Question Build advice (sanity check) Ryzen 9900x / RTX 5060Ti - Future proofing

[EaYaJB]

Hi and thank you in advance,

I have put together a new work machine with a £1500 budget (+£100 if needed) - There is scope to push this further in a few months for upgrades, but I'm looking for a nice foundation just now. I would like to put in the orders in the next few days, but advice is worth more:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/eayajb/saved/gKj3Hx

I will sort out the case and OS later.

It will mainly be used for Unity Game Dev. - lighting, animation, rendering (little bit heavy) - mostly coding and building versions with Machine Learning (cores and threads). I would really appreciate a sanity check on my thought process:

* Ryzen over Intel (13/14 gen) balance of cores and power - x3d is overkill / underused here

* Strong motherboard for PCIe Gen 5 graphics (too ££?) focus on not throttling PCIe lanes for future upgrades (PCIe / NVME) lane sharing
- x870Gigabyte Aorus Elite / x870 AsRock Steel Legend - both throttle main x16 lane for additional NVME and PCIe slots
- MSI x870-P Pro / ASUS Prime x870-P - Cheaper alternatives but feel lacking

* RAM can be swapped to 64GB later (Ryzen doesn't support quad very well?)

* RTX 5060Ti 16GB - more than enough for now - CPU and board can support 5080 / 5090 down the line

* Storage - Samsung for OS (DRAM) - WD_Black large files and storage

* AIO cooling would be nice, but already a shade over budget - maybe for another day

My main concern is around the power specs.

* Power - 1000W - Is this a good price point or should I drop to 850W - Thinking about bigger cards in the future
- I'm really not sure about enough cabling / connectors - but I don't really see any need for additional hardware
- "A" rating ATX 3.x on SPL PSU tier list

I'd really appreciate any thoughts or input.

 

[Lutfij]

You don't need an X870 chipset unless you're looking just looking for the latest and greatest. I'd have opted for B850 chipset instead. You could go for slightly higher memory frequency kits, if you want to stick to G.Skill, you can look at their Neo lineup. You could look at this ram kit;
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...x-16-gb-ddr5-6400-cl38-memory-cp2k16g64c38u5b
or this kit;
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...x-32-gb-ddr5-6400-cl40-memory-cp2k32g64c40u5b
if you're not into RGB. They have AMD's E.X.P.O baked into them, mind you.

Outside of that, your build is great off the bat.

The PSU would be your call entirely. If you don't see yourself upgrading your GPU to something higher than an RTX5080 + without the need for overclocking then no, you're fine as is.

Moved thread from Components section to Systems section.

 

[EaYaJB]

You don't need an X870 chipset unless you're looking just looking for the latest and greatest. I'd have opted for B850 chipset instead. You could go for slightly higher memory frequency kits, if you want to stick to G.Skill, you can look at their Neo lineup. You could look at this ram kit;
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...x-16-gb-ddr5-6400-cl38-memory-cp2k16g64c38u5b
or this kit;
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/product...x-32-gb-ddr5-6400-cl40-memory-cp2k32g64c40u5b
if you're not into RGB. They have AMD's E.X.P.O baked into them, mind you.

Outside of that, your build is great off the bat.

The PSU would be your call entirely. If you don't see yourself upgrading your GPU to something higher than an RTX5080 + without the need for overclocking then no, you're fine as is.

Moved thread from Components section to Systems section.

Great, thank you for the quick reply!

I did do a lower spec on the B650:

https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/eayajb/saved/#view=M47kjX

The B870 was to gain PCIe 5 on the graphics slot which I don't think was offered in the B650.

Thank you for the suggestions. From what I have read the Ryzen prefers DDR5 6000 at CL30 or lower. I've seen it be clocked on this board, but I just want stable and punchy.

Really glad to hear I've not gone completely off the rails though. Thank you.

 

[logainofhades]

With some tweaks, you can do 64gb ram now, and be really close to that budget.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor (£334.90 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 BLACK 81.88 CFM CPU Cooler (£42.00 @ Computer Orbit)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B850 AORUS ELITE WIFI7 ATX AM5 Motherboard (£190.00 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory (£202.86 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: SK Hynix Platinum P41 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£58.90 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: SK Hynix Platinum P41 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£119.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus PRIME OC GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Video Card (£435.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£125.00 @ Computer Orbit)
Total: £1509.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-08-01 15:19 BST+0100

 

[LordVile]

If maybe look at a used 7900X as the performance difference isn’t too much between 7th and 9th series Ryzen. Saves you £100 which could go onto a 5070 rather than a 5060Ti

 

[EaYaJB]

With some tweaks, you can do 64gb ram now, and be really close to that budget.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 4.4 GHz 12-Core Processor (£334.90 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Royal Pretor 130 BLACK 81.88 CFM CPU Cooler (£42.00 @ Computer Orbit)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B850 AORUS ELITE WIFI7 ATX AM5 Motherboard (£190.00 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill Flare X5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory (£202.86 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: SK Hynix Platinum P41 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£58.90 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: SK Hynix Platinum P41 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive (£119.99 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Asus PRIME OC GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB Video Card (£435.97 @ Scan.co.uk)
Power Supply: be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply (£125.00 @ Computer Orbit)
Total: £1509.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2025-08-01 15:19 BST+0100

Thank you for your response!

I've updated the question following the guide - there was a little head room in the budget, and usage was a bit vague.

That's a nice adjust on the drives for the RAM! I've had some realy nice drives from Samsung so I fell into the reapeat offender, but direct to manufacturer is so much nicer.

The only issue I saw with the Gigabyte Aorus was that it throttles the PCIe 5.0 graphics to x8 if you used the CPU_NVME. I'm not sure that's 100% right, but I've had to try and get up to speed pretty quickly in pulling spec. sheet together.

I (think) the original spec MSI X870 Tomahawk does not do this, so I dropped graphics to allow for bigger and beefier later (5090) - https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MAG-X870-TOMAHAWK-WIFI/Specification

Really appreciate the recommendations. Thank you!

 

[logainofhades]

Where have you seen that regarding the GPU slot?

 

[EaYaJB]

If maybe look at a used 7900X as the performance difference isn’t too much between 7th and 9th series Ryzen. Saves you £100 which could go onto a 5070 rather than a 5060Ti

Thank you!

I had initially specd. a 5070Ti 😀

Had to reign it in a bit.. 50% on GPU, 50% on (other) hardware, still don't have a case..

It's going to be a free-range dev machine

 

[EaYaJB]

Where have you seen that regarding the GPU slot?

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X870-AORUS-ELITE-WIFI7/sp

"Expansion Slots" - "When the M2B_CPU or M2C_CPU connector is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode."

I'm not 100%, but I took this to mean there were bandwidth issues. It was a similar story on the other options I was looking at. That's why I dropped a lot of the other specs to try to future proof.

 

[logainofhades]

Odd, because unless I am blind, I don't see that on the B850.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B850-AORUS-ELITE-WIFI7-rev-1x/sp#sp


I just pulled up the manual. M2B and M2C are slots 3 and 4 for M.2 . If you never use more than 2x SSD, it won't be an issue.

 

[EaYaJB]

Odd, because unless I am blind, I don't see that on the B850.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B850-AORUS-ELITE-WIFI7-rev-1x/sp#sp


I just pulled up the manual. M2B and M2C are slots 3 and 4 for M.2 . If you never use more than 2x SSD, it won't be an issue.

Great spot!

I didn't check the spec sheet on the B850-AORUS ..

Just looking now I saw "* The PCIEX16 slot can only support a graphics card or an NVMe SSD. If only one graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot."

The "or" there has me wondering. Is the idea to pipe it off to the 2/3, but then what does that do ..?

I was seeing this kind of thing on other alternative B850 boards, so I kind of gave up. I felt manufacturers were being deliberately vague about the PCIe potential in the series. The B650E I posted in the low-spec at least openly supported NVME. There were a lot of BIOS config option in how to split resouces / pipelines that would essentially nerf the upgrade path.

The MSI X870Tomahawk has a similar problem - if you use slot "x" then half the USB's on the back panel go to x4. Not that I'm concerned about that, they're just balancing lanes.

I won't lie, it's been a real trial by fire trying to put a couple of spec sheets together in a few days. Really appreciate your input! I think the SK Hynix RAM options are a great shout though. Thank you!