roughly 20–30% faster, depending on the game.
Look for current CPU, motherboard, and memory bundles from major computer retailers. A bundle can sometimes save enough to cover the extra $100, although some deals require picking everything up in person. Also, 16GB of RAM is workable, but 32GB would be a worthwhile upgrade if you can fit it into the budget, especially for Minecraft with mods and newer games.
The 650W power supply should be adequate for this setup, but if you expect to install a substantially more powerful graphics card later, a quality 750W unit would give you more headroom. I wouldn’t sacrifice the motherboard or power-supply quality just to save a small amount; the CPU and GPU are the better places to adjust first.
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