Best Gaming PC Builds (3 Custom Rigs)

Even if you can purchase one of the best gaming PCs, building your own desktop is more satisfying.
You have complete control over everything when you assemble your own gaming PC, from the motherboard’s precise brand and model to the chassis’ design and number of RGB fans.

We’ve made a collection of suggested parts lists below for various configurations to assist you in putting together the best PC setup for productivity or gaming on a budget.

Also take note that we did not add the price of an operating system as Windows is available for free or at a low cost. But we factor in the cost of accessories like the top gaming displays, keyboards, or mice.

Entry Level Rig

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (It doesn’t have iGPU)

OR

Intel Core i5 9400F (It doesn’t have iGPU)

GPU: Zotac GTX 1650 AMP

Motherboard: MSI Tomahawk B450 for AMD

OR

ASUS Prime H310M-E for Intel

RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB DDR4 3000 CL16

Storage: Adata XPG SSD 128 GB

2 TB Seagate Barracuda HDD (Size Optional)

Power Supply: Corsair 500 Watt 80Plus Bronze

Cabinet: Antec DF500 RGB

Cooling Solution: With CPU box

Monitor: Acer Nitro QG221Q 21.5 Inch

Keyboard & Mouse: Your choice according to budget

Mid Range Rig

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X

OR

Intel Core i7 – 9700K

GPU: Gigabyte RTX 2070 Super 3F OC

Motherboard: Gigabyte X470 AORUS Ultra Gaming for AMD

OR

ASUS ROG Strix H370-F Gaming

RAM: Gskill Trident Z RGB 16 GB 3200 MHz CL16

Primary Storage: CRUCIAL P1 500GB SSD

Secondary Storage: 2 TB Seagate Barracuda HDD

Power Supply: Antec Earthwatt 750 Watt 80Plus Gold

Cabinet: Thermaltake V200 RGB (ATX) Mid Tower Cabinet

Cooling Solution: Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240L RGB (Optional)

Monitor: Acer Nitro VG270P IPS 27 inch / LG 29UM69G (29) 1ms 21:9 Ultrawide

Keyboard & Mouse: CORSAIR K55 RGB Gaming Keyboard & Razer Viper

High End Rig

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

OR

Intel i9 10900K (I don’t recommend getting 11th Gen 11900K due to its poor reviews and lesser number of cores from 10900K)

GPU: Gigabyte Aorus GeForce RTX 2080 Ti XTREME WATERFORCE 11G (for custom liquid loop cooling)/ ASUS ROG Strix RTX 2080 Ti (You can go for SLI Dual GFX Card setup, though modern titles don’t utilize SLI as much before)

Motherboard: Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero For AMD (Air-cooled Version)

MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE For Intel CPU

RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Royal RGB 16×4 GB 4000 MHz CL15 (Go more bling)

Storage: Samsung 980 PRO Series 1TB PCIe NVMe x As much as you wish Or You can go for latest gen PCIe 4.0 x4 SSDs from vendors like Sabrent or Corsair

Power Supply: Asus Thor 1200 Watt 80+ Platinum

Cabinet: NZXT H700I

Cooling Solution: Custom Liquid Loop or AORUS RGB AIO Liquid Cooler 360

Monitor: Acer Predator X27 (For 4K 144Hz Display)

From pure FPS/Performance Perspective Benq Zowie XL2546K

Keyboard & Mouse: Logitech G513 RGB Keyboard & Razer Viper Ultimate Wireless Mouse.

Intel has launched 10th gen Comet Lake CPUs sometime back. And they have added a new term or feature called thermal velocity boost.

Turbo Boost 2.0 is a single-core boost available if the CPU’s running under its power, current and temperature specifications.

Turbo Boost Max 3.0 This applies to two favored cores out of all cores provides increased performance on those cores through increasing frequency as needed by taking advantage of power and thermal headroom.

Single-Core Thermal Velocity Boost It boost faster of the two favored CPU cores to a speed higher than what’s achieved with Turbo Boost Max 3.0.

Intel?

Considering Best Gaming PC Builds, for desktop CPUs, this is only possible if the CPU temps are below 70 degrees and if the CPU is working beneath its power, current and temperature specifications. For Laptop CPUs, the temperature threshold is 65 degrees. So in my opinion, this is only possible if you have a high end cooling solution and your ambient temperature is quite low, like during winters or you live in colder areas.

The main advantage of this is, that some of the single threaded application will get benefited from the higher boost clocks. So definitely a lot of the games will be getting higher frame rates.

The downside of this is, since Intel is still stuck at 14nm fabrication process, the power requirement is enormous and too much heat is generated. You will require a high quality 3rd party cooling solution to even come close to these kind of performances.

Prices of the 10th Gen sits somewhere close to their 9th Gen counterparts. Hence you can replace 9700K with 10700K and 9900KS with 10900K and will get slightly better performance on some games.

Bonus PC Rig:

Further I am adding barebones PC config in the list since I see a lot of people are not interested or capable of buying a dedicated CPU and GPU. So for playing e-sports and other than AAA titles, you can have this simple computer which will also fulfill the general computing requirement. Since now a days a lots of people are purchasing computers and laptops to attend classes and Work from Home:

CPU or rather APU : AMD 3200G or 3400G since AMD 4000 series APUs are still not available

Motherboard: ASRock A320M-HDV R4.0

RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (8GBX1) DDR4 2400MHz

SSD: Adata Ultimate SU630 240GB

HDD: 1 or 2 TB Seagate or Western Digital as per requirement

PSU: Zebronics ZEB450W

Case: AeroCool Aero-300

Monitor: 19 inch Acer EB192Q

Edit 1:

Nvidia has launched its RTX 3000 series cards which include RTX 3070, RTX 3080 and RTX 3090. They didn’t launch RTX 3080Ti and instead they went for RTX 3090 which kind of replacement for both Titan RTX and 2080Ti by the looks of it. Nvidia have claimed even their cheapest of the bunch RTX 3070 performs better than the 2080Ti. Which is bonkers to say the least.

Since former is $499 and later is a $1200 card. Similarly they have claimed that RTX 3080 performs twice as better than RTX 2080. Which if true is makes the mid range RTX 3080 with 10 GB GDDR6X VRAM at $699 makes a rather very enticing card for 4K 120Hz at max settings Gaming. On the other hand RTX 3090 is an absolute beast with 24 GB GDDR6X VRAM. Highly recommended for best Gaming PC builds. This card is going to make 8K 60Hz Gaming a reality. Nvidia in all of the cards has increased number and improved CUDA cores, RT cores and Tensor cores, memory bandwidth.

Due to high bandwidth these cards will be able to take advantage of PCIe Gen 4 which is coming in X750 and B550 motherboards. Though all 3 cards are backward compatible with PCIe Gen 3. With this Nvidia has also increased recommended PSU capacity to 750W for 3090 and 3080 Card, for 3070 it’s still same at 650W.

Why Nvidia?

Despite increase in power consumption all of these cards provide better performance to per watt power than previous generation. Already some of the benchmarks have started to come out. This indicates Nvidia’s claims are largely true. This truly is a generational leap. I myself am feeling little bit jealous. I should have waited for RTX 3000 series.

Nvidia has posted their Founders Edition Card prices on their India website which is 152K for 3090, 71K for 3080 and 51K for 3070 Cards respectively. This is disappointing, as it seems to be increasing trend, that the companies like Nvidia, Apple are converting it US prices to Indian prices, by multiplying 100 to US price instead of actual USD to INR exchange rate. Large part of it is due to import duties. But still quite unfair.

Anyway, I would suggest all people who are gonna build mid range to high range Best Gaming PC Builds to wait for a couple of months to let new cards come and old cards prices to be adjusted.

Edit 2:

Since the last edit, AMD has launched Zen 3 based, Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. Currently they have are offering 4 CPUs i.e. 5600X, 5800X, 5900X and 5950X. AMD has retained the same node size i.e. 7nm but tweaked the architecture a lil bit. In the Zen 3 instead of L3 cache being divided in to 2 part like it was in Zen 2, they have combined it into one chunk. Any CPU core can request data from this single L3 cache. This including other tweaks has resulted in improved IPC of approx 19% as claimed by AMD. Which is found to be true upon testing by third parties.

This is has resulted in great improvement in single-core performance. So thanks to this, AMD has snatched gaming crown from Intel. AMD was already King in multicore workloads. So Intel is gonna be trying to snatch back their gaming crown by guess what, launching Rocket Lake CPUs on ‘improved 14nm++++++++++++++++++++++++++’ node next year. Mind you Apple has launched 5 nm based CPUs for their Macbook Pro 13 inch, MacBook Air and Mac Mini after ditching Intel.

These Best Gaming PC Builds(or CPUs) have beaten almost every Intel CPU in Single core and multicore loads. So basically $999 MacBook Air is beating $4000 MacBook Pro 16 inch with i9. I don’t generally like Apple, but I must appreciate when it is due. Intel will launch 7 nm by 2022 or 2023. By that we would have 3 nm CPUs from Apple, Samsung, and probably AMD too.

AMD?

Anyway too much ranting on Intel aside, now Gaming King are the Ryzen 5000 CPUs. Considering Best Gaming PC Builds, Now even their low end offering 5600X is beating Intel i9–10900K in most of the games and in the rest coming very close. However, there is one downside, AMD has jacked their prices a lot especially for Indian consumers. Who already faces the brunt of Higher Consumer Electronics prices.

Further AMD has launched RDNA2 based Radeon 6000 series Graphics Cards. Which are quite good. Their performances come quite close to the Nvidia RTX 3000 series cards barring their Ray Tracing capabilities. Again their pricing is quite weird in Indian Market. They seem to be more expensive.

Turbo Boost 2.0 is a single-core boost available if the CPU’s running under its power, current and temperature specifications.

Turbo Boost Max 3.0 This applies to two favored cores out of all cores provides increased performance on those cores through increasing frequency as needed by taking advantage of power and thermal headroom.

Single-Core Thermal Velocity Boost It boost faster of the two favored CPU cores to a speed higher than what’s achieved with Turbo Boost Max 3.0.

Hope this article helps you with your next choice of Gaming PC.

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