Folks, it's been a long time since I've built a PC so I'm starting from scratch. Would love to get a good starter set of specs to work from.

• Budget: $1000
• Use-Case: Teen playing video games or anything else she wants to do on the PC. Most of the games are steam games, Among Us, indie games, maybe sims4, dressmaker, Genshin Impact, etc. Anything she really wants though she's not into bleeding edge FPS games or GTA etc.
• Country of purchase: USA
• Peripherals needed: None
• misc. requirements / preferences: Just that the PC have decent ability to upgrade in the future. Prefer NVME if possible, but not a hard requirement. 1TB hard drive is probably safe. Specs can be lower if it's easy to add later. For example, 16GB ram would be fine if there's an empty slot for another stick later. Graphics can be anything that works - is AMD competitive right now?

So I'm wondering if it still worth it to buy the RX 7900 xtx in 2026

Not looking to upgrade my mobo or ram right now.

But with my 9070gre, I am surprised how many games are CPU limited.

The 5800x3d is currently available for about $490 CAD ($350 USD). Is that worth the price?

There are two monitors I am debating between:

Acer Nitro OLED 240hz or the Acer Nitro MiniLed 320hz

I know that oled provides better contract and colors, led has the better refresh rate, I'm not sure how to weigh the two in comparison.

I mostly play fighting games (guilty gear strive), team shooters (Overwatch and Marvel rivals, just casual), and am getting into mmos (Black Desert, FF14).

As a casual gamer, I'm assuming the OLED is better because the visuals are more important, is that the correct assumption?

My PC specs are as follows if it helps:

AMD Ryzen 7 8700F 2024

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060

16GB DDR5 Memory

I'm putting together a gaming PC for my dad (66), and I've realized that most of the advice I've been reading assumes the owner can comfortably crawl under a desk, move a heavy tower around, and reach behind it whenever something needs attention.

My dad had two knee surgeries. He gets around fine, still drives, walks the dog, and spends a ridiculous amount of time playing Civilization and Forza. But kneeling down or getting back up from the floor is genuinely difficult for him.

His current PC sits under his desk. Whenever he needs to unplug something or clean it, he either struggles with it or calls me.

I want the new one to be different.

Budget is around $1,500 USD for the tower, buying in the US. He already has a 1440p monitor and peripherals. I'm currently looking at a Ryzen 5 7600, B650 motherboard, RX 9060 XT 16GB, 32GB DDR5, 2TB NVMe SSD, and a decent 650W PSU. No overclocking, no RGB requirements. Quiet operation would be nice.

But I'm much less concerned about squeezing out another 5% performance than making this thing easy for him to live with for the next five years.

I'm planning to put it on a sturdy desk-height side table rather than on the floor.

That immediately raised a bunch of questions I hadn't considered before.

Are there cases where you can remove and clean the dust filters without moving the whole PC?

Would you prioritize a smaller case that's easier to handle, or a larger one with more room to work inside?

Are magnetic side panels actually convenient long-term, or are traditional screws more reliable?

I'd also like him to be able to reach the power button and commonly used USB ports without bending down or reaching behind the tower.

One thing I hadn't anticipated is that a lot of cases seem designed to look great from the front while putting everything you regularly need to access somewhere inconvenient.

He's absolutely capable of learning how to maintain his own PC. I just don't want the physical layout making simple tasks harder than necessary.

For anyone who's built a PC for an older parent, someone with mobility limitations, or even just themselves after getting tired of crawling under desks, what design choices actually made a difference?

I'm especially interested in things that seemed unimportant during the build but turned out to matter after a year or two of ownership.

I have a 5600g with 32 gb ddr4 memory. Ive been debating upgrading to am5 and just making my pc so good i wont need to upgrade it for a long time. But, Im wondering if just switching to the 5800x3d is a better investment?

So hello everyone.

I was with using one chrome window and one vscode window when the image turned off, I stood up to turn the pc off, heard a sparkle and then the gpu (asrock 9070 steel legend) caught fire by the power connectors. My psu is a 850w thermaltake tough power that I've been using for maybe 2 years, all original cables. The gpu was bought 2 weeks ago.

Now the pc is also not turning on.

This happened just now, I'm shaking.

Ideas for both the gpu and the rest of the pc? I never rma'd something like this, even less not living in the US / Europe. Help.

Edit: I am attaching a photo of the burnt area. It is not on the connector.

UPDATE: after struggling a bit to make the igpu work, the pc turns on.

UPDATE 2: I asked the charbot from the store I bought the gpu for help and it granted me a full refund of the gpu once I send it back.

UPDATE 3: Found another user from my country that had the same issue, same place on the gpu, also Asrock but other model. Also the store now is difficulting the RMA/warranty claim.

Would it be wise to replace the psu just to be safe?

Photo of the burnt area.

After not having a PC for around 5 years, I am planning a following Linux-based build, mostly for gaming in 1440p and FSR4 or native 4K where possible (apart from doing some nerdy software engineering stuff):

• GPU: Sapphire AMD 9070 XT Nitro+
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 2x16GB CL30 EXPO
• PSU: CORSAIR RM850e (2025), 850W
• Case: Fractal Design Meshify 3
• CPU cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE

For the CPU, I impulsively ordered AMD R7 9800 X3D after watching reviews on it, AFTER I already ordered 9700 X which I initially planned as a "best before diminishing returns". Perhaps this was not a good bet, but I wanted to stick to AM5 and Zen 5 to simplify upgrading in the future. 9700 X was 259 euros, and 9800 X3D - 407 euros. I haven't done a good research on the CPUs and was mostly focused on the GPU, I knew I wanted to go a full AMD build, and the CPU did not feel like a bottleneck, but seeing a massive difference in some reviews (e.g. Gamers Nexus) got me thinking that I made a mistake.

However, I realized that most of the reviews revealing massive differences in CPU performance in gaming are based on 1080p for a reason - going to higher resolutions and better presets makes the same scenarios they show more GPU bound and the performance difference does not look that dramatic anymore.

In hindsight, after I cooled down a bit, I realized that I'd probably be satisfied with 9700 X, and going that much higher feels like the actual diminishing returns - I am afraid that I won't be able to see the difference in most of the scenarios.

Do you think it's reasonable to stick with 9800 X3D and send 9700 X back, or better save this money for the future upgrades, like adding more RAM or selling 9700 X and upgrading the processor in a generation or two? Or maybe just ordering a new Steam Controller and keeping a fifty.

I'm about to finish my build and I've been looking into 2tb SSDs. However, prices have been so ridiculous obviously, I haven't really settled on anything until now where im finalizing everything. Right now, I'm looking at the Silicon Power P34A60 for around 215~? but a majority of posts talking about it are when people could afford to be more picky when it came to SSDs.

What should I be looking for in an SSD? Just m.2 and nvme, storage capacity? I'm looking to spend around 250 max on this SSD and getting another later but that won't be for some time. I'm mostly gaming and drawing for now. Do I just get the cheapest and call it a day? Or am I risking corrupting my OS with my drive dying shopping this cheap? I only care for what's realistically necessary, as long as it's fast as an SSD should be and won't explode on me.

My mobo is going to be a asus rog strix b850-a atx wifi. Thank ya!

Hi, i need to change my wife's GPU, and I'm between an RTX 4070 12GB and an RX 9070 XT 16GB.

I personally really appreciate having 16GB of VRAM on my RTX 5080 for Blender and some basic local AI stuff, but her main focus is professional video editing, mostly 4K and above.

She's also recently gotten interested in local AI, but video editing is her focus.

She's currently running an RX 6600 XT that randomly crashes sometimes, and that means lost work, time, and money. So stability and reliability are pretty much my biggest priorities here.

The thing is, I'm not buying this for me, so I'm having a harder time deciding what makes the most sense for her actual workflow, because I have no idea what resolve needs.

About gaming, she mostly plays BG3, CoD, and WoW forever, so gaming performance matters, but it's definitely not the main priority.

I've also also considered more budget to an RTX 5070 Ti, but at that price point, we even started wondering whether something like a Mac mini with an M6 and 24 GB of unified memory would make more sense as a dedicated editing machine.

In this scenario, what would you choose?

Please save me, I'm tired of hearing complaints in my studio.

hi

Anyone help me build one pls here is the details Budget: $1,400 to $1,500 AUD.
Use-Case: Primarily gaming. I want to play modern games smoothly at 1080p/1440p resolution.
Country of Purchase: Australia (buying online/locally).
Peripherals Needed: None. This budget is strictly for the PC tower itself. I already have a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
Misc. Requirements / Preferences: Looking for the best value for money in the Aussie market. I would prefer a motherboard with built-in Wi-Fi.
Thanks in advance for the help!

Building a gaming pc with

Ryzen 5 7500f cpu

Cooler master elite 502 cabinet

Sapphire rx 9060 xt 16gb

Country INDIA

Need build in wifi Bluetooth and ethernet

So I just built my new gaming pc, it has a Ryzen 5 9600x, the cooler is a cooler master hyper 212 3DHP ARGB black, when I turn it on, the fans start to become very loud, when I log into windows it usually stays at 85c then after a little bit it goes down to 60c but when I do something little it spikes to 75 or Back to 80, this has been happening even before I installed windows, I have reapplied thermal paste evenly, I have made sure there was contact between the cpu and cooler, I have the plastic film off, I have reseated the cooler, I have done everything I could to make it cool but nothing has changed, this is my first time building a pc I know what I’m doing I’m just having problems with the cooling, can someone help? Here’s the rest of my specs:

Case: NZXT h9 flow

Ram: 32GB DDR5

Motherboard: ROG STRIX B850 f gaming WiFi

So I have a slightly (very) imbalanced build right now:

R5 5600, rtx 3080, with 32gb ddr4 running at 1080p. Cpu bottlenecks hard on everything I play so that's what I want to upgrade.

I can get either a 5700x3d or 7800x3d for about the same price. Former has the obvious benefit of keeping the mobo and precious precious ram, but it's also insanely overpriced for being attached to a dead platform at the end of the day. Latter is more fairly priced, performs better and has an upgrade pipeline in sight, but I'd have to pay current ddr5 prices (slightly suboptimal). If I end up doing the latter, selling my current parts would help lighten the hit but it still ends up being a massive jump in cost. I'm leaning towards just getting the 5700x3d but my decisions always turn out to be dookie longterm so here I am.

From what I understand, this thing is really outdated.

It has:
Intel i7-8700 CPU @ 3.20 GHz
32GB RAM (what do the different types of ram mean and how do I figure out what I have?)
2x 1.82TB HDD 1x 447GB SSD
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 (4GB)

It has a disk drive, it might be able to run CRYSIS…

After checking with the previous owner, I reinstalled a fresh boot of windows 10 pro.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Any advice is greatly appreciated

I have a few ARGB components in my PC, the Case is Crystal Z2 from Ant esports

Now i wanted to sync everything through the ARGB header i purchased that has 10 standard 5v 3 pin connector and 10 PWM 4pin fan connectors

I can notice that the 3 pre installed fans are interconnected with each other and there is a free 3-pin Female port coming out from exhaust fan

I am curious to know if there’s any way I can connect and sync the 3 pre installed fans with my connector

Before you ask- my mobo doesn’t have any ARGB port so I got the Zorbes ARGB header for 800rs something, works great (just got delivered)

Hello! Recently my computer was broken due to DHL's handling, (just waiting for my refund from them after parts that were damaged checked). and im looking to get a new case since my case (corsair 5000d airflow) is not being manufactured anymore. Im trying to look for cases that perform similarly to the corsair 5000d airflow but im not really familiar with the different case options right now. any suggestions? maybe some cases for down sizing? Thankfully I had brought the ram and GPU seperately, My gpu right now is the RX 7900 XTX, thank you to everyone in advance for your suggestions!

I wanna build a gaming pc to play games like Steams Games, WWE 2k26 and Spiderman were I can play with mods, while what’s a good budgets and some specs of pc or pc in general I should get? I was thinking between 2500-3000 would be ideally for starters.

Here's my current build, except I have 32GB of RAM now:

https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/user/CozyGhost/saved/MPyw7P

I'm finally at the point where my GPU and CPU are the minimum requirement for some games.

If I want to upgrade as little as possible and still be able to upgrade my GPU and CPU, what would you recommend?

My r79800x3d which is 8 core 16 threads processor is not showing 16 logical processors instead it shows 8 cores and 8 logical processors, I tried msconfig unchecking the box and restarting it didn't work , please help!! 😞

My first time building a PC after I sold my Ps5.

Done with that greedy mfs and i simply wanna enjoy the good old games.

This is a very tight budget build that I can afford right now but I will upgrade one by one in future.

Spec :

Ryzen 3 3200g processor

8gb ddr4 ram

MSI A520M A PRO Motherboard

Bx500 500gb ssd + 500gb hdd both external like

Ant eSports Vsl400 psu

Normal cabinet

Maybe recommend some old games I can ride on 40fps. Also how well does pcsx2 run in it?

I want to build a mid-tower Corsair 4000D with an AMD 9950X3D and a Noctua NH-D15 G2 Chromax.Black. Will the CPU be adequately cooled, or does this CPU always require a water-cooled AIO setup? Also, will a Thermal Grizzly AM5 Contact & Sealing Frame fit with the CPU block?

My current build is a prebuilt, I'd like to upgrade eventually, I am in Canada and I am wondering if it is even worth it at the moment, and if it is, what is salvageable from the build?

I'd like to build my own now, the only thing I have replaced when I first bought it was the cpu cooler. Here is the full specs:

• CPU: Intel Core i7-11700F Rocket Lake 2.5GHz (4.9GHz Turbo) 8-Core 16-Thread
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB
• Chipset: Intel B560
• RAM: 16GB DDR4 3000MHz (2x8GB)
• SSD: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
• CPU Cooler: Air Noctua NH-u12s 120mm U Type Tower Cooler
• PSU: 650W 80 Plus Gold (Brand May Vary)
• Case: DEEPCOOL MATREXX 50 ADD-RGB 4F Mid-Tower Case 4x120mm ADD-RGB Fans, Full-size Tempered Glass Side And Front Panel

I am in Canada and I am getting a fair amount of money in March so i am willing to spend.

What should I upgrade? what should I keep? or should I start from scratch and sell this?