First PC build in 20 years...

Boizo · Monday at 17:21

Hi all,

After a little advise please. Am looking to build my first PC in over 20 years. Would like to be able to play top end demanding games and video edit 4k footage etc.

I've come up with this list so far but am struggling with what motherboard to choose...hoping you can help or suggest where I may be going wrong. I'm looking to future proof it as best possible as am not a fan of constantly upgrading parts.

Case - Corsair Frame 5000D RS ARGB

PSU - Corsair HXI 1500W (2025 Model)

RAM - Corsair 2 x 32GB DDR5 CL30 6000mhz (Bought £210)

SSD - M.2 4TB - Samsung 990 Pro Gen 4

GPU - Depending on what is good value at the time...suggestions please?

CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D

Motherboard - MSI MPG X870E Carbon WIFI ???

Cooling - Loads of fans and maybe Corsair iCUE LINK TITAN 360 RX RGB Liquid CPU

Thanks

Tetras · Monday at 18:09

Boizo said:
I've come up with this list so far but am struggling with what motherboard to choose...hoping you can help or suggest where I may be going wrong. I'm looking to future proof it as best possible as am not a fan of constantly upgrading parts.

If you're doing stuff that will pin the CPU at 100% for hours, I'd suggest a B850 board with a good VRM, like B850 Tomahawk or Asus B850 TUF-Plus. B850 does normally lose USB4, so if you care about that feature, you'd need X870/X870E.

Boizo said:
PSU - Corsair HXI 1500W (2025 Model)

Boizo said:
GPU - Depending on what is good value at the time...suggestions please?

For 4K, I'd want a 5070 Ti or a 5080, though difficult to buy those right now with the Supers supposed to give them a lot more VRAM. Your budget appears to be very large, so maybe you're considering a 5090? If you're not, then the 1500 watt PSU is overkill.

Boizo · Monday at 20:03

Tetras said:
If you're doing stuff that will pin the CPU at 100% for hours, I'd suggest a B850 board with a good VRM, like B850 Tomahawk or Asus B850 TUF-Plus. B850 does normally lose USB4, so if you care about that feature, you'd need X870/X870E.

For 4K, I'd want a 5070 Ti or a 5080, though difficult to buy those right now with the Supers supposed to give them a lot more VRAM. Your budget appears to be very large, so maybe you're considering a 5090? If you're not, then the 1500 watt PSU is overkill.

Thank you for the useful info. That 5080 Super is sounding appealing...can't justify the 5090 price tag.

Gray2233 · Monday at 20:07

What is your total budget for the full computer not including peripherals? There's a lot of potentially unnecessarily expensive components in your list, cost doesn't always equal quality.

Boizo · Monday at 20:20

Gray2233 said:
What is your total budget for the full computer not including peripherals? There's a lot of potentially unnecessarily expensive components in your list, cost doesn't always equal quality.

£2500-£3000.

Gray2233 · Monday at 20:37

Boizo said:
£2500-£3000.

If I was spending in the region of £3000 I'd want a 5090, especially for 4K.

The 5080 is an awful value proposition in my opinion. Here's two example builds, one at the top end and one that would be around on par with a 5080 (hold in mind the 9070XT isn't much slower than a 5080, but is considerably cheaper):

Top End

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Phanteks AMP GH 1000W 80PLUS Platinum ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02521) = £128.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance XMP 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel (SKU: MEM-CRS-05105) = £175.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Eight Core 5.20GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-03517) = £399.95
1 x Sapphire Nitro+ B850M WiFi (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-SPR-05690) = £139.99
1 x PHANTEKS XT M3 Micro-ATX Case, includes 3x 120mm Fans - Black (SKU: CAS-PHK-05735) = £59.90
1 x Thermalright Aqua Elite 360 Black ARGB V3 All In One CPU Cooler (SKU: COO-TLR-03256) = £50.00
1 x Gigabyte Aorus 7300 2TB SSD M.2 2280 NVME PCI-E Gen4 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-GIG-05732) = £119.98
1 x Inno3D GeForce RTX 5090 X3 32GB GDDR7 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-INO-04518) = £2,099.99
1 x NVIDIA Game Bundle - Arc Raiders Deluxe Edition PLUS Astro Cosmetic Pack (SKU: DIG-NVI-06436) = £0.00

Total: £3,186.78 (includes delivery: £11.98)

Lower End

My basket at OcUK:

1 x Phanteks AMP GH 1000W 80PLUS Platinum ATX Power Supply Modular - Black (SKU: POW-PHK-02521) = £128.99
1 x Corsair Vengeance XMP 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-48000C38 6000MHz Dual Channel (SKU: MEM-CRS-05105) = £175.99
1 x AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Eight Core 5.20GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: PRO-AMD-03517) = £399.95
1 x Sapphire Nitro+ B850M WiFi (Socket AM5) DDR5 Micro-ATX Motherboard (SKU: MOT-SPR-05690) = £139.99
1 x PHANTEKS XT M3 Micro-ATX Case, includes 3x 120mm Fans - Black (SKU: CAS-PHK-05735) = £59.90
1 x Crucial T500 4TB NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2 Solid State Drive (SKU: STO-CRU-02889) = £245.99
1 x Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 9070 XT Gaming 16GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card (SKU: GRA-SPR-03983) = £559.99
1 x Thermalright Aqua Elite 360 Black ARGB V3 All In One CPU Cooler (SKU: COO-TLR-03256) = £50.00

Total: £1,772.78 (includes delivery: £11.98)

There's a bit of a no mans land between the 9070XT/5070TI/5080 and the 5090 in terms of performance, the first three are very close whereas the 5090 is a massive jump. If aiming for the top end of your budget I'd pony up the extra for a 5090, or I'd simply spend less over all on something akin to the 9070XT system. If the software you use for video creation likes Nvidia cards the 5070ti might be worth a push, you might be able to justify around a grand on a 5080 but it would leave a bad taste in my mouth personally. If you can get a Founders Edition 5090 you should come in under the £3000 mark easily enough, they were around £1800-1900 last I checked.

See here: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/sapphire-radeon-rx-9070-xt-nitro/34.html

Scroll down to the relative performance section for 3840x2160 (aka 4k).

PS: If you opt for the above case measure up to make sure whatever GPU's fit, same with any case you opt for tbh as modern higher end GPU's are mammoth.

PPS: At 4K the CPU tends to matter less, so you could save there over forking out for an X3D chip, or simply go for a multi-core CPU if it benefits your editing for the same price without the extra cache. It does depend on the games in question however, so depending on what you're planning on playing your mileage may vary.

sastusbulbas · Tuesday at 08:19

Currently for any sort of production work involving cores the 9900x or 9950X3D are often recommended.

The only time I would entertain a 9800X3D is if I was running a 5080/5090 gaming only PC and wanted every frame gain no matter how small.

If the priority is video work or paid on the PC, a 9900x or 9950X3D, with a 5080 or 5090 simply due to the feature sets if you utilise the GPU in work loads.

For an all round value production and 4k gaming pc 9900x with a 9070xt.

If you use USB4 as others have mentioned, it's an X870E motherboard, but bear in mind the bifurcation, USB4 often disables an NVMe drive or you get an x8 GPU slot.

Ronin Wilde I think is the name, he does YouTube content showing PCI lane distribution on various motherboards.

If you have no intention of using USB4 then a good B850 board will do the job.

Bear in mind the case and cooling too, sessions running into hours basically turn the pc into a room heater, cases such as the Antec Flux Pro and Havn 360 offer great cooling performance

Quartz · Tuesday at 09:17

Boizo said:
Would like to be able to play top end demanding games and video edit 4k footage etc.

What is the balance of usage? Mostly gaming, mostly editing, or about even?

Which monitor(s) do you have? Are you open to having multiple monitors and editing at 4k and gaming at - say - 3440x1440?