The future is multithreaded, so basically the best course of action is to get something with as many cores/threads and as high a frequency as you can afford.

I used to be an Intel guy but I think AMD’s offerings are much better value for money at the moment.

If I was building a new desktop PC, I would probably get Ryzen 3700X.

I went with a Ryzen 3600X based system recently - first CPU upgrade in about 10 years for me. I think it’s great and suspect it will last me a long time.

A few months ago I replaced my i5 4690K with a Ryzen 5 3600, X570 motherboard, DDR4-3200 and NVMe SSD. I am really pleased with it, good value for the money and for some reason I find new AMD hardware more fun to tinker with than Intel.

I still need to upgrade my graphics card (currently using a GTX950), most likely I will go for an AMD GPU on black friday if I have the chance.

Yep, you can't go wrong with the Zen 2 CPUs. IPC is actually slightly higher than the latest Intel chips--it's just that they can't clock quite as high. Still, single-threaded performance is more than respectable, and when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, it's absolutely no contest: AMD's mainstream socket currently gives you up to 12c/24t, while Intel only provides 8c/16t. The 16c/32t Ryzen 9 3950x should be available in a few weeks, too.

I recently upgraded from a 6c/12t Ivy Bridge-E 4930K to a 12c/24t Ryzen 9 3900X. The uptick in both single- and multi-threaded performance was enormous! And with Zen 2, AMD finally fixed their AVX2 implementation. Fire up x265 and stand back baby!

Awesome! Thank you so much for the help.
What about the GPU? I see the Geforce 1050 GTX and the AMD RX 570 in my price range. Mind you my goal is to be able to play newer titles for a long time even if it means sacrificing quality.

I'm using a 1060 GTX 3GB here and it's OK for 1080P, I don't love it though. I should have gone for the 6GB in hindsight I think. I can see another upgrade within the next year or so.

Another vote for a ryzen 3600 - 3700x here. Don't even have to go x570 if you don't want PCI-E 4, but be wary of bios support.

As for GPU, that's the one part I've been sticking to buying used these days due to insane prices. Budget GPUs are leaving too much on the table for me performance wise, and high end cards are way too expensive to buy new. Your choice here will make or break the "gaming pc"..

I got a b-stock 980Ti which I run overclocked.. it's in GTX 1070 Ti territory and I barely paid $200 with a 1 year warranty (this was nearly a year ago, they go for much less on forum trades now). The 980Ti still runs every game in my library flawlessly (Borderlands 3 included at 1080P high settings, usually in the region of 90FPS. 120FPS on medium settings..)

So.. my budget PC suggestion would be
CPU: Ryzen 3600
Mobo: Pick your poison (Not sure when B550 boards are coming. Most b450/x470 boards will require a bios update for 3000 series).
Ram: 16GB Anything with SK-hynix C die, e.g. G.skill sniper 3600 (does 3600 at fairly tight timings for half the price of samsung b-die)
GPU: Used 980ti to as high as 1080Ti (unless RTX is a requirement). Vega64 is also VERY cheap in the US used and trades blows with GTX 1080 (non ti), but be wary of loud blowers and high power consumption/heat.

Note: If the monitor you're using is only 60hz/1080P, you could step down the video card even further. Point is, don't be afraid of used, prices came down a ton on the used market this year.

I knew picking the GPU won't be easy. When it comes to used I'm a scaredypuss. I just like things new and with a 3 years factory warranty. I'm looking at used 980Tis now and only 1 week warranty on most of them for $350-400! Can't take that risk. The used market here is small and overpriced.
I like the 1060 though and it's 192 bit instead of the 128 bit 1050. I've read somewhere that 128 bit cards should be avoided. The 6 GB version costs almost double than the 3 GB, pricey.
The question is, will 3 GB VRAM be enough for future games? Since COD WW2 already recommended 6 GB VRAM for the game in 2017 the answer is probably no.
What about the Radeon RX 580 8GB GDDR5 256bit? It's $300 new while the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5 192bit is $390.

TheMobRules wrote:

A few months ago I replaced my i5 4690K with a Ryzen 5 3600,.

I recently replaced my AMD FX 6300 with a 4690 😒

And that's for my main rig! I would upgrade to the latest but something keeps soaking up all my spare cash (looking at you pile of retro computers).

I used to have a 1050Ti and it was not fast enough to run 2017 games in FullHD at medium-high settings.

RX580, on the other hand, is still an excellent GPU, especially the 8GB version. Definitely fast enough for FullHD gaming.

Can confirm RX580 8GB is an okay card. It's no S3 ViRGE but it'll do.

The RX480 8GB I got in 2016 still plays everything fine at 1080p with a Ryzen 2600 today.

Any of the Eluktronics laptops you can afford will be fine

Same here, I bought RX470 day one, later reflashed it with RX570 BIOS and it's perfectly fine for 1080p gaming even today.

Today is NO different than the old 486 era of 1992-94.
If you want to play computer games then your best bet is build your own computer.
Or you can buy an iMac for $3000.

If you want to choose your own sound card and video card and CPU and 4K display and motherboard.
Then you want to build your own.

Search YouTube for “tech deals” channel.

They seem to be the lone “Jeti” exposing the Darkside.

RX580 it is! Thank you for all your help!

Miphee wrote:

RX580 it is! Thank you for all your help!

If your budget allows for it the RX5700 is also a solid card

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Today is NO different than the old 486 era of 1992-94.
If you want to play computer games then your best bet is build your own computer.
Or you can buy an iMac for $3000.