Gaming

So, the trap of modern game setups is that there is a lot of super high powered hardware out there- but unless you're driving 4K monitors at 120hz+, or striving for super fast 360hz+ refresh rates for competitive gaming, you don't need any of it. And people often get too caught up in the flashy new latest-and-greatest to recognize what's a good deal and what's just showing off.

Define your use case. What's your desirable budget? What kind of games do you want to play, do you want to do VR, what kind of display do you plan on using. Because while it's easy to drop $2800+ on hardware these days (like I did), it is still very possible to end up with a $900-1k machine that is super capable at 1440p and can run most all games you throw at it for at least another 5 years. Dpending on what exactly you want to do with it, prioritizing certain areas of hardware over others will pay off.

Simply going one step down from buying every "halo" product would already do wonders for a significant price/performance increase.

That said, when building a new PC I usually start with the recommendations listed at Logical Increments, which has a neat table sorted by budget. Anything at or above the "Suberb" should give you what you want at 1440p.

I'd also very much recommend a high refresh rate monitor, preferably 1440p, which has either GSYNC or FreeSync with a good variable refresh rate range. It really helps with maintaining a smooth presentation as you aren't forced to keep your game running at a fixed framerate anymore.

This is what I use when creating baselines for different price-points:

https://www.logicalincrements.com/

If you feel like you'll need more RAM or a bigger SSD then that's a simple thing to do but this will give you all of the components you need for a solid system at whatever your price point is.

That said, the "Great" range and up will play pretty much anything. You can even play pretty much any game on the "Good" range and up. So if you are looking to save money, I'd say the "Great" range will last you a good 5 years right now at least.

First, you want to play on high/60fps but at what resolution? Paying over 1700$CAD for a RTX4090 GPU seems overkill while a RX6800 or a RX7700/7800 would let you play at 1080p/1440p at high settings at a fraction of the price.

SSD is fine.

PSU could be reduced to 850W.

64GB RAM is overkill for gaming right now but potentially useful in the upcoming years.

Bottom line, you could save here and there and still have a capable AM5 machine.

If you want value for your buck, build yourself an AM4 machine. Yes, AM5 is out now but your rig could still last you many many years with the right AM4 components.

Second the PCPartPicker recommendation. You can also share your build ideas with people via that site, very useful.

I have just spend the last couple of months researching myself because I'm in the process of upgrading my rig as well.

I haven't seen you mention your budget anywhere, but as I read your comments, I understand this is a bit above what you want.

CPU: I would get the 7 7800X3D instead. It odtens performances better for gaming.

Fan: I don't really like water cooling, but that's personal opinion. I would get a noctua NH-D15

Motherboard: the "X" before the numbers, is overkill for gaming, it has lots of "ekstra" expensive features that's just not that usefull. Definitely find one that start with a "B". Iam getting the "Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ATX AM5 Motherboard"

GPU: I don't play 4k myself, so cannot really give you any pointers. I got a 7800 XT, because it's super good for it's value. The biggest difference is, Nvidia cards is best for Ray tracing in games, so if you need that, get a Nvidia. If you don't care for Ray training, get AMD. Also look up reviews of the GPU fx Gamers Nexus/hardware unboxed is good. And see how the cards perform in the games you want to play.

RAM: 16 gb is often good enough, but I would go with 32 gb for now. 64 gb is overkill, and can always be upgraded later. The ones you have picked I think is fine, just get the 32 variant.

Storage: the SSD is good, and 2tb is good. Maybe getting a HDD, if you wants to storage other files that don't need to be on the SSD.

PSU: I got the exactly same for my build. A rule of thumb for calculating the PSU needed, put every component you need in PCPartPicker, and take the total wattage * 1.5. But the new GPU use so much power should should add 100 ekstra wattage as a "high-end tax" so fx 550 wattage * 1.5 + 100 = 925 PSU.

But the most important thing is, research all the comments you want to try, and watch YouTube videos of people that actually tried and tested it. One youtube channel I like is "PC Builder" he explains what components are pretty well, and give actually examples of good parts to buy.

What I usually tell people is "set a budget". You can always fall in to the trap of $20 more here, $40 more there...etc and explode your budget.

If you can keep moving the needle, you can keep dumping more into better components in different areas.

Use PCPartPicker to make sure everything is compatible, check the price history to see if there's a similar component available for cheaper or if you're getting a good value, and make decisions on what is necessary. Also, pick a date. You can hang around for MONTHS waiting on a certain part to hit a price drop.

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.

Resolution (1080, 1440, etc) will be critical for your high and 60fps qualifier. Is RTX a deal breaker for you? Are you looking to produce content (or edits videos, 3d rendering, stable diffusion, etc)?

Without knowing any of that I can still identify CPU, ram, and GPU you listed are overkill for gaming purposes.

Edit: Gamers Nexus YouTube and Website is a great for getting rundown of current gen hardware and their capabilities. They typically give really good recommendations based on value instead of just raw performance.

Let me be the Linux evangelist here and say: consider AMD for GPU, they aren't bad.
https://www.logicalincrements.com/articles/graphicscardcomparison

Yeah. We don't know your budget, but if you are just playing at 1440p, you could cut down to a Ryzen 5, a 4070, and 32gb of ram easily.

I was part of the hardcore build it yourself crew for years and years, but I find now that for the last 10 years or so now, and especially with the death of places like Fry's and all the bullshit Newegg pulled, it's way easier and cheaper to buy a pre-built box that's maybe 90-95% there, then tweak what you need to tweak.

Get that manufacturers warranty and forget trying to part it out yourself.

$3,500 here.

https://www.magicmicro.com/14443-13/?gclid=CjwKCAjwgsqoBhBNEiwAwe5w0-_ZgYLWExSn5qI8px0IsfY6YxDieItNckeje3agVUSZTF_OilVppRoC8nsQAvD_BwE

Well, for a practical example, my Ryzen 5 5600x and Radeon 6600xt combo is juuust out of the running for games coming out right now, I'd say. The VRAM limitations at 8GB are becoming apparent and there's been a few instances where the 5600x struggles in games that hit CPUs hard. But I'd say that's because there's been an oddly big jump in system requirements, recently.

What resolution are you going to be gaming at?

If you're only at 1440p60 or something then you can cut the GPU down for sure.

With anything in line of that build; a VR headset. Although I'd wait until the Deckard is officially announced/released before actually buying.

Don't know how many AAA games you plan on playing, and I genuinely no expert, but 90% of the games I play are 3-5+ years old and my Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (or is it 2050? I always forget. Lol) works just fine as a GPU.

if like, you aren't too attached to the look of them, you could save a bunch by using an air cooler instead of an AIO water cooler, they don't actually perform better than decent air coolers.

Hmmm c/build_a_pc ?? 🤔

A steam deck works well enough for most games if you want something handheld but dockable into a full computer. Gives you that sort of console feel without a console ecosystem.

High settings for most modern games jump from game to game. I was able to keep high settings with a 1080 and a Ryzen 7 with 64 gb of RAM. I think 16-32 GB ram should be fine but I am also a game developer so I use extra RAM for debug. Nvidia sent me a 3080 for testing last year and I just installed it.