I'm planning to build a gaming PC myself and have a budget of roughly €800–€1,000, although I could spend a little more if the upgrade is genuinely worthwhile. I'm in Germany and already own a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals, so I only need the components inside the PC. The system will mainly be used for 1080p gaming, and I'm prioritizing strong price-to-performance and reasonable longevity over RGB lighting or premium aesthetics. I'm open to either AMD or NVIDIA and would appreciate recommendations for the CPU, graphics card, memory, storage, motherboard, power supply, and case.
3 Answers
For this budget, prioritize the graphics card. A Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 on the AM4 platform paired with 32GB of DDR4 can leave more money for the GPU. A Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB would be a strong 1080p choice if prices come down enough, but the complete system may exceed €1,000. A 650W power supply and a 1TB NVMe SSD are sensible targets.
A practical build that stays near budget would use a Ryzen 7 5700, a B550 motherboard, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a 1TB NVMe drive, and an Arc B580 12GB graphics card. Add an inexpensive tower cooler, airflow-focused case, and decent 650W power supply. It should land around €940, though upgrading to 32GB of RAM later would be worthwhile.
The games you play should decide the balance. Competitive games may run perfectly well with a cheaper CPU and a stronger GPU, while CPU-heavy simulation or strategy games benefit from a better processor. Buying some parts used can also help a lot, especially the motherboard, DDR4 memory, or an older RTX card. Just check the card carefully and test it before relying on it.
The newer AM5 platform with DDR5 and a high-end 16GB graphics card is attractive, but current German pricing makes fitting all of that into this budget unrealistic. AM4 or a discounted used platform gives you much more GPU performance today.