Building a gaming PC on a budget: A build for EVERY budget

One of the things I enjoy about building PCs is finding creative ways to achieve desired results while saving some money. I had a friend who was using a MUCH older system, and they wanted a gaming system, and had saved up around $800 for the parts.

Planning:

Originally, the plan was to save money by reusing the power supply and case from their existing system. They knew that this wouldn’t have the same “pop” as a new case, but the savings was the focus. Later, they decided that they wanted to get all new parts as long as we could make them budget friendly.

I usually like to keep things close to latest generation on parts, so that one can upgrade things later, but it became clear that latest gen wasn’t going to allow for much budget room for her graphics card, arguably one of the most important parts of the gaming build. Instead we took a step back.

We went with a Ryzen 7 5800X processor, which still provides plenty of power, and 8 cores/16 threads, but still staying under $200.

For RAM, we got her 32GB of DDR4 3200. Grabbing a no-frills T-Force Vulcan Z design, we managed to get that 32GB for just over $50

We also got a suitable motherboard with the Asus ROG Strix B550-F.

I’ve had Crucial brand storage recommended highly, so I tend to stick with them. 1TB of PCIe 3.0 was plenty to get her started.

Choosing the Right Case:

She wanted something reasonable, with good air flow, could accommodate an air cooler, and was brightly colored. After giving her a few options, she decided on the Thermaltake Ceres 330 TG ARGB Hydrangea Blue SPCC.  This was a modest mid size case that came with 3 different 140mm fans preinstalled, including 2 ARGB fans for the front intake. It was bright, there was lots of mesh for airflow, would allow plenty of space for components, as well as ample cable management space in the rear of the case.

Air Cooled vs. Water Cooled:

I love water cooled systems, but when it comes to budget, I don’t think you can beat air cooled. I opted for the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE as it has some incredible performance from a respected brand, but also costs only $40.

Graphics Card:

After looking over the games she was looking to play, her budget, and trying to plan for the future, I decided on the MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 4060 8GB GDDR6 GPU. Coming in under $300, it still has plenty of power to give her great settings and great framerates for her games.

Power Supply Considerations:

Continuing on the budget theme, I grabbed a 600w 80 PLUS Thermaltake non-modular power supply for $45. It would allow plenty of wattage for all the components, and there was enough room in the case that I could bundle and hide the unused cables. As an added bonus, I ordered some white sleeved PSU cable extensions as a way to hide the “ketchup & mustard” colored cables being used.

Conclusion:

This build came out great. There are a few things I wish could be better, as the case was a little flimsy in places, and there’s less control over the ARGB fans than I would like, but where it matters, everything worked out great. the cables are managed well, it looks like a showpiece case, and it’s blazing fast compared to anything else she’s ever used.

I stress tested the CPU to test it and the cooler, and even running Cinebench on loop, the Peerless Assassin kept the processor cool, so we never reached any sort of thermal throttling. I also applied a light overclock on the graphics card to boost performance without sacrificing stability. I still get messages from her periodically telling me how happy she is and that “the performance is amazing!” Another satisfied customer.