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$668 Cheap Bastard’s Gaming PC Build Guide
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this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2026
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Same. I managed to build mine between the crypto mining craze and the COVID shortage. At this point I regret not going AM5 but how the fuck was I supposed to know what was going to happen 😅
Yeah… my last serious rebuild was in mid/late 2020, and I definitely overdid it with a 5950x. But the good news is that I feel relatively future proofed. And I found a deal (read: found being sold at MSRP) a 9070XT several months ago that I replaced my 3080FE with (mainly because I’m shifting to Linux gaming and AMD makes that easier with the drivers). I’m gonna ride this out for a few more years. And I’m gonna pray that none of my RAM decides to shit the bed 😬
I've got a 2060 and i5 10400. I'm boned.
Sorry friend, I will pray for you to find some cash in the couch cushions 🙏
Yeah, I upgraded to a 5700x3D a year ago, but if I'd known RAM was going to be overpriced for half a decade I would've gone 9800x3D instead.
I probably would have too, but back when I did it AM5 stuff was pretty steep and the value/dollar was still a bit hazy. I'm still not really quite sure what the real AM5 advantage over AM4 for the common person is, especially at the prices today. I mean obviously it's better and newer and whatever, but is it really that necessary?
Ya same, decided to stay on AM4 instead of swapping to AM5 (it'll be cheaper next year, I naively thought) so I grabbed the best AM4 processor and upgraded my RAM to 64GB, tossed in a few more TB of SSDs and planned on a motherboard upgrade next year.
Now I'll probably buy a side-grade (Steam Frame or maybe Deck) instead of trying to buy into the current generation hardware.
Luckily my job involves local AI (primarily training techs, I'm not a social media propagandist) so the business may find a business need for a graphics card soon. It won't be mine, but we can hang out off-duty.
I did a 5800x3d/4070ti/128gb AM4 refresh three years ago, and honestly the thing still absolutely cooks. I'm not even sure why you would ever need more. Maybe if you game in 4k, or bragging rights or something. I'm more than content with the 1440p plebes though.
Because there's about a 20% performance increase with DDR5
Yeah and about a 400% increase in weight loss to my wallet.
I'm good with the 20% reduction, if that's the cost.
We weren't talking about money. You said "I'm not sure why you would ever need more", that's what I was addressing. At the time I built my PC it would have been pennies on the dollar.
Pennies on today's dollar. When I was looking at doing it in 2023, it was still pretty expensive. The ram was about twice the price, plus you'd need a motherboard upgrade. Juice just wasn't worth the squeeze. I get that stuff like this can be 10 or 20% more efficient or whatever, but then you consider on the other hand that quite a lot of games get released in a trash alpha state where it's ~~CPU~~ (edit meant to say GPU) bound, or your NVME hard drive isn't operating at peak state, or something stupid like that. Stuff you never really think about.
If I could rewind, I'd maybe would have done it just to stay ahead of the need to upgrade down the road. I'm hoping to skip the AM5 generation, if I ever build another PC, big if (I'm getting kinda old, don't game as much anymore).
Yes that's what I was saying.