As part of our Ebuyer Build series and seeing as we’re halfway through 2022 and the AAA game season is fast approaching, let’s show you how to build your own 1440p gaming PC. It’ll smash this year’s biggest upcoming releases like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at ultra-level graphics.
Wondering why we’re targeting a 1440p resolution and not a native 4K? It’s because 1440p is considered by many PC gamers to be the sweet-spot between 1080p and 4K – check out our Gaming Monitor Guide for more information.
How To Build Your Own 1440p Gaming PC – The Components
As is the case for any good build guide, we’re going to walk through our component choices and explain why we picked them. Looking to build this PC for yourself? There are links to components sold on Ebuyer throughout the blog – with next-day delivery as an option!
Intel Core i5 12600K – The CPU
Honestly, you can’t go wrong with either AMD or Intel’s latest generation of CPUs in 2022. Ryzen 5000 and Intel Core 12th-Gen provide ample amounts of power – more than you’ll ever need for 2022 gaming – with advanced CPU architectures, high core counts, and high thread counts.
At present, arguably the best mid-range gaming CPU is the Intel Core i5 12600K, landing right in the price-to-performance sweet spot. It’s based on Intel’s newest hybrid CPU architecture – codename Alder Lake – which gets you 6 high-performance ‘P-Cores’ and 4 efficient ‘E-Cores’, for a combined total of 16 threads. In theory, the E-Cores juggle your PC’s light background processes, letting the P-Cores operate CPU-heavy workloads without a distraction.
This Intel CPU already has a fast out-of-the-box boost clock of up to 4.9GHz – no BIOS tuning required. As it’s a ‘K’ model, however, you can push its performance even further with manual CPU overclocking. It’s ready for whatever you throw at it. Gaming, video editing, rendering, streaming – you name it, the Intel i5 12600K has got it covered.
MSI RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X – The GPU
The centrepiece of any gaming PC is its graphics card. Right now, the best 1440p graphics card is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, featuring 6,144 CUDA Cores and 8GB GDDR6X VRAM. As you’ll see in the gaming benchmarks below, the performance results speak for themselves. This card absolutely rips in AAA and esports games at 1440, with headroom to spare in some games if you’d rather game in native 4K.
From ASUS to ZOTAC, Ebuyer stocks all the biggest brands of NVIDIA graphics cards. For this PC build, we went with an aftermarket card over NVIDIA’s reference model. The MSI RTX 3070 Ti SUPRIM X is an enormous card that’s sure to stay frosty even when it’s churning out hundreds of frames-per-second. It features a triple-fan cooling solution, RGB lighting, and an all-metal backplate to support the card’s weight and help dissipate heat.
MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4 – The Motherboard
As detailed further in our Motherboard Guide, you can think of it as the ‘spine’ of a PC. In one way or another, everything’s connected to the motherboard, so it’s a crucial and often overlooked element of a PC build. It’s why we opted for the MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4, a feature-packed motherboard that’s relatively affordably as far as a high-spec Z690 board goes.
Most notably, it features built-in Wi-Fi 6 and the latest PCIe Gen5 standard. PCIe Gen5 is going to be used by the next generation of graphics cards and solid-state drives, helping future-proof the project when you build your own gaming PC. And as it’s a Z-series motherboard, it allows for untethered overclocking of our unlocked ‘K’ CPU.
Notice how there’s DDR4 in the model name, as opposed to the standard MSI PRO Z690-A also sold on Ebuyer. While our 12th-Gen Intel CPU supports DDR5, this motherboard does not. DDR5 is the latest generation of RAM. As it only releases towards the tail-end of 2021, however, the technology is very much in its infancy. It’s not a must-have; it’ll be a while yet before DDR5 capitalises on its exciting potential. Here’s what you need to know about DDR5.
For now, DDR4 is more than fast enough for gaming, and DDR4 is considerably cheaper than DDR5 – both the memory modules themselves and DDR5-compatible motherboards. This lets us save some money and reinvest it into a more powerful graphics card, for instance.
Kingston FURY Beast – The Memory
Speaking of, let’s quickly go over this PC build’s RAM. We picked up a 16GB DDR4 Kingston FURY Beast memory kit, clocked at 3,200MHz. That’s 2 x 8GB DIMMs, or ‘sticks’, for faster dual-channel performance. It’s DDR4, but as mentioned it ticks all the right boxes for a 2022 PC build.
For gaming, 16GB is more than adequate; look at any big game’s system requirements. Dying Light 2, one of this year’s biggest PC releases, has an 8GB RAM minimum requirement and a 16GB recommended one. Fast RAM isn’t as much of a necessity on Intel CPUs at it is on AMD ones, but 3,200MHz is again the price-to-performance sweet spot.
If you’re using this an all-in-one gaming and content creation machine, then you might want to up the RAM to 32GB. Fortunately, that’s incredibly easy to do in this PC build – pick up a second identical memory kit and use it to populate the motherboard’s four DIMM slots. Here’s how to install PC RAM.
WD_BLACK SN770 – The Storage
Memory holds onto data used by active programs, but only temporarily. It’s volatile, meaning it’s wiped whenever the PC shuts down. So, when you build your own gaming PC you also need a long-term storage solution to keep your games on. That’s where the WD_BLACK SN770 comes in.
This is one of Western Digital’s latest PCIe Gen4 NVMe solid-state drives. Importantly, it’s not an uber-high-end model like the heatsink-equipped WD_BLACK SN850, but it crushes boot and load times nonetheless. Rated at a read-write speed of up to 5,150 and 4,900MB/s, the SN700 gets us most of PCIe Gen4’s performance at a more reasonable price.
NVMe drives are in an entirely different league to a mechanical hard drive, and it’s considerably faster than a 2.5” SATA SSD. In this PC build, we opted for a 1TB model. This should be enough to store your operating system and a decent number of AAA games. 500GB and 2TB models are available also.
CORSAIR iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX – The CPU Cooler
Seeing as we have an unlocked and overclockable CPU, it wouldn’t make sense to use a basic stock cooler on it. To ensure temperatures are kept nice and cool even when overclocking, this PC build includes an aftermarket all-in-one liquid cooler.
The CORSAIR iCUE H100i ELITE CAPELLIX is one of the best-selling AIOs Ebuyer, and for good reason. It features a low-noise pump, a 240mm radiator, and 2 120mm RGB fans that’ll aid in cooling the PC in its entirety. Also, this AIO uses a modular, tool-free mounting bracket, making it easier to install for a first-time PC builder. And, of course, it’s RGB – each of the 33 LEDs are customisable through CORSAIR’s extensive iCUE software.
CORSAIR iCUE 4000X & RM850 – The Case & PSU
To round out this PC build, there are a couple of less exciting but nonetheless essential components to cover. As the name implies, the CORSAIR RM850 is an 850W PSU. NVIDIA recommends a 750W PSU for an RTX 3070 Ti-equipped PC, so this gives us a comfortable amount of extra power if overclocking. It’s also an 80+ Gold rated and fully modular unit, meaning it’s highly efficient and that you can plug in just the cables you need.
This cuts down on cable clutter significantly when building in our computer case, the CORSAIR iCUE 4000X. It’s available in black or white to suit your set-up, and there’s also the airflow-focused 4000D which omits the tempered glass front panel for a perforated mesh one. It only includes 2 120mm non-RGB fans, however, while our 4000X includes 3 120mm RGB case fans.
Gaming Benchmarks – Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, & More
Make sure to check out the above video for a slick build montage. Here, however, we’ll skip straight to gaming benchmarks. You can expect some superb performance results from this PC build in the latest AAA and esports games.
Over the course of our testing, the CPU’s temperature averaged around 60°C and maxed out at only 65°C – that CORSAIR AIO is doing some serious work! While the GPU’s temperature came in at a 66°C average and a 71°C max.
Of course, you can tweak this PC build’s configuration to suit your exact needs, like adding extra RAM as mentioned. So, head on over to Ebuyer and see what PC hardware we’ve got in store.
|
Game |
FPS Average |
90th Percentile |
99th Percentile |
|
Apex Legends |
113 |
101 |
94 |
|
Call of Duty: Vanguard |
177 |
150 |
116 |
|
Call of Duty: Warzone |
127 |
111 |
95 |
|
Battlefield 2042 |
122 |
105 |
90 |
|
Grand Theft Auto 5 |
140 |
129 |
121 |
|
Halo Infinite |
108 |
92 |
81 |
|
Forza Horizon 5 |
82 |
77 |
72 |
|
Fortnite |
262 |
243 |
219 |
|
Valorant |
394 |
370 |
297 |
