I'm planning a completely new PC build around November and would like some advice before spending roughly €3,000–€3,500. I'm based in Romania and may be able to find unusually good local deals, including a Ryzen 9 9950X3D for about €500 and 64GB of DDR5-6000 CL30 for around €800 rather than their usual higher prices.
My current system is a Ryzen 7 5700X3D, Radeon RX 7700 XT 12GB, 16GB DDR4-3600, ASUS ROG Strix B550-A motherboard, Corsair RM750x PSU, DeepCool LS720 SE cooler, and DeepCool CH560 Digital case. I use two 1440p 240Hz monitors.
The PC is mainly for gaming and demanding video work. I play Forza Horizon 6 and want strong 1440p performance at very high settings, ideally with ray tracing and minimal reliance on upscaling or frame generation. I also use Premiere Pro, After Effects, CapCut, DaVinci Resolve, and OBS with 4K footage, heavy effects, masks, overlays, and motion blur. I'm increasingly editing projects for other people, so I want several years of comfortable performance rather than just a gaming upgrade.
The potential new build would use a Ryzen 9 9950X3D, 64GB DDR5-6000 CL30, an RTX 5080, a suitable B850 motherboard, and an appropriately sized PSU. I'm unsure whether to build everything in November, buy particularly good deals now and assemble later, or simply keep my current PC and upgrade it. I'm especially unsure about the RTX 5080: at roughly €1,700, is it a reasonable purchase for high-end 1440p gaming and editing, or excessive for my needs? Would pairing it with the 9950X3D and 64GB of RAM be sensible for my workload, or am I overspending?
3 Answers
Your current PC is still quite capable, so there’s no urgent reason to replace the entire platform. Adding another 16GB or moving to 32GB or 64GB of DDR4 would help your editing workload immediately. You could then wait for a later platform generation and upgrade the GPU when there’s a genuinely worthwhile deal. A faster card such as an RX 9070 XT, RX 9070, or comparable model could also provide a substantial 1440p improvement without rebuilding everything.
It may be worth revisiting your dislike of upscaling before deciding. Older FSR implementations and visible frame-generation artifacts can look poor, especially when recording detailed game footage, but newer DLSS and FSR versions can be much better depending on the game and settings. Native rendering is still preferable when possible, but refusing all upscaling can push you toward paying a lot more for performance you may not always need.
For your editing work, 64GB is a sensible target, and an Nvidia GPU can be valuable because of CUDA support, NVENC, and broad application compatibility. The 9950X3D is powerful, but it may not be the best-value choice unless you specifically want top-tier gaming performance as well as heavy productivity performance. A non-X3D high-core-count Ryzen 9 could be worth comparing if editing is becoming the priority.
I would be cautious about paying €1,700 for a 5080. That price only makes sense if it is substantially better priced than the alternatives available when you actually build. At 1440p, it is a luxury purchase rather than a necessity, especially with your two monitors. Keep the current system until the rest of the parts and the GPU can be bought at sensible prices.
That’s fair. I have very high standards when checking details in recorded footage, so even small artifacts make me wary of DLSS and frame generation. I should probably test the newer versions myself instead of judging them only by older FSR results.