It really depends on how much you want to spend on other parts. Maybe you value having large storage capacity, so you'll want to allocate more money towards a large SSD or multiple hard drives. Similarly, if you want your PC to look really fancy, you might want to trade in some value for after market power supply cables, RGB, or a fancier motherboard. If you are looking to simply cover the basics, and are after pure bang for buck, we can whip something up to maximize performance with as little money as possible.
Some additional information to consider: Going with a modern platform will cost slightly more than building on something a little older, such as AM4. With 1500 dollars you can go either direction, and I would recommend spending the extra 150 dollars or so and going with a modern platform for the latest features and hardware support, but if you don't mind investing in an older platform right out of the gate, you can still have an outstanding gaming experience and save a little money. Additionally, if you insist on only buying Nvidia video cards, frankly, expect to get ripped off. You will get vastly superior performance per dollar by going with AMD, unless you desperately need DLSS or Ray Tracing. Also, be aware that Nvidia's unveiling for their new 5000 series cards is around the corner. Even if 5000 doesn't fit your budget, this new series should bring the prices of older cards down with its release. If you are willing to wait several months to get Nvidia's latest offerings or find a good deal, that may be something to consider. With all that said,
here's the list. I'll also put an AM4 machine
here so you can compare price discrepancies.
As far as breaking down the actual list, the 9600X is a six core processor, so if you intend do do other things on your system like run local servers, edit video, or other multithreaded tasks, it might slow you down a little, but if you are certain you will only play games, it will provide more than enough performance.
If you wanted to drop the additional SSD, you could swap the air cooler for a nicer model, or for an AIO liquid cooler. If that's your preference, then go for it, but any performance gained from a water cooler will be negligible with this CPU, and air coolers are typically more reliable and are cheaper to replace.
The chosen motherboard isn't particularly fancy, but it has plenty of expansion and IO for any peripherals you may want to install later down the line. While some motherboards come with other features like WiFi 7, those fall a little outside of this price range unless you're willing to make other compromises. This board should serve you well.
Memory latency is extremely important for Ryzen, so I selected a kit with low latency and tight timings. At this price range, you can comfortably afford 32 gigabytes, so I went with a basic Corsair kit. Windows 11 uses a stupid amount of memory just running the OS, and having some extra headroom can't hurt. If you want RGB, feel free to swap it, but ensure the timings, speed, and latency match for maximum performance.
I went with two NVMe solid state drives to keep building complexity to a minimum. This way, you won't have to run extra wires or mount any physical hard drives. The Samsung 990 Pro is extremely reliable and has blistering performance to keep your OS feeling nice and snappy. As for the other SSD, if you are okay with installing a hard drive, you can save a decent chunk of money by forgoing the Predator GM7000 2TB for your games and throw in a regular hard drive instead. Just keep in mind that a physical hard drive is louder, less power efficient, less reliable, and most notably, slower than a modern NVMe SSD with a DRAM cache.
At this budget, you can afford something has high end as the Radeon 7900 GRE. A wicked fast card that will easily shred modern games at 1440p resolution. The large amount of video memory also ensures it will comfortably run games that release down the road, as larger worlds and texture sizes begin to demand more memory.
There isn't much to say about the Corsair RM850e. It's fully modular to keep your system looking clean, has 80+ Gold certification, and has support for ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 standards. This PSU will be more than enough to run your system.
As far as the older AM4 system I linked, most the parts are similar, but some money was saved on the motherboard, CPU, and memory, which allowed for a gigantic 4TB SSD in addition to your 1TB OS drive. Needless to say, that should be more than enough storage for even the largest game libraries. Although, keep in mind you can always add more storage later, so the modern AM5 system gets my recommendation, unless you seriously need that amount of storage right now, or want to swap the SSD for something more modest and put that money into other parts of the system as alluded to earlier.
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