First PC Build for 4K Gaming, VR (Meta Quest 3), and Sim Racing – Need Feedback & Compatibility Check!

[BraAin]

Hey everyone,


I’m building my first PC, and I’m looking for some feedback to ensure everything is compatible and up to the task. My main goals are 4K gaming, VR (Meta Quest 3), and sim racing. I’ve tried to balance performance and cost, with an eye toward future-proofing it as much as possible.


Here are the specs I’ve settled on:

Case
CORSAIR 3500X ARGB TEMPERED GLASS MID-TOWER (PCS)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Eight Core CPU (Up to 5.2GHz/104MB w/3D V-CACHE/AM5)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B850-PLUS WIFI (AM5, DDR5, M.2 PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 7)
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 6000MHz CL30 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
16GB GIGABYTE GEFORCE RTX 5070 Ti GAMING OC - HDMI, 3 x DP
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SOLIDIGM P44 PRO GEN 4 M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 7000MB/sR, 6500MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 850W RMx SERIES™ ATX 3.1, MODULAR, CYBENETICS GOLD
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
ARGB Power Supply Extension Cables
LIAN LI ARGB STRIMER WIRELESS 24-PIN + 12VHPWR CABLE
Processor Cooling
NZXT Kraken Elite 360 RGB (2024)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND APPLICATION
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD 2.5Gbe LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
NONE OR ONBOARD Wi-Fi (MOTHERBOARD DEPENDENT)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
Norton 360 inc. Game Optimizer - Free 90 Day License
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (6 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Price: £2,698.00 including VAT and Delivery

Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am5-pc/xcB3gecXzZ/

Purpose:

• 4K Gaming – I want to run AAA titles at ultra settings with stable framerates.
• VR (Meta Quest 3) – Will this setup be powerful enough for a smooth VR experience?
• Sim Racing – Is this build good for racing simulators with high realism, like iRacing or Assetto Corsa?
• Future-Proofing – Is this build going to hold up for at least 3-5 years, or should I upgrade any components now to avoid bottlenecks down the line?

Questions:

1. Are all these components compatible?
2. Is there anything I should be upgrading or changing based on my needs (VR, 4K gaming, sim racing)?
3. Will this build handle demanding VR games without performance dips or lag?
4. Is the cooling system "over the top"?
5. Does the PSU have enough wattage to support potential future upgrades (GPU/CPU)?

I appreciate any advice you can offer!

 

[TonyCarter]

I don’t think it’s far off, just needs a couple of tweaks to storage config and cooling (as the Kraken is VERY expensive), but this does release some budget for a better motherboard, PSU & SSD config.

Case
CORSAIR 3500X ARGB TEMPERED GLASS MID-TOWER (PCS)
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Eight Core CPU (Up to 5.2GHz/104MB w/3D V-CACHE/AM5)
Motherboard
GIGABYTE X870 EAGLE WIFI7 (AM5, DDR5, M.2 PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 7) - higher tier with USB4 on board
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 6000MHz CL30 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
16GB GIGABYTE GEFORCE RTX 5070 Ti GAMING OC - HDMI, 3 x DP - you’re paying a £100 premium for the Gigabyte brand here, the performance of the Palit & Zotac models will be essentially identical
1st M.2 SSD Drive
1TB CORSAIR ELITE MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 7000 MB/R, 6200 MB/W) - smaller faster drive just for Windows, apps & game launchers
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB CORSAIR CORE XT MP600 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (up to 5000 MB/R, 4400 MB/W) - secondary drive just for game installs
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ ATX 3.1, MODULAR, CYBENETICS GOLD - slightly more powerful PSU for future GPU upgrades (i.e. xx80), but the higher tier 1200Hx would be needed if you’re ever planning on a xx90 tier GPU
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
ARGB Power Supply Extension Cables
LIAN LI ARGB STRIMER WIRELESS 24-PIN + 12VHPWR CABLE - seems a lot of money (£92) for a cable
Processor Cooling
CORSAIR ICUE LINK TITAN 360 RX RGB HIGH PERFORMANCE CPU COOLER - same cooling performance as the Kraken, but £100 cheaper
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING - no need as the pre-applied Corsair paste is better
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD 2.5Gbe LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
NONE OR ONBOARD Wi-Fi (MOTHERBOARD DEPENDENT)
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Microsoft® Edge
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Price: £2,617.00 including VAT and Delivery
Unique URL to re-configure: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/saved-configurations/amd-am5-pc/zUbtvXvF8M/

 

[Scott]

The build above is ideal for the budget. I just want to highlight that the 5070Ti will perform admirably for your uses, but you're not going to be maxing anything at 4k. If the Sim Racing is for VR, you're not going to be able to max the settings there either as there are some real resource killers in the options.

You couldn't max out the settings on everything on a 5090 (2k GPU on its own) and you're 2 full tiers down on the 5070Ti with a more budget friendly choice, this logic alone tells you that you won't be maxing performance..... but you wouldn't be able to hit max on the sliders anyway.

Just attempting to caveat the assumptions and expectations vs reality and sensibility.

 

[simwad]

The build above is ideal for the budget. I just want to highlight that the 5070Ti will perform admirably for your uses, but you're not going to be maxing anything at 4k. If the Sim Racing is for VR, you're not going to be able to max the settings there either as there are some real resource killers in the options.

You couldn't max out the settings on everything on a 5090 (2k GPU on its own) and you're 2 full tiers down on the 5070Ti with a more budget friendly choice, this logic alone tells you that you won't be maxing performance..... but you wouldn't be able to hit max on the sliders anyway.

Just attempting to caveat the assumptions and expectations vs reality and sensibility.

Just interested as to what current GPU could max out the settings? Or is that games are designed to take advantage of what 'might' be coming?

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Just interested as to what current GPU could max out the settings? Or is that games are designed to take advantage of what 'might' be coming?

70 tiers are 1440p / Ultrawide
80 and 90 tiers are 4k
60 tiers are 1080p

 

[Scott]

Just interested as to what current GPU could max out the settings? Or is that games are designed to take advantage of what 'might' be coming?

Like I said, I have a 5090 and I couldn't max out all settings on all games at 4k and expect optimal frame rates (144hz). If the 5070 Ti could max out settings at 4k what would be the point of the 5080 and 5090? It's just logic.

With VR it's even more unlikely as you are rendering 2 different screens at the same time. In MSFS2024, for example, I see around 45 FPS in VR without the settings even being close to max.

This is a very common area of misunderstanding with the gaming community, "max" gets used all the time but rarely anything is actually maxed. FPS games are pretty good for being able to max out settings as they are well optimised, but typically the high end players don't do this as they want everything smooth and sharp for accuracy.

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Max settings is simply used for benchmarking, no gamer would ever use those settings as it so negatively impacts performance for little or often zero gain

You learn which settings you can reduce or disable without affecting visual fidelity, it’s called optimised settings

ULTRA GRAPHICS SETTINGS - DONT BELIEVE THE HYPE

Hi all Moving to PC Gaming requires some knowledge on adjusting graphical settings to get best performance, especially when on a more budget system, or with some games that aren't ported so well to PC and have rogue settings that can either be turned down or even disabled. For most games, if...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

 

[BraAin]

70 tiers are 1440p / Ultrawide
80 and 90 tiers are 4k
60 tiers are 1080p

I believe that the 5070ti is almost identical to the base 5080. Both 16gbvram? That's why it would be able to play 4k? And with the dlss4 or whatever it's even better? Should be be more than enough for pc vr. I have a quest 3 so it's pretty good just on it's own without a pc.

 

[BraAin]

For example 4k playing spiderman 2, cyberpunk etc. ? Playable at 4k. And then the lower res 1440p on competitive games. Or even more demanding like StarCitizen ?

 

[TonyCarter]

I believe that the 5070ti is almost identical to the base 5080. Both 16gbvram? That's why it would be able to play 4k? And with the dlss4 or whatever it's even better? Should be be more than enough for pc vr. I have a quest 3 so it's pretty good just on it's own without a pc.

It's close in VRAM and memory bandwidth, but 30% down on cores and 10% lower boost clocks.

 

[Scott]

I believe that the 5070ti is almost identical to the base 5080. Both 16gbvram? That's why it would be able to play 4k? And with the dlss4 or whatever it's even better? Should be be more than enough for pc vr. I have a quest 3 so it's pretty good just on it's own without a pc.

They aren't that close, as explained above. I have said already that it will do a reasonable job at 4k, this isn't the contention.

I didn't want you getting the wrong idea about "max" settings. If you were to maximise all the settings in those games you mention, it's very likely that you would lose a ton of performance. All those little tricks that you mention are lowering the settings. Anything where you need to use AI to create frames is due to a lack of performance, and it's making up the difference.

This is a perfectly acceptable and known way of making up that difference but I just wanted to highlight how often "max" settings and "ultra" is thrown around and misunderstood nowadays. If you could max settings at 4k on a 5070ti then no-one would want/need to buy anything higher than that.

 

[AccidentalDenz]

To try and illustrate the point Scott and others are making using a game mentioned in the thread, Cyberpunk 2077 has a setting about how fluffy you want your clouds to be. Max it out and you'll get photo-realistic clouds which the game will generate the whole time the game is playing. When you're inside buidlings with no windows, the clouds will be out there taking up a lot of system resources for no visual benefit. When you're in the downtown areas of Night City and can't see the sky, yep the pretty clouds will still be there. When you're in the suburbs and can see the sky, but you're being chased by various factions so can't focus up there, you'll still have the clouds. Drop that setting down to Medium, the clouds still look pretty impressive, but will use far less resources.

For a more recent example with specific examples of graphics settings, the Indiana Jones game that came out last year is a technical masterpiece in a lot of ways, but still needs a bit of tweaking as maxing out all the settings isn't really feasible.

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

To try and illustrate the point Scott and others are making using a game mentioned in the thread, Cyberpunk 2077 has a setting about how fluffy you want your clouds to be. Max it out and you'll get photo-realistic clouds which the game will generate the whole time the game is playing. When you're inside buidlings with no windows, the clouds will be out there taking up a lot of system resources for no visual benefit. When you're in the downtown areas of Night City and can't see the sky, yep the pretty clouds will still be there. When you're in the suburbs and can see the sky, but you're being chased by various factions so can't focus up there, you'll still have the clouds. Drop that setting down to Medium, the clouds still look pretty impressive, but will use far less resources.

For a more recent example with specific examples of graphics settings, the Indiana Jones game that came out last year is a technical masterpiece in a lot of ways, but still needs a bit of tweaking as maxing out all the settings isn't really feasible.

It's kind of like the original Crysis released in 2007, it literally took about 10 years before hardware had caught up to be able to happily play that maxxed out.

I guess now, we've got far more games doing that kind of thing, plus devs have put their fingers up to NVidia who've strangleholded VRAM for a long time now. Not saying AMD are any better certainly at the entry level.

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Just interested as to what current GPU could max out the settings? Or is that games are designed to take advantage of what 'might' be coming?

Just an additional to this, the current brand new graphics tech that is causing GPUs to MASSIVELY #truggle is Path Tracing.

Rasterization vs Ray Tracing vs Path Tracing: What is the difference?

Understanding the differences between rasterization vs ray tracing, and path tracing helps you know how they transform digital models into stunning images.

irendering.net

How it worked with graphics technology road map was the following all outlined by like the founder of pc graphics back in 1969 or something crazy:

2D: the initial basic pixel art tech. Enhanced as colour palettes grew.

Rasterisation: what we’ve been used to for so long, 2D appearing 3D, really started back in the 90s, just with GPUs becoming more and more powerful and bitmaps turning into more complex triangles and polygons, plus obviously GPUs being able to process more and more pixels at the same time for a far higher resolution output. The original Crysis from 2007 was the benchmark game to showcase this for a decade where bullet sprays could cut down palm trees in the distance using complex PhysX

Ray Tracing: core thing here is global illumination, where a specific light source can interact in real time with any graphical objects within that path. Control from 2019 was the initial game to showcase showcase this

Path Tracing: Path Tracing extends that initial global illumination source and then follows it in all the ways it can bounce, so far more complex and realistic reflections in glass or water for instance. The first major game to really showcase this was Black Myth: Wukong

Its Path Tracing being implemented to current games where A: it requires quite a substantial amount of VRAM, and B: will swallow any GPU currently available. These are the games that will cause a 5090 to crawl to under 60fps at 1080p when maxed out.

There are games with partial path tracing and then there are fully path traced games. It’s the games like Wukong, Doom: The Dark Ages has been announced it will have a Path Tracing update shortly, Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty

All these ones just currently tank the FPS counter, the tech is still so new and the AI models are still learning, as time goes on they’ll become more efficient at predicting ray paths.

 

[TonyCarter]

…and most will probably turn it off / down as they can’t tell the difference…or it adds sod all to a fast-paced gaming experience 😁