I'm in England and currently play on a PS5, but I'd like to build a gaming PC for around £500–£600. I mainly want to play Fortnite, Rocket League, Minecraft, and older popular PC games. I'm not especially concerned about demanding games such as Warzone, Black Ops, or Cyberpunk, although I'd like the option to run them at 1080p on reduced settings with a stable frame rate.
My monitor is 165Hz, and I'd ideally like around 120 FPS. For most games I'd prefer 1440p, but I'm happy to drop demanding titles to 1080p or lower their settings. Used parts are fine, especially the GPU and RAM.
My current parts list is roughly:
- Used Radeon RX 5700 GPU: £115
- Ryzen 5 5500 CPU: £80
- Gigabyte B550M DS3H R2 motherboard: £80
- Used 16GB DDR4 RAM: £60
- Case: around £45
- 1TB SSD: around £100
- Power supply: around £41
Is this budget and parts list realistic for my target performance? Are there any components I should change or ways to get better value?
3 Answers
The RX 5700 and Ryzen 5 5500 can make a decent budget system, but 1440p at 120 FPS across modern games is too ambitious for this level of hardware. Competitive games should be fine at 1080p and often 120 FPS or higher, while older games may run well at 1440p. Modern AAA games will generally be closer to 1080p at around 60 FPS on medium settings.
Used parts can make this budget work, but you don’t need to buy everything at once. Check local listings and auction sites over time, since GPUs, memory, and even complete systems often appear at much better prices. A used complete PC could offer better value than buying each part separately.
If you can stretch the budget, a stronger AM4 gaming CPU such as a Ryzen 7 5700X3D would improve minimum frame rates and make the system last longer, but it may not be the best use of money if it forces you to downgrade the GPU or PSU. For this budget, keeping the Ryzen 5 5500 and putting the savings toward the graphics card is probably the more balanced choice.
The 5500 is fine for a low-cost build, especially for Fortnite, Rocket League, Minecraft, and older games. Just don’t expect a 165Hz experience at 1440p in demanding modern titles.
For games from the PS4 era and older, 1440p should be quite achievable. The biggest compromises will be in newer and more demanding games.