Part 8: Gaming PC Final Build
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve written articles on the individual components and gave my recommendations on what I would choose. I don’t consider my choices to be low-end budget build or even a high-end build.
I consider my choices to be a decent Gaming PC build where you can actually play most games on high graphics settings. Not the Very High, but High settings. In some of the latest and very demanding games, you may be able to play on Medium settings on a 1080p monitor.
Of course, if you do have a higher budget than what this final build prices out to be, then by all means, go with a higher end graphics card setup. If you only have a slightly higher budget, upgrade the graphics card first. If you have a much higher budget, then also include a better CPU in addition to a better GPU. But always upgrade the GPU first.
Keep in mind though that if you upgrade your graphics card to the highest end card available, you will also need to choose a higher wattage PSU/Power supply.
So, here are the components that I chose:
(All prices were obtained from Amazon at the time this article was written)
- Case – Corsair Obsidian Series Black 450D Mid-Tower Case ($114)
- CPU – Intel Core i7-8700 ($360)
- Motherboard – ASUS Prime Z370-P ($140)
- GPU / Graphics Card – EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti ($197)
- PSU / Power Supply – Corsair CX Series 550 Watt ($60)
- Memory – Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB ($197)
- SSD/HDD #1 – Samsung 850 PRO 256GB ($114)
- SSD/HDD #2 – Western Digital Blue 2TB HDD ($69)
- Optical Drive (Optional) – LG Internal Blu-ray Rewriter ($47)
- CPU Cooler – Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler ($31)
Total Build Price = $1329
I didn’t write individual articles on the optical drive or the CPU Cooler. The optical drive these days is an optional component. All new laptops don’t even come with an optical anymore. Actually, it’s been several generations already where most laptops don’t include optical drives so it’s up to you if you want to include one in your desktop build.
As for the CPU cooler, I plan to write up another article on this later on and talk about water cooling as well. But, I did include in the list above my favorite air cooler that performs very well.
At a final build price of $1329, it’s a decent build for a gaming PC. In my opinion, if you try to get a gaming PC that’s below $1k, you’ll be sorely disappointed with its performance.