It's not a powerful GPU, and buying a used GPU does come with some risk, but it's slow enough that it's unlikely anyone was mining on it 24/7 for a few years. For less than $200, this CPU offers 6 cores and 12 threads with a maximum boost clock of 4.4 GHz and a competent cooler in the box.įor graphics, we were able to squeeze in an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti, which we've seen for around $225 on eBay, often used.
Thanks, component shortage!įor the best $800 PC build for gaming and productivity, we chose Intel's Core i5-11400F (we're saving a few bucks here by ditching the integrated graphics). To get a discrete GPU in here, you're going to have to go with something low-end and possibly even used. If you can stretch your budget up to $800, you can build a PC with the ability to play pretty much every game, albeit perhaps at low or medium settings. Phanteks Eclipse P400 PH-EC416PTG_BK ($10 MIR) Seasonic Focus GX-550, 550W 80Plus Gold ($15 MIR) Western Digital 1TB WD Blue SN550 NVMe Internal SSD You can always save your pennies for a future GPU upgrade.
We don’t expect fantastic frame rates in games, but you should be able to game at 720p and perhaps step up to 1080p with low-to-medium settings on some less-demanding games. That APU also comes with AMD's Wraith cooler in the box, so that's one place where we'll save some money. The Ryzen 5 boasts AMD Radeon Vega 7 graphics, 6 CPU cores and a boost clock of 4.4 GHz. On the CPU side, that means an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G. Because of that, we’re recommending that you go with the best possible integrated graphics you can afford. We hate to say it, but with recent price spikes on GPUs, it’s impossible to fit a discrete graphics card into a $500 build. Phanteks Eclipse P300 PH-EC300PTG_BK ($15 mail-in rebate) Nor do we include the price of peripherals such as the best gaming monitors, best gaming keyboards or best gaming mouse.
Hopefully, you’ll be able to find the parts you need at reasonable prices at the time you’re ready to do your next build.Īlso note that we don't include the cost of an operating system, because you can get Windows 10 for Free or Cheap. Whether or not you want to reward scalpers is up to you. So where does this leave our build recommendations? Here, we're going to be realistic based and put in rough prices for GPUs based on what we've seen from eBay resellers, which appears to be the most reliable way to get a GPU. You can find pretty much any card for sale by scalpers on eBay and, according to our up-to-date GPU Price Index, that means spending almost $700 for an RTX 3060 card that should theoretically cost $329. All of the best graphics cards and even many of the worst ones are out of stock. Due to a perfect storm of production problems and high-demand, it’s often difficult to find some of the key PC components in stock.
Before we get to our recommendations, we have to talk about the state of the PC component market right now.