“The kid’s” laptop appears to be on its last legs. Gotta say the 1060 6GB card they’ve had in it held up like a champ over the past several years. They’re no longer a student and has a decent phone, so we’re looking at a desktop. Between what my kid can put in and what I’ll contribute, I’m thinking $2k(-ish; I can push the budget a little, but also wouldn’t complain if it was all free).
For a “serious” gamer who has an eye on not buying a new PC for at least another five years, any recommendations? I was hoping for the 7800x3D but that’s not out until mid-April. The 7900XT looks less-stupid (but still stupid) after the price drop to $800 and driver updates, but of course it’s still lagging in ray-tracing.
Any thoughts on components for a build from the experts and/or peanut gallery?
I have a 4070Ti in the NR200P Max SFF gaming PC I just built for TV gaming and multiplayer with my son. On a flat monitor, running games normal humans play, it’s just fine. I can run MSFS (with the DLSS3 frame doubling turned on) at over 100 fps, and all other games I’ve tried on it max out the 4K TV’s 120Hz refresh rate just fine.
The only places where the 4090 in my primary gaming rig pays for itself are in MSFS at 5,120x1,440, and in VR flight sim titles. There, the extra memory does help.
But for normal games non-flight-sim-geeks play, the fact that demanding games are designed for consoles first means that 12GB should be plenty for a long time. The PS5 and Series X only have 16GB RAM total for both video and programs, so as long as games are targeting those as it’s gonna be the next console generation (2027?) before 12GB even starts to feel limited for normal games.
My 2 cents would be to get the 7600X on an AM5 board w. DDR5. If you have a Microcenter, they’ll even give you RAM and or discounts on Ryzen 7000/RAM and an AM5 motherboard.
It’s a great gaming CPU, costs under $250 USD, and you’ll be able to drop new X3D Ryzen chips in the motherboard for at least 3 years. The Intel 13600 is awesome, but the motherboard and chipset are basically EOL while the AM5 boards are just getting started. Same w/ the 5800X3D. It’s still great, but AM4 has reached the end of its run.
Or if you can find a 7700/7700X on sale for a good price, which is what I did. AM5 is nice for the future proofing, especially now that motherboard prices have gotten more reasonable along with DDR5 prices. You get a lot of performance per watt with these Ryzen chips and I figure it’s worth going efficient there and then you can buy whatever electric bill doubling GPU you want.
Also, absolutely make sure to pick up a good 2TB nvme drive for their primary storage. Prices have gotten really affordable there now too. Not only is it noticeably faster in general it’ll be really nice for any games supporting DirectStorage in the future.
