I'm planning to build a gaming PC and would like to keep the budget around £1,150–£1,300, though I could stretch to a maximum of £1,600 if the extra money makes a meaningful difference. Peripherals aren't included. I'm considering an RTX 5070 with a Ryzen 5 9600X, but I'm unsure whether DDR5 is worth prioritizing given current memory pricing. Would an RX 9070 or RX 9070 XT offer better value? I'd also appreciate recommendations for the motherboard, RAM, storage, power supply, case, and cooling.
4 Answers
For the higher budget, I’d put the extra money into the GPU and power supply rather than paying a premium for a motherboard or a slightly faster CPU. Keeping the more affordable CPU and board while stepping up to an RX 9070 XT should provide a more noticeable gaming improvement.
If you’re willing to spend the full £1,600, check complete systems using a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RX 9070 XT with 32GB of RAM. A deal around that price can be worthwhile, even if building yourself is normally cheaper, because the CPU and GPU combination is excellent for high-refresh-rate 1440p gaming.
The RX 9070 is generally faster than the RTX 5070 in regular rasterized gaming and gives you 16GB of VRAM, making it a strong choice for 1440p and some 4K gaming. Since the Ryzen 5 9600X uses the AM5 platform, DDR5 is required anyway. If you want to save money, the Ryzen 5 7600X should deliver similar gaming performance and leave more of the budget for the graphics card.
At around £1,200, I’d avoid spending too much of the budget on the RTX 5070. A Ryzen 5 7500F, an affordable AM5 motherboard, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and a Radeon card such as the RX 9060 XT 16GB can make a balanced system. Just make sure to use two memory sticks for dual-channel performance rather than one 16GB stick. A 2x16GB DDR5-6000 kit would be a better target.
The single-stick memory setup would limit performance, so dual-channel RAM is definitely worth prioritizing. Also, the listed prices looked inconsistent, so double-check current UK pricing before ordering.