Never... in my country my wealth level is most likely below average but i am very efficient using my financial resources available. World wide, my wealth is surely above average but this is very difficult to compare because my life is "more expensive". I can not eat or sleep a day for the same price someone from India or Brazil... or Romania, is capable of. Hell... even the games on GoG are usually with highest price for my country... so you see, i need more coins than most of the worlds population, for the exactly same stuff. Heck, even if i go traveling to Romania, using my car... i have to pay probably 2 times more for the exact same repair on my car because i get the "rich people treatment"... this is something special i tell you, but only those experiencing it may know "how it feels like", and they instantly feel less secure as they simply need "more wealth", for the exact same thing.

Anyway, how much are you able to "afford" on a PC build for example?

Nah, it does not work like this because people naturally got their "favorites" with by far biggest demand. So there are maybe like 140+ AM5 offers but only about 20 are truly in a very high demand and sold very frequently.

Same with Smartphones:
Apple Iphone 15 is the by far most popular phone here, Number 2 is Samsung Galaxy.... and most other phones got barely any buyers at all. I got a Xiaomi but Xiaomi is actually a niche product here.... not many buyers compared to Iphone and Samsung Galaxy... same with almost any other phone. I guess Iphone 15 and Samsung Galaxy... only 2 phones got about 50% market share... yet there are over 100 different phones in theory.

People are sheeps!

There are about 10-20 AM5 boards that got about 50% of all sells.... not to hard to guess, just look at the reviews... those are the ones who got above 20 reviews. Actually around 10 got above 40 reviews and another 10 above 20 reviews.

I will list those with above 40 reviews... not many at all, actually only 8 boards for the entire AM5 category.

Actually, there are only 6 boards above 20 reviews, and perhaps around 10 between 15 and 30 reviews. Anyway, i just will show up the 8 by far most sought after (40+ reviews) and lets see if they are able to use PCIE 5.0.

ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming Wifi
MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI
MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI
ASUS TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wifi
ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-A GAMING WIFI
ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI
ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WIFI
ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero

Besides: Yes i can tell you, it was very difficult to get me the "niche board" X670E Ace... because so few offers and previously i tried to get me the X670E Aorus Xxtreme, which was almost impossible because no offer for many months in a row. It has been listed on the shop but rarely available for buying... from the Ace is currently ONLY 1 on stock and from the Extreme 3 (actually a lot, because it was out of stock for very long in the past). If there is a board with high demand, there are usually more than 10 on stock, most of the time... (usually the ones in the list above).

As a rough estimate, that's what PPP is for.
Heh, at the moment nothing. And in terms of the plan, it's hard to put a full value on it because I'll be keeping parts. But let's say that for MB, CPU, RAM and NVME SSD and also adding what I already spent on the PSU (bought earlier and will be moved over), about 900 EUR tops (there will be no dedicated video card).
And if you want to laugh, this one cost a little over 400 EUR back in 2015 when I got it. Of course, was never meant to even be mine, much less a "gaming PC", was meant to be used by me for about a year before we could afford something better and then I'd have passed it on to my father and I'd get something better, but that time didn't come, so I was left with it.
But, while this is the least powerful, I wouldn't say that I ever had a "gaming" PC anyway.
I mean, here's the full system "history" for me:
- 1992: 386 SX 16 MHz, 512 kb probably Trident video card, 2 Mb RAM and I think 120 Mb HDD. Some chance it may have just been 80 Mb.
- 1994: 486 DX2 66 MHz, same video card as above, 4 Mb RAM later upgraded to 8 Mb, 540 Mb HDD.
- 1998: Pentium II 266 MHz, S3 Virge 4 Mb, 32 Mb SDR 66 MHz RAM later upgraded to 64 Mb, 3.2 Gb HDD with a 20 Gb one added I think in late 2001.
- 2002: Pentium 4A 2 GHz, GeForce 2 Ti 64 Mb, 512 Mb DDR 266 MHz RAM which in 2006 went down to 256 Mb as one module failed, the 20 Gb HDD mentioned above replaced with a 160 Gb one I think at the start of 2005.
- 2008: Core 2 Duo E8400 3 GHz dual-core, initially GeForce 8400 256 Mb upgraded to GeForce GTS 250 1 Gb in 2009, 2 Gb DDR2 1066 MHz 5-5-5-15 RAM, initially 500 Gb HDD replaced with a 250 Gb 10000 rpm one in early 2013 (a 500 Gb remained as backup).
- 2015: Pentium G3440 3.3 GHz dual-core, just using the integrated graphics, 4 Gb DDR3 1600 MHz 9-9-9-24 RAM, at first same HDDs as the upgraded configuration above but OS on the 500 Gb one, 250 Gb SSD added in 2018.
Sure, but I was talking of what was available.

OK, i was checking it out now...

Actually, there are only 6 boards above 20 reviews, and perhaps around 10 between 15 and 30 reviews. Anyway, i just will show up the 8 by far most sought after (40+ reviews) and lets see if they are able to use PCIE 5.0.

ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming Wifi
MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI
MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFI
ASUS TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wifi
ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-A GAMING WIFI
ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI
ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WIFI
ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero

Ok, 3x X670E are all PCIE 5.0, no need to check.

The ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming Wifi is PCIE 5.0 too, so another "fat" title. MSI B650 GAMING PLUS WIFI and MSI MAG B650 TOMAHAWK WIFIis without 5.0. so no fat title here.

The ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI got 5.0 so it is fat now and the ASUS ROG STRIX B650E-E GAMING WIFI got PCIE 5.0 as well...

So, from the 8 by far most sought after AM5 boards 6 of them are compatible with PCIE 5.0 SSDs... which means, the clear majority, actually in high demand on this shop, is supporting it.

Another thing very visible: Asus is the big one single ruler in my country (might be different elsewhere, however... Asus is the biggest of them).

I use... a very rare... MSI X670E Ace... which is of course supporting 5.0 but this is NOT a board with high demand.
*Gasp*... Well i adore you even was showing me the exact timings of those RAMs... because, lets be honest, it may not make much difference here... i guess at least something funny here...
Okay, "oldie" games from GoG may work fine, but with the new games you are out of luck, thats clear.

Actually, i had some way better systems i was "giving away for free" (to a brokerage house) already... did not even bother selling it because to much work selling it for the few hundred coins i may have gotten. I have notoriously just to few time left and if something is not really worth it... i just "give it away" in usual. The only thing i always remove are the HDDs and SSDs because those got very personal data... so the ones getting my old systems will have to rebuild the storage themself, but any other parts are included.

One of those systems, i guess the strongest of them still working, was a very high quality OC-Nehalem board with POScaps (made of Tantalum) with a 990X CPU (6 core Gulftown) and some dedicated card... which was actually my old mediacenter-PC. Anyway, this stuff was out of date, i just had no interest anymore and may some other "lucky finder" find some use for it... i had in mind.

The newest of the old PCs... my old previous gamer PC which i still have stored at home (not in use obviously), unfortunately was way lower quality with a (guess Asus- ROG, board was not even cheap) mATX board. This board is defective, after 6-7 years of use... and the 980 TI Matrix (at that time the most expensive design) GPU had a fan which stopped spinning. So it may need a repair, but i think this GPU still works fine if the fan is repaired properly. Still a viable GPU for 1080 P i think, and the expensive Seasonic 750 W Platinum PSU is surely working as well... but the board, most likely is beyond repair. So... since this happening i always get me the highest quality board... and i hope it will last above 7 years, this time.

Actually the 980 TI Matrix was at that time of its release, the most huge card by far. But since i got my 3090 TI, my newest card is EVEN bigger and nowadays... with the release of the 4090 there are boards that even are exceeding the size of my 3090 TI... GPUs really was never that huge.

Sure, i had many pretty exiting hardware inside may hand/builds already. Not because i have way to much coins, i just was setting lot of value into it, as i enjoy good hardware and a good gameplay, so it was worth a lot to me. People may know... if someone is stingy, it does not matter how much cash they own (for example my brother)... they could be millionaire and they may still not afford any car nor any PC at all... so it is not directly related to the coins someone got, but, obviously... if someone got almost ZERO coins... they may only get some stuff either by a friendly donation... or by stealing.

The store I was checking lists which products have over 100 pieces sold. 14 AM5 boards fit there, precisely none of them listed as PCI-E 5.0, all are 4.0.
And ASUS seems to be last. 6 Gigabyte, 3 MSI, 3 ASRock, 2 ASUS.

As for the timings, heh, have that list in a file, just copied it :)

But we're really sidetracking this thread.

Guess it is safe to say.... in my country they have a "higher standard" or they put more value into pricey hardware, or both at once. And they hype certain stuff like crazy... if they do consider it "their favorite piece".

I was not checking AM4 but sure, AM4 got bigger sells everywhere. Those boards have been around for almost a eternity... it is one of the longest running board designs in history, perhaps the longest running ever.

Ah yes, I have experience with hand-size lego pieces before from dismantling old computers
I paid my dues for the important lessons of being careful with a hard drive and the pins

However, the new gaming builds have evolved a lot since the old computers from decades ago.
Water cooling and even large heat sinks that I have never seen before.

Will definitely read through each of these to avoid making some common mistakes.
Thank you everyone for your meowtastic input and advice!

Update: 7800x3D is sold out everywhere and with third party sellers selling at 2X the price, my build is likely postponed for the time being. Nonetheless, thank you for the lovely advice and discussion :)

Yeah, the 7800 X3D is now being boosted hard because the new 9000 series sux so hard. Probably less than 10% faster (vs. X3D, not vs. non X3D. mind you) but higher power efficiency. The issue is just, the 7800 X3D is already a very power efficient gaming CPU with probably 50-80 W consumption during gameplay. It is way more effective, for saving up power, to use a "better" GPU, a more efficient PSU (targeting the sweet spot of about 50% load) and a smaller TV or monitor.

The only ones feeling the joy are laptops-users... as they are happy for every Watt saved up and way better cooling (no need for watercooling anymore). So, desktop is currently "over", the current generation is a laptop-gen.

The only situation where AMD might still become truly interesting for gamers at the new gen is if there is a 9800 X3D released, which is probably still many months away and even better if they finally provide a TRUE 16 core X3D with every single core with 3D-cache, not just half the cores. Perhaps they have to, else Intel may give them the hardest time ever with a even better efficiency (this gen is all about).

Even if there is a 9800 X3D, it will not allow a 60 FPS CPU bound game to run 120 FPS after... not even a 90 FPS CPU bound game to run 120 FPS after... the difference is simply no game changer at all, so it does not really matter what you use.

Besides those "max FPS, max load reviews" might be funny but not very realistic because it is "bloated" hard the stuff visible there. In a realistic situation, the GPU is more likely to become the limitation at any FPS above 120, so any test running at 120+ FPS means that the graphic is decreased the hard way, which makes not much sense and without a flagship GPU those loads are "way over the top of any realistic scenario".

Thank you too. The best thing is you never finish learning and mistakes are the most valuable lessons.

Yes the new gaming builds have evolved in terms of technology and features, but the basics are the same.

Nevermind that your cpu of choice is not available, I started building PCs when the Bitcoin crash happened after 2022. Patience is key here. So you can always buy old stock for cheap or even go second-hand, that's better for the environment anyways.

Don't forget the old lego bricks stored in the attic ;)

I hope this is true.

I tried to find 3080 and thinking it would be cheaper now that 4080 is out, but it's not manufactured anymore and prices are even more than 4080.

Old stock for expeeeensive!

Just hope this doesn't happen too often. Some game developers also price hike games from 20 years ago.
I had to face the disappointment firsthand after waiting years for a price to drop.
It was a disheartening experience.
Thanks for this list. I see one on sale but it isn't listed.
MSI B650-S ATX
And
ASRock X870 Pro RS