I've been gaming on PC for most of my life, but due to some unfortunate personal circumstances, I'm currently without a computer or console and I'm really feeling the urge to get back into it. My main games are WoW, FF14, and SWTOR, plus I enjoy some fighting games like SF6 and Tekken. I usually play at 1080p with upscaling at 144Hz, and I'm not interested in the latest 4K resolution stuff.
A few months back, I tried to put together a budget build that could run these games on lower graphics settings while maintaining at least 60 FPS, but the prices were just too high. I've been considering both AM4 and AM5 CPUs along with DDR4 and DDR5 RAM, but everything seems ridiculously priced. I need some advice—has building a decent gaming PC become a luxury for the wealthy? If anyone has suggestions for an affordable build that suits a casual MMO and fighting gamer like me, I'd really appreciate it. Also, should I wait a couple of years before trying to build? I was looking at Ryzen CPUs in the 5 to 9 series, Nvidia GeForce GPUs from 5060 up to 3060, some Radeon cards, and basic components like cheap cases, cooling, SATA SSDs, and appropriately powered PSUs. But I can't get the total to come under $1,600!
1 Answer
I found a decent build on PCPartPicker that could work for you. It should handle 1080p pretty well, and even run emulators smoothly at high FPS. Check this out: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/gZH4Cw. It's a good balance of performance and price for your needs!
Hey, that's not bad! Thanks a lot! I asked some friends, and their 'budget' builds were all around 1.5-2k, which I'm finding absurd. This looks affordable. I used to think anything over 1k was a luxury build... times really have changed.