Building your gaming PC can seem daunting, but it’s not as hard as you think. If you follow these instructions, you can create one yourself in just a few hours. This guide on building a high-end gaming pc will help you choose the best components for your budget, whether $1000 or $3000 or more! It will also explain what type of motherboard to buy and why that matters, plus whether liquid cooling is worth the extra expense and more!
Best Budget Motherboard
The best budget motherboard for a computer is the one you can find at the lowest price point. There are cheaper motherboards, that build a high end gaming PC but these typically have less support from their manufacturers and sometimes don’t support essential features such as SATA 6G or PCI Express 3.0 video cards. The Gigabyte GA-H110M-A board is the cheapest motherboard in this category and has all of the essential features with a few extra extras, leading to increased price points down the line.
This motherboard supports up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM and has 4 DIMM slots for maximum configuration compatibility; great for building a high-end gaming pc! It also has three (3) PCI Express 3D slots, making it an ideal board for handling modern-day computer graphics needs!
Best Value Processor for Gaming
To build a high-end gaming PC, you need the best processor for gaming and the best graphics card for gaming. An Intel Core i7-4790K for the CPU will allow your games to run smoothly and provide good speed when doing other tasks like browsing the internet or streaming videos. You should also have an AMD Radeon R9 Fury X or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 as your graphics card if you want fast speeds while playing games.
These components can range in price, but they typically cost less than $2000 each. However, there are alternatives to these parts that come in at under $1000, but it is crucial to find the right balance between price and performance, so you get the best value for money.
TOMAHAWK MAG B550
Enthusiast-grade performance and incredible upgradability make it an obvious choice for people looking for ultimate PCs. The motherboard is Intel’s X299 which supports the latest CPUs from Intel but also allows for overclocking with its unlocked K series CPU support. It has six DDR4 slots, 12 USB 3 ports, and one Thunderbolt 3 port that can power two 4K displays at 60Hz while supplying up to 15 watts of power to each.
Aesthetics over function
What would you rather have- a super shiny, expensive car with new tires and leather interior or an average-looking car with ultra-high gas mileage? The super shiny vehicles might be more fun when new, but they’ll age faster than the less flashy option. In this example, the same is valid for computers.
Fancy processors and the best graphics cards are all well and good if you’re willing to upgrade often to maintain that performance edge. If you’d rather not worry about updating your computer constantly, focus on an aesthetic over-function approach. This doesn’t mean you can’t play games on it!
Invest in an older CPU or GPU
Gaming is an expensive hobby, and many opinions on what hardware is the best investment. One common misconception is that you must buy new hardware for a quality gaming experience. This can be the case, but an older CPU or GPU can usually handle most games just fine.
An alternative would be buying used hardware like this website, for example, for cheaper yet still reliable.
Explore your storage options
One of the best investments you can make when building your PC is upgrading your storage. A good amount of RAM will generally provide enough runtime for everyday use, but if you’re going to be doing intensive work with large files like video or photo editing, or games with large file sizes and requiring higher capacity memory requirements (e.g., VR), upgrading your hard drive can’t be beaten.
Solid-state drives (SSDs) are way faster than traditional spinning-platter drives (HDDs), and newer SSDs are more affordable than ever. With a few exceptions, they tend to run cool and won’t suffer from rotational latency delays, as found in HDDs when having to shift around data on their spinning platters.
Recommendations for PC Builds
Depending on your priorities and budget, different storage solutions are available. Hard drives give you more capacity but cost more. SSDs have less power but faster read/write speeds. Cloud-based storage is also an option if you don’t need massive data storage on your device or want to prioritize affordability.
The best budget build
This is the best budget PC you can build, but if you want some higher-end options, I would recommend checking out Extremetech. These builds are tailored for gamers, with performance being the primary concern. If you’re playing games at home and not professional level, this will be more than enough, though they’ll be better than this option.Â
AMD Ryzen 3 2200G 4-Core 3.5GHz Processor – $84.99Â
ASRock B450M Pro4 Motherboard – $69.99Â
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR4 2666MHz Memory – $55.25Â
Crucial MX500 500GB 2.5 Inch Solid State Drive – $89.98
The best mid-range build
To put together your ultimate mid-range gaming PC, we suggest the following components: For the CPU, the Intel Core i3-4170 is an excellent choice for any mainstream PC setup. It features an attractive price point, power efficiency, and moderate performance.
However, Build A High End Gaming Pc if you’re looking for even more processing power on a budget, try pairing this with the AMD Athlon X4 750K. These are among our favorite budget CPUs that won’t leave you feeling like you are compromised. Of course, as expected, higher-end processors will provide better performance.
