I'm helping my brother put together a gaming PC with a total budget of about $1,400 CAD, including a monitor. He mainly wants to play Call of Duty: Warzone, Marvel Rivals, Total War: Warhammer III, Subnautica, and GTA. Nothing has been purchased yet. The current parts list is a Ryzen 5 5500, ASUS Prime B550M-A WiFi II motherboard, 16GB of DDR4-3600 memory, a 1TB Kingston NV3 NVMe SSD, an ASRock Radeon RX 7600 8GB graphics card, a 650W Seasonic Gold modular power supply, and a DeepCool Macube 110 case. We were initially considering a 27-inch 1440p 180Hz monitor, but after realizing the difference between resolutions, we're now looking at 1080p instead. Is this a good 1080p build, and are there any parts we should change or other tips we should know before buying?
4 Answers
Check the monitor specification carefully. The model listed is a 27-inch QHD display, which means 2560x1440 rather than 1920x1080. It will work, but the RX 7600 won’t be as comfortable at 1440p, particularly in demanding games. A 24-inch 1080p monitor usually looks sharper than a 27-inch 1080p monitor because the pixels are packed more closely.
The parts are generally compatible, but the Ryzen 5 5500 is a fairly basic processor and uses PCIe 3.0. If a Ryzen 5 5600 is only a little more expensive, it would be the better choice for gaming and gives you PCIe 4.0 support. The motherboard, power supply, and case are otherwise reasonable for this build.
Canadian component prices can make a new build poor value, so compare several stores and consider reputable used parts. A used graphics card or a complete gaming PC could potentially free enough money for a Ryzen 5 5600, 32GB of RAM, or a stronger GPU. Just test used hardware carefully and avoid saving money on the power supply.
Yes, this should be a decent 1080p gaming system. The RX 7600 is aimed at 1080p, and it should handle these games well with sensible settings. Don’t pair it with a 1440p monitor if you expect high settings and high frame rates on this budget. A 1080p 144Hz or 180Hz display would make more sense. Also, 32GB of RAM would be preferable if the budget allows, especially for Warzone and newer games.
That helps a lot. We’ll stick with 1080p and see whether we can fit 32GB of memory into the budget.