I'm planning my first gaming PC build in the UK with a budget of about £2,000, including a 1440p monitor but excluding the keyboard, mouse, and headset. My main games will be RPGs such as Skyrim, Cyberpunk 2077, and Baldur's Gate 3. The current parts list is: Ryzen 7 7800X3D (£270), Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE (£30), Asus PRIME EVO OC Radeon RX 9070 (£571), Corsair Vengeance RGB 32GB DDR5-6000 CL36 (£381), Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX (£105), Crucial P510 2TB PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD (£275), Corsair 3500X case (£80), MSI MAG A850GL 850W Gold power supply (£90), and an LG UltraGear 27-inch 1440p 200Hz monitor (£169). The total comes to roughly £1,971. Are there any compatibility problems or obvious weaknesses, and would it make sense to redistribute the budget between components?
3 Answers
Also compare the Thermalright Phantom Spirit with the Peerless Assassin. It’s a slightly newer and stronger cooler, and it’s often priced very similarly. If it’s only a few pounds more, I’d choose the Phantom Spirit.
This is a well-balanced setup overall, and the Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX is a dependable motherboard. The power supply and cooler are suitable, and DDR5-6000 is a good speed for the AM5 platform. CL30 is technically preferable to CL36, but the real-world gaming difference is small. It’s worth checking current prices, though: a Samsung 990 EVO Plus 2TB may be cheaper than the selected SSD, and Crucial DDR5-6000 CL36 memory may cost less than the Corsair kit. The Corsair kit may mainly be charging extra for its brand and RGB lighting.
The parts look reasonable, although component prices are unusually high at the moment. There don’t appear to be any major problems with the list as it stands.
So there probably isn’t much meaningful performance difference between the Corsair and Crucial memory? It sounds like the RGB and branding account for much of the price difference.