Buying a high-end PC for the first time - help me to doublecheck what I'm buying? Is 4k a bad idea with the specs?

Gaming in 4K is overrated. Just enable in-game upscaling or gamescope FSR. Stable frame rate is more important.

The actual benefit of 4K is the crisp text when you are working. I cannot overstate how much better it is. If you have a decent phone, you are familiar with crisp text already. Compare with your 1080p PC screen yourself.

And since it's just 2x integer scaled 1080p, it gets you decent compatibility too. Fractional scaling combined with old, unaware apps is sometimes a blurry disaster.

You will need to use up scaling for some games to be able to do 4k. WoW is probably going to be fine though ;) But, for other games it is worth knowing that this is the case since some people don't like up scaling and AMDs FSR isn't quite as good as Nvidias DLSS.

If I end up on 1440p, if anyone has experience with this part, what do movies and such look like? Would a 1080p download look strange and blurry being upscaled? And would a 2160p download look weird being downscaled?

1440p really is a sweet spot as far as I am concerned. I have two 27 inch 1440p monitors and I do all my gaming and other media consumption on these.
Movies do look absolutely fine. 1080p looks good without being blurry in any meaningful way and 2160p is no issue at all and just looks sharp as heck.

The power supply should be good enough, but I had to replace my RM750x (2018 edition) because the GPU (exact same as yours) has the tendency to have high power spikes which caused my system to lock up. I think that the extra 100 watt and the fact that it is a newer model should be fine, but figured I'd mention it since you have the option to go for the 1000watt version as well.

I also noticed they include a mousepad at the bottom and you can safe a few bucks by removing it.

Personally, I'm on board with the "pc monitors are too small for 4k to be effective" and 4k is extremely demanding.
There was a monitor thread recently, a lot of tilderinos and myself run 1440p and I think that's the sweet spot. Games look and run great at this resolution and the desktop experience is excellent too. I would always choose a rock solid 60 or 140 FPS over a shaky one, and without using up scaling (like DLSS or FSR).

This is just an opinion though!

Hey, I run 4k on most games, and I have an older/weaker configuration than you:
7800xt, 5700 x3d, 32g ram, etc. I’m very happy with the performance, although framerates can be lower depending on the game (30-60), but that doesn’t bother me at all. Coming from a 1070 the difference will be night and day.

Since your build is quite a bit more powerful I think you’ll be perfectly fine. With a little upscaling where necessary you won’t even notice a difference. IMO you have a really solid build and you should just go for it.

I will also throw my two cents in here. 1440 is really where it's at for gaming. You want stable framerate more than shear amount of pixels. I also run multiple 27 inch 1440p monitors and do all my gaming and media on them. It really is preference though. If my framerate was under 60fps in any game I'd probably crash out, regardless of how pretty it looks in 4k. I do play a lot of action intensive games though.

I have a 4070 Super and run most of my games on the highest settings and get above 100fps in most of them, but I also really don't want to use DLSS or framegen for anything because the look of it annoys me. From what I've seen it looks like I'd be able to do 4k 60fps in older games but not newer ones without framegen or DLSS.

One option that might feel a little wrong (but hey you're spending a ton of money, may as well get it right) is to literally just try out a 4k or 1440p monitor and if you don't like the results return it and go with the other option.

I think your planned storage is too small and would go with 2tb at least. That's what I have and I still have to delete things from time to time.

Also, I do VR on this GPU, which requires rendering 2160×2160x2 plus video streaming at the same time (also twitch streaming on top of that, sometimes) and it works just fine. Like others have said, your maximum framerate will be lower, that's all.

This very similar to my own build (better actually, I've got 12gb VRAM and a worse CPU), which is hooked up to my 4KTV. If you can handle 60fps upscaled (not too much, though) for demanding games (think cyberpunk, oblivion remastered, etc.) then TLDR it's great.

Upscaling will be a requirement for playing modern games at 4k with 60+ FPS. I really don't like how FSR looks, so I end up using XeSS for most things (DLSS is not an option, obviously). Usually "quality" or "balanced" modes get me where I want to be for all but the least optimised games (looking at you, Borderlands 4!). It's also worth noting that AMD cards have significantly worse ray-tracing performance than Nvidia Cards, if that matters to you.

Depending on what software you're running, just scaling is an option if you reallllly want to boost your frames. I'm running a steamdeck-esque gamescope setup, so I can set the scaling mode to "pixel" to get a perfect 2x at 1080p. It's definitely noticeable, especially on a TV the pixels are quite large, but like with a lot of things you'll probably forget once you start playing (especially if you use that extra headroom to really crank graphical settings). This doesn't work as well at 1440 since it's not pixel perfect, but Nvidia Image Scaling is pretty good and straight bilinear is also okay, if a bit blurry.

As far as resolution is concerned, I would say it's probably not that noticeable below 32in. I have a 1440p 27in and I can only barely discern pixels from where I sit. But, and I cannot stress this enough: regardless of 4k or 1440p, BUY A GOOD MONITOR. Getting an OLED with good HDR is going to be way more impactful than the resolution bump. 120fps at medium settings with beautiful colours and a looking monitor is going to feel better than 60fps ultra RT on some crappy VA panel (ask me how I know, lol). Even if you have to spec down your PC, I would say that having budget space to buy a really good monitor is going to be the most bang-for-your-buck.

There's 2 things that I would like to touch on, but they're nitpicks. They're not a huge deal and can be solved, just think they're worth keeping in mind:

1- 4k screens: old games hate them.

For example, I've been playing "Medal of Honor: Allied Assault" with a community patch to enable widescreen and whatnot. On my 1080p monitor, everything looks fine, but on my 4k TV, every UI element looks tiny.

I'm sure there might be solutions to upscale them, but the point is: with my 1080p monitor I don't need to bother, with my 4k TV I need.

This happened to some other games but tbh, I can't remember which they were. But as a rule of thumb, I assume that old games will likely have one issue or another on a 4k screen.

2- Streaming: scaling is annoying

If someday you get a Steam Deck (720p screen) or similar and want to stream games: you'll have kind of the same problem while navigating the OS. Depending on your scaling settings for your monitor, the UI could look very tiny on stream. But to be clear, it's not that huge of a deal and there are solutions - like getting a dummy HDMI port to trick the OS into thinking there's another 1080p monitor, and you can use that for streaming (or just having the patience to change the scaling every time) - It's just something to be aware of.

Personally speaking, I'm planning to get a 1440p monitor in the near future, one with 120hz at least. 4k is demanding and to me it feels a bit overkill for a 27' monitor. It probably looks nicer, but idk. I think it probably won't look much better than a 1440p monitor, but that's just my 2 cents!

I have a pretty much identical set up (9070 XT, Ryzen 7 9800X3D, MSI B850S, 1TB DDR6 Kingston SSD for main drive and 1TB 970 Evo + SSD for secondary drive, 32GB Corsair DDR5 RAM) and the only thing I was told not to cheap out on and provide some overhead for was the power supply. The configurator i used was suggesting the same 850W unit you have, but i went for a Corsair RM1000e i think it is, which is 1000W.
I run an AOC G2490W1G4 ~21' and an AOC CU34G2XP 27' - so far it has eaten everything I've thrown at it on the main monitor (the 27' is a 3440 x 1440) without issue. I dislike using any sort of scaling and for games like Cyberpunk on high settings with RT low or off, I get a steady 40-60FPS. Everything else, ranging from Overwatch, Deadlock, CS2, Civilisation, Marathon, Enter the Gungeon, it can maintain 144FPS + on med-high settings.
I've used it for tasks like 3D scanning, rendering, mesh manipulation and CAD modelling and it has had no issues there either.
I think with you moving from a 1070, you'll be very happy. The only thing I'd mention is the AMD software can be a bit clunky, and any RGB element control can be a bit hit and miss - my GPU is the Asrock Steel Legend and the RGB control software crashed any time i changed a colour more than once in 5 seconds. AMD Adrenalin can be a bit annoying too sometimes, but no more so than my old i9900k RTX2080 Alienware Area51M was with the Nvidia and Intel drivers honestly.

Edit - made up an entire Intel CPU by accident by adding one too many 9's

I got myself a 32" 4k 240hz OLED monitor and it's genuinely beautiful to look at.

Here's the weird conundrum: I don't want to change back to less than 4k, but I probably wouldn't buy it again.

Games, movies, and other media looks incredible on this screen and the 4k is largely responsible for this. Yet I'm constantly lowering specs in games to make use of the 240hz more than I do the 4k. Having framerates at or close to the refresh rate is incredible. I had Windows silently lower my refresh rate from 240hz to 60hz and I could immediately tell because everything feels sluggish.
Stable and high framerates on a high refresh rate screen is better for the overall experience and the irony is that the element that prevents that the most is the 4k resolution aspect. It just takes my 4080 to the absolute limit.

I recommend'nt a 4k screen!

Maybe check it out somewhere before taking the plunge? I think it's great, 1440p is really good too though.

I have a similar system, and I can play games in 4k, I just choose not to. I too play WoW quite a bit (though gave it a break after the most recent patch), Diablo 4, CS2, and some hyped game of the month from Steam. All of which runs quite well at 4k, but I honestly don’t see the benefit over 2k. If you’re playing strategy games where the screen rarely moves and there’s a lot of text, I can then see the benefit, but it doesn’t sound like you do. Still, this is a debate that you personally have to settle yourself. Some people prefer higher resolution, some prefer higher refresh rates. I belong in the latter group, as long as I have 2k.

If you care about consuming content too, get yourself an OLED monitor with a higher refresh rate (for gaming). They are so worth it. You are right about 4k being better on 30”+ panels. I wouldn’t get a 27” 4k. 27” is for 2k, 32”+ for 4k.

The only thing I’d be critical of 2k is that text is not as crisp as it is on 4k, but you do get used to it. It used to bother me quite a bit because of my dual monitor set up where I was being constantly reminded how better text rendering was on 4k, but I don’t even think about it anymore. (I do still notice it when I think about it though, I don’t want to lead you into thinking there’s not a noticeable difference.)

Personal observation, I have a 4k monitor at work, and a ultrawide at home, and the 4k doesn't do much for me, but the ultrawide is awesome. Everyone is not the same, etc, but i'd go with ultrawide every time if I had the choice.

Hi OP, I have literally those exact specs on my pc. Same GPU, same CPU, same RAM sticks, even same PSU (only the motherboard and ssd is different but that's not significant). If you have specific questions or games you want me to test, feel free to comment and I can try to take a look. Caveat is that I'm on CachyOS but this should still be applicable for Windows. My main monitor is also 1440p 165hz, not 4k.

If you're using a 1440p monitor, don't even sweat it. You can run basically anything at any settings. At that resolution, I've recently played Pragmata without a hitch and have played other AAA games like cyberpunk without a hitch at 100+ fps on high/ultra settings.

This GPU is also capable of 4k, so if you really want 4k you can go that route and won't feel stutters or anything. Just know you won't be able to push as high fps on very high visual fidelity AAA games. But I want to stress those are edge cases and if you're not looking to push ultra settings on everything, this GPU will handle 4k above 60 fps and you can always downscale to 1440p in the settings if need be. But to be honest I've always felt 4k is completely unnecessary unless you have a really big monitor (30 inches or more) because 1440p already has enough pixel density below that to feel very comfortable.

For movies specifically, I have 65 inch 4k oled tv and a 27 inch 1440p monitor and regularly watch 1080p content on both. I don't really notice much of a difference to be honest, and I'm someone who pixel peeps. Yes if you glue your face to the monitor you can see some upscaling artifacts but from any reasonable distance you won't. I would not bother with 4k just for this reason unless, again, you get a big monitor.

Regardless, since you don't mention playing any heavy games, and with WoW not being that GPU heavy of a game, you should be totally be okay if you do get a 4k monitor, but I'd personally recommend investing that money on a higher refresh rate 1440p monitor unless you're up for a bigger monitor at 4k.

TL;DR 4k is fine for that setup if you really want it, but pair it with a big monitor (30+ inches). With 4k you can always downscale if performance tanks. If big monitor isn't in the cards, save your money and invest in a higher refresh rate 1440p monitor.

I'm just gonna throw in my anecdote about 4k here.

In 2020 I bought an Xbox Series X and a few months later I bought my first 4k tv, a 55", since 4k60 was a big selling point of the Xbox.

Nevermind the fact that most games on Xbox don't actually hit both 4k and 60fps and often make you choose one or the other, I really wasn't that impressed by the upgrade from my then 6-year-old 1080p panel to the new 4k one.

2 years later the new TV took a crap. I was going to fix it myself but the part alone was $180 and I decided it wasn't worth it. This was also my first smart tv and quite frankly I hated the thing from the day I got it and was not sad to see it go.

Anyway I hooked back up to my old 1080p panel and I've been gaming on that ever since. It's now 11 years old and I do not really miss the 4k or even the HDR.

After going to a 4k 27", I can't imagine ever going back down to a lower DPI. Part of that is that this monitor is dual-use and I also use it for work, where I'm mostly reading text and code all day. (Well, okay, my personal use includes text and code as well, not just games.) Every time I go to a store where they have monitors on display, the majority of them look so pixelated to my eyes now.

For gaming use, I love using at the full 4k for games that aren't too graphically demanding, and for the more demanding games I can always just bump it down to 2k and use integer scaling. I'm not really a fan of FSR or DLSS, and prefer native rendering or integer scaling, though I'll admit those two have gotten pretty good these days. But with 4k, there's just something nice about the resolution letting you see all the little details that the game artist put into the textures and models (or at least having the option to do so, even if you don't use it all the time and run at 2k on other games). I remember the first time I fired up my 4k monitor with a game I'd been playing, it felt like I'd just put on a pair of brand new glasses after years with an outdated prescription.

The other parts mostly look good to me. The 9070 XT is a very solid GPU (obligatory bias disclosure - sales of them help pay my bills), likewise the 9800X3D. And the 850 W PSU should be sufficient to power both.

Probably the only other thing I'd suggest is upping the storage. 1 TB isn't a huge amount these days when you regularly have games in the 100 GB+ territory. It's a lot easier to start big and grow into the extra room then have to copy everything over to a larger disk later. I wouldn't look at anything less than 2 TB these days.