I'm planning a new PC primarily for gaming, especially titles like inZOI, Planet Zoo, and Frostpunk, with high graphics settings. I may also need to use it for professional rendering in V-Ray and 3ds Max if I change jobs and no longer have access to a company computer. My budget is €3,000–€3,500, excluding peripherals, and I'd like the system to remain capable for several years. I'm located in Italy. An initial suggested configuration included an RTX 5080 or possibly an RTX 5090, a Ryzen 9 9950X or 9950X3D, 64 GB of DDR5 memory, a 2 TB NVMe SSD, an X870/X870E motherboard, a 360 mm liquid cooler, and a 1,000–1,200 W power supply. Does this make sense for my needs and budget, or would you recommend a different balance of parts?
3 Answers
You could reduce the memory to 32 GB and use an RTX 5080 to keep the build within budget. That should be a strong gaming configuration, and memory can be upgraded later if your rendering projects start exceeding 32 GB. I’d still check whether your specific V-Ray workflow uses the GPU, since GPU rendering can benefit substantially from additional VRAM.
The suggested build doesn’t appear to account for current European pricing. An RTX 5090 alone can cost several thousand euros, and high-capacity DDR5 memory is unusually expensive right now. Before choosing parts, it’s important to check Italian prices and decide how much rendering you’ll actually do, whether it will be CPU- or GPU-based, and what resolution you’ll game at. Since you don’t need peripherals included, the budget should still allow for a strong system, but the parts list needs to be built around real local prices rather than generic recommendations.
For a mixed gaming and rendering system, I’d choose the regular Ryzen 9 9950X rather than the 9950X3D. The extra 3D cache mainly benefits certain games and doesn’t help V-Ray rendering, while the standard chip can cost less and perform slightly better in heavily threaded workloads. If you render with V-Ray GPU, NVIDIA’s CUDA support and VRAM capacity matter more, so putting more of the budget toward the graphics card may be worthwhile. A 5090 would be excellent, but only if it fits the budget after the rest of the system is priced realistically.
That makes sense. I’ll compare the regular 9950X with other current CPU options and see how much room remains for the graphics card.
An Intel Core Ultra 9 285K or similar high-end Intel chip could also be considered, depending on current Italian pricing and the applications you use most.
I’m in Italy and will mainly use the PC for gaming at high settings, but I may also use it for work-related rendering. Peripherals don’t need to be included in the budget.