Building a PC can be a simple process for some, but not always. Finding the mixture of components to suit your budget is very important, and can prove tricky. Do you spend more on one component at the sacrifice of another? Do you go with AMD or NVIDIA for your graphics card? SATA or NVME? The combinations are endless.
Working with a budget of around £1000/$1200 (depending on exchange rate), you certainly have a lot of difficult choices to make. That’s not a truly “budget” build. However, for that money, we wanted to see how much value you could get from your investment, as well as how much performance for gaming.
CPU
For this build, we went with the latest AMD Ryzen 5 3600X. It’s got a good mixture of clock speed and core count, without costing the Earth. 3.8 GHz over 6 Cores and 12 Threads, making it more than suitable for most gamers.
Motherboard
For the motherboard, we chose the surprisingly affordable ASUS RoG STRIX B450-F Gaming. Update the BIOS and it’ll handle a 3rd Gen CPU, at a fraction of the cost of flagship X570 solutions.
RAM
It’s the TeamGroup T-Force Night Hawk RGB. We love this kit, as it’s got amazing styling, loads of RGB, good speeds, and the price is pretty tough to beat for what you get. It’s also Aura Sync compatible.
Storage
Keeping things nice and simple here, we’ve oped for a faster M.2 drive for the OS and a couple of games. However, for bulk storage, a 1TB HDD, both from the WD Blue Range. Both great drives, both very kind to the wallet too.
Graphics Card
AMD’s latest graphics card, the Radeon 5700 XT, is pretty hard to beat when it comes to price and performance. You could step up a bit more for a custom cooler design, or even an RTX 2060 or similar, but right now, I think keeping this build AMD focused what the right choice.
Case
The Thermaltake V200 TG is a lot of case for very little money. Plus, if you grab their combo deal, you’ll get a 550W PSU included saving you even more money. Plus, we got much loved Tempered Glass and RGB features here, which is awesome.
UK Shopping Links
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600X – https://amzn.to/2UQKQiz
- ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F Gaming – https://amzn.to/2ZVausg
- TEAMGroup Night Hawk RGB 16GB DDR4 3000MHz – https://amzn.to/2USnJ7l
- WD Blue 250GB M.2 SSD – https://amzn.to/2HYv6Fe
- WD Blue 1TB HDD – https://amzn.to/31g7ljphttps://amzn.to/34GkZyj
- Thermaltake V200 TG RGB – https://amzn.to/2I06JHa
- With Litepower 550W PSU – https://amzn.to/2ZS62uh
- V200 TG RGB w/550W PSU – http://bit.ly/2kw1dUf
US Shopping Links
- AMD Ryzen 5 3600X – https://amzn.to/306Vd2P
- ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F Gaming – https://amzn.to/2NXlzlm
- TEAMGroup Night Hawk RGB 16GB DDR4 3000MHz – https://amzn.to/34Da9JG
- WD Blue 250GB M.2 SSD – https://amzn.to/2Q53qVE
- WD Blue 1TB HDD – https://amzn.to/2Q5ea6s
- AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT – https://amzn.to/32HCcWB
- Thermaltake V200 TG RGB – https://amzn.to/2Q0opsu
- Thermaltake Litepower 550W PSU – https://amzn.to/2NV7TYg
The Build
Performance
As you can see in the video at the top of this page, Andy’s got some decent gaming performance already from this rig. Playing World War Z at 1440p Ultra settings, 100-130 FPS right off the bat is pretty impressive.
Apex Legends settings were maxed out too. However, with the 5700 XT, that’s hardly surprising. Easily seeing around 110-115 FPS during combat and above that while exploring.
Thoughts?
What do you think of the system we put together and what would you change on a build of this budget? How does it compare to your own build? Let us know in the comments below or on the YouTube video here.
