With the Christmas 2019 holidays coming soon, we decided to create a small collection of gaming PC builds suggestions in different price levels. Below you will find the parts lists for machines for around 300/500/750/1000 and 1500 “units”. If you live in the USA it’s $, if you live in EU it’s Euro. Please note that as prices change frequently, the total might be a bit more or a bit less. Some components might not be available at the time you visit Amazon. Please choose a similar item or drop us a line and we will help you with that.
Each component is linked to it’s page on the local Amazon. The links to Amazon provided are affiliate links. If you buy through those links, we will get a small comission without inflating your cost.
Budget Gaming Build – About $300/300 Euro
If you just want to enter the PC Master Race, or the gaming is not the main focus, but you still want all the functionality. This PC will give you 720p@60 FPS for all the games on low or medium settings and you can even go to (near) 100 FPS for multiplayer shooters with some “tweaking”. For some games even 1080p is not out of the question. If you want still want something even cheaper, go for Athlon 3000G to save around 40 bucks, but the gaming part starts to be questionable.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 2200G
Motherboard: ASRock B450M-HDV R4.0
Memory: Patriot Viper 4 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
Storage: Kingston A400 240 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
Case: Deepcool MATREXX 30 MicroATX Mini Tower Case
Power Supply: Thermaltake Smart RGB 500 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply
The $500/500 Euro Gaming PC Build
This is the budged gaming build that is relatively cheap but offers surprising bang for the buck. With this 4 cores/8 threads processor you get plenty of CPU power for now and even the near future and the RX570 is capable of running most games in 1080p@60FPS in Medium/High settings, and even near 100 FPS for online shooter on low settings. Also you are getting a lot of potential for upgrade on the AMD platform. If you have a bit more in your pocket the easiest upgrade is to go with higher end graphics, one good variant will be Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Super. And/Or if you want more CPU performance for gaming and content creation – go for Ryzen 5 1600/2600. Or add more SSD/HDD.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1500X 3.5 GHz or Ryzen 5 2600
Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M DS3H
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
Storage: Team GX2 512 GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 570 8 GB GTS XXX or similar
Case: Thermaltake Versa H15 MicroATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Thermaltake Smart RGB 500 W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply
The Intel Based $750/750 Euro Build
This will net you very good performance for Fortnite and other online shooters, but will also for most of the games at (close to) maximum settings for 1080p or Medium/High 1440p. For games like Fortnite, Overwatch and Apex Legends it should be easily capable of generating over 144 FPS average on low settings, or even more. Other options for some bucks more are going for Z370 motherboard and 9600KF for even more FPS and/or upgrading the graphics to GeForce RTX2060 or Radeon RX5700.
CPU: Intel Core i5-9400F 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: Gigabyte B365M DS3H
Memory: G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
Storage: Team GX2 1 TB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6 GB Twin Fan
Case: Cougar MX330-G ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: be quiet! System Power 9 600 W 80+ Bronze Certified
Optimal Price/Performance Gaming Build – Around $1000/1000 Euro
The nice round 1000 bucks sum. This is one well rounded system that will give you a lot of performance for gaming and good performance for content creating. 1080p Maximum settings for 100 FPS or 1440p@60 FPS shouldn’t be a problem and there will be also be even more performance for online gaming. But you will also be capable of streaming in 1080p (with some limitations) and even do some more serious work if you choose so. If you want more gaming performance – go for some higher performance GPU variant (GeForce RTX2070 Super?). If you want more content creation/streaming performance – go for Ryzen 7 3700X or even Ryzen 9 3900X.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports DUO
Motherboard: MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory
Storage: Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
Video Card: PowerColor Radeon RX 5700 8 GB or similar
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair TXM Gold 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-modular
The High End Gaming PC Build – Around $1500/1500 Euro
In our opinion anything more than this and you are going in the section of the market where price/performance is getting noticeably worse. At least for gaming. And if you don’t care for price/performance, the the choice is getting a bit too personal to give you recommendations. With this you should be able to enjoy quite nice 1440P performance and even dab your fingers in 4K if you choose to. If you want good 4K performance, your only choice is 2080Ti (we don’t think 2080 Super is worth it for just 10-15% more performance), which in itself is almost the price of this PC. For maximum online gaming performance you may choose to go Core i7-9700K+Z370/390 motherboard, that will net you some more FPS than 3700X, but it’ll be on the expense of multi-threading performance if you need it for other stuff.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz
CPU Cooler: ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 56.3 CFM
Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 GAMING X ATX
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z Neo 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory
Storage OS: ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Storage Data: Crucial MX500 1 TB 2.5″ Solid State Drive
Video Card: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC 3X
or AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
Case: Phanteks ECLIPSE P350X ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair RM (2019) 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular
That’s our recommendations, but please don’t take them as something set in stone. Feel free to mix-and-mach depending on your requirements, financial capabilities or personal preferences. Also you can add your own touch with some RGB fans for better cooling and personalised lighting :).
