For those about to build a gaming PC, we salute you. These are the dark times for PC building, with the
And, as silly as it might sound, it also creates a bit of a bond between you, too.
The first step to building your own PC is choosing your components. Below you'll find three gaming PC builds, starting from a vaguely affordable build (we've really tried, here) to a high-end rig at, well, likely more than most of would want to spend. All the hardware components in this guide are parts I'd pick if I were building my own PC, and I've been using my own experience and our expert reviews to guide me. The key components have been tested on our test bench to ensure they meet expectations.
If this isn't what you're looking for, you can skip the whole building thing and get one of the cheap gaming PC instead. But trust me, PC building can be a whole lot of fun. Go on, give it a go.
Shop the best value PC Gamer build
The 'budget' gaming PC build is arguably the hardest of all the builds to create, because it requires a level of compromise that can become uncomfortable. And, honestly, any notion of 'budget' is an long way from where we are right now. But there are some things that are hard to compromise, even on a budget machine; we want 16 GB of DDR5 memory at a time when memory prices are sky-rocketing, and we need a 1 TB SSD to feel comfortable. That's why we're well over our initial budget of around a grand here.
You might also be unhappy to see an 8 GB graphics card here, but while you could go for a slightly cheaper Intel B580 with a 12 GB frame buffer, you're going to have a far better all-round experience with the Radeon RX 9060 XT, whether it's got less memory or not.
The Ryzen 7 7600X is a very solid gaming chip, and while yes, we'd love a
Shop the PC Gamer mid-range build
This is essentially the sweet spot of PC gaming builds: the mighty mid-ranger. We're still trying to be disciplined with our spend, making sure to keep it to a relatively strong sub-$2,000 budget, and we actually have succeeded. Ideally you would want 32 GB of RAM for a bit of future-proofing, but memory is costing the earth right now (thank those AI data centers springing up all over the place, and their voracious appetite for memory).
Likewise, you can save some money going for a 1 TB SSD again instead of the 2 TB drive we have pegged in here. Windows does hog up some space, and game sizes aren't getting smaller, so we would always rather have that space.
Your RTX 5070 has dipped around its MSRP, and the
