I'm planning a new gaming PC and would appreciate advice on whether these parts are well balanced: MSI AM5 B850 Gaming Plus motherboard, AMD Ryzen 7 9700X, Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5070 Windforce OC, Patriot Viper Venom 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 EXPO memory, Kingston NV3 2TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, DeepCool GamerStorm PN750-M 750W 80+ Gold PSU, Arctic Liquid Freezer III Pro 360mm AIO, and DeepCool CG530 4F case.
The SSD is my main concern. Is the Kingston NV3 good enough for gaming, or would it be worth spending €70–80 more on a Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB or Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB with a heatsink? I'm also considering cheaper G.Skill Ripjaws DDR5-6000 CL36 memory using Intel XMP instead of AMD EXPO, which would save about €40. Would that small RAM performance difference be noticeable, and would it make more sense to put the savings toward a better SSD?
I'm also unsure whether the Ryzen 7 9700X is worthwhile. In my area, the Ryzen 5 9600X costs €220, the Ryzen 7 7700X costs €245, and the Ryzen 7 9700X costs €275. Finally, is a 360mm liquid cooler excessive for these CPUs, and should I consider an AMD graphics card such as the RX 9070 XT? The RTX 5070 costs about €850, while the RX 9070 XT is around €800, but I'm more familiar with NVIDIA's DLSS features.
5 Answers
A 360mm AIO is overkill for the 9600X and 9700X. A good air cooler, such as a Thermalright Peerless Assassin, Phantom Spirit, or DeepCool AK620, should be enough and will usually cost less while being simpler and more reliable. A 240mm AIO would also handle these processors, but it may not offer a meaningful advantage over a quality tower cooler.
The 9700X is reasonable, but it isn’t automatically the best value for a dedicated gaming build. At those prices, the 9600X is attractive, especially if the system is mainly for gaming and the €55 difference can be used elsewhere. The 9700X’s extra cores may help with multitasking and future workloads, but they won’t transform gaming performance. The 7700X only makes much sense if it is notably cheaper than the 9700X.
The RX 9070 XT is worth serious consideration at €800 versus €850 for the RTX 5070. It generally offers more raw performance and more VRAM, which can help with higher resolutions and future games. NVIDIA still has advantages in DLSS, ray tracing in some titles, and software familiarity, so the RTX 5070 is not a bad choice if those features matter to you. Otherwise, the AMD card looks like the stronger value at those prices.
For gaming, the NV3 should be fast enough in day-to-day use, and a more expensive flagship SSD usually won’t improve frame rates or loading times by much. I would be more cautious about the NV3’s reputation and would compare prices with other reputable TLC-based PCIe 4.0 drives, such as the UD90, NQ790, or SN5100. If one of those is similarly priced, it may be a better compromise than paying a large premium for the Samsung or Fury drive.
The Patriot kit is a good match for Ryzen: DDR5-6000, CL30, and EXPO are all sensible choices. The cheaper CL36 XMP kit will probably work too, but it may require enabling the profile manually and could be roughly 1–2% slower in some situations. If the €40 saving matters, the cheaper kit is perfectly usable; otherwise, the CL30 EXPO kit is the nicer plug-and-play option.
I originally leaned toward the 9700X because it was only €30 more than the 7700X and I thought eight cores would be better long term, but I’m now considering putting the €55 saved by choosing the 9600X toward another component.