Right now, building a brand-new PC with normal, off-the-shelf parts around the $1,000 mark is honestly dramatic. Between the SSD situation and a GPU shortage ramping up (especially anything with 16GB and higher VRM cards getting snagged), there aren’t many clean options. In this video, I put together a “shortage build” that still makes sense and still targets what most of you actually want: 1080p 240Hz and even 1440p around 144Hz, without going into the weirder AliExpress/mystery parts territory I also cover on the channel. At the core, I went Ryzen 5 9600X on B650 because Intel boards for my usual value pick (i5-225F) are just too expensive right now. I did overpay for RAM, so I kept it to 16GB—because for gaming, 16GB is still plenty unless you’re doing heavy multitasking or pushing 4K. Cooling is easy on this chip, so I used the Valkyrie Surge SL125 air cooler and paired it with the Valkyrie VK02 case plus Arctic P14 Reverse fans for quiet airflow. For the GPU, I settled on an RX 9060 XT 8GB—not my favorite at launch, but it’s priced sanely compared to inflated 16GB cards, and with undervolting + overclocking you can squeeze roughly 20% extra performance while dropping temps. The end result is a cool, quiet, upgrade-ready PC that can later handle a bigger CPU and even a massive GPU—just swap the PSU when you get there.