I'm putting together my first gaming PC with a budget of roughly £1,500. Does this build offer good value, or are there changes I should make? I'm mainly interested in games such as Satisfactory, Cities: Skylines 2, and Apex Legends, so performance in simulation-heavy games as well as high-refresh-rate competitive games matters to me.
4 Answers
The overall build looks solid, but there are a few easy places to reduce the cost. A Thermalright Peerless Assassin or similar air cooler should be plenty for a first build and costs less than a larger cooler. DDR5-6000 CL30 memory is also preferable to CL36 if the price difference is small. The case is mostly a personal choice, so you could save money there as well.
Consider a newer B850 motherboard if the price is close to the B840 option. It should give you a more up-to-date platform, while using an air cooler and a reasonably priced 32GB memory kit can free up enough money to move up to the RX 9070 XT.
You can get a noticeably faster graphics card for about the same overall budget. A Ryzen 5 9600X paired with an RX 9070 XT, 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and an 850W Gold-rated power supply would make a strong gaming build. The 9070 XT is especially worthwhile if you want high settings and good longevity.
You probably don’t need an 850W power supply for this system. A good-quality 600W–750W unit should be sufficient, depending on the final graphics card and the manufacturer’s recommendation. Just make sure it’s from a reputable model range rather than choosing solely by wattage.
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