At £1,200 you face the decision that defines PC building in late 2026: do you spend the money on the platform or on the graphics card? DDR5 memory now costs about three times what it did a year ago, according to ramprices.uk. That means a modern AM5 platform and a 16GB graphics card don't fit comfortably under £1,200 together. One of them has to give.
Our main pick puts the graphics card first. We also give you the AM5 alternative, so you can see exactly what the trade-off costs.
Forge PC has not built or bench-tested these systems. Performance figures are from Tom's Hardware and TechSpot, and credited. Prices are approximate lowest UK prices for new stock on 12 November 2026. They exclude Windows, a monitor and peripherals.
The short version
Our pick (about £1,128): Ryzen 5 5600, B550 board, 16GB DDR4, Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, 1TB NVMe SSD, 650W PSU.
AM5 alternative (about £1,151): Ryzen 5 9600X, B840 board, 16GB DDR5, RTX 5060 8GB. A better platform, but a weaker card with half the VRAM.
Stretch pick (about £1,280): our pick with a Radeon RX 9070 instead. That's a big jump for 1440p.
Best use of the spare £72 in our pick: 32GB of DDR4 (about £87 more) or a 2TB SSD (about £105 more), whichever you'll notice sooner.
Our pick: the 16GB graphics card build
Part | Our pick | Approx. price |
|---|
Processor | AMD Ryzen 5 5600 (6 cores, Wraith Stealth cooler included) | £125 |
Motherboard | Gigabyte B550M Aorus Elite | £87 |
Memory | 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 | £111 |
Graphics card | AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB | £580 |
Storage | Kingston NV3 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe | £130 |
Power supply | MSI MAG A650BN PCIE5 II (650W) | £45 |
Case | Montech XR (three ARGB fans) | £50 |
Total | | about £1,128 |
The graphics card price is the cheapest new listing on SpecPrice, at Scan. The processor price is SpecPrice's cheapest, at AWD-IT. The board, SSD, PSU and case prices are Scan's. The memory price is the cheapest matching kit on ramprices.uk's Amazon.co.uk tracker. All were checked on 12 November.
Why the RX 9060 XT 16GB
TechSpot's Q4 pricing report (2 November 2026) calls the 16GB RX 9060 XT the cheapest way to get a 16GB graphics card. It found the card 20 to 40 per cent cheaper than an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, which cost about £660 on 12 November. AMD's specifications give it 32 compute units, 16GB on a 128-bit bus, a 160W board power rating and a 450W minimum PSU. That's easy to run on a 650W unit.
In Tom's Hardware's GPU hierarchy (updated 24 June 2026), the 16GB card averaged 67.3fps at 1440p ultra in raster games and 31.0fps in its ray tracing suite at 1440p. The 8GB version of the same card averaged 62.5fps and 20.2fps. The memory is what makes the difference: in ray tracing at 1440p the 16GB card was about 53 per cent faster, with the same GPU. Our VRAM guide explains why.
Why AM4 and DDR4 here
The Ryzen 5 5600 is a six-core Zen 3 chip with 32MB of L3 cache and a cooler in the box. It runs on cheap B550 boards and DDR4. Going to AM5 adds about £178 to the processor, board and memory at 16GB (see the table below). At this budget, that money buys a 16GB graphics card instead of an 8GB one. The trade-off is upgradability. AMD has committed to AM5 through 2029, while AM4's newer releases are still based on the 2020-era Zen 3 design. For our full reasoning, see DDR5 vs DDR4 for gaming.
Memory: 16GB now, 32GB when prices allow
Our RAM guide recommends 32GB for a new gaming PC, with 16GB as the floor. In this build, 32GB of DDR4-3200 CL16 (about £198 on 12 November) would add about £87 and take the total to roughly £1,215. That's just over budget. Buy 16GB as a two-stick kit, and add another pair or swap to 32GB when you can.
The AM5 alternative
Part | Our pick | Approx. price |
|---|
Processor | AMD Ryzen 5 9600X (no cooler included) | £160 |
Cooler | Arctic Freezer 36 | £20 |
Motherboard | MSI PRO B840M-B | £90 |
Memory | 16GB (2x8GB) DDR5-5600 (Team Elite) | £231 |
Graphics card | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 8GB | £425 |
Storage | Kingston NV3 1TB | £130 |
Power supply | MSI MAG A650BN PCIE5 II (650W) | £45 |
Case | Montech XR | £50 |
Total | | about £1,151 |
Choose this if you value the upgrade path more than graphics performance today. You'll be able to drop in a faster AM5 processor later, and you can swap the graphics card for a 16GB model when prices ease. Two things to know about the B840 chipset: AMD's specifications say it does not support CPU overclocking, and its graphics and M.2 slots are PCIe 4.0. Neither matters much for a 9600X and a mid-range card.
The downside is the graphics card. In Tom's Hardware's hierarchy, the RTX 5060 averaged 59.8fps at 1440p ultra in raster games and 24.6fps in ray tracing. That's slower than the RX 9060 XT 16GB in both, and it has 8GB of VRAM. Swapping in the RX 9060 XT 8GB (£450) instead makes this build about £1,176. Going all the way to the RX 9060 XT 16GB takes it to about £1,306.
The stretch pick: RX 9070
Swap the RX 9060 XT 16GB in our pick for the cheapest RX 9070 (about £732 on 12 November) and the total becomes about £1,280. In Tom's Hardware's hierarchy, the RX 9070 averaged 104.0fps at 1440p ultra in raster games, about 55 per cent more than the RX 9060 XT 16GB's 67.3fps. Tom's calls it "the 1440p raster value champ". AMD recommends a 650W power supply for the RX 9070, which the A650BN meets. There is no headroom for much more, though.
On a Ryzen 5 5600, a card this fast is more likely to be held back by the processor in CPU-heavy games and at high frame rates, especially at 1080p. It's a better match for a 1440p monitor. See our RX 9070 vs RTX 5070 comparison for why we prefer it to NVIDIA's equivalent.
How the three builds compare
| Our pick | AM5 alternative | Stretch |
|---|
Total | ~£1,128 | ~£1,151 | ~£1,280 |
Graphics | RX 9060 XT 16GB | RTX 5060 8GB | RX 9070 16GB |
1440p raster (Tom's, fps) | 67.3 | 59.8 | 104.0 |
1440p ray tracing (Tom's, fps) | 31.0 | 24.6 | 47.6 |
Platform | AM4 / DDR4 | AM5 / DDR5 | AM4 / DDR4 |
CPU upgrade path | Limited | Good (AMD support through 2029) | Limited |
The frame rates are Tom's Hardware's geometric means at ultra settings on a Ryzen 7 9800X3D test system, without upscaling. Your results with these processors will differ, especially at 1080p.
What about a pre-built?
On 12 November, Scan's Scan Gamer RTX with a Ryzen 5 8400F, 16GB of DDR5, an 8GB RTX 5050 and a 1TB SSD cost £1,179.98. The same range with an RTX 5060 was £1,249.98. Both include Windows 11, assembly and a warranty on the whole system. Building our pick yourself and adding a Windows 11 Home licence (£119.99 from Microsoft's UK store) comes to about £1,248. That's about the price of the RTX 5060 pre-built, but you get a 16GB RX 9060 XT. If you'd rather not build, a pre-built is a reasonable choice. Just compare the graphics card and memory carefully. Our step-by-step build guide covers the DIY route.
Before you buy
Check graphics card length against the case's maximum clearance. Partner cards vary.
Update the BIOS if needed. The motherboard's CPU support list tells you which BIOS version supports your processor.
Enable XMP or EXPO in the BIOS so your memory runs at its rated speed.
Black Friday is 27 November. Use the prices above as your benchmark. Our Black Friday guide covers how to tell a real deal from a fake one.
Our verdict
For a UK gaming PC under £1,200 in November 2026, we would build the AM4 machine with a Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB for about £1,128. Today's memory prices make the platform the smart place to save, and 16GB of VRAM is the better long-term bet at this level. Choose the AM5 version if a future processor upgrade matters more to you than frame rates today. And if you can find another £150 or so, the RX 9070 stretch build is the biggest performance jump available in this price range.
