Our build process
Every month we build a gaming PC with the latest components and cases—it’s good to get stuck in and build something regularly in our opinion. If you’re looking for inspiration for your next build, or you’re new to the hobby, you can check out our picks below. You can easily make changes to these too, and in some cases, we hope you do. We’re building and testing every PC we highlight, and if we run into any issues, we’ll explain them here.
Sometimes less is more, and this PC build epitomises that concept. I can’t claim all the credit; the Asus ProArt PA401 is a gem. The wood finish down the front panels, the all-black interior, and the clever switches that make it a breeze are all to thank for that. Now I do realise the irony of saying less is more and placing two sticks of G.Skill’s finest gold-plated, faux-crystal RAM sticks in there, but they don’t look anything near as garish as they sound.
This is an all-AMD gaming PC; my slight obsession with using the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in full force here. It’s a powerful gaming chip for a reasonable price—3D V-Cache working a treat for improving frame rates. If you wanted to improve further, you could opt for the 16 cores of the Ryzen 9 9950X3D, but you’ll pay a tall fee for that. No, the 9800X3D works great here, and most of all in combination with the Asus Prime 9070 XT I’ve selected to go with it.
Quick list
- Case: Asus ProArt PA401 Wood Edition – $140/£120
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Aorus Pro X870E – $350/£324
- Graphics card: Asus Prime Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Edition 16 GB – $643/£630
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D – $472/£420
- RAM: G.Skill Trident Z5 Royal Neo RGB 32 GB @ 6000 MT/s – $180/£170
- SSD: Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2 TB – ~$230/£210
- Cooler: Asus Prime LC 240 ARGB – $80/£96
- PSU: Corsair RM850x – $145/£135
- Fans: Included with case
- Total: $2,240/£2,105
Gallery
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Parts list
Performance
We put every build through its paces, testing the latest games and putting the CPU under pressure to ensure stability.
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This PC is ‘Custom PC #12’ in the charts below.
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