I'm building my first PC after using the same prebuilt for about seven years. I recently started my first full-time job, so my original budget of around $3,000 has grown closer to $4,000. I mainly want the system for gaming, including Deadlock, Total War: Warhammer III, RimWorld, Elden Ring, League of Legends, Overwatch, and Valorant.
I currently use a 34-inch Alienware QD-OLED ultrawide running at 165 Hz. The monitor is 1440p ultrawide rather than 4K. I'd like the new system to last as long as possible, but I'm not very experienced with PC building and suspect some of these parts may be unnecessarily expensive.
The current list includes a Ryzen 7 9850X3D, a 360 mm LCD liquid cooler, an ASRock B850 motherboard, 32 GB of DDR5-6000 memory, a 4 TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD, an RTX 5080, a Lian Li O11 Dynamic Mini case, a 1,000 W power supply, and six case fans, for a total of about $4,277. I do need a large SSD because my existing two 1 TB external SSDs are full and I keep a large backlog of games installed.
Where would you cut costs without giving up good gaming performance? I'm especially wondering whether the CPU, graphics card, cooler, SSD, and memory are overkill. I'm also interested in understanding what makes one motherboard worth buying over another.
4 Answers
The parts are compatible and high-end, but the build is aimed more at showing off than maximizing value. At 1440p ultrawide, a 5080 and the top-end X3D processor may not provide a noticeable improvement over cheaper options in many games. Some titles are capped at 60 FPS, while others will already run near the monitor’s 165 Hz limit on much less expensive hardware.
A 7800X3D bundle, if available at a good price, could be a sensible starting point. It would leave room to upgrade the CPU later while still being excellent for gaming. You could also put the savings toward a better-value graphics card or simply keep the money.
A 1,000 W power supply is reasonable with an RTX 5080, but if you move to a lower-power graphics card, a quality 750–850 W unit should be enough. Six fans are not automatically necessary either, especially if the case already includes fans or you can use cheaper non-RGB models. Keep the airflow balanced with front or bottom intake and rear or top exhaust rather than buying fans purely for appearance.
The biggest red flags are the $760 4 TB SSD, the $180 liquid cooler, and the $1,800 RTX 5080. A good PCIe 4.0 4 TB drive should cost dramatically less, and you will not notice the extra PCIe 5.0 speed in games. A quality $40–$60 air cooler should handle an X3D gaming CPU well too.
For a 1440p ultrawide display, an RX 9070 XT is worth considering at roughly half the price, unless you specifically need CUDA, certain ray-tracing features, or Nvidia’s superior video encoder. If you prefer Nvidia, a 5070 Ti may be a better value than the 5080. The Ryzen 7 9850X3D is powerful, but a less expensive X3D model should still perform extremely well, including in simulation-heavy games such as RimWorld and Project Zomboid.
A motherboard generally affects connectivity, expansion, power delivery, memory support, storage slots, networking, and firmware features. It does not directly make games run faster when the CPU, memory, and graphics card are the same. You usually do not need an expensive board unless you need specific USB ports, Wi-Fi, more M.2 slots, stronger overclocking support, or a particular layout.
The B850 board you chose should be adequate for a gaming system. Spending more on the motherboard will not solve high room temperatures either. Nearly all the power used by the CPU and GPU eventually becomes heat in the room; a large liquid cooler can lower component temperatures, but it cannot make the room cooler. Good airflow and a reasonably efficient build matter more.
I definitely want to reduce the cost, so the 9070 XT is appealing at that price. I’ll keep the 4 TB capacity because my backlog is huge, but I’m comfortable switching to a cheaper PCIe 4.0 drive.