My old PC finally died, so I'm planning to build a new system from scratch. I use a 27-inch 1440p monitor locked to 120Hz. I mainly play League of Legends, although I might try Valorant in the future. I used to play Tekken 8 but no longer play it, and I'm not interested in demanding single-player or PvE games.
I'd prefer to stay on AM4 with 16GB of DDR4 to keep costs down. My workload will mostly be League, Discord, and a browser, and I expect to keep the system for many years. I'm looking for the cheapest CPU and GPU combination that can reliably deliver at least 120 FPS in League at 1440p. New parts are preferred, especially for the graphics card, since I'm hesitant about buying used hardware.
3 Answers
For AM4, the Ryzen 5 5600 is the better value if the price difference from the 5500 is reasonable. The 5500 should still exceed 120 FPS in League most of the time, but the 5600 has stronger overall performance and may produce smoother frame times. A Ryzen 5 5700X is also an option, though it’s probably unnecessary for League, Discord, and browsing. Pair it with a new RTX 5050-class card and 16GB of dual-channel DDR4.
A Ryzen 5 5600X with an Intel Arc B580 would be a much stronger combination, but it’s more graphics performance than you need for League at 1440p and 120Hz. High-end combinations such as an i5-14400 or i5-14600K with a Radeon 9070 GRE are massive overkill for your target and don’t fit the AM4 requirement.
A Ryzen 5 5500 paired with a B550 motherboard and 16GB of DDR4-3200 would be enough for this use case. For the GPU, a used RTX 3060 12GB offers plenty of performance and should handle 1440p esports gaming easily. Make sure the memory is two 8GB sticks so it runs in dual-channel mode. If you want to avoid used parts, look for a new card in the RTX 5050 performance range instead.
I’m a little nervous about used parts. Is there a new graphics card with roughly the same performance as an RTX 3060?
That kind of setup seems excessive for a game that only needs 1440p at 120Hz. I’m specifically trying to keep the graphics card and the rest of the build as cheap as possible.