I'm planning to build a gaming-only PC in France with a maximum budget of €6,000. I mainly play demanding AAA titles such as Resident Evil, Cyberpunk 2077, Monster Hunter, God of War, and Horizon, and I want to use maximum or Ultra settings, including ray tracing where practical. My current display is 1440p at 120 Hz, and I already own a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and headset, so I only need the computer itself. I'm looking for very smooth gameplay and excellent image quality, but I don't want to spend the entire budget unnecessarily. What configuration would provide the best price-to-performance balance for this use case?
2 Answers
For value-focused 1440p gaming, a Ryzen 7 9800X3D paired with a Radeon RX 9070 XT would be a strong choice. That combination should handle demanding games at 1440p very well and is far less expensive than building around a top-end Nvidia card. Nvidia still has an advantage in ray tracing, but the extra cost of moving to a high-end model such as an RTX 5080 does not translate into proportional performance gains. A quality power supply can support an RTX 5080 later if you decide ray tracing is worth the premium. The remaining budget could go toward additional storage or 48–64 GB of memory, although more than 32 GB is generally unnecessary for gaming alone. Also keep in mind that poor game optimization can limit performance regardless of how powerful the hardware is.
You don’t need to spend anywhere near €6,000 to reach 1440p at 120 Hz. A well-balanced system costing roughly €2,500 should exceed 120 FPS in many games and still provide excellent settings in demanding titles. Since you already own a 1440p/120 Hz monitor, spending the unused budget on unnecessary components would have very limited benefit. If you want a more noticeable upgrade, consider putting some of the savings toward a faster OLED display, such as a 1440p model with a 280 Hz or 360 Hz refresh rate.
That makes sense. I’m mainly trying to avoid overspending for performance I won’t actually see on my current 120 Hz display.