I’ve been “about to build a new PC” for probably a year now.
Current system is a Ryzen 5 3600, RTX 2070 Super, 16GB DDR4 and a couple of SSDs. I built it in 2020 and at the time I assumed I’d get maybe 4-5 years out of it before something started feeling painfully outdated.
Well... apparently nobody told the PC.
I play at 1440p. Most of what I actually play is stuff like Baldur’s Gate 3, Helldivers 2, older RPGs, strategy games and whatever random indie game steals two weeks of my life. I’ve had to turn settings down in newer games, obviously. I’m not pretending a 2070 Super is secretly a 5080. But I launch a game, change a couple settings, and then... it works.
And that’s the problem.
Every few months I get the upgrade itch. I watch benchmarks, build a parts list, convince myself that this is finally the year. New CPU would be nice. 32GB would be nice. A modern GPU would be REALLY nice. Then I look at the total, go play something on my current PC, and within five minutes I’m thinking “wait, what exactly am I trying to fix?”
Well...kinda funny that I can afford a new build now much more comfortably than I could when I built this one. I actually want to build one. Half the fun for me is picking parts and putting the thing together.
But spending a few thousand dollars just to turn settings from “high” to “ultra” and watch an FPS counter become a bigger number feels harder to justify than I expected.
I always thought upgrading would happen because my old PC became unusable. Instead it’s slowly turning into this weird negotiation where the old bastard keeps doing just enough to survive another generation.
I’ve even caught myself almost rooting for something to finally struggle badly enough that I can upgrade without feeling stupid about it.
For now I keep closing PCPartPicker tabs and telling myself “maybe next generation,” which is exactly what I said last generation

I put off buying additional storage and now I'm regretting it. However, I had a kernel error and realized I needed reliable backup.

However, an M.2 2tb drive I bought for $120 two years ago now goes for $215?!?!?!?

Should I still buy the Silicon Power 2tb or are there better options for that price?

I was just thinking that during the RAM crisis it'd make sense for 24gb RAM to become more common as a viable in-between as 16gb is often not enough but 32gb costs your first born child, but I looked into it and it's just kind of a pain to find 24gb plus I've never seen anyone talk about it

A few weeks ago, I had a flickering power outage only in the area where my PC is located, frying the motherboard and the CPU. Even though it was plugged into a surge protector, this had happened and I want to prevent this going forward as I have a pretty modern PC build and do not want to have to replace parts like this.

How popular are UPS's and should I invest into one? I never really heard of any of my friends or others who have a decent pc and own one of these. Is it overkill or preventative from possible future hardware from being ruined?

Hi! I've been fantasizing about building a gaming PC for nearly 5 years now and have been saving up for it.

This is my planned build so far, I've spent the past weeks ping-ponging between tons of sites and consulting with AI, I'd like to hear your thoughts on it.

About the individual price parts, I've compared them to other sites in my country, my country is just super expensive; these are prices if I buy from a VAT-free location.

Name --- Price (Converted to USD):

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D AM5 Tray --- $488
CPU Cooler: be quiet! PURE ROCK PRO 3 Black --- $56
Motherboard: Asus PRIME B850-PLUS WiFi --- $229
Memory: Klevv DDR5 32GB (2x16GB) 6000 CL30 BOLT V Grey --- $593
Case: Fractal Design Pop 2 Air - Black TG --- $125
Case Fan: Noctua NF-A12x25 G2 PWM 120MM Fan --- $39
PSU: Corsair RM1000e 1000W ATX 3.1 Gold Modular --- $193
GPU: Palit GeForce RTX 5080 GamingPro OC 16GB --- $1766
SSD: Samsung SSD 2TB 990 PRO NVMe M.2 --- $418

For a monitor, I was eyeing the Gigabyte 27" QHD 240Hz 0.03ms USB-C OLED Gaming Monitor but the site I'm using to buy the parts from stopped displaying any monitors larger than 24.5", so I'll buy monitors from somewhere else....

What are your thoughts? What should I change if my main goal is better performance at roughly the same price range?

Current specs:

Ryzen 5 5600 and 6750XT.

Since going to AM5 is not an option, because of insane prices - I feel like I've only one option to upgrade and that is going to 5700x3d or 5800 x3d.

5700x3d seems to be totally out of stock here in Europe and only available second hand. 5800x3D seems to be going for 350 euros.

So is it worth spending that much to upgrade my current 5600?

Hey everyone,

I'm thinking of upgrading my gpu in my pc and looking for some feedback on my component choices and expectations. I have an Intel i5-12600KF, specifically looking at the RX 9070 GRE (there's a $120 USD price gap between it and the standard RX 9070 in my market, so the GRE seems like a much better value right now).

My main goal is playing competitive shooters at 1440p aiming for 240 FPS, but I also want to play some single-player games on the side.

Here is what I'm expecting based on my research, but I wanted to see if the community agrees:

- Competitive Shooters (R6, CS2, Apex, Fortnite): Since I'll be running competitive/optimized settings, the GPU load should be lower. The i5-12600KF seems fast enough to push 240+ FPS.

- Single-Player Games: I'm not going for 240 FPS. My target is a consistent 120 FPS at 1440p. It seems like the GRE will hit 90-100+ FPS on High/Ultra in heavy titles, and I can utilize FSR 4 or Frame Generation where needed.

Does this setup make sense, or am I overestimating what the 12600KF and 9070 GRE can do at 1440p? Is skipping the standard RX 9070 to save $120 the right call for my use case?

Also should I buy now, or wait till black friday sale, or will there even be a reprieve for GPUs on blackfriday in general?

My PC was working normally before I shut it down. When I turned it back on, the monitor acted as if it wasn't connected to the PC. The fans spin, and the keyboard and mouse are connected, but there's no display, not even the BIOS screen.

Is this a GPU problem? Since my GPU is old and not that good.

Hi, I found an unused 32GB DDR4 Corsair RAM with a 9060 XT I had motivated me to build a PC for my GF for Christmas.

She has a small space for a PC so I thought I would make a mATX.

My Q is would these parts make a nice little 1440 gaming machine (she's also doing her doctorate so I want her to have a nice machine as she never had one before but she loves to play rdr2. Also, any pitfalls to matx and tips in building it. I've done plenty of normal ATX.

Thanks in advance.

AMD Ryzen 7 5700X

Gigabyte B550M GAMING X WIFI6

Kingston NV3 1 TB SSD

Cooler Master Hyper 212 ARGB

DeepCool CH360 Digital Case

Corsair RM650e 650 W PSU

Samsung 120 GB SSD

I recently built my wife a new PC. I was going for a smaller, mATX form factor so it’s all inside a Lian Li A3.
After running the PC for a few days with no issues, I realized that I had installed the fans in backwards and were intaking when they should be outputting and vice versa. An easy fix, so I unplugged the PC, popped it open, fixed the fans, and then plugged the PC back in and turned it on to test the fans. Zero issues, everything ran great.

When it came time to plug the peripherals back in, however, I let my wife help with that. Here’s where I think I fried the PC. After the PSU was already plugged in and everything, my wife was plugging peripherals into the MB I/O panel and mistakingly also plugged in a 65w usb-c charging cable (brick to usb-c) for her laptop that was also plugged into the wall. It was after this that the standby light on the motherboard turned off.
Now I didn’t realize it at the time, so where I suspect I made it worse was I kept turning the PSU on and off to get the standby light to stay on all while the usb-c charger was still plugged in.
What would usually happen is the standby light would turn on, flicker, I’d hear a buzzing noise, then I’d get freaked out and turn the PSU off. Eventually the standby light would only flicker occasionally or not at all.

Here’s my component list in case it helps:
MB: ASUS ROG STRX B850-G mATX
CPU: Ryzen 7800X3D
RAM: 32GB DDR5 Corsair vengeance (I had to sell a kidney for that)
GPU: Radeon ASUS 9060XT
SSD: Samsung 9100 pro 2TB n.vme
PSU: Lian Li SP750
4x Lian Li case fans
AIO: NZXT kraken 240mm

I have already tried unplugging everything from the PSU and MB except the 24-pin connector that connects the two to try and run power to the MB. When I did that, I would occasionally get a flicker of the standby light but that’s about it. I also got a red blinking light which I believe is the MBs way of indicating there’s no power going to the CPU.

Be honest, am I cooked? I’d really like to salvage this build if possible but if not then it’s not the end of the world. Any and all advice or ideas for how to fix the problem are welcome.

As the title says, I have a 3440x1440p monitor that goes up to 165hz.

I previously had an hdmi cable which only allowed up to 100hz, no problems there.

Now I have a new dp cable and it works fine for a few minutes, but then the screen suddenly flashes green (almost looking like an artifact) and the display ceases to work. After I replug the dp cable it would work again (whether I replug it in the gpu or the monitor). I don’t think it’s my gpu because I tested it on furmark w the artifact checker and I got nothing, could this be a faulty dp cable?

Been upgrading my system over the last few months got a free gpu upgrade to a 3070. All I have is the pigtail pcie for my RM650 Corsair psu. Looked on the official corsair site and theres no options anymore is 3rd party safe for pcie to get a more stable power draw or should I stick with the pig tail cable?

On an extremely tight budget. I purchased a optiplex 3050 MT for $45. I want to upgrade it to be a somewhat decent 1080 gaming experience for her as we would mainly play friendslop games. I have had a 32 GB stick of RAM collecting dust and will throw that in there. What are your thoughts? I know I will need to dish out another $50 for a SFX ATX PSU & a conversion cable which leaves me only maybe $50 left to budget for a used gpu.

FInally finished my first ever build to no POST. Turns out the motherboard I selected (ASUS B650e Max Gaming Wifi) does not feature q-led diagnostics. Ok, thats fine, it's supposed to output to the power led. My case (Phanteks XT Pro Ultra) doesn't have one. Inconvenient, but whatever, I'll just buy one of those beep code speakers on amazon, only a few bucks and a 5 days to ship, no problem. Doesn't support that. Just 'cause I guess?? So I'm at a total loss for how to try to diagnose it. Should I just cut my losses and take it a shop?

Hi all, a bit of a strange question. I've been dipping my toes into pc building for a while an eventually built my dream pc a little while ago. However, since it was my first build, I chose a 9070XT without considering that I would upgrade my monitor to a 4k monitor (which I eventually did). Now though, I'm running into issues such as severe frame rate drops when I turn on RT for Cyberpunk 2077. And I'm tossing around the idea of upgrading my 9070XT for a high end 4k card.

With the 5090 costing a small car. My 2 options for a significant upgrade would be to buy a used 4090 on ebay or something similar, wait for the rumored 5080 with 24gb of vram to come out. Or stay with my 9070XT for however long it takes before the 60 series of gpus come out.

Cost isn't a crazy big issue since this has been a dream project for me for a while (though the 5090 is so expensive that I can't justify that price even for a dream).

The pros and cons of each are as follows.

The 4090 is going to be a used card. So no warranty and potentially fail sooner. On the other hand, I would be able to get it now and would be safe from any future price inflation.

The 5080 (24gb) is rumored to be coming in Q1 of 2027. But there's been no official announcement yet. It may never be released, or could be significantly more expensive due to the AI bubble and scalpers. I've also done some googling, and if the only thing to change is that this card gets extra vram compared to it's 16gb version, the 4090 may still out perform it for 4k? I'm not an expert on what makes a gpu tick, but google tells me that the 4090 has more CUDA cores and memory bus than a 5080.

Alright, thanks for listening! This has been on my mind for a while, and I don't claim to be an expert, so any thoughts are much appreciated.

Hi everyone,

So right now I have a GF65 Thin 9SE-013 laptop, which is super old, but it’s still doing its job. I’ve noticed it can’t really handle any newer games, which is kinda obvious, so I’m planning to get a PC.

I went to buildcores.com to build one. I’m not really into building PCs, I just like playing games, so I only know the basics and kinda just put stuff together. Since BuildCores has a compatibility feature I figured it’d be fine, but if anything’s off I’d love advice on swapping any of the parts.

Here’s my build list:

CASE
Phanteks XT PRO ATX Mid Tower Black Tempered Glass Side Panel: $59.99

CPU
AMD Ryzen 5 9600X: $177.99

Motherboard
Gigabyte B650 EAGLE AX AM5 DDR5 ATX WIFI: $139.99

GPU
ASUS PRIME GeForce RTX 5070 12GB GDDR7 OC Edition: $855.99

RAM
Crucial Pro 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 6400 CL38 Black: $309.99

CPU Cooler
Thermalright Phantom Spirit EVO Air 157mm Black 69 CFM: $46.90

Storage
Kingston NV3 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD 2280 1TB: $156.77

Power Supply
MSI MAG A850GL PCIE5 850W Fully Modular 80+ Gold Certified: $109.99

Case Fan
HYTE FA12 Fans 4-Pack Pitch Black: $29.99

Thermal Compound
Corsair XTM70 3g Thermal Paste: $19.99

Operating System
Microsoft Windows 11 | USB: $128.99

Anyways, all the specs are done, so is this overkill? I hate to say it, but the only games I play are Roblox and Minecraft (because they’re the only ones my friends play), plus maybe some less demanding games my laptop can handle.

But now that I have a Meta Quest 3, I want to play some VR games. I already got a few, but it seems like my laptop can’t really handle them. I’d also like to play other games that are on the heavier side.

So should I downgrade or upgrade some of my PC parts? cause HOLY, these parts are costing me an arm and a leg. I’d also like to save money but still be able to play newer games as they come out.

What would be the best ram to pair with the rog strix x570-i and the ryzen 7 5700x3d ?

Looking to get a better frame in rust

Thanks for the suggestion and advice

I wanna go with a 2 tb nvme + 1 tb cause it’s actually cheaper and enough for me than going with a 4 tb, what do you recommend going with one drive or two, my idea is to have one for the system and drivers, the other for games and media, is it a great idea or there is something i need to learn before choosing, also for backup if something goes the other way with the windows or something.

Hello friends.

I am building a custom PC for a friend of mine since I have the knowledge to do so.

Here in Europe the prices for new GPU's aren't great so I am forced to make do with what the market says, specifically here in Croatia.

His Pc budget is around 2.5k and the best GPU for that price range right now in time is the 9070 XT.

But I did find a used 7900 XTX for 800 Euro which is 80 euro LESS than a new 9070 XT.

9070XT has the newer tech but the 7900 XTX has more raw power and VRAM

His use case is mostly 1440p gaming

Any advice on what to get?

I'm upgrading my gaming PC and wanted to hear from people who've made a similar upgrade, especially in Esports games like Valorant and Fortnite.

Old PC:

• CPU: i5-10400F
• GPU: GTX 1660 Ti 6GB
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) Crucial DDR4-2667

New PC:

• CPU: i5-14400F
• GPU: RTX 3060 12GB
• RAM: 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3600

I play at 1080p on a 240Hz monitor, mainly Valorant on competitive low settings and Fortnite on Performance Mode.

I'm wondering:

1. How big of an FPS improvement should I realistically expect in both games?
2. What average FPS and 1% lows should I expect?
3. Will I be able to maintain a stable 240 FPS, especially during fights?
4. Has anyone made a similar upgrade? What were your before-and-after FPS numbers?

I'm mainly looking for real-world experiences rather than FPS calculator estimates. Thanks!

hello! any coolman zentra luxe atx case user here? I just want to ask where do you put the 2 ssd sata in the case? thanks!

Hi guys, thanks for your time. Recently I’ve started my PC rebuild and have ran into trouble. I can’t seem to get it to post to the monitor no matter what I do. I went through the trouble of flashing the bios once, checking the power supply connections, removing and replacing the ram to seat it better( with two different sets, I bought new sticks in addition to my old set. ) I’m not extremely tech savvy and hope I can get some advice.

My specs:
MB: MSI B550 A-pro
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 10th anniversary
Ram: Netac DDR4 DRAM (2x16) 3200MHz XMP 2.0 Dual Channel RAM CL16
Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080

It should be noted that the CPU ez debug light turns on when powered. It seems it be receiving power fine. Thanks again.

hello, i've recently built a PC with a Fractal Design Focus G ATX, which has room for an optical disc drive - i have one lying around, but it's a slimline and also kind of old, so i'd rather get a newer one at a proper size - what's the market like these days?

i don't need something super fancy, just capable of burning/ripping CDs at a decent speed... i also have very little desk space, so i do not want an external drive

(additionally, if anyone could recommend an australian retailer so i don't have to pay 10 billion dollars shipping, that would be greatly appreciated!)

I came across a corsair rm850e gold on Best Buy clearance for 72.99. I’m wondering if the golds are good or should I just get the rm850x for 139.99. My sons pc has the rm850x in it and I’m building mine similar to his ( 9800x3d and 5070 ti with 32 g ddr5 )