Alright… so after several months of discussion with the PC gaming community of VGChartz, I have finally landed upon this build. Tell me what you think:

*Edit: Change GPU to maybe RX-9070 XT.

(in particular, I want to make sure this build is actually sane and not completely incompatible. RAM is a lot more expensive than I was expecting…)

In all, this is slightly over my desired budget, so any cuts would be helpful. I’m still a little confused on how this whole PC build thing works… it’s all very complicated to a console gamer who has only played Nintendo Switch 1/2.

A 9070 XT would be a tad more expensive but still better than the 5070 for gaming overall. The main criticism of the latter is it only having 12GB of VRAM which while nowhere near as bad as 8 is still not ideal long term and it's also a fair amount weaker than the 9070 XT. It does have better ray tracing performance and upscaling though so there are trade-offs. For the overall build did you use pcpartpicker? Cause that'll tell you if there's any incompatibilities and whatnot. 

Also yeah RAM prices have exploded in the past few weeks so unfortunately while as recently as September was a decent to good time to build a new PC it's quickly turned to bad. It could get even worse next year though so unless you'd be cool with waiting a while for things to stabilize again biting the bullet now and taking advantage of as many current deals as you can on the parts you choose makes sense.

Yes, I ran it through PCPartPicker. I’m not getting any notifications of issues…so I guess everything is good? I know the motherboard, CPU (RX 9070 XT… I don’t care about RT, and care a lot about FPS, so I’d imagine this is a better fit than 5070), GPU, and PSU are all compatible; only concern is (i) how many fans will I need to buy and (ii) will everything fit in the case.

The case already comes with 3 intake fans, so I'd get 1 extra fan to help moving the hot air out of the case. You don't need to fill every possible fan mount.

The GPU and CPU would work together so that aspect is fine. For other things paying somewhat less for the SSD is worth considering since the 990 Pro is more expensive than some other options though it is a relatively good gen 4 SSD. The thing that catches my eye the most is the CPU cooler you picked $125? Cause you could easily get one that costs half as much as that and does the job plenty good enough.

For fans there's what JEMC said and for if everything will fit pcpartpicker will tell you if that would be a problem so since it didn't say anything about that it'll be fine. Also for RT an increasing amount of games require it but since they still need to run on the 5 year old consoles that have really poor RT performance the required stuff isn't intense at all and for the really demanding stuff the 5070 doesn't really cut it so if you're prioritizing FPS then the 9070 XT makes more sense. The only concern is the 5070 has better upscaling support and that's a way to get better FPS at the cost of visuals.

Looks good to me!

Some people might argue that the PSU is a bit overkill, but it’s really not a bad choice, especially if you decide to upgrade your GPU later on. I’m running a Corsair 750W Bronze with an RTX 5080 and a 9800X3D, and it handles everything just fine.

Apparently 6000MHz is the sweet spot for RAM, though I can’t remember why - something worth considering.

After doing a quick Google search, I think your case might be the same one I’m using. If so, you’ll have plenty of room for everything. It’s really easy to open up and work in. My previous case from 2014 was a complete nightmare in comparison, cables everywhere and so many obstructions.

Here's an image of my case that I took a moment ago for your reference:

Seems good to me, but damn the price of DDR5 ram now.

Is there a reason you're going for the Asus ROG Strix brand motherboard? You could probably get a different brand B650 motherboard for like $100 less and put that money towards the GPU, or pocket it.

Yeah, had you built that one 2 months ago the RAM price would only be half of that.

And like others suggested already, the 9070XT would be a better GPU in a similar price bracket. CPU is good and the AM5 socket allows for future upgrades. If you want to save a couple bucks you could also opt for a 7500F or even 7400 for a slight reduction in performance but also a nice drop in price ($160 for the 7500F, $130 for the 7400)

As has been mentioned before, an ASUS Strix motherboard is overkill for such a setup, you can save over 50 bucks with a cheaper B650 board with very similar equipment and performance.

I found the SSD pricey at first, but then I checked and the SSD I bought last year now cost ~50% then it did back then, so you're good here.

No need to fill every slot with fans, especially 120mm ones. If you can substitute any with a 140mm fan, do so, as they are both more performant and generally turning at a slower speed, so also less noisy.

It’s such a bad time to build because of RAM prices, but yeah if you want a PC then it’s not likely to get better anytime soon. You might want to see if you can find a pre-built that hasn’t yet been price hiked though.