PCWorld specs out Will Smith’s RTX 4090 gaming PC

If there’s anything more fun than building a new gaming PC, it’s building one for a buddy. That’s why the PCWorld crew invited Will Smith, prolific podcaster and game streamer and a former coworker of Gordon, on the PCWorld YouTube channel. Will needs a new gaming PC and Gordon and Adam are more than happy to lend their expertise to his build. He’s ready to put together a new super-powered desktop and send his current gaming machine to secondary streaming duties.

Will’s a true power user. In addition to high-end game streaming, he does video and audio editing, photo retouches, the works. He’s also using a 360Hz 1080p monitor for primary gaming plus a secondary 4K display, so he needs frame-pushing power plus enough video memory to run lots of desktop on the side. In short, his PC needs lots of everything: processor power, GPU, memory, fast storage, all running as quickly and efficiently as possible.

But there’s another aspect to Will’s business and that’s recording podcasts. So when it’s not pushing pixels and rendering frames, the PC needs to stay reasonably quiet. Oh and a case that looks cool with plenty of RGB lighting would be nice, too. A motherboard with integrated Wi-Fi would help with his infrequent travel schedule.

Will doesn’t need to upgrade his monitors and he has already settled on a pricey RTX 4090 graphics card, literally the latest and greatest. For the CPU, Gordon recommends high clocks to hit those massive 300+ framerates. The top-of-the-line AMD and Intel processors are obvious picks (Core i9-13900K and Ryzen 9 7950X), with a “dark horse” being the more affordable Ryzen 7 5800X3D. But there’s a downside with that more economical option — it uses DDR4 memory, which limits upgrade potential.

How would you build this monster PC? Watch the video, take Will’s needs into account and wait for Adam and Gordon to present their builds. We’ll see who comes up with the better machine in an upcoming video — be sure to subscribe to PCWorld’s YouTube channel for the live build video!