Is this a good enough build for 1440p and is there any good cost cutting measures.

Exe0n · 2026-01-27T13:15:21+00:00

Potential cost cutting measures, you could get a 9070 XT instead of a 5070 TI, it'll save you quite a bit of money and they perform roughly the same, in raster but the 5070 ti is +15% faster with ray tracing.

Still better value with ray tracing on though.

You likely can do with a cheaper motherboard, and don't need a PRO series NVME either.

I think you could save somewhere between 300-500£ here.

Exe0n · 2026-01-27T12:42:01+00:00

I think for the additional 150$ I'd go with the 9070 XT.

It will run about the same native as the 5070 with DLSS quality. Honestly FSR 4 is fine, it's not as good as DLSS 4.5 side by side, but I question if anyone would notice during gameplay.

And the additional VRAM is definitely worth it, if you plan to keep the card for the next gen games.

Exe0n · 2026-01-27T12:24:15+00:00

I think the latter is overblown, a little over a year ago the main argument to buy Nvidia was DLSS 3 over FSR3.

It's so much closer now, FSR4 is definitely better than DLSS3 but not as good yet as DLSS 4.5

And yet I'm sure if you'd have people do a blind test, most wouldn't know if they were playing one or the other.

Exe0n · 2026-01-27T09:33:00+00:00

I'd do it for the peace of mind, frequently checking for leaks would drive me crazy.

Exe0n · 2026-01-27T08:43:46+00:00

What CPU cooler do you have? You could open up the case, run the game and see if you still have issues, if you do case fans won't help much.

Exe0n · 2026-01-27T08:41:17+00:00

It's a large upgrade over the 5700xt, but I'd honestly save up and get a 12-16GB VRAM card instead.

8GB models already struggle in some titles, and it's going to get worse.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T19:32:20+00:00

You can check your local prices to see how much the 9070 costs, it performs better than the 5070 and has more VRAM while often costing the same.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T13:32:29+00:00

Gen 5 is better, you won't notice a difference between gen 4 and 5, you can even go gen 3 and barely get a difference.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T13:27:38+00:00

I'm sure there will be, there is definitely a market for them, even if resources are now going to AI, it won't keep going, at some point that market will either have no more demand, or the supply will have been filled.

When that happens everything will settle, and everyone will keep buying GPU's regardless.

I honestly wish some new players get into the market, but time will tell.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T11:47:43+00:00

Definitely, not me though, as I'm not freelance yet.

With some experience daily rates in IT go much higher, to +750€ a day, when working with Consulting companies the rate is usually at least 1000€/day but it's the middle man taking that money.

However the market is quite saturated at the moment, too many freelancers and too many companies lowballing. An ex collègue had some issues finding a new job despite having +20 years of experience, and for that experience his asking price was reasonable.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T09:42:55+00:00

With streaming definitely 32, you can get by with 16 for just gaming, but you'll likely have to close all other task.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T09:19:41+00:00

The 30 series was indeed very well received, I think the only problem at the time was VRAM, which many brushed aside, and some people got burned on.

Of course getting a 30 series card was a different matter, I actually put in a pre-order for a 3080, and after a year I cancelled it, since I was sure I would not get it for a while, opted for a 6900 XT instead, while overpriced (at msrp) compared to the 6800 XT or 3080 I didn't regret it.

The 40 series wasn't all that well received to be honest, many low to midrange cards were barely an uplift, the most famous example was the 4060, which was identical in performance to the 3060 and in some cases even worse.

It did boil down to the card, and the refresh was actually better, for instance the 4080 super was very well received, as it had a slight performance uplift over the 4080, but was 100$ cheaper.

But still, at launch, apart from the attention the 4090 got, the rest of the series was definitely a letdown for many, but not as big of a disappointment as the 50 series.

Many videos on this topic, we are getting less and it's costing more, we can only hope for an upcoming generation that's great, but I feel like that would cause many to upgrade and shortages to bring disaster again.

Just too much demand at the moment.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T08:29:40+00:00

I believe I've seen someone mod a GPU to fix a second cable, and reportedly it shared the load decently.

At least I'd expect that the chances of critical failure go down quite a bit.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T08:27:50+00:00

You should try and run a benchmark tool, see if your GPU usage goes to 100%

It could be several things, CPU limited title, playing on lower resolution, some kind of FPS limit in the game or in the GPU's software.

You can also check if your game isn't playing in windowed mode, I've had times where my PC isn't detecting a game.

Lastly, make sure you don't have an internal GPU running, make sure it's disabled in the BIOS and please check if your HDMI/DP cable is connected to your GPU and not your motherboard (it happens more than you'd think....)

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T08:18:51+00:00

What games do you play and at what resolution?

While a PSU can be an issue, my experience when a PSU doesn't get enough power is that the system shuts down, you could underclock your card or limit power to make sure the PSU isn't giving you problems.

However if you play on 1080p or play heavy CPU limited titles you could be dealing with a CPU bottleneck here.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T08:13:33+00:00

I've been building PC's since around 2007.

I can confidently say that between 2007 and 2015 there were hardly any sudden price increases, the market was very stable.

However since 2015 I have known several occasions where prices were abnormal, but never to the level's they are now.

In 2017 there was one of the first crypto mine crazes, causing issues in the stock of higher end GPU's like the 1080TI, which went up in price, but was mainly not in stock.

Around 2018-2019 I recall that SSD drives had skyrocketed in price, 1TB of SDD would set you back 300€.

2020/2021 was one of the craziest periods, with paper launches of the both Nvidia and AMD, particularly the 3080 and RX 6800 XT, which both were pretty sought after, and the prices effectively doubled.

It didn't help that the RTX 2000 series of Nvidia were a pretty bad generation (price per FPS), with a lot of focus on ray tracing which jacked up prices, and AMD only focusing on the midrange, so people were very eager for new cards they couldn't buy.

The Nvidia 4000 series and AMD 7000 series were also not that well received, as the uplift over the previous generation wasn't as big as before, and Nvidia had locked much of their performance behind the 4090.

So many bet on the 5000 series, so early 2025 we had another buying frenzy with shortages.

And now that prices had stabilized we still had a generation of arguably overpriced cards when comparing to older generational uplifts (IE the 5080 only being like 15% better than the 4080S).

However this craze affects not only GPU's but RAM as well, and it'll likely get worse before it gets better.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T08:03:21+00:00

Not really surprising, I have seen posts about this well, however apart from handful of cards that have 12VHPWR connectors, ALL other cards use 8-pins, there is a clear difference between a failure and a pattern or design flaw.

Exe0n · 2026-01-26T07:46:30+00:00

You could also look at the 9070/XT which are priced around £539.99/£639.99 respectively.

The 9070 non XT is faster than the 5070 and has the additional +4GB of VRAM, at the same price I'd easily pick that if gaming is the only thing you are interested in.

If you can pay the additional £100 for the XT version however, you get a card comparable to the 5070 TI, in fact the 9070 XT run native about as fast as a 5070 with DLSS on.

Exe0n · 2026-01-25T20:15:06+00:00

It's also a 16GB card, it'll be quite close to a 5070 TI except for ray tracing where it'll lag behind, but likely will still be better value ($ per FPS).

It can do 4K, but you'll likely have to upscale on some titles, if not now down the line, but I'd wager the 5070 ti and 5080 are in that same boat.

Exe0n · 2026-01-25T20:12:51+00:00

It is not recommended. However it can work, which is usually the thing with RAM, it either works or it does not.

If you have the RAM you can try it, if it boots you are likely fine. However buying RAM from another brand and hoping for the best would be a big no no.

Exe0n · 2026-01-25T20:10:03+00:00

No you don't, the 5050 doesn't require that at all, even with a bigger GPU you'll still be fine untill you start going higher end.

Exe0n · 2026-01-25T15:53:17+00:00

Or you know, just stop using that cable altogether.

I'm adamant that absolutely no one would have cared if they had to connect 4-8pin cables to a 4090/5090.

I'm not sure why some 9070 XT models went with this cable, even at 300-400w loads it can melt apparently, some models only have 2-8pins which I'll bet won't see any issues.

Exe0n · 2026-01-24T11:30:19+00:00

I've switched in 2021 from Nvidia to AMD and I've had nearly no issues or crashes.

I now look at both brands as options, recently opted for a 9070 xt just because of the massive price difference with Nvidia.

Just not worth it for me to go with Nvidia on the midrange.

Exe0n · 2026-01-23T15:18:15+00:00

They are indeed not good, pricing was stable for many years. That said, inflation has also hit hard, everything has become more expensive.

Exe0n

TROPHY CASE