You will have to look at the second hand market for sure, but you can probably get a decent 1080p 80-100fps medium/high build.

Something like (or equivalent):

Ryzen 5 3600

RX 6600

16GB DDR4

1TB SSD (probably not NVMe)

Whatever case

Whatever monitor, even if only 60Hz, for now

Whatever MoBo

Tier A PSU from the Cultists Network PSU tier list

You can most likely get everything used if you buy from a second hand shop that has a form of buyer protection (eBay and similar) and thoroughly check and clean and test everything you buy

Nitro+ worth it?

I guess not for that much more. A 10% increase is substantial, and I don't think the difference in actual performance is enough to justify it; but you also said that your region can get toasty in summer, and the Nitro+ has better cooling which could help. I don't think the Pulse will get too hot to work, but it may be something to consider!

DDR5

Those are one of the best performance to price ratio, and they're very inexpensive for what they are (plus full support for AMD overclocking, EXPO I think it's called); you can also go higher frequency, but prices will go up as well.

cooler

Good call then, AIO will probably perform a bit better with extreme high ambient temps

970

All good, a 970 Evo Plus might be cheaper so why not!

5.0

Yeah, there's no way gaming will saturate PCIe 5.0 anytime soon, no need to pay premium for specs you won't benefit from

Happy building and gaming!

About RAM, Trident Z5 NEO @ 6000Mhz seems to be the best price/performance ratio.

About GPU, I'd personally go for a Sapphire as they're one of the historic AIB for AMD GPUs and I also dig a lot the design of the Nitro+ lol

See if you can save something on the MoBo (by getting a lower trim) and 2x2TB might be a bit overkill for gaming only (ofc it depends on your habits, but I personally don't have games installed for more than 500-600GB). Also, you picked two PCIe 4.0 NVMEs, so maybe consider a 970 Evo Plus if it's cheaper than the 980 Pro

About cooler, I'd prefer an old fashioned air cooler simply because it can't leak lol

Agree, I stopped buying Sony games because of that

I feel the pain: began my Linux journey some four months ago, tried Ubuntu first, played with it a bit for a couple days, abandoned it; then tried PoP!_OS, got it up and running, broke it, wiped it; tried again and it finally clicked! I'm now dailying it, and it's been pretty good so far!

Keep trying without forcing yourself, maybe try different distros depending on what you need!

I saw W11 in action on a different PC and that made me stay on W10. In the meantime, I researched Linux and dipped my toes in it for a while. Just made PoP! _OS my daily driver (installed on my main NVME), with much less pain than I thought, while I moved W10 on a secondary, old and small SSD, only for those games that don't work in Proton/Wine.

It is a bit difficult to learn everything from scratch, but it's a small price to pay, to be honest

Since you already got your answer (separate cables are safer), I'm absolutely loving the fit. Gigantic GPU and coolers inside small cases are the bane of my existence. I'm also about to shove a 7900XT into a Meshify C, plus I'm sporting a Dark Rock Pro 4 haha and I really like the way it looks

Simply because I have a budget that I really can't stretch further than this! Getting a 7900XT is already going to punch a huge hole into my pockets, and since I'm going to play games at 3440*1440, according to this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81kAorV30Vc) (skip to 10:05 to see the averages) the differences between 5600x and 5800X3D are definitely interesting, especially for some games, but overall, at my target resolution there is a difference between 10% (1440p) and 6% (4k).

If I were to want to close that gap and get a 5800X3D I'd have to go for a 7800XT instead (to not further raise the budget) and at that point I'd be losing much more performance than I'd be missing by getting a 5600x w/ a 7900XT, since, on average, a 7800XT gets 50-60fps at 4k, while a 7900XT gets 60-80fps at 4k. At 4k I'll get 6% less FPS with the weaker CPU, but I'd get 25%+ less FPS with a weaker GPU!

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

Thanks for the tip, I'll keep it in mind in case I need to add/change drives!

Thanks for the reply!

storage

Must have gotten lost in the wall of text, but the storage configuration is unusual because I already have all these drives and I added onto it as I needed more.

I do have a main 1TB NVME, SATA SSD as mass storage is a bit expensive in my country, so I still prefer HDDs, which I plan to bring to a higher total amount of storage as I move towards building my own NAS; at the moment I make do with what I have!

fans

I opted for more fans than usual because it's a bit hot here! They definitely helped with keeping temps in check!

clearances

All good, already tested in current PC!

Thanks for the reply! Might have gotten lost in the wall of text, but I already have most parts, I'm just upgrading my current PC.

DR4

Good enough for me, hasn't let me down yet in these years!

GPU

As long as it fits, there shouldn't be problems, though, right? I can double check the actual space inside the case and take accurate measurements, but even if it's a very tight fit, I don't see why I can't stuff it in. Getting a shorter GPU means ditching Sapphire Nitro + (the 7800XT is just as long) and go for a dual fan model, which I'd rather avoid (noise+cooling concerns)

response time

1ms MPRT, should be enough for non-competitive gaming! If that's not it, I don't know what you're referring to!

storage

Again, might have gotten lost in the wall of text, but I already have all those drives, including a 1TB NVME. The configuration is all over the place because I kept adding onto it as my needs grew. At some point I'll clean it up haha

Data hoarding haha I know it's not ideal, and I will build a NAS at some point, but at the moment high-res, high-fps, high-details gaming is a priority!