First PC unsure on specs

[Bkleinman1]

Hi all,

I would like to build a PC which would mostly be used for gaming on racing sims. The type of games I would like to play are; iracing, Assetto Corsa Competizione, etc.

Currently i only have a single monitor, though would like a possible upgrade path in the future for it to support VR and/or a triple monitor setup. Not necessary for right now, but I don’t want to box myself in, so just future upgrade potential.

Budget can be a little flexible, though of course not looking to spend more than I need to.

I am not entirely sure if the below is wildly off the mark or not, but this is what I configured so far.
Thanks for any support in advance.

Case
PCS PRISM II ARGB MID TOWER CASE (PWM)
Promotional Item
Get a discount code for 20% off select peripherals at Corsair.com
Processor (CPU)
AMD Ryzen 5 7600X Six Core CPU (4.7GHz-5.3GHz/38MB CACHE/AM5)
Motherboard
ASUS® TUF GAMING B850-PLUS WIFI (AM5, DDR5, M.2 PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 7)
Memory (RAM)
32GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 5200MHz CL40 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card
8GB ASUS DUAL GEFORCE RTX 4060 EVO OC - HDMI, 3 x DP
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (3500 MB/R, 3100 MB/W)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W CX SERIES™ CX-650 POWER SUPPLY
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 100 V3 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
STANDARD THERMAL PASTE FOR SUFFICIENT COOLING
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
Google Chrome™
Cable Management
PCS 1.5M Zip Cable Tidy - Professional Cable Management
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
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book
Logo Branding
PCSpecialist Logo
Packaging
PCS Trade Pack - New 2023
Price: £0.00 including VAT and Delivery

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

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Please read before posting:- Collaboration of Helpful Hints

NB: These forums are not an official support channel. None of us work for PCS, we're all either customers or techies who just like to help out where possible. For any official support, you need to contact PCS directly either through your PCS account, or via the contact details on the main...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

 

[Bkleinman1]

Please read before posting:- Collaboration of Helpful Hints

NB: These forums are not an official support channel. None of us work for PCS, we're all either customers or techies who just like to help out where possible. For any official support, you need to contact PCS directly either through your PCS account, or via the contact details on the main...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

Hi -

I did read this first, my apologies, I thought I had answered, but I will try and be more specific:

Monitors: currently a single 27” 1440p monitor. Potential to upgrade to a triple monitor of similar spec monitors in the future, and potentially looking to use VR but really unsure on specs for this.

Usage: mostly be used for gaming on racing sims. The type of games I would like to play are; iracing, Assetto Corsa Competizione, etc.

Budget can be a little flexible, though of course not looking to spend more than I need to.

I hope this clarifies it?

Thanks

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Monitors: currently a single 27” 1440p monitor. Potential to upgrade to a triple monitor of similar spec monitors in the future, and potentially looking to use VR but really unsure on specs for this.

We'd need the refresh rate as well?

Budget can be a little flexible, though of course not looking to spend more than I need to.

This is great, but still doesn't tell us what it is? We need the fixed ceiling you're working too

 

[Bkleinman1]

We'd need the refresh rate as well?


This is great, but still doesn't tell us what it is? We need the fixed ceiling you're working too

Hi, apologies, the refresh rate is 144Hz.

I wouldn’t necessarily say I have a fixed ceiling for the budget - but if it helps I suppose we could say £1500. This being said, I’d be more interested in finding something that is good enough for what my usages are, without going over the top.

Hope this makes sense?

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

I wouldn’t necessarily say I have a fixed ceiling for the budget - but if it helps I suppose we could say £1500. This being said, I’d be more interested in finding something that is good enough for what my usages are, without going over the top.

I'm afraid you're way off the mark for a custom pc to drive 1440p at that budget, you'd need to look at second hand.

Or a discounted old gen off the shelf model, they will heavily discount to clear stocks.

But not remotely possible on a custom PC I'm afraid.

 

[Bkleinman1]

I'm afraid you're way off the mark for a custom pc to drive 1440p at that budget, you'd need to look at second hand.

Or a discounted old gen off the shelf model, they will heavily discount to clear stocks.

But not remotely possible on a custom PC I'm afraid.

Hi,
Okay, thank you for your insight.

Could you please help me in understanding what about the setup I configured is off the mark? I am assuming a mix of the CPU and GPU? What sort of models would I need to consider to run my current monitor?

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Hi,
Okay, thank you for your insight.

Could you please help me in understanding what about the setup I configured is off the mark? I am assuming a mix of the CPU and GPU? What sort of models would I need to consider to run my current monitor?

It’s the budget, it’s nowhere near enough for a 1440p system

For an entry level 1440p system you’d be looking around £2000 up to around £2500 for bells and whistles

SIMS are both heavy on cpu and GPU, this means unless you open yourself up to stuttering issues, you really need an X3D cpu

They're also pretty heavy on the GPU, and as they tend to be fast paced (aside from something like MSFS) you need to maintain decent frames

The card you’d put was a very entry level 1080p card, as you head up the power, the price increases significantly.

Then everything around that has to support all the components, they all inter relate. If you don’t balance the system, doesn’t matter how good your GPU, CPU or SSD is, youll never get the available performance due to bottlenecks.

It’s not something that can just be outlined as simply as that, there are too many factors to go into. If you want to understand better I’d suggest frequenting a forum and watching others build to gradually learn what influences what

 

[Antiquary]

Hi, I'm sorry you've had a response from a traditional and much-loved internet forum tradition - personally I hope they never die out, they've been with us from the beginning.

However, condescending replies from someone claiming to be a specialist, guarding any knowledge like a gnostic and sharing little actual information isn't helpful.

I haven't tested Asseto... etc with a 4060, but this guy has:

And I've not kept up with AMD cpus but Tom's Hardware does:

Intel Core i5-13600K vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X Face Off

Zen 4 vs Raptor Lake, Fight!

www.tomshardware.com

(they do not recommend it for gaming, although it is over the recommended spec for Asseto, the one good bit of advice you received is to spend an extra £50 or whatever it is to upgrade to the Ryzen 5 7600X3D).

The RTX 4060 is fine for Competizione, what you need to think about is future racing games and 8GB will in future likely be inadequate for 1440p as it is in several high end games now.

I don't have VR but the 4060 would only be good for things like Beat Sabre.

Higher resolution increases video RAM used, as does how many times the image is pushed at you per second, so a 240Hz image will require more VRAM than a 144Hz.

Now you can either get a PC that is more than enough for today's racing games or the most realistic upgrade now is to save up several hundred more for a 12GB 4070 Super - which would be enough for VR in Asseto now - but then it's a gamble that 12GB will be enough for future games (tho it's certainly a lot faster than the 4060, rated 191% and you can usually cope by reducing graphics settings)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Specs

NVIDIA AD107, 2460 MHz, 3072 Cores, 96 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR6, 2125 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

And then many places will recommend that you require an 850W PSU for the 4070 Super.

Or you could upgrade the graphics card later (but I still recommend upgrading the PSU to 850W now for that possibility, unless you want to get your hands dirty there - and as a beginner I advise against it)

The good news is that your motherboard and cpu combination looks fully capable for PCIe 5.0 cpu, gpu and M.2 at the same time so it has some future-proofing for upgrading. And it should be able to access system memory efficiently (your 32GB RAM) - as far as it goes (badly usually) - if you tip over the VRAM limit.

Also you don't need to rely on curmudgeonly forum lurkers so much these days. X's Grok AI is pretty good at answering tech questions, though do verify important stuff elsewhere.

 

[TonyCarter]

There's your answer then...no need for any more input from the regulars then!

New member @Antiquary has offered to build you a 1440p gaming PC, that offers good components, plenty of room for all your games and a 10 year upgrade path, all for £1500!

 

[Martinr36]

There's your answer then...no need for any more input from the regulars then!

New member @Antiquary has offered to build you a 1440p gaming PC, that offers good components, plenty of room for all your games and a 10 year upgrade path, all for £1500!

Wow that's amazing

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Hi, I'm sorry you've had a response from a traditional and much-loved internet forum tradition - personally I hope they never die out, they've been with us from the beginning.

However, condescending replies from someone claiming to be a specialist, guarding any knowledge like a gnostic and sharing little actual information isn't helpful.

I haven't tested Asseto... etc with a 4060, but this guy has:

And I've not kept up with AMD cpus but Tom's Hardware does:

Intel Core i5-13600K vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X Face Off

Zen 4 vs Raptor Lake, Fight!

www.tomshardware.com

(they do not recommend it for gaming, although it is over the recommended spec for Asseto, the one good bit of advice you received is to spend an extra £50 or whatever it is to upgrade to the Ryzen 5 7600X3D).

The RTX 4060 is fine for Competizione, what you need to think about is future racing games and 8GB will in future likely be inadequate for 1440p as it is in several high end games now.

I don't have VR but the 4060 would only be good for things like Beat Sabre.

Higher resolution increases video RAM used, as does how many times the image is pushed at you per second, so a 240Hz image will require more VRAM than a 144Hz.

Now you can either get a PC that is more than enough for today's racing games or the most realistic upgrade now is to save up several hundred more for a 12GB 4070 Super - which would be enough for VR in Asseto now - but then it's a gamble that 12GB will be enough for future games (tho it's certainly a lot faster than the 4060, rated 191% and you can usually cope by reducing graphics settings)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Specs

NVIDIA AD107, 2460 MHz, 3072 Cores, 96 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR6, 2125 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

And then many places will recommend that you require an 850W PSU for the 4070 Super.

Or you could upgrade the graphics card later (but I still recommend upgrading the PSU to 850W now for that possibility, unless you want to get your hands dirty there - and as a beginner I advise against it)

The good news is that your motherboard and cpu combination looks fully capable for PCIe 5.0 cpu, gpu and M.2 at the same time so it has some future-proofing for upgrading. And it should be able to access system memory efficiently (your 32GB RAM) - as far as it goes (badly usually) - if you tip over the VRAM limit.

Also you don't need to rely on curmudgeonly forum lurkers so much these days. X's Grok AI is pretty good at answering tech questions, though do verify important stuff elsewhere.

Sorry to come back but it’s important to highlight these things.

It’s your first post, I’m assuming you’ve created a duplicate account or are a staff member or something. I can’t imagine someone who had no clue of the forum policies before posting would be that brash.

This is a forum for PCSpecialist systems only, we’re not at liberty to provide advice on non PCS systems, PCS don’t stock the 7600x3d so it’s not relevant. They also don’t stock the 4070 which stopped production some time ago. If the user had an available budget that made sense speccing a build, I would happily do that.

Anyone promoting Grok also suggests they have no understanding that almost all its responses are intentional disinformation spreading on behalf of a fascist movement. Let alone the fact they didn’t instantly realise it was obvious lies must have pretty low critical thinking skills, I am sorry your parents didn’t give you more attention. Ask anyone who used to frequent twitter just how bad it is. Anyone remotely connected with this industry knows that first hand

Grok’s ‘white genocide’ meltdown nods to the real dangers of the AI arms race | CNN Business

It’s been a full year since Google’s AI overview tool went viral for encouraging people to eat glue and put rocks on pizza. At the time, the mood around the coverage seemed to be: Oh that silly AI is just hallucinating again.

amp.cnn.com

So while I get that your intentions are good, there are reasons why my post was a bit vague.
And please please please, if you’ve no understanding of specific AI tools, please don’t randomly suggest them

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Hi, I'm sorry you've had a response from a traditional and much-loved internet forum tradition - personally I hope they never die out, they've been with us from the beginning.

However, condescending replies from someone claiming to be a specialist, guarding any knowledge like a gnostic and sharing little actual information isn't helpful.

I haven't tested Asseto... etc with a 4060, but this guy has:

And I've not kept up with AMD cpus but Tom's Hardware does:

Intel Core i5-13600K vs AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and Ryzen 5 7600X Face Off

Zen 4 vs Raptor Lake, Fight!

www.tomshardware.com

(they do not recommend it for gaming, although it is over the recommended spec for Asseto, the one good bit of advice you received is to spend an extra £50 or whatever it is to upgrade to the Ryzen 5 7600X3D).

The RTX 4060 is fine for Competizione, what you need to think about is future racing games and 8GB will in future likely be inadequate for 1440p as it is in several high end games now.

I don't have VR but the 4060 would only be good for things like Beat Sabre.

Higher resolution increases video RAM used, as does how many times the image is pushed at you per second, so a 240Hz image will require more VRAM than a 144Hz.

Now you can either get a PC that is more than enough for today's racing games or the most realistic upgrade now is to save up several hundred more for a 12GB 4070 Super - which would be enough for VR in Asseto now - but then it's a gamble that 12GB will be enough for future games (tho it's certainly a lot faster than the 4060, rated 191% and you can usually cope by reducing graphics settings)

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Specs

NVIDIA AD107, 2460 MHz, 3072 Cores, 96 TMUs, 48 ROPs, 8192 MB GDDR6, 2125 MHz, 128 bit

www.techpowerup.com

And then many places will recommend that you require an 850W PSU for the 4070 Super.

Or you could upgrade the graphics card later (but I still recommend upgrading the PSU to 850W now for that possibility, unless you want to get your hands dirty there - and as a beginner I advise against it)

The good news is that your motherboard and cpu combination looks fully capable for PCIe 5.0 cpu, gpu and M.2 at the same time so it has some future-proofing for upgrading. And it should be able to access system memory efficiently (your 32GB RAM) - as far as it goes (badly usually) - if you tip over the VRAM limit.

Also you don't need to rely on curmudgeonly forum lurkers so much these days. X's Grok AI is pretty good at answering tech questions, though do verify important stuff elsewhere.

I am now wondering if this is in fact from Grok, that would be hysterical!

 

[Antiquary]

No, I was just waiting for my order had a quick look here and thought it would be nice to give real advice for a beginner rather than 'spend £2,000'.

I do agree that you can't trust Grok for non-technical queries... I used to get it to admit that Mussolini never stopped being a socialist and that his movement was an extension of communism - Grok's been spayed since then.

Good to see you have company - 10 year path indeed. I'd appreciate you more Tony if you at least had an honest bone of contention, but keep on ignoring the dude's actual questions and my answers and make up your own thread - I'm guessing why the idea of alt accounts came up is because the regulars do it?

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Grok's been spayed since then.

Love it when people just ignore posted content to highlight ignorance.

Musk bought Grok right before Apple announced Apple intelligence because he assumed - incredibly incorrectly - that Apple were going to do the deal with grok rather than ChatGPT

Grok had no training avenue, so his only option was to “illegally” make it opt-in by default on twitter. Ironically most of the training data was generated by grok bot accounts as most real educated people had left the platform by that point

It remains the poorest objective data source of all AI models, but the best if you’re into white supremacy and trumpian phallacy, nice to know where you’re coming from

 

[Antiquary]

Ah yes all the 'trained' people went to Bluesky and created much success. I see now. Have a good day sir.

 

[steaky360]

@Antiquary @BlessedSquirrel Please stop this as we've detracted enough from the OP.

 

[Bkleinman1]

I must say, I wasn’t expecting a simple build post to stir quite such a passionate exchange of ideals—but here we are. Grateful for all the input, nevertheless. After all, if it doesn’t flirt with a debate on fascism, is it really a forum worth visiting?

Thanks @Antiquary—really appreciated the grounded advice. The additional context you provided helped me better understand the reasoning behind some of the earlier sentiment.

To the longer-standing forum members: your pushback on my initial build definitely made me reassess my options. Your knowledge is clearly valuable… and just a touch intimidating!


I might have another crack at it with the new info you’ve all shared—thanks again!

 

[Ekans2011]

Returning to the topic, the stated budget is insufficient for a 1440p gaming PC unless the OP is willing to play at 60fps and/or low details; personally, I believe such a gaming experience undesirable in 2025, but everyone is free to do whatever they want.

Finally, I would be suspicious of a YouTube channel (Italian, as me) that hasn't produced any videos in about a year and just shows three meaningless slides: 1080p native, Ultrawide with DLSS, and Superwide with DLSS. Why not show the entire benchmarks at the native resolutions with max details , along with the video? It's possible that we Italians have a culture of distrust in our DNA, but reliability in this situation should be verified.

PS. Please do not even mention the individuals and/or ideology that wrecked my country and for which we have been paying the price for 80 years... Thank you. 🙏