Home PC — which graphics card to buy

The short version

NOTE

1. The home desktop can’t show a picture at all right now. The i3-10100F has no built-in graphics, and the GTX ?? is in the machine at Nottingham. A graphics card has to go in — doing nothing isn’t an option.

1. Don’t swap the CPU. Moving to an i3-10100 or i5-10400 gets you Intel UHD 630, which is roughly GT 740-class — fine for YouTube, nowhere near a gaming GPU. The i5-10400 is also only about 5% faster in games than the i3 you already have.[1]
2. Best buy: a used RTX 3070 8GB (£210–235) if you’re happy keeping the current power supply, or a new RTX 5060 8GB (~£290–330) if a new PSU is going in anyway — which is what I’d do.[2]
3. Don’t buy: the GeForce GTX Titan X (dead driver support, no DLSS, 250W), Intel Arc B580 (needs Resizable BAR your 10th-gen board can’t reliably give it), or any used 12GB card right now — those are exactly the ones the memory shortage has inflated.[3][4][5]
4. Buy sooner rather than later. Memory prices are still climbing and nobody forecasts relief before 2027–28.[6]
5. Check three things before ordering: the PSU’s PCIe cable, that the RAM is two sticks, and eBay’s Sold items prices.

Prices in this note are dated 20 September 2026. Used figures are asking prices (typically 5–15% above what actually sells); new figures are in-stock retail.

The machine

Part	What it is	Why it matters here
CPU	Intel Core i3-10100F — LGA1200 (10th gen), 4 cores / 8 threads	The F means no integrated graphics, so no display output without a card
Motherboard / case	microATX, plenty of room	Any normal 2-slot card fits
PSU	Channel Well (CWT) GPT500S-A, 500W, fixed cables (2018)	The real limit — see below
RAM	16GB	Confirm it’s two sticks, not one
Monitor	1440p, 144Hz	Sets the performance target
Games	Rocket League, plus others	Rocket League is light; “others” is the unknown

Constraint 1 — what the PSU can actually take

The PSU is documented in independent testing, so this isn’t guesswork.[7]

Property	Value	What it means
+12V rail	38A = 456W	Enough for any card discussed here
PCIe cables	One cable, two 6+2 connectors	Cards needing a single 8-pin are fine. Cards wanting 8-pin + 6-pin are a stretch
Regulation	Group-regulated, double-forward	Cross-loading (heavy 12V, light 5V) is its weak spot — its crossload ripple test failed at 134mV
Age / parts	Built 2018; CapXon + ChengX capacitors	Budget-grade caps, eight years old
Efficiency	~84.6% average	Bronze class

Practical ceiling: I’d run a card up to about 170W on it without worry. At 220W it’s ~74% of the 12V rail on an eight-year-old budget unit — workable, but the PSU becomes the part most likely to fail, and PSU failure can take the rest with it. If you’re going above 170W, budget £55–70 for a fresh 650W unit and treat it as part of the card’s price.

Never use a SATA/Molex-to-PCIe adapter to get more connectors. That’s how machines catch fire.

Constraint 2 — 1440p 144Hz

Rocket League is genuinely easy to run: it lists Intel HD 4000 as the minimum, and any card here will hold 200+ fps at 1440p.[8] So Rocket League is not the thing that decides this purchase.

Modern big-budget games at 1440p are. That’s why the tables below show a rough 1440p frame rate, and why video memory (VRAM) matters: at 1440p with high textures, 8GB is the floor and 16GB is comfortable.

The options, priced

Used

Card	Asking price	1440p	Power	Notes
RX 6600 XT 8GB	£150–165	~70 fps	160W	Cheapest thing that genuinely games
RTX 3060 12GB	£200–225	~61 fps	170W ✓	12GB, but slow, and no longer cheap
RTX 3070 8GB	£210–235	~84 fps	220W ⚠	Fastest per pound; wants the new PSU
RX 6700 XT 12GB	£225–275	~84 fps	230W ⚠	12GB, but needs 8-pin + 6-pin
RTX 2080 Ti 11GB	~£244	~85 fps	250W ⚠	11GB, but old and hot
RTX 3060 Ti 8GB	~£260	~75 fps	200W	Outpriced by the 3070
RX 6800 XT 16GB	£315–360	~110 fps	300W ✗	Too much for this PSU

New (retail, with warranty)

Card	Price	1440p	Power	Notes
RTX 5050 8GB	£219–249	~55 fps	130W ✓	Cheapest current-gen; slow
RTX 5060 8GB	£290–330	~84 fps	145W ✓	DLSS 4 frame generation, one 8-pin, warranty
RTX 5060 Ti 8GB	£300–362	~100 fps	180W ✓	~19% faster than a 3070
RX 9060 XT 16GB	£380–420 (seen ~£350 on promo)	~100 fps	150W ✓	16GB, one 8-pin, warranty — the “won’t need revisiting” option
RTX 5060 Ti 16GB	£410–470	~100 fps	180W ✓	16GB, but pricey
Arc B580 12GB	£249	~80 fps	190W	Don’t — see below

Why the three “no”s

GTX Titan X (Maxwell, 2015), £78–120. 12GB and 336 GB/s looks like a bargain next to an RTX 3060 12GB. It isn’t: it’s roughly 77% of an RTX 3060’s speed, it’s 250W needing a 600W supply, it has no DLSS, and NVIDIA ended Game Ready driver support for Maxwell in late 2025 — it now gets security fixes only, through around October 2028, with no new game optimisations ever.[3] Buying it means buying a new PSU to get a slower card than a £290 RTX 5060 that draws 145W and has a warranty.

Intel Arc B580, £249. 12GB for the money, and it looks ideal. But Intel’s own documentation says Resizable BAR “must be enabled for optimal performance in all applications using Arc B-Series”, that support on 10th-gen platforms “will vary”, and there are reports of it being impossible to enable on Comet Lake chipsets — which is what this machine has.[4] Also avoid the RX 6400/6500 XT: they’re PCIe x4 cards and 10th gen is PCIe 3.0, so they lose a lot of performance here.

Used 12GB cards (RTX 3060 12GB, RX 6700 XT). These used to be the value pick. In March 2026 a 3060 12GB sold for £115–145; it now asks £200–225. The reason is below.

Why buy now rather than wait

A memory shortage is being driven by AI data centres outbidding consumers for memory chips.[5][6]

• Memory makers put their capacity into AI memory instead of consumer memory. A 16GB memory module that cost about $40ayearagoisnow$170–180.
• NVIDIA raised prices to its board partners three times in 2026, the last at roughly $10 per GB of VRAM — about £160 on a 16GB card before it reaches a shop. MSI described 2026 as its most severe year since the company was founded.
• Price scales with VRAM. That’s why 12GB cards rose ~50–80% in six months while 8GB cards barely moved. It’s also why the “12GB for the same money” advice is now wrong.
• Next-generation consumer GPUs have slipped from 2027 to 2028, and analysts see no relief window in 2027. Retailers warn that once current stock clears, prices could jump up to 40% more.

So: don’t panic-buy a bad card, but “wait for prices to fall” is a two-year wait that probably costs more.

Before ordering — five checks

1. Look inside the case and confirm there’s one spare 6+2 PCIe connector. If there is only the one cable with two connectors on it, any single-8-pin card is fine.
2. Check the RAM is two sticks (e.g. 2 × 8GB), not one. Dual-channel matters for smooth frame rates. Note: a 16GB DDR4 kit has gone from £40 to £92 in a year, so if it is one stick, that’s a ~£50+ fix rather than a cheap one.
3. Measure clearance — an mATX case with room to spare should take a 2-slot card up to ~30cm.
4. On eBay, use the “Sold items” filter, not asking prices. That’s the only real price data. The trackers listed at the end are faster.
5. Agree the budget before ordering. The spread between the cheapest sensible card and the best one here is roughly £150.

My assessment (Alf)

This is a judgement call, not a slam dunk, and anyone telling you otherwise is guessing.

The used RTX 3070 is the cheapest route to the best frame rates: ~£220 for ~84 fps at 1440p. But 220W on a 2018 budget-capacitor supply is where I stop being comfortable, so I’d add £60 for a new 650W unit — which makes it £280. A new RTX 5060 at ~£290–300 costs about the same, draws 145W instead of 220W, carries a warranty, and brings DLSS 4 with frame generation — the technology that keeps an 8GB card usable at 1440p as games get heavier. It also keeps working if the old PSU fails next year.

So my pick is the new RTX 5060 8GB, because the £60 you’d spend on a PSU for the 3070 is better spent on a card that doesn’t need one. If you’d rather keep the old PSU and spend as little as possible, take the used RTX 3070 — just know that’s the part of the machine most likely to give trouble.

If the “other games” are current big releases and this machine has to last several years, the RX 9060 XT 16GB at ~£350 on promotion is the better long game: 16GB of VRAM, 150W, and it runs on the existing PSU.

The thing I’d push back on: don’t buy anything because it has “12GB” next to it. Ten years ago that was a bargain-hunting shortcut. In 2026 it’s the reason the price is high.

Where to check prices yourself

• storagediskprices.com/uk/graphics-card-prices — cheapest in-stock price for every current-gen card on Amazon.co.uk, live.
• gpupricehistory.com/uk/rtx-5060 and gpuprix.com/uk — per-card price history with a current minimum and a date.
• idealo.co.uk — compares Amazon, Currys, Overclockers and others; a live delivery estimate tells you the page isn’t stale.
• eBay → filter → “Sold items” — the truth about used prices.

One warning about shopping for this: retailer “deals” articles stay online for months and read as current. Check the publication date before trusting a price, including any in this note once it’s a few weeks old.

Sources

1. Intel Core i3-10100F vs i5-10400 comparisons — i3-10100F = 4C/8T, LGA1200, no integrated graphics; ~5% gaming delta to the i5-10400.
2. UK used asking prices harvested from eBay UK listings, 20 Sep 2026; new prices from idealo.co.uk, storagediskprices.com, Ebuyer and geekom.co.uk (updated 24 Jul 2026).
3. NVIDIA legacy driver transition — Maxwell/Pascal/Volta: 580/581 (Nov 2025) was the last full-feature branch; security-only updates thereafter, planned through Oct 2028. https://videocardz.com/newz/maxwell-and-pascal-gpus-get-a-new-nvidia-security-focused-driver-but-no-game-ready-updates
4. Intel Arc B-Series desktop quick start — Resizable BAR required for optimal performance; support on 10th-gen platforms “will vary”. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000091128/graphics/intel-arc-dedicated-graphics-family.html
5. GPU pricing through the memory crisis. https://techspot.com/article/3152-gpu-pricing-mid-2026 · https://club386.com/intel-amd-nvidia-gpu-price-drop
6. UK GPU price outlook 2026. https://overclockers.co.uk/blog/navigating-gpu-prices-in-2026
7. Cybenetics power-supply evaluation, CWT GPT500S-A. https://www.cybenetics.com/evaluations/psus/468/
8. Rocket League system requirements. https://www.epicgames.com/help/c-Category_RocketLeague/c-Trending_0/what-are-the-system-requirements-for-rocket-league-a000084383

Related

• Ongoing Parenting
• Vault Index