A friend needs a new gaming PC soon after saving for several years. He mainly wants to play modern games at 1080p and 144 Hz, though he is comfortable with around 40–50 FPS in the most demanding titles. He is coming from a PS4 and does not need the absolute best graphics settings.
The proposed new-parts build costs €1,261 locally:
- Ryzen 5 7500F — €123
- Arctic Freezer 36 Black — €27
- Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX V2 — €136
- G.Skill Flare X5 16GB (2x8GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 — €312
- Gigabyte Radeon RX 7600 8GB — €343
- Lexar NM790 512GB NVMe SSD — €123
- Seasonic Focus GX ATX 3.1 750W — €122
- Corsair Frame 4000D RS — €75
The original target was €1,000, but local prices made a roughly €200 overspend necessary. An AM4 and DDR4 system would be cheaper, but he specifically prefers AM5 and DDR5 for future upgrade options. He already owns a 1TB hard drive, while the NVMe drive would mainly hold the operating system and a few regularly played games.
Are there any compatibility or value problems here? Would you change anything, particularly the memory, graphics card, or storage?
2 Answers
The SSD is the weakest part of the list from a value and capacity perspective. A 512GB drive is usable for the operating system and a few games, but modern installs can easily take up most of that space. Since he will be juggling a large game library, a 1TB model would be a much more comfortable starting point. The existing hard drive can handle less frequently played games, though loading times will be slower.
Nothing looks fundamentally wrong, and the Ryzen 5 7500F with a proper tower cooler is a sensible budget choice. Before giving it to him, enable EXPO so the memory runs at its rated 6000 MT/s, and consider updating the motherboard BIOS to the latest stable version for improved memory compatibility and training. If there is any room to stretch, 32GB of RAM or a 1TB SSD would be more useful than spending extra elsewhere. Modern games are already starting to make 16GB feel limiting, and 512GB fills up very quickly.
I was already planning to enable EXPO, but I hadn't considered updating the BIOS for newer memory support. A 32GB kit is outside the budget for now, but I'll look for a reasonably priced 1TB NVMe drive.
A 1TB drive may cost roughly twice as much locally, but it provides several times the usable space and should prevent having to uninstall games immediately.