I'm putting together a gaming PC in Australia with a budget of about $3,750 AUD. The current build uses a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. Are there sensible component changes that would bring the price down while keeping performance strong? I'm mainly targeting 1440p gaming, though I'd also like the system to handle 4K reasonably well. I'm open to changing the CPU, graphics card, storage, motherboard, cooler, or power supply, but I don't want to make sacrifices that will be obvious in games.
4 Answers
For 1440p, a Ryzen 7 7800X3D could save roughly $250 while usually giving up only a small amount of gaming performance compared with the 9800X3D. At 4K the difference is even harder to notice because the graphics card is normally the limiting factor. I’d put the savings toward a 2TB SSD, since modern game installs fill a 1TB drive very quickly.
The biggest saving is replacing the RTX 5070 Ti with a Radeon RX 9070 XT. In Australia, the 9070 XT is often hundreds of dollars cheaper while delivering similar conventional gaming performance. The main compromises are weaker ray tracing and less mature upscaling support compared with NVIDIA’s DLSS, so stick with the 5070 Ti only if those features are especially important to you.
A similarly priced prebuilt with an RTX 5080 may be worth checking before buying each part separately. The 5080 is faster than the 5070 Ti, although some prebuilts use a weaker or less upgradeable CPU platform and may cut corners on cooling. Check the motherboard, power supply, memory, storage, and cooler carefully rather than judging the deal by the graphics card alone.
There are also easy savings in the supporting parts. A cheaper Thermalright tower cooler is sufficient, and you can use a less expensive AM5 motherboard without losing meaningful gaming performance. Look for a reliable 850W Gold power supply with enough PCIe connectors for the graphics card; some models only include one 8-pin connector even though many cards need two. DDR5-6000 is already a sensible target, so paying extra for faster memory is not essential unless the price difference is tiny.
I agree with dropping to the 7800X3D if the goal is value, but I’d keep the 9800X3D if the budget allows and the system is intended to last several years. The graphics card choice will make a much larger difference to the total price.