Building Yourself A $500 Gaming PC … Today

What Kind Of System Can You Get For Less Than An RTX 3080?

Today is perhaps not the best day to go shopping for parts for a new gaming PC, as in a month we will have new Ryzen processors to consider purchasing, not to mention the impact on the pricing of currently available processors from AMD and Intel.  We will also know what Big Navi looks like, but at $500 that matters less than a fancy new Ryzen 3 or 5.  This is also why the PCPer HWLB hasn’t been updated in a while … not to mention the lack of availability of new GPUs.

However, life likes to hand out surprises and you can’t always choose when you need to build a new PC, especially one on a tight budget, which is why anyone in that position should take a peek at TechSpot’s parts guide for a low cost gaming desktop.  They walk through everything you will need, from the CPU through the case to the monitor and operating system, giving you a way to start completely from scratch if necessary.

As you might expect AMD’s Ryzen CPU powers the system, with the baked in Vega GPU handling graphics.  They manged to fit in 8GB of DDR4-3000 and both a SATA HDD and SSD so you get both a fast OS drive as well as storage.  Their final build includes a Windows 10 license but if you were to chose Linux you will have a bit more budget free to be able to upgrade a component and stay within budget.

You won’t be breaking performance records but you will certainly be able to play at 1080p and 1440 to a certain extent as well.