New PC + monitor, up to €3k budget -- what parts/pre-builds & where?

rat_race

Hi -- willing to spend up to €3k on a new computer + monitor (maybe even keyboard and mouse too), for software development and gaming.

It's years since I've researched hardware, so it's hard to know what's what in 2023. I know this is a boring and repetitive question to many of you, but I'm a bit clueless about the latest & greatest in terms of cases, GPUs, chipsets, DD4 vs DD5 RAM, etc. -- what should I be looking for and where. So any tips on the current market & rough prices I should be looking out for, etc., are welcome.

Happy to build or buy pre-built. Thanks a bunch y'all!

1. What is your budget? €3,000

2. What will be the main purpose of the computer? Gaming & development.

3. Do you need a copy of Windows? [Yes/No] No.

4. Can you use any parts from an old computer? No, they will remain in service!

5. Do you need a monitor? Yes, something suited for gaming. Thinking an ultra-wide as it would work nicely for development.

6. Are you willing to try overclocking? Hopefully won't be a need.

7. How can you pay? Cash, transfer, card

8. When are you purchasing? ASAP if there are any GPUs!

9. If you need help building it, where are you based? I won't need any physical help, I've built many PCs -- just not recently!

K.O.Kiki

RTX 4070 Ti just announced for release later this week.

cornholio509

@rat_race

As for if you want it now it would be nice to get more info on what you want out of the PC . Lets be clear on this . GAMING and DEVELOPEMENT are very broad terms . FOr example : if you are playing mine craft and doing web developement then a €3000 pc is well overpowered . If you playing the latest and greatest PC games at 4k and and developing CGI models then a €3000 PC is scraping the bottom of the barrel .

AMD R9 7950x , X670 motherboard , 32 gb ddr5 , rtx 3080 , 850watt PSU , A 360 AOI cooler . 1TB pcie gen 4 ssd . as for cases Fractacl design meshify C , COrsair Icue 4000x , NZXT H510 airflow just a couple of examples . That should cost you approximately €2500 . That leaves roughly €500 for a monitor .

Dont take my rough price there as gospel . It all depends on where you shop for your PC parts . intel equivelent will cost about the same . The reason i didnt list the intel parts is that the latest socket is going to be a dead end . if not by mid march , then definately by the end of this year . THe AMD AM5 socket is set to last until 2025 maybe early 2026 .

NOTE:

Also it is that time of the year for asking about the latest and greatest when CES just went live .

NVIDIA already announce the 4070ti but it was seriously cringe with a lot of TI and TIE thrown in as recognition of the PC communities memes on how its said . I am still waiting for 3rd party benchmarks b4 i beleive what NVIDIA said .

AMD is also set to make announcementes about more GPUS and 3D vcache CPUS . SO probably an r7 7800x3D and maybe even a ryzen 5 varient . Rumours at the moment b4 their keynote at CES .

Intel are also announcing more CPUs in their keynote . Aparrently a new I9 SKU .

Not to mention there will probably be the usual PC case reveals and prototypes so watch out for . Not to mention we will probably see PCIE gen 5 ssds been announced at the show . ALso tofay i think samsung just showed off and launched its first 8k ultrawide today .

So be aware what is latest and greatest now may be outdated soon .

agileunwitting

Intel are also announcing more CPUs in their keynote . Aparrently a new I9 SKU 

cornholio509

The rtx 4070ti is not competetitve at it's price range . id rather the rtx 4080 few hundred more .

intel did announce a new desktop processors but no mention of a new i9 for desktop . Some ne I3 N series chips focused probably the education side of desktops and laptops . THat said they didnt really give much away about desktop CPUs . The announcement was more focused on laptops , and having the world fastest laptop processor . i9 13980HS .

AMD will have most of its high end CPUs with 3dvcache . Looking at the specs thats an obsurd amount of cache to have on a CPU . SO ryzen 7 and 9 cpus will be interesting . That said AMD hypetrain is still going strong .

AFAIK most of what was announced at CES will be a february launch window . So watch out for benchmarks in the meantime . i am kinda glad i didnt build my new system yet . It will be nice to at least get the benchmarks and decide then .

THat said if you cant wait for the official launch dates and want to build now i find https://www.gputracker.eu/en to be a great resource . ALso https://geizhals.eu/ is another good site to use .

Lumen

w.r.t monitors, I do think it's quite difficult to optimise for both software and gaming at the moment.

Whereas a few months ago it looked like the mid-high end GPUs would be able to run 4k with ultra settings without breaking a sweat, that seems no longer the case. Fortnite on UE5 is a return to slideslow gaming. So the widescreen choices will remain 1440p, and that's good, for gaming.

But I'm running HiDPI LED/LCD screens for work (32" 4k matte, 27" 5k glossy, 13" 2560x1600 glossy) and there's no way I'd choose to go back to 1440p, and I've experimented with OLED but found some issues with text clarity.

I suppose if I had to choose one screen I'd probably go with a 1440p ultrawide OLED, but it would be annoying paying all that money and suffering lower DPI and worse text clarity.

I have a feeling there's going to be big changes in the monitor space over the next couple of years. LG has shown with its 2023 G series TVs that there's potential to substantially increase OLED brightness, and LED/LCD monitors a bit like the 40" 5k2k/72Hz LG 40WP95C but with higher refresh rates and DisplayPort 2.1 could work well for gaming with DLSS cranked up (or simply feeding a lower res).