I'm looking for advice on building my first high-end gaming PC. My total budget is around $4,000, although I can go roughly $200–$300 over if the upgrade is worthwhile. I'm in the United States and don't have much experience choosing PC parts, so I'd really appreciate a complete, balanced build recommendation.
The system will mainly be used for regular gaming and VR gaming. I've used VR for several hours a day in the past, although lately I've only been playing for about 30–60 minutes because my current Quest 3 is nearly worn out. I'm also considering buying a Bigscreen Beyond 2e separately after the PC, so that headset should not be included in the budget.
I'd also like a 34-inch or larger curved OLED monitor with a 240Hz refresh rate. My current monitor is an Odyssey G40B, and I'm ready for a substantial upgrade. Should the monitor be included in the $4,000 budget, or would it make more sense to spend most of that on the PC and buy the display separately? I'm open to buying from retailers such as Micro Center, considering bundle deals, or possibly using safe open-box options if that makes the budget go further.
2 Answers
A high-end build with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, a strong motherboard and memory bundle, a 360mm cooler, a quality case, a 1TB PCIe 5.0 SSD plus a 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and a 1,000W power supply would fit the use case well. Depending on current pricing, an RTX 5080-class card could put the tower somewhere around $2,500–$3,000 before taxes. That leaves room for a premium OLED display and peripherals, assuming the monitor is part of the same budget.
Don’t assume you need the most expensive graphics card. An RTX 5070 Ti or Radeon RX 9070 XT could offer nearly the same practical experience for considerably less, especially if you’re targeting high refresh rates at 1440p ultrawide rather than demanding 4K settings. Micro Center bundles can also reduce the cost of the processor, motherboard, and RAM. A prebuilt is worth comparing too, since some current deals have much smaller markups than they used to.
That sounds close to what I had in mind. I’m mainly trying to avoid wasting money on parts that won’t noticeably improve gaming or VR performance.