09 Jul 2025 5 min read video games

Building a Gaming PC in 2025 Takes a Community

A (not so) brief comment on technology and community.

First of all: no, I'm not finally building the gaming PC I've been toying with doing for 5+ years. Nobody gets to cash in on that bet yet. 😆

I've actually been helping my oldest kid research and put together a part list for his first PC build. And this post isn't about the finished product or a recap video of the build process and turning it on for the first time—we haven't even ordered any parts yet—but just taking a moment to appreciate the help of fellow nerds along the way.

As with any technology, computer parts change fairly regularly and so while some of the knowledge I had from researching this last year (and the year before, and the year before, etc.) is helpful, a lot of it is lost because of updates to processors, video cards, RAM speeds, motherboards, and so on. And I get cold feet and overthink spending that kind of money on something that potentially could give me more headaches than fun if I do it wrong—hence the 5+ years of ongoing deliberations for my own PC.

Enter PCPartPicker

PCPartPicker.com is a PC builder's dream site. Way back in time—Pentium 4 and AMD being new to CPUs way back—when I used to work at a local computer store helping people build PCs, I would've loved to have a site like PCPartPicker. Not surprisingly based off the name, you pick the parts and put together a PC.

There are guides for all kinds of budgets to start you off if you have no idea what to look for, which are great!

Screenshot of PCPartPicker's Build Guide page with options of different builds

The problem for an over thinker like me is that when I wade into the comments on any of their guides, it's usually a respectful debate full of links to other parts or lists of parts and "don't do that!" "you can't pair those!" and "it's crazy that you'd do this!":

Wouldn't the 5070 be better? It seems the 5070 typically performs a bit better than the 7800 XT and it just costs $20 more. PermalinkReplyReport manirelli manirelliSTAFFSUBMITTER8 Builds 1 month ago Generally speaking, the difference is usually closer to 50/60 dollars. Right now there are a couple 12GB 5070s on sale that you can consider if you want a slightly more performant build. We try to keep the Excellent guide around $1250 — Sampling of comments on a PCPartPicker Build Guide

Actually there is even a 9070 in stock currently at the same price. https://pcpartpicker.com/product/6BLp99/sapphire-pulse-radeon-rx-9070-16-gb-video-card-11349-03-20g Finally, the CPU is outdated at this point, too. You're paying the exact same price as a 9600X costs currently, while getting less performance and efficiency. https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/amd-ryzen-5-9600x-cpu-review/2 https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/#sort=price&m=6&s=60 Actually looking at the price history of the 7600X and the 9600X, even a month or two ago, they were essentially the same price even back then. You could argue that the 9600X may require a BIOS update, but I think by this point every single motherboard actually sold as new would come pre-flashed with recent enough firmware so that's probably kind of moot. Actually I said finally already, but another nitpick is the case. Why does the build by default come with a case with only 3 fans total? It's currently $85 and you have 0 exhaust fans. Just nothing but intake. So any potential new builder looking at this is either going to have to reconfigure the fan configuration, buy more fans (which would take its price up into "better cases anyway" range), or just deal with having no exhaust. As an example, there are more modern designs with more included fans: — Sampling of comments on a PCPartPicker Build Guide

I'll try and read through the comments and come up with some sort of guide to what I should actually do, and eventually give up in frustration at there not being THE ONE TRUE BUILD for my exact price point and circumstances.

Enter Discord Communities

Back in the not so olden days, I used to be able to post something on Twitter and have it find the right audience to get decent feedback. But ever since El0n ran the neighbourhood into the ground, everybody has scattered to various smaller social networks or more private communities. It's in these private communities, often on Discord, that I now find a lot of the support that used to come from the public square.

A couple of Discord forms are my go to.

First off, the ShopTalk Show D-d-d-d-discord—a podcast client of mine—is a great place to learn about both web developer things I only vaguely know how to spell, and also bounce ideas and gear suggestions off to get real world experiences and knowledge. There's just enough "noise" to keep it humming and alive without feeling overwhelmed by all the conversations. A bit like a local coffee shop I can drop into.

Second: the Cozy Chaos Arcade Discord, run by Keith and Binary Digit, is a more gaming focused Discord with a healthy dollop of fun community on the side. Much like the ShopTalk Show Discord, the community Keith & BinaryDigit have built is just noisy enough that I want to dip in to see what's going on without feeling like I'm missing too much if I don't have time on a given day or week.

🎮

You can check out the conversation I had with Binary Digit about their community & streaming and more on my YouTube channel.

In both communities I was able to post a quick "here's the list we're looking at, any suggestions or things we missed?" and I got back a bunch of helpful tips and suggestions.

Super helpful to have conversations with people I know and trust. In as much as you can trust an avatar of a person you've never met in real life anyway. 😆

The internet is weird and I love it.

Back to PCPartPicker

So I shared my son's original parts list, which Keith then graciously reworked to this list with a few modifications based on the suggestions in the Discord thread.

Which PCPartPicker lets you export in a variety of formats, which is a win for data portability:

Screenshot of PCPartPicker's copy and paste screen with options including Reddit, HTML, Plaintext and more.

So I can paste it here:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/YMvjDj

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor ($386.30 @ Amazon Canada)
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE 66.17 CFM CPU Cooler ($48.90 @ Amazon Canada)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX V2 ATX AM5 Motherboard ($219.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Memory: Patriot Viper Venom 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL36 Memory ($109.99 @ Amazon Canada)
Storage: Silicon Power UD90 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($136.97 @ Amazon Canada)
Video Card: Gigabyte GAMING OC Radeon RX 9070 16 GB Video Card ($849.99 @ Newegg Canada)
Case: NZXT H5 Flow (2024) ATX Mid Tower Case ($94.99 @ Canada Computers)
Power Supply: MSI MAG A850GL PCIE5 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($113.98 @ Amazon Canada)

Total: $1961.11CAD + tax + shipping

Now to order it quickly before everything changes. Again.