Gaming PC build around $1,500 budget?

Hey everyone!

A buddy of mine is looking to pick up a gaming rig, mainly for FPS titles and sports sims—basically anything hitting the market soon.
He’s aiming for a budget around $1,500, though he might stretch it a bit since he'll be putting it on a Diners Club card anyway, so an extra couple hundred isn't a dealbreaker.
Is it realistic to hit 1040 FPS at 144Hz for that kind of money? If it is, throw some monitor suggestions my way too, even if we have to bump up the budget a little. 😵
Just a heads-up: he doesn't need an HDD; he wants to go with two SSDs, one 120GB and another 250GB or larger.
I don't care which shop he uses in New York City or the surrounding area, and I don't care who builds it.
Thanks in advance.

CPU: https://www.newegg.com/p/amd-ryzen-processor...m_medium=click

RAM: https://www.amazon.com/ddr4-memory...00mhz-c16.html

GIGABYTE Video Card Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GDDR6 8GB/256bit, 1620MHz/14000MHz, PCI-E 3.0 x16, HDMI
ASRock B450 PRO4, AM4
Case: SilentiumPC Armis AR7 Black (no PSU included)
Power Supply: SilentiumPC Supremo L2 Gold 550W 80+ Gold
GIGABYTE SSD 240GB, 2.5”, SATA III, 500MBs/420MBs, Retail
SSD ADATA 256GB SU900SS SATA 3D Nand
Cooler: SilentiumPC Spartan 3 PRO HE1024

Total: $2.50 - Best Buy, financing available

Monitor:

https://www.walmart.com/lcd-monitors/aoc...m_medium=click

Whoops, almost 12k 😬

It’s a good thing he isn't grabbing 🙂

Just one more question—I haven't really been keeping up with the latest hardware since I'm still rocking an (i7-3770K) 🙂 will this Ryzen be a decent match for this GPU? I'm asking because the price seems almost too good to be true.

I’ve always been an Intel guy through and through, but I have to admit—this time around, Ryzen is just a much better call when you look at the price-to-performance ratio. This 6-core, 12-thread processor is likely twice as fast as what you're running right now, so you won't have to worry about any bottlenecks with that new Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 GDDR6.

Not really, but if you're specifically chasing that 144 FPS mark, the 8600K is going to pull higher numbers... though it'll cost you a lot more.

At 1440p with an RTX 2070, I don't think the 8600K would offer any real speed boost—it’d probably be totally unnoticeable—so that’s why I went with the 1600X instead. 😉

It’s not quite accurate to say they won't perform similarly; in some cases, they're neck and neck, but in others, the i5 actually pulls ahead by about 15-20% more FPS based on what I've seen in YouTube benchmarks. Still, that doesn't mean I'd choose that route, because the 1600X is an absolutely insane deal at $400.

Is he even going to hit 144 fps on newer titles like BF5 with that GPU? If it were my money, I’d just grab an Intel setup and a beefier card regardless of the price, but he’s still sitting there second-guessing everything.
That first option might actually be his best bet.
The monitor you linked me is just 1080p, right? Can it handle 1440p?

It really comes down to whether you want 1440p at 60Hz or sticking with 1080p at 144Hz.
The thing about going for 1440p at 144Hz is that it’s way more expensive, and I guess you’d also need a much beefier graphics card to pull it off.

If you're aiming for 1440p, Intel is basically a non-starter unless you're stepping up to at least a 1080Ti.

crimsonstag84 said:Running 1440p on an RTX 2070, an 8600K isn't going to show any real gain—it'll be basically invisible. That’s why I went with the 1600X 😉 instead.

Didn't you suggest he just get a 1080p monitor? 🤔

Ah... this is what I meant:

https://www.bhphoto.com/product/Acer-Nitro-VG240Y-3-24-Gaming-Monitor

I think I ended up grabbing that 24" model at the last minute just to stay within my budget.

The RTX 3080 barely edges out the old GTX 1080, yet it falls significantly short of the 1080Ti. You're looking at a GPU bottleneck in 99% of scenarios, especially if you're trying to play at 1080p, let alone 1440p.

Modern games have become absolute monsters; take this latest Assassin's Creed title, for example—it absolutely shreds a card like that even at 1080p on medium or high settings. Forget about hitting anything north of 100 FPS. Meanwhile, those "competitive games" designed for high refresh rates can run at massive frame rates even on a literal potato PC.

The other side of the coin is that in most games, you can barely tell the difference between high and ultra settings.

You grab a high refresh rate monitor if you're playing fast-paced stuff—it’s mostly worth it for those competitive shooters. But if someone actually cares about frame rates, you can usually push more demanding titles toward 100FPS without forcing ultra settings (provided you're running something like a GTX 1070 or better).