I'm building my first PC with some help from a more experienced friend. The goal is a reasonably compact, inexpensive system that can sit beside or under my TV and be used from the sofa with a controller. I'm aiming to stay below €1,000, using some second-hand parts where possible.
I'm in Croatia, and these are the prices I'm seeing locally. I can get the 16 GB RAM kit from a friend for €50, while the graphics card is flexible. Used RTX 3070 cards are available for around €300, though I might find something better for roughly €350.
The planned parts are:
- Ryzen 5 5600X — €140
- Deepcool GAMMAXX AG400 cooler — €22
- MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI motherboard — €110
- 16 GB Kingston Fury Beast DDR4-3200 CL16 — €50
- WD Blue SN580 1 TB NVMe SSD — €65
- Used Gigabyte RTX 3070 8 GB — around €300
- Lian Li A3-mATX case — €90
- be quiet! Pure Power 13 M 650 W Gold PSU — €132
The total is approximately €909. I know this is an AM4 and DDR4 build, but current AM5 and DDR5 prices in my area make that platform poor value for this particular budget.
The games I'm interested in include various Assassin's Creed games, Resident Evil, GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2, Skyrim, Hogwarts Legacy, and newer releases such as the Shadow and remastered Black Flag titles. I'd like to maintain around 60 FPS at 1080p on medium settings without ray tracing or frame generation. Higher settings or light ray tracing in easier games would be a bonus.
Does this look like a sensible build for that use case? Is the RTX 3070 a good choice, or would a used graphics card with 10–16 GB of VRAM be a better long-term option?
2 Answers
The most important detail is whether the TV is actually 1080p or a 4K model. If it’s a 1080p screen, the RTX 3070 is a reasonable choice for this build. If it’s 4K, even if the TV upscales a 1080p input, you may get a noticeably better image by rendering at a higher internal resolution with upscaling. In that case, something like a used RX 6800 or RX 7700 XT would be a stronger fit, especially because the extra VRAM helps with newer games and high-resolution textures. An 8 GB card can eventually run into severe stuttering in some titles even after lowering settings.
The processor should be fine for this target, and 650 W is more than enough for the system. At 1080p, the RTX 3070 should manage roughly 60 FPS in most of those games at medium settings. Hogwarts Legacy and the newer Assassin’s Creed games are the main concerns, though: the 8 GB of VRAM can cause texture-streaming problems and stuttering when moving through demanding areas, even if the average FPS looks acceptable. I’d keep textures around medium and consider a used 12 GB card if you can find one near the same price.
If I can find a reliable AMD card with 12 GB in the same price range, I’ll consider it. Are 10 GB Nvidia cards enough, or should I specifically target 12–16 GB options?
The TV is probably 4K, although I need to confirm the exact model. I’ve previously streamed or played at 1080p on it and found the image acceptable, but I’ll compare some benchmarks and look into higher-resolution upscaling before choosing the GPU.