I'm in the UK and planning to upgrade my current gaming PC from an RTX 2080 to an RTX 5070, with about £700 set aside for the graphics card. I'd also like a 34-inch 3440×1440 OLED ultrawide monitor for roughly £600, mainly because I want much better black levels than my current Acer Z35.
My current system has an Intel i9-9900K, RTX 2080, MSI Z390 motherboard, 16GB DDR4, an 850W Corsair PSU, a 500GB NVMe SSD, a 240mm AIO and a CyberPower case. After the upgrade, I'll have the RTX 2080 available for my partner's gaming PC.
She already has a 1080p BenQ monitor and has a total budget of around £800 for the PC, keyboard, mouse and headset. Ideally, I'd spend about £700 on the computer and £100 on peripherals. I'm considering an AM5 system with a Ryzen 5 7600 or 7600X, a B650 motherboard, 16GB or 32GB of DDR5, a 1TB NVMe SSD, a reliable PSU, a basic airflow-focused case and Windows, using my RTX 2080 as the graphics card.
I'm not confident building an entire PC from separate components, although I'd be comfortable installing the graphics card into an otherwise complete system. I'd prefer a reputable UK company to build and test it, but I'm also considering buying the parts and paying a local shop, purchasing a prebuilt system, or finding a builder that accepts a customer-supplied GPU.
What would be the most sensible real-world approach? Should I have a company build around the RTX 2080, buy a complete PC, install the card myself, or consider giving my existing i9 system to my partner and building a new AM5 system for myself?
2 Answers
Some UK system builders let you order a PC without a graphics card and either install your supplied card or leave the installation to you. That could be a good compromise if you don’t want to assemble the whole machine. Make sure the chosen power supply has enough capacity and the correct connectors for the RTX 2080; a parts-list calculator can give you a reasonable estimate. Removing the GPU from the builder’s specification should leave more of the budget for the CPU, motherboard, memory and storage.
It may be worth reconsidering which machine goes to whom. Rather than building a new £700 system around the RTX 2080, you could give your partner the existing i9-9900K system after cleaning it up or moving it into a cheaper case, then use your upgrade budget to build yourself a newer AM5 system. That gives her a strong 1080p gaming PC and avoids paying for assembly around an older graphics card.
That’s a good point, and several people have suggested the same thing. I’m going to spend some time comparing complete systems for myself before deciding which machine makes the most sense for each of us.