Hell yea

You will have to look at the second hand market for sure, but you can probably get a decent 1080p 80-100fps medium/high build.

Something like (or equivalent):

Ryzen 5 3600

RX 6600

16GB DDR4

1TB SSD (probably not NVMe)

Whatever case

Whatever monitor, even if only 60Hz, for now

Whatever MoBo

Tier A PSU from the Cultists Network PSU tier list

You can most likely get everything used if you buy from a second hand shop that has a form of buyer protection (eBay and similar) and thoroughly check and clean and test everything you buy

Haven't seen this mentioned, but did you make sure to plug the display cable into the GPU and not the MoBo?

edit: nvm, just saw a comment with same suggestion

Nitro+ worth it?

I guess not for that much more. A 10% increase is substantial, and I don't think the difference in actual performance is enough to justify it; but you also said that your region can get toasty in summer, and the Nitro+ has better cooling which could help. I don't think the Pulse will get too hot to work, but it may be something to consider!

DDR5

Those are one of the best performance to price ratio, and they're very inexpensive for what they are (plus full support for AMD overclocking, EXPO I think it's called); you can also go higher frequency, but prices will go up as well.

cooler

Good call then, AIO will probably perform a bit better with extreme high ambient temps

970

All good, a 970 Evo Plus might be cheaper so why not!

5.0

Yeah, there's no way gaming will saturate PCIe 5.0 anytime soon, no need to pay premium for specs you won't benefit from

Happy building and gaming!

About RAM, Trident Z5 NEO @ 6000Mhz seems to be the best price/performance ratio.

About GPU, I'd personally go for a Sapphire as they're one of the historic AIB for AMD GPUs and I also dig a lot the design of the Nitro+ lol

See if you can save something on the MoBo (by getting a lower trim) and 2x2TB might be a bit overkill for gaming only (ofc it depends on your habits, but I personally don't have games installed for more than 500-600GB). Also, you picked two PCIe 4.0 NVMEs, so maybe consider a 970 Evo Plus if it's cheaper than the 980 Pro

About cooler, I'd prefer an old fashioned air cooler simply because it can't leak lol

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying "this account is being verified" and I coulnd't comment or anything else.

Anyways, I kept them. One drive loss won't be catastrophic (got two mirrored and also spare backup), so I decided to go for it!

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying "this account os being verified" and I coulnd't comment or anything else.

In the end I decided to keep them, considering the store provides warranty! Loving the gigantic storage amount I have now haha

Sorry for late reply, app kept saying "this account os being verified" and I coulnd't comment or anything else.

Anyway, yes, the store I bought them from is a legit store and provides warranty, so I decided to keep the drives!

That's fair, I paid three times as much though so I do care a bit more haha

Actually, I found something: "DOM: 07JUN2022". I guess that's "Date of Manufacturing"?

I was a bit off, they were 15% cheaper than the Ironwolf on the same website/from same seller (156, not USD, vs 179, not USD).

For a better comparison, I went to WD's official store and for what I spent on these two 8TB Exos (312, not USD) I can get two 4TB Red Plus (310, not USD). Can't make a direct comparison with other Seagates because their "buy now" section redirects me to Amazon, which, as you said, is not the best since they allowed third party sellers, but on there the 8TB Ironwolf is 250 (!!).

As you already know, I'm not in the US so I can't buy from there. Unfortunately, Seagate's "buy now" section (which should be official retailers) brings me to either Amazon or other chains that don't have much else besides portable drives.

At this point I have two options, really: try again the same online store (which is kinda like Amazon, many third party sellers), but getting Ironwolf, which should be more likely to be "legit", and of course check them as well when they arrive, or settle for two 4TB WD Red Plus (which isn't ideal as I'm already nearing 2.5TB total, but should allow me to get by a while longer) bought directly from WD.

edit: looking at the link you provided, I paid 30% less for my Exos. Would that sway you towards keeping it without warranty (apart from the seller's, which is one year I think)? Mind that I don't need enterprise-grade drives, and I think even NAS drives are overkill for my needs. For example a WD Blue with its 55TBW per year might be enough for me (that's 150GB a day everyday for a year, which is above my average writes), ~~but those don't come big enough (I need 6TB min to be comfortable)~~ nevermind, they do come in 8TB size, just at a lower spinning speed (5640rpm), but they cost more (267) than the Ironwolf, and are SMR and have 128MB cache. Sounds like a bad deal!

No I don't, ~~I wrote it in the OP haha~~ unless there's a way to know it by looking up the S/N. Have to check.

How can you be so sure they're older? They were sold to me as new and they did come in the usual sealed plastic wrap.

Anyway I don't think saving some money is worth more than a full warranty, so I'm basically set on returning them and get something else