Planning to build a relatively budget friendly gaming pc for 1440p, my budget is around 1200, Part List - AMD Ryzen 5 7600, GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, Montech AIR 903 MAX ATX Mid Tower - PCPartPicker
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Hate to break it to ya, that thing is not quite good enough.
6 core CPUs are rapidly becoming the Grandma CPUs in 2025. They are now struggling to keep up. When running only games they seem like a perfect budget option, but as soon as you add in a 30 tab browser, a discord and some other biz like streaming or whatnot, and you’ll experience a significant performance penalty. 8 or 12 cores is pretty much what you want, these days. Atleast go with the 9600X + a $30 cooler over the 7600.
Second, GPU - 7800 XT just flat out destroys it at a similar price point, however maybe you should take a lesser GPU like the 6600 for now and upgrade to something like the RX 6070 XT once you have saved up for it, say, for Black Friday or so. At that point there might be better options out though.
Third, SSD - no DRAM, go for the WD SN850X or KC3000 if you want budget options. Renegade is also good.
Lastly, PSU - 650W is just too little. You could but if you upgrade GPU or CPU, you will need a new PSU as well. Try to go with a 750W or even 850W. 1000W, not really necessary unless you plan to spend another €3k on a Zen 6 Ryzen 9 and an RTX 6090 Ti further down the systems lifespan.
Those price points are good for being EU though.
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Don’t cheapen on wattage – Go for 750W minimum [typ. isn’t much of a price bump]
A lot of GPUs can/will pull higher [intermittently], than what is advertised
Mind you, it’s more pressing, when talking about larger GPUs
Also going at 750(+), offer additional EPS cabling [should upgrade(s) involve thirsty CPUs]
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If you’re building a budget-friendly PC, here’s what I suggest:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600 (or 7600X for a little more power)
GPU: RTX 5060 Ti (or RTX 3060 if you need to save)
Motherboard: MSI B650M PRO-VDH WiFi
RAM: 16GB DDR5-6000
Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD (Crucial P3 Plus or Samsung 980)
PSU: 650W (Corsair CV650 or EVGA 600 W1)
Case: Montech AIR 903 MAX
Cooling: Stock Wraith Stealth cooler (or Cooler Master Hyper 212 for better cooling)
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Using the same Austrian region as that PC Partspicker link, the 7800Xt would be more performant at the same 500 price as the 5060 Ti. If you really want to play with raytracing enabled then the 9070 probably better value still, if they restock close to 650 though I’m not sure how much value is left in it once over 700.
Theoretically there are enough rumors of late that Intel may finally be launching a B770 card… so do wait for Computex next week to see if Intel announces any new Battlemage GPUs, if they do I would bet you it will be the best performance/value option for your build.
The 650Rme is not stocked, so I don’t know what price you’re paying for it. But as others already said above, usually the 750 is barely anything more, and the 850 barely above that. While 650 would power your build, I’d still recommend 750 minimum, you don’t want to have to upgrade a PSU if you upgrade the PC down the road.
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Also, given the few measurements done so far show 65-90% of dGPU current returning through the slot, if the mobo has 1.5 or 2x EPS I’d plug it to help offload the GPU from 24-pin ground.
I do have to say… “depends on budget”.
6 cores are cheap. And if simply you close the 30 tab browser, discord, etc. before running the game… and are not streaming - probably fine. 8 cores is however a decent step up in price and depending heavily on what you’re playing… maybe not required yet.
That cash you spend on the 8 core could be put towards a bigger SSD or better GPU instead, potentially - and upgrade the CPU next generation.
Also, as dirty as it makes me feel suggesting this: but for 1440p gaming with > 6 cores at the moment, definitely consider the intel options.
intel are getting crushed at the high end right now, but this does mean that there are some real bargains to be had in the mid-range, as AMD have really bumped up the processor and platform costs this generation.
Where I live for example you can have an intel i5-14400F 10 core 16 thread processor (for example) for LESS than the cost of an R5-8400F.
Sure, the socket is dead but you can also get a Z series chipset for intel cheaper than an X series chipset for AM5 right now, by quite a bit.
Combined, an i5-14400F plus entry Z series motherboard will be a couple of hundred Aussie pesos cheaper than an X series AMD board plus Ryzen 5 6 core and you’ll get more cores at same clock.
Not saying “just go intel” but certainly consider it.
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Agree intel could definitely be an interesting option here as well.
And i would also like to put AM4 to the table as well.
Yes i know AM4 is eol and has no upgrade path.
But the 5700X3D cpu at €250 ish is currently still a bargain for gamers.
On AM5 there also is a 7600X3D however with midrange gpu´s like a 5060Ti, 7800XT etc,
for 1440p gaming you could probably argue the benefit of X3D cpu´s on AM5.
The extra cache might help stabilize the 1% lows a little bit in extreme conditions but yeah…
Not sure if that would actually be worth the premium price doe.
In the end it all depends on the games that are played.
Usually previous gen cpu´s fall a little bit behind current gen cpu´s on average.
However those figures are mainly shown with the higher end gpu´s usually.
But if you are planning to stick to the platform as long as possible,
and you want to upgrade the gpu over time than AM5 would currently be your best bet.
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More importantly, the X3d processors are not so memory speed sensitive, and if you’re upgrading from an older machine with DDR4 you can likely re-use your memory to save money if going AM4…
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