THE CRUNCH
With DRAM prices soaring thanks to demand from AI datacentres, building a new gaming PC has become painfully expensive. Club386 argues that targeted upgrades are the sensible response, and its guide points to three areas where money still goes a long way: dropping a newer CPU into an existing motherboard, improving cooling, and buying a monitor. The squeeze is stark enough that, according to Club386, a high-end graphics card alone now costs more than a complete high-end system did a year ago.
The cheapest meaningful CPU path is on older AM4 boards: a Ryzen 5 5600 costs around $159 or £120 and a Ryzen 7 5800XT around $229 or £195, both a large step up from first-generation Ryzen chips while reusing existing DDR4 memory. The newly rereleased Ryzen 7 5800X3D remains the top AM4 pick, because its extra 64MB of cache lifts game frame rates without needing fast memory. Intel owners on LGA1700 boards can also move to 14th-gen Raptor Lake chips, which support both DDR4 and DDR5, with a BIOS update required on 12th-gen systems.
Cooling is the other bargain corner. A 360mm all-in-one liquid cooler such as the Arctic Freezer III Liquid Pro 360 costs $76.99 or £74.99, while the budget air cooler Arctic Freezer 36-S is just £17.89 or $18.89 and can quietly handle a Ryzen 5 9600X. Better cooling lets modern CPUs and graphics cards hold higher boost clocks, and simply cleaning dust from filters and the card can improve temperatures too.
Monitors are the exception to the price gloom, getting cheaper week by week. Club386 cites the 240Hz MSI MAG 245F X24 at £108, the 27in 1440p Philips Evnia 27M2N3501PA at £36 more, and a 240Hz QD-OLED panel, the AOC AGON Pro AG276QZD2AM, at £299, a fraction of what such screens recently commanded.