I'm planning my first budget gaming PC and the parts currently total about £725. The build includes an AMD Ryzen 5 5500, an ASUS Prime B550M motherboard, 16GB of Silicone Power DDR4 RAM in two 8GB sticks, a 512GB SSD, an ASUS Dual EVO OC Radeon RX 7600, a Montech X5M microATX case, and a DeepCool PF 700W power supply. Are these parts compatible, and would this be a sensible build for 1080p gaming or possibly 1440p? I'm okay with starting with only 512GB of storage. I'd also appreciate feedback on whether the parts would look reasonably good together, since I'm new to PC building.
2 Answers
Put the complete parts list into a compatibility checker such as PCPartPicker’s UK site. It can flag issues and make it easier to verify prices and fit. Also check whether you’ve included a CPU cooler—the Ryzen 5 5500 normally comes with a basic stock cooler, so you may not need to buy one separately.
If your budget allows, compare the RX 7600 with newer options such as an Intel Arc B580 or Radeon RX 9060 XT. They may offer better performance, but the upgrade is only worthwhile if you’ll actually benefit from it. If your monitor is limited to 60Hz, putting some of the extra money toward a better monitor could make a more noticeable difference than buying a faster graphics card.
That’s what I was wondering—if the monitor is limiting me to 60 FPS, I may get more value from upgrading the monitor before spending extra on the graphics card.
I used PCPartPicker to select the parts and check the prices. I believe the Ryzen 5 5500 includes a cooler, but I’ll verify that before buying.