132 PCWorld DECEMBER 2020HERE’S HOW BUILD A PS5 OR XBOX SERIES X PC
should expect games to showcase those
features, much less to what degree (e.g.,
graphical settings, type of ray-tracing
implementation, type of 8K content).
To be fair, some of these features serve as
future-proofing for these consoles’ inevitably
long lives. The PS4 and Xbox One lasted seven
years, while the generation before ran for eight.
This fogginess around performance isn’t
helped by the fact that Nvidia just released its
first set of cards using new architecture, and
AMD’s new GPU, at the time of this writing,
won’t be available for another week, as
mentioned above. So not only is it imprudent
to buy an older video card, we can’t lock in
the appropriate RDNA 2 GPU (or Ampere
rival, if you don’t care about exactly matching
the consoles). We don’t know yet what to
expect from the Radeon RX 6800 and6800XT—it might turn out
neither one is the right
graphics card for these PS5
and XBSX PC builds.
Still, we can start
ballparking most of what will
go into the machine, and
estimate what costs to
expect. So let’s get to it.
Why now? All this
uncertainty around the
consoles’ performance may
cause some folks to question
why we’re trying to answer
this question now. Think of it
as a snapshot to compare against later; we’re
calling this a project because we’ll revisit it on a
rolling basis. The PC landscape will shift and
improve, and you get to come along on the
journey.
Also, those internet commentors are
saying you can build a PC right now for $800,
not in the distant future. Naturally, I saw that as
a challenge.PS5 BUILD (ROUND 1)
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (go.pcworld.
com/r737), $305
Motherboard: Asus TUF Gaming
X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) ATX (go.pcworld.
com/570p), $180
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB
DDR4/3600 (2x8GB) (go.pcworld.com/
rpjw), $64In 2017, we had a much easier time trying to reproduce an Xbox One
X (go.pcworld.com/3ago) thanks to its modest hardware and the
timing of product launch cycles. This time, the process is more chaotic,
because components like RDNA 2 graphics cards have yet to launch.