I'm putting together a gaming PC for my girlfriend in the United States. The current parts list comes to about $1,556, but I'd like to reduce it by a few hundred dollars and land between $1,000 and $1,200. The main goal is comfortable 1080p gaming for less demanding titles, while still using parts with good longevity and performance per dollar. We already have a suitable monitor, so that does not need to be included. I'm open to changing the CPU, motherboard, cooler, memory, storage, graphics card, or operating system as long as the final build remains balanced and reliable.
4 Answers
The hardware should work together, but the operating system is another place to cut the total. Windows can be installed without immediately buying a retail license, or you could consider a beginner-friendly Linux gaming distribution if the games she plays support it. Steam-focused gaming can work very well on Linux, though game compatibility should be checked first.
You can save money by replacing the liquid cooler with a decent air cooler and choosing a more affordable B650 motherboard. The current board is overkill for this CPU and graphics card. The graphics card could also be changed to a Radeon RX 9060 XT, depending on local pricing, for strong 1080p performance at a lower cost.
A Ryzen 5 7600X paired with a Radeon RX 9060-class card could reduce the total while still being excellent for 1080p gaming. For this use case, the 9600X and premium motherboard do not add enough practical performance to justify their cost. A basic tower air cooler and a less expensive B650 board should be plenty.
The memory price is the biggest obvious problem here. $260 for 16GB is far too high, so look for a 32GB kit of DDR5-6000 with reasonable timings instead. That should give you more capacity and potentially cost much less. The 1TB SSD price also looks inflated, so compare other reputable PCIe 4.0 drives.
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