I'm putting together a gaming PC and would like to keep the build around £1,150–£1,300, although I could stretch to £1,600 if the extra money provides a meaningful upgrade. Peripherals aren't included. I was considering an RTX 5070 with a Ryzen 5 9600X, but I'm unsure whether DDR5 is worth prioritising given current memory pricing. Would an RX 9070 or RX 9070 XT offer better value, and what would you recommend for the motherboard, RAM, storage, case, cooler, and power supply?
4 Answers
For a build close to £1,200, I’d avoid putting too much of the budget into the CPU. A Ryzen 5 7500F paired with a decent inexpensive cooler, an AM5 motherboard, 32GB of dual-channel DDR5, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and an RX 9060 XT 16GB would make a balanced gaming system. Make sure to buy two memory sticks rather than a single 16GB module, since dual-channel memory improves performance and 32GB is preferable for a new gaming build.
There are also prebuilt deals worth checking. A system with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, RX 9070 XT, and 32GB of RAM for around £1,600 can be good value if the other components—especially the power supply, motherboard, and cooling—aren’t cut down too aggressively. Normally I’d favour building it yourself, but that combination is difficult to match at the same price.
The RX 9070 is generally faster than the RTX 5070 in regular rasterised gaming and its 16GB of VRAM gives it more headroom. It’s a particularly good choice for 1440p and can handle basic 4K gaming. If you’re using a Ryzen 5 9600X, DDR5 is required, so a 32GB DDR5-6000 kit would be the sensible target. For a cheaper build, the Ryzen 5 7600X offers similar gaming performance and leaves more budget for the graphics card.
For the £1,600 version, I’d prioritise the RX 9070 XT and a higher-quality power supply rather than spending the extra money on a more expensive motherboard and CPU. The cheaper CPU platform should still be more than adequate for gaming, while the stronger GPU will make a much bigger difference at 1440p or 4K.
The budget is in pounds rather than dollars, so there may be enough left over to step up to a stronger graphics card instead of settling for the 9060 XT.