New Gaming Build - advice needed

[CrouchingPeeky]

I'm looking to build a gaming PC or to be more accurate order the parts and have OCUK build it. My budget is £3.6k but probably needs to include two monitors in that.

I have looked at the various different options and the choices are just overwhelming. Where to start? Start with the GPU and get the rest around it? Or start with the CPU? The last PC I had was a pre-built one about 5 or 6 years ago and was an i7 7900k and GTX1080 Ti so I'm leaning towards an Intel set-up purely through familiarity. Is there a huge difference between Intel vs AMD or is that like an Apple vs Samsung can of worms best left alone?

Provisionally I had put this together;

Case	Kolink Unity Peak ARGB Midi Tower Showcase - Black
Power Supply	1000W 80+ Gold Rated PSU
CPU	Intel Core i7 14700KF Hyperthreaded Twenty Core Processor
Motherboard	B760 ATX DDR5 WIFI Motherboard
Cooler	360mm AIO RGB Liquid CPU Cooler
Memory	32GB DDR5 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Primary Solid State Drive	1TB Gen4 M.2 NVMe Sold State Drive
Secondary Solid State Drive	Optional
Graphics	GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super 16GB GDDR6X Graphics Card
Network	2.5Gb LAN, WIFI6E
Audio	7.1 High Definition Audio

This is the pre-defined options but I have swapped out the Memory to

Corsair Vengeance RGB 64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C36 5600MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMH64GX5M2B5600C36)​

and I swapped out the SSD to

Samsung 990 Pro 4TB M.2 2280 PCI-e 4.0 x4 NVMe 1.3c Solid State Drive​

That seems to come in at a fairly reasonable £2,518.98.

I don't know much about that motherboard and I don't think I have the option to swap it out for anything else.

Is there anything there that sticks out as something you'd want to change? Is the 4080 or 4090 worth the huge jump in price?

There are so many different options at some many price points I, like most I assume, want to get the most bang for my buck so if an i9 or 4080 are really worth the extra £££ and those £££ can be saved on Mem or SSD as performance of high end is similar to mid-range then that's something I can take into account.

I appreciate there is a lot to unpack with this, so thanks in advance if you even made it until the end of the post and thanks in advance for your sage advice

 

[tamzzy]

you can always ask ocuk to build you a custom spec, though it will cost a bit more
but at least you know you are getting the parts you want.

what is the purpose of the build?

 

[Tetras]

Is the 4080 or 4090 worth the huge jump in price?

For 1440p? No, not really. For 4K gaming, with your budget a 4080 Super isn't a bad idea, but the 4090 is a lot more, so I'd only buy one if using the absolute max settings (including ray tracing) is important to you.

if an i9 or 4080 are really worth the extra £££ and those £££ can be saved on Mem or SSD as performance of high end is similar to mid-range then that's something I can take into account

For gaming: the i7 is fine.
32GB or 64GB is fine.
You're unlikely to notice the difference between any PCI-E 4.0 SSD. I'd avoid the bottom of the barrel models (like Kingston's NV2) because of their poor endurance ratings and component swaps.

Is there a huge difference between Intel vs AMD or is that like an Apple vs Samsung can of worms best left alone?

Generally not, but the X3D can pull ahead a fair bit sometimes ((if the game loves the cache), it is also more power efficient at stock settings. The 14700K is a better productivity / content creation CPU.

 

[Lemin]

Make sure its not a Kolink PSU ! A high quality PSU is vital, i'd get...

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x MSI MPG A1000G PCIE5 UK PSU 1000W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply (SKU: CA-00W-MS) = £169.98

Total: £173.98 (includes delivery: £3.99)​

 

[Dreadi]

If it's solely a gaming machine, a Ryzen 7800x3d would make more sense and probably be cheaper and the am5 socket will last a lot longer as current gen intel is EOL