It seems that finally the age of limited PC parts supply is over and the age of low prices is upon us! What better time to build a new gaming PC than amidst these falling prices. So we decided to update our list of template builds from the back to school season and see what and for how much you can build now.
The Minimalist (Roughly $400 or a bit more)
- AMD Ryzen 5 5600G
- Gigabyte B450M DS3H V2
- Silicon Power Turbine 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16
- Kingston NV2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME
- Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case
- Cooler Master MWE Bronze 500 W 80+ Bronze
We haven’t changed the basic system, just shuffled some components, but it is hard to get anything better at that price. You get reasonably competent CPU that can handle even some fast cards, and has integrated video that will let you play most eSports games and a lot of single player games on low@720p. The system is a good start with great upgradeability. Just make sure the motherboard is updated to the latest firmware.
The Basics (1080p60 for ~$600)
- AMD Ryzen 5 5500
- Gigabyte B450M DS3H V2
- Thermalright Assassin X120 Refined SE ARGB
- Silicon Power Turbine 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16
- XFX Speedster SWFT 210 Radeon RX 6600 8 GB
- Kingston NV2 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME
- Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L MicroATX Mini Tower Case
- Cooler Master MWE Bronze 500 W 80+ Bronze
Our next offer is pretty much what will happen if you get The Minimalist and add a GPU and a cooler to it. Just if you are buying it all at once, you can choose to buy the lower priced Ryzen 5 5500, that lacks integrated graphics, but is a 6 core Zen 3 based CPU for under $100! And the cooler is added so you can extract a bit more performance from it with overclocking if you want. In general this PC should be able to delived at least 60 FPS in 1080p on High/Ultra settings and in some games it may be able to even go for over 100 FPS. And of course there will be no problem for all eSports games. Though if you play mostly the later, a good upgrade will be adding Ryzen 5 5600X for about $50-60 more.
The 1000 Bucks
- Intel Core i5-12400F
- Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE
- Asus PRIME B660M-A WIFI D4
- Silicon Power Turbine 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16
- Zotac GAMING Twin Edge OC GeForce RTX 3060 Ti LHR 8 GB
- Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4
- Fractal Design Focus 2 RGB
- EVGA 600 BQ 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular
For this one we decided to switch the things around. You can probably get something similar for a bit cheaper if you just get The Basic and upgrade the CPU to Ryzen 5 5600X/5700X and the GPU to the Zotac GeForce RTX 3060 Ti used here or to a Radeon RX 6700 XT. But the Intel models also deserve some spotlight, so we chose to go with Core i5-12400F, which is comparable to Ryzen 5 5600X (+/- 5-7% most of the time), the motherboard is better equipped with newer interfaces and Wi-Fi and finally we get a better case and PSU. This model will serve you perfectly for 1080p High/Ultra for even high refresh gaming (144 FPS or more) and you can also use it for 1440p gaming. Or even 4K with somewhat lowered settings!
The Reasonable Maximum (~$1500)
- Intel Core i5-13600KF 3.5 GHz
- Thermalright Assassin X 120 Refined SE
- Gigabyte Z690 AORUS ULTRA
- G.Skill Flare X5 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-5600 CL36
- XFX Speedster SWFT 319 Radeon RX 6800 16 GB
- Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME
- Fractal Design Focus 2 RGB
- Corsair RM850 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular
This pc offers balanced performance in all areas making it good both for productivity as well as great at gaming. Frankly we offer you to buy the Core i5-13600K (non-F) if you are going to be using it for video editing, but at the time of writhing this it was not available. As for the GPU, we wanted to add Nvidia RTX model, but we just couldn’t resist the great price of Radeon RX 6800 XT. With it even 4K is not out of the question, but ideally you should be using this PC for 1440p with high refresh rate monitor.
The unreasonable one ($4500+ and counting… )
- AMD Ryzen 9 7950X
- NZXT Kraken Z73
- Asus PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI
- G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL32
- MSI GAMING X TRIO GeForce RTX 4090 24 GB
- Samsung 980 Pro 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME
- Solidigm P41 Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME
- Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO
- EVGA SuperNOVA 1300 P+ 1300 W 80+ Platinum
That one is easy – we just piled up the best CPU and GPU we could find with a lot of storage and other stuff. As for why we choose Ryzen 9 7950X – there was a large price drop for the holidays, but mainly because the expected longevity of the platform. The 13900K is the end of the road for LGA1700, while the Ryzen 9 7950X is just the start for AM5 and it is expected to have at least 2 more generations on this platform. So in 3-4 years you can still upgrade it. It is the best productivity CPU at the moment and one of the best for gaming. The GeForce RTX 4090 is a beast but we advise you to get a good 4K monitor to use its full potential. And that’s pretty much it.
We hope that will help you for the purchases and just keep in mind that you don’t need to get the exact models of the offered components, so mix, match and change as you see fit.
Happy gaming.