This is based off the “Great tier” AMD build, but I’m waffling a bit on the price. I don’t really know a whole lot about PC specs, but I read this is supposed to be a good long-lasting build based on the DDR5 and something newer in the CPU or Video card. That being said, I’ve only really ever build mid-tier and while I do want something nice, I’m just not sure it’s necessary for me? I tend to stick to Indie titles and the most demanding game I’ve played lately was BG3 (which my current PC has to be on med-low settings to run).

Also, if anyone has a good 22" monitor recommendations I’ll take them.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type Item Price
CPU AMD Ryzen 5 7600 3.8 GHz 6-Core Processor $218.98 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler Thermalright Peerless Assassin 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler $37.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard *Gigabyte B650M K Micro ATX AM5 Motherboard $119.99 @ Amazon
Memory *TEAMGROUP Elite 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR5-4800 CL40 Memory $37.99 @ Amazon
Storage Intel 670p 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive $79.99 @ B&H
Video Card *PowerColor Fighter Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB Video Card $319.99 @ Amazon
Case Lian Li LANCOOL 216 ATX Mid Tower Case $104.99 @ Adorama
Power Supply *Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600 W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply $66.98 @ Amazon
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total $986.81
*Lowest price parts chosen from parametric criteria
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-10-06 20:02 EDT-0400
  • Not really tbh, but Intel has adopted the little.BIG architecture which means those CPUs are have high and low performance cores, just like in the ARM/mobile CPUs. Currently these low perf cores aren’t detected correctly in Windows, and as a result it actually worsens gaming performance, but I assume this will be corrected? In synthetic/theory 13600K is better at multithreaded (https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5172vs5008/AMD-Ryzen-5-7600-vs-Intel-i5-13600K).

    This is my build:

    • The E-cores (on existing Intel chips) aren’t going to help with gaming ever, there’s just too much latency communicating between them and the P-cores. That said, performance is similar to AMD with Raptor Lake often slightly edging out Zen 4, albeit at higher power usage, but this can vary game to game. Until Cities Skylines releases and we have third party benchmarks, it’s hard to say which will be better, but they should be close either way. Raptor Lake refresh is also about to release which will probably add another 5-10% single threaded and a bit more multithreaded performance.

      I don’t know where you got the idea that they aren’t detected correctly. Intel and Microsoft worked together on the thread director for Windows 11. There were some teething issues in some games and apps early on but it’s been 3 years and most of the biggest issues were fixed in the first few months. They even work decently well on Windows 10 (I have a 12600k on 10). You can also disable them if you run into any issues.