My PC from 2015 lasted me a solid 10 years. The only upgrade I made during that time was swapping out the GPU in 2020, and even then, that system could still emulate Tales of Xillia (PS3 game) in 4K without issues.

So if you’re spending around $1,500 on a build today, you should have no trouble emulating older titles smoothly.

Just for reference, my old setup was:

• CPU: i7-4790K
• GPU: GTX 980 Ti (later upgraded to an RTX 3070 after the 980 Ti died)
• RAM: 16GB DDR3

My new rig is running:

• CPU: 9800X3D
• GPU: RTX 5080
• RAM: 32GB DDR5

Spoiler!

NyanNyanNekoChan said: SvennoJ said: Spoiler!

It's a screenshot from graph a) on page 3 in the linked study
https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rkm38/pdfs/ashraf2025_resolution_limit.pdf

Stupid UK Imgur battle :(

More stupid, the image is 890x340, why does it show a super tall purple rectangle lol.

Oh, that was way before my time :)

Lol looking back at all these replies, it seems my GPU/CPU/RAM/PSU picks are very consistent with what everyone is suggesting here. That’s reassuring. All I need now is to pick the right motherboard, cooling units, and SSD. I also need a case… but that won’t be too difficult to figure out.

R5-7600XT + RX9070XT + Corsair 16GB (2x) + 850W Pure Power is decided.

You got yourself an excellent GPU. Congratulations.

When it comes to motherboards, there aren't a lot of reviews out there outside of the most high-end ones, but most are fine and deciding one over another is usually a matter of price and what features you want. Techspot has some very useful motherboard round-ups, that will help you to, at least, know which ones you should avoid: https://www.techspot.com/reviews/motherboards/

Since you went with a 7000 series CPU, you can choose without problems between the two gens of AM5 cards.

As for the storage, the fast Gen5 drives aren't worth it yet, with Gen4 being great performers and the G2n3 offering good performance at great price (or they used to last year). Just try to get one that has cache, as that will make Windows feel faster.
When it comes to capacity, it will mostly depend on how many games will you keep installed on it. 1 or 2TB drives should be your focus.

I’m so excited to get this thing!! Cannot wait to have easy access to any game from any retro console with virtually no drawbacks (compared to console releases, that is). Sonic Unleashed at 1440p and stable 60FPS sounds too good! And all the mods…I’m happy with my investment. :)

If have it right you've been almost exclusively playing games on Nintendo consoles till this point so you're about to have access to so more games and your build should be excellent at 1440p 60fps for a long time so have fun! 

Buy RAM and GPUs as soon as possible. There are rumors that prices will rise significantly soon due to market shortages.