Building a Budget Gaming PC: A Guide to Creating a Powerful Rig on a Shoestring Budget

When it comes to building a gaming PC, many people assume that you need to break the bank to get a powerful rig. However, with a little creativity and planning, it's possible to create a high-performance gaming computer on a budget of just $588.92. In this article, we'll explore the components and parts that make up this build, as well as some tips and tricks for finding deals and discounts.

The CPU: Intel Core i3-10100

Our budget build starts with an Intel Core i3-10100 processor, which is a great option for gaming at 1080p. With its 4 cores and 8 threads, this processor should provide plenty of power for most games. At a price of $114.99, it's also relatively affordable.

The Motherboard: ASRock B450M Steel Legend Micro ATX

Next up is the motherboard, which we've chosen as the ASRock B450M Steel Legend Micro ATX. This board offers great value for its price and supports both AMD Ryzen and Intel processors. With a price tag of $79.99, it's an excellent choice for this build.

The RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200MHz

When it comes to memory, we've opted for the Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200MHz. This kit of dual-channel RAM should provide plenty of capacity for most users and is also relatively affordable at $69.99.

The Power Supply: EVGA 500BR 80+ Bronze 500W

Our power supply is the EVGA 500BR 80+ Bronze 500W, which is a great option for this build. With an 80+ Bronze certification, it should be able to handle most of our components and provide plenty of headroom for future upgrades. At a price of $54.99, it's also relatively affordable.

The Cooler: Deepcool Gammaxx 400 V2

One of the biggest challenges when building a PC is keeping it cool. To address this, we've chosen the Deepcool Gammaxx 400 V2 CPU cooler. This fanless design should be able to keep our processor at a safe temperature even during heavy gaming sessions. At a price of $20, it's an excellent value for its performance.

The Case: Thermaltake Versa H15 Micro Tower

Our case is the Thermaltake Versa H15 Micro Tower, which offers great airflow and cable management options. While it may not be the most powerful case on the market, it should provide plenty of room for our components and keep them cool. At a price of $49.99, it's also relatively affordable.

The Fans: Arctic F12 PWM PST

To keep our PC cool, we've opted for a pair of Arctic F12 PWM PST fans. These fans offer excellent airflow and are also relatively quiet, making them perfect for a gaming rig. At a price of $20 each, they're an excellent value for their performance.

The Storage: P2 500GB NVMe SSD

Finally, our storage is the P2 500GB NVMe SSD, which offers blazing-fast speeds and plenty of capacity for our operating system and games. At a price of $52.99, it's an excellent choice for this build.

Adding a GPU: GTX 970 or RX 470/570

So how do we take this build from budget-friendly to truly powerful? The answer lies in the graphics card. While we could opt for something more expensive like an RX 480 or 580, those cards are currently out of our price range. Instead, we've chosen a GTX 970 or RX 470/570 as our GPU option.

In terms of performance, these GPUs should offer excellent results at 1080p and even some mid-to-high settings at 1440p. The GTX 970 is currently selling for around $125, while the RX 470 and 570 are also available in this price range.

Conclusion

Building a gaming PC on a budget doesn't have to be difficult or expensive. By choosing wisely and doing our research, we've created a powerful rig that should handle even the most demanding games at high settings. Of course, there are always better options out there, but for those who want to get into gaming without breaking the bank, this build is an excellent starting point.

If you're interested in learning more about our build or see some benchmarks, be sure to check out our full review linked below. We also stream on Twitch every Friday at 8pm Pacific time, so be sure to tune in for live coverage of our builds and other tech-related content.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni built a 600 gaming pc in the middle of a pandemic and it doesn't suck my name is chris this is coalition gaming and today i'll be your computer technician there's no two ways about it building a pc right now is worse than trying to push your old beater of a car uphill during a snowstorm yeah it's not going to happen not even a few months ago i put together a few ryzen 3100 budget builds and they perform great for the money i even did one with a full setup including the monitor for 700 and it performed great safe to say ryzen is the golden child of recent times and for good reason but this pandemic we're in has really changed things and now that we're trying to build a competent budget gaming pc here in 2021 what do we end up with big daddy until is back since intel right now happens to have decent offerings for decent money depending on the product range you're looking at you would still end up with great performance for gaming or content creation or streaming or whatever they didn't suddenly become bad processors that can't do anything you know so let's run down the specs and prices for the cpu we have drum roll the intel i3 10 100 this is a four core eight thread part with a base frequency of 3.6 gigahertz and a turbo 4.3 gigahertz amd having forced intel to eventually enable hyper threading across their entire core i-series cpus has really made the i3 a desirable budget gaming option again and the benefit of this over a ryzen 3 3100 is that it has integrated graphics but at a similar price trust me it comes in handy for the motherboard we have the msi b460m pro a no frills micro atx board that should do the trick for ram we have a 16 gigabyte dual channel kit of 2666 megahertz patriot viper elite power supply is an evga 500br because i hate the stock intel cooler which i guess would be enough for this i3 i found a deepcool gammaxx 400 v2 for 20 bucks case is nothing crazy but still should have a decent airflow it's a thermaltake versa h15 micro tower and the reason for this style of case though is that the person that i'm actually building it for intends to use it as more of an office computer extra cooling will be provided by a pack of my favorite pwm fans the arctic f12 pwm pst and storage is a crucial p2 500 gig nvme ssd all right so let's add this up cpu 114.99 mobo 79.99 ram 69.99 psu 54.99 cooler 1999 case 49.99 fans 2099 ssd 52.99 total 463.92 so i took these parts fired up my twitch stream and got to building i have two 16-foot extensions running from my computer to the table over there this is a hazard in here all right i'm gonna stuff you under the fan just like the body from the other week add a ps1 to get better fps yes it's booted it's booted booted it clip that ah but you might have noticed that of something out one of the most problematic things to try to get right now the graphics card depending on your budget there are some options still this system would be a great basis for a 1080p gaming rig and with that on a budget i generally recommend something like an rx 470 or 570 from ebay sadly even prices on those have gone up with them going around for 120 to 150 used when you could easily get them under 100 before rx 480s and 580s are priced out of being completely worth it now sadly same with gtx 1060s however gtx 970s are on ebay in the same price ranges in rx 470 and 570 and on par with the performance of the 570 so that's definitely an option too so let's take that 463.92 and add a gtx 970 cheapest i saw was about 125 shipped and we had a total of 588.92 with narc 470 it also comes in about this price give or take a few bucks 1080p performance should be at least as good as the benchmarks covered in my 700 full setup build with the ryzen 3 3100 so see how good that will do click right up here or find the link down in the description below now if you ask me what gpu i'd ideally want to put in this system a 1660 super or a secondhand gtx 1070 since those are close in performance a 1660 super is supposed to cost 230 dollars with some costing 240. after that i'd avoid them so let's take 463.92 and add 240 dollars to it and we get 703.92 not bad at all so let's see a few benchmarks of this system with the gtx 1660 super huh wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait we have a problem of course you can't get a 1660 super for that 230 to 240 normal pricing anywhere right now like i said a gtx 1070 performs about the same and depending on your local market you can get these for about the same cost as the 1660 super so anyways this was just a small sample of 1660 super benchmarks to see more feel free to check out our full review of it linked up here and down in the description below and so here we are in this day and age during a pandemic with pc parts being either impossible to get or costing more than they ever have a budget build like this is still possible and still great for gaming if you guys wanted to check out any of these parts i'll have links down below are you surprised until it's back in the game like this for budget builds drop a comment down below let's talk about what parts would you choose well parts that you could get at least anyways if you like this video you know what to do hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload i stream to twitch every friday at 8 pm pacific link down below so make sure to stop by drop a follow let's talk some tech following all our socials everything again link down below so check down there for any of that stuff we'll see you on the next video or on the stream click one of those drop a comment i'll see you down there in the comments i reply to comments all the time or just come by the stream maybe yeah we can talk live eh you click onei built a 600 gaming pc in the middle of a pandemic and it doesn't suck my name is chris this is coalition gaming and today i'll be your computer technician there's no two ways about it building a pc right now is worse than trying to push your old beater of a car uphill during a snowstorm yeah it's not going to happen not even a few months ago i put together a few ryzen 3100 budget builds and they perform great for the money i even did one with a full setup including the monitor for 700 and it performed great safe to say ryzen is the golden child of recent times and for good reason but this pandemic we're in has really changed things and now that we're trying to build a competent budget gaming pc here in 2021 what do we end up with big daddy until is back since intel right now happens to have decent offerings for decent money depending on the product range you're looking at you would still end up with great performance for gaming or content creation or streaming or whatever they didn't suddenly become bad processors that can't do anything you know so let's run down the specs and prices for the cpu we have drum roll the intel i3 10 100 this is a four core eight thread part with a base frequency of 3.6 gigahertz and a turbo 4.3 gigahertz amd having forced intel to eventually enable hyper threading across their entire core i-series cpus has really made the i3 a desirable budget gaming option again and the benefit of this over a ryzen 3 3100 is that it has integrated graphics but at a similar price trust me it comes in handy for the motherboard we have the msi b460m pro a no frills micro atx board that should do the trick for ram we have a 16 gigabyte dual channel kit of 2666 megahertz patriot viper elite power supply is an evga 500br because i hate the stock intel cooler which i guess would be enough for this i3 i found a deepcool gammaxx 400 v2 for 20 bucks case is nothing crazy but still should have a decent airflow it's a thermaltake versa h15 micro tower and the reason for this style of case though is that the person that i'm actually building it for intends to use it as more of an office computer extra cooling will be provided by a pack of my favorite pwm fans the arctic f12 pwm pst and storage is a crucial p2 500 gig nvme ssd all right so let's add this up cpu 114.99 mobo 79.99 ram 69.99 psu 54.99 cooler 1999 case 49.99 fans 2099 ssd 52.99 total 463.92 so i took these parts fired up my twitch stream and got to building i have two 16-foot extensions running from my computer to the table over there this is a hazard in here all right i'm gonna stuff you under the fan just like the body from the other week add a ps1 to get better fps yes it's booted it's booted booted it clip that ah but you might have noticed that of something out one of the most problematic things to try to get right now the graphics card depending on your budget there are some options still this system would be a great basis for a 1080p gaming rig and with that on a budget i generally recommend something like an rx 470 or 570 from ebay sadly even prices on those have gone up with them going around for 120 to 150 used when you could easily get them under 100 before rx 480s and 580s are priced out of being completely worth it now sadly same with gtx 1060s however gtx 970s are on ebay in the same price ranges in rx 470 and 570 and on par with the performance of the 570 so that's definitely an option too so let's take that 463.92 and add a gtx 970 cheapest i saw was about 125 shipped and we had a total of 588.92 with narc 470 it also comes in about this price give or take a few bucks 1080p performance should be at least as good as the benchmarks covered in my 700 full setup build with the ryzen 3 3100 so see how good that will do click right up here or find the link down in the description below now if you ask me what gpu i'd ideally want to put in this system a 1660 super or a secondhand gtx 1070 since those are close in performance a 1660 super is supposed to cost 230 dollars with some costing 240. after that i'd avoid them so let's take 463.92 and add 240 dollars to it and we get 703.92 not bad at all so let's see a few benchmarks of this system with the gtx 1660 super huh wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait we have a problem of course you can't get a 1660 super for that 230 to 240 normal pricing anywhere right now like i said a gtx 1070 performs about the same and depending on your local market you can get these for about the same cost as the 1660 super so anyways this was just a small sample of 1660 super benchmarks to see more feel free to check out our full review of it linked up here and down in the description below and so here we are in this day and age during a pandemic with pc parts being either impossible to get or costing more than they ever have a budget build like this is still possible and still great for gaming if you guys wanted to check out any of these parts i'll have links down below are you surprised until it's back in the game like this for budget builds drop a comment down below let's talk about what parts would you choose well parts that you could get at least anyways if you like this video you know what to do hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload i stream to twitch every friday at 8 pm pacific link down below so make sure to stop by drop a follow let's talk some tech following all our socials everything again link down below so check down there for any of that stuff we'll see you on the next video or on the stream click one of those drop a comment i'll see you down there in the comments i reply to comments all the time or just come by the stream maybe yeah we can talk live eh you click one\n"