u/gooseta

Hi, I've been planning on using the parts from my gf's old computer to build a PC for gaming in the living room. I'm not sure what combination of the old parts and upgrades would give me the best value for money.

I'd like to be able to play some moderately heavy games at 4K, and can settle for medium-high settings. Some specific games:

• Switch emulation: Mario Party Jamboree, Mario Kart 8, Pikmin 4, Fire Emblem, Smash, Tears of the Kingdom, etc.
• Wii U emulation: Breath of the Wild, Wind Waker HD
• Silent Hill F, Silent Hill 2 (remake)
• Resident Evil 2, 4 (remake)
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Red Dead Redemption II
• Alan Wake II
• Lighter games like Slime Rancher, Hades II, Cairn
• Older AAA games like NieR Automata, Detroit: Become Human, etc.
• Lighter VN titles like Slay the Princess

The parts I already have:

• Ryzen 7 3700X (can sell for around £65-75)
• Gigabyte X570I AORUS PRO WIFI
• 16GB DDR4-2666 RAM (Corsair Vengeance LPX)
• Zotac RTX 2070 Mini (can sell for around £130-140)

I'm going to be selling the CPU and the GPU for sure, and I think I may end up selling the motherboard, though this depends on whether a different platform would offer better value. Obviously RAM is ridiculously expensive right now, so unless a platform that requires DDR5 is a must for getting good performance for this use, I'd prefer to use the DDR4 that I already have. In addition to the money I get from selling these parts, I can probably invest an additional £500ish into the budget for the build.

From the research I've done, I think that selling the CPU and GPU, and then getting a Ryzen 5 5500X3D seems like a decent option. I would spend the remainder of the budget on a GPU and a new PSU as the one I currently have is a small SFX 500W one.

So currently, my final build would look something like:

• Ryzen 5 5500X3D (~£170-180 on Aliexpress)
• X570I AORUS PRO WIFI
• 16GB DDR4-2666
• AMD 6950 XT (~£350-425 depending on specific model. There's currently a brand new reference card on ebay for 390. Used cards have been selling for about 350-400 recently)
• Lian Li A3
• Corsair RM750e (£85)

Can I do better than this value-wise, and do you think this combination of parts would be able to handle the 4K gaming I described above? Is going for an AM4 X3D chip the right route here, or should I be switching platforms, and is the 6950XT well suited for this build? I could potentially opt for a 7900 XT or a 9070 non XT if they'd offer significantly better performance, though these would be at the very top of my budget and if I don't have to spend that much I'd prefer not to. I'm not going to be using it for pretty much anything except gaming, so I don't mind the productivity performance etc. being a bit underwhelming.