I'm planning a gaming PC with a budget of around £1,600. The current parts list is a B650 motherboard, Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 16GB of DDR5-5600 Corsair Vengeance memory, a Thermalright Peerless Assassin cooler, a 2TB SSD, an Nvidia RTX 5060 8GB, and a Corsair CX750 power supply. I'll mainly be playing competitive FPS games, including Call of Duty, so the large SSD is useful. Should I change any components to get better performance for the money?
3 Answers
The best choice depends on your target resolution and settings, but this setup is heavily weighted toward the processor. The 7800X3D is excellent for gaming, yet pairing it with an RTX 5060 8GB leaves a lot of performance on the table. You could use a less expensive CPU and put the savings toward a stronger graphics card. Also, 32GB of RAM would be a better choice than 16GB for a new gaming system.
The 7800X3D is probably overkill for this graphics card. Consider dropping to a cheaper gaming CPU and upgrading the GPU instead. You may also find that a prebuilt system offers better value at this budget, so it’s worth comparing complete systems with the price of the individual parts before buying.
I wouldn’t spend this much on the build with an RTX 5060 8GB. A card such as the RX 9060 XT with 16GB of VRAM would generally be a better match in this price range and should handle newer games more comfortably. The extra VRAM is particularly useful as game textures and system requirements continue to increase.
I’m mainly playing FPS games, especially Call of Duty, which is why I was considering the X3D processor and a 2TB SSD. I agree that the graphics card may need changing.