I'm putting together a new PC mainly for 1440p gaming, coding, and some light Blender work. My current system has a GTX 1050 Ti and an i5-6500, so this would be a major upgrade. I chose a large 360 mm AIO because I may upgrade later, but I'm concerned about radiator or fan clearance around the motherboard heatsinks and memory. Could you check the compatibility and let me know whether any parts should be changed?
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
CPU cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer III Pro A-RGB 360
Motherboard: MSI MAG X870 TOMAHAWK WIFI, ATX, AM5
Memory: Patriot Viper Venom 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 2 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
Graphics card: PNY OC GeForce RTX 5070 12 GB
Case: Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini V2
Power supply: MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5, 750 W, 80+ Gold, fully modular
Fans: Three ARCTIC P12 Pro A-RGB 120 mm fans and three ARCTIC P12 Pro Reverse A-RGB 120 mm fans
3 Answers
If the X870 board is priced well, it’s perfectly reasonable, but a B850 board could save money while still providing the features this build needs. The 7800X3D, DDR5-6000 memory, and RTX 5070 should be a strong combination for 1440p gaming, and the listed 750 W supply should be adequate for the current parts.
An RX 9070 XT is another strong 1440p option and may offer excellent rasterized performance. However, sticking with Nvidia makes sense if you rely on its software, ray tracing, CUDA support, or Blender features.
The 360 mm liquid cooler is a good-quality choice rather than an unreasonable one, although it may be more cooling than the 7800X3D strictly needs. The main thing to verify is the case’s radiator and motherboard clearance, especially with the Liquid Freezer’s thicker radiator and VRM fan assembly. I’d also consider an 850 W power supply if you want more headroom for a future graphics-card upgrade. For the SSD, a less expensive 2 TB PCIe 4.0 model could offer nearly identical gaming load times.
Is the Lexar NM790 a good alternative? I assumed the 990 Pro would provide noticeably faster load times, but I’m wondering whether there’s any meaningful difference in everyday gaming.
I know the 9070 XT is appealing, but I do Blender work and really prefer Nvidia’s features, so I’d rather stay with the RTX card.