I haven’t built a gaming PC for over fifteen years; I defected to PlayStation in '08 when the constant upgrading got too expensive to really justify, but now I’m looking to come crawling back.
I am finding it easy enough to find build ideas for very capable (and expensive) machines but I am that out of touch with “what’s good” that I no longer have any idea of what would be “good enough” (to play most modern games at “high” settings and at 60fps).
Basically, I would like help in avoiding an attempt at going back to my old ways and building some kind of pie in the sky setup like this:
CPU AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
CPU fan NZXT Kraken 360 RGB
MB Asus Prime X670E-Pro WiFi 6E
GPU Gigabyte Aero GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
RAM G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB Series 64GB DDR5-6000
SSD Samsung 990 Pro 2TB
PSU Corsair RM1000x Shift 1000 W
Perhaps the could serve as a starting point - what could you cut from the above build and what would you substitute?
Sub the 7950x3d for a 7800x3d, and swap the GPU for a 4070 or 7800 xt. You can likely swap the MB, but I’ll let someone else speak to that one.
Where I would spend money is with two NVMe drives. A 1TB drive for the OS and a 2TB game drive. You can add a spinning HD for mass storage if needed.
If you really want to save some money, go with an x570 MB and a 5800x3D. But I’d stay with the GPUs from this gen. Downside is you have no room for upgrades down the line.
For reference, I have an x570 MB, 5800x3D, and a 6750xt GPU. I’m not having issues running games.