Cheapest Gaming PC Build

Do you want to build the Cheapest Gaming PC?

Before building the Cheapest gaming PC, there are some basic considerations like what is your location and how much budget you have for this PC. I am assuming that you are located in a city where you get lots of options of PC parts and peripherals to choose from. And you will also get good after-sales service if something goes wrong after building your gaming PC. All of the major PC parts manufacturing companies have their authorized service centres mainly in the cities.

Next, you have three options:

1.            You have a safer option like buying a gaming Desktop from popular and trustworthy gaming brands like Asus ROG or Acer Predator  or Dell Alienware. They will provide any support and service in future. However, the cons are, limited choices of component, and their high end gaming rigs are very expensive. If you open up a High-End Gaming PC you will find that they use custom PSUs, and other components like RAM, cooler, even motherboards which are of poor quality. They had a little fan to cool the CPU, RAM sticks without heat spreaders, generic motherboard of unknown brand. Most of these branded gaming PCs offer 1 year warranty with additional warranty on very high price.

2.            There is another option of buying through some online aggregator sites like themvp.in etc. The price is lower and you get a little more options of choosing your components (still limited). They will provide service like the first option. Downside is that, they offer more options but not full freedom of building a custom gaming PC. And they will be slightly more expensive than your custom PC.

3.            Finally you have the option of getting a custom build cheapest gaming PC. Here you have complete freedom. It’s only limited by your budget and availability of that particular component in your location. You can buy individual parts and getting it assembled professionally or assemble yourself if you know how to do it. I personally have experience in assembling a desktop.

To buy component you can go for MdComputers or other online Shopping sites of your choice like Amazon. You can check and compare prices there and then order.

This guide focuses on Option 3 only. But you can get a general idea even if you are going for option 1 or 2. Cost is most important thing while building any gaming PC. I will make some suggestion based on the different budget ranges for each component.

Before building your cheapest gaming PC, you have two components to choose (which will affect all the other decisions) that are CPU and GPU. These two are the most crucial components for any PC, while GPU being more critical than the CPU for cheapest gaming PC.

1. CPU:

You have two options here, Intel and AMD. A couple of years back Intel used to be the king of the Gaming segment. But recent years AMD has launched Ryzen series CPUs which are based on its newest architecture. AMD CPUs are not only cheaper than their Intel counterparts but they consume much less power for effectively the same performance.

To make matters worse for the Intel, AMD CPUs beat the shit out of much higher priced Intel CPUs in all other workloads except gaming. So it’s a tough task to choose a platform. If you only value gaming then go for Intel’s offering depending on your budget. You may even go for Core i3/i5 if your budget is limited.

Recommendations and facts:

The latest Intel Core i3 12100 is best performing CPU for any tasks be it gaming or other day-to-day tasks. Beware for many of the Intel CPUs which do not provide CPU cooler within the box. AMD provides good-looking CPU cooler in the box with most of their CPUs. Normally Intel CPUs have in-built GPUs except the CPUs which carry F suffix in their number like i7 – 9700KF.

2. GPU:

GPU or Graphics Card matters more for games than the CPU. In the past, due to the frenzy created by Cryptocurrency mining using GPUs and supply chain disruptions especially during the Covid period, their prices skyrocketed. But since start of 2022 they have come down. Like the CPU, we have two major players here nVidia and AMD (used to be ATI a while back, which was bought by AMD).

Like the CPUs segment, AMD was a poor man’s choice a while nVidia was the King. However, since a couple of years AMD had made a comeback in the GPU segment as well. They have launched Radeon 5000 series and RX series cards with good performance and good value.

Choosing a CPU is much more easier than the GPU as you have to choose between two companies and be done with. However choosing GPU is more complicated. Because other than the two main GPU maker, there are so many other companies which buy GPUs from these two companies and customize them with fancy looking enclosures, fans and overclocking etc.

Hence people tend to get confused. There are several companies, which makes the Graphics card with GPUs from both nVidia and AMD, like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI. While there are several other companies that make graphics card from only one company’s GPUs. Like Sapphire and Powercolor makes AMD Graphics Card. Zotac, Galax, PNY and Inno3D make only nVidia based Graphics Card. I personally like Asus, Gigabyte and MSI because all three have a very wide presence and entire computer component segment and have good after-sales services. Obviously, they are slightly pricier than other companies’ offerings.

Recommendations and facts:

RTX has a new feature called Ray-tracing, which is supported by a few games at the moment. This enables GPU to render lighting like the real world. NVidia RTX 2000 series GPU based graphics cards can range from 30k to 1.5 lakhs may be even more. While AMD RX 5000 series can go from 25k to 45k. If you have lower budget then you can opt for the previous generation cards from both of the manufacturers like nVidia GTX 1000 series or maybe even 900 series depending on your budget.

3. Motherboard:

After you have decided which CPU you have chosen, next comes the motherboard. Motherboard comes in different sizes like ATX, mini ATX and ITX while ATX being the most common. After you have selected a CPU, two main things are going to affect the motherboard: Socket and Chipset. You must confirm before buying the Motherboard, that whether it has compatible socket and chipset as required by CPU. Intel 12th gen processors generally require motherboard with LGA1700 socket. While Ryzen 7000 series requires AM5 socket.

Chipset is important considering the fact, lots of component communicate through chipset to CPU and GPU. Chipset can control no. and type of available PCI Express Lanes, USB ports, support for SATA and M.2 storage and CPU overclocking.

Recommendations and facts:

Most gaming motherboard now a days comes with optional features like, Wi-Fi customizable RGB lighting, heatsinks for SSD. Some even with liquid based cooling system inbuilt. Some of the good motherboard manufacturers are Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI.

4. RAM:

I would recommend go for DDR4 RAM only, not only because we are building cheapest gaming PC. But because it has gotten a lot cheaper compared to previous years. The latest DDR5 is still too expensive. RAM mainly has two things to consider, Frequency and CAS latency. Frequency higher the better and opposite for CAS latency. However, after certain level too high frequencies stop to matter, as they will be supported by the Motherboard or CPU. For present day games, 3000-3600 MHz is good.

Anything over that is overkill and won’t result in better performance in most games. RAMs come in attractive RGB lighting and cool looking heatsinks attached to them.

Recommendations and facts:

Some of the good brands are Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston, and ADATA. I would recommend minimum of 8 GB RAM, 16 GB for most games and 32 GB if you have cash to spare.

5. Storage:

You have two option here: SSD or HDD. SSD (Solid State Drive) is much more faster than traditional HDD. A few years back SSD prices were somewhat ludicrous. People used to buy 120 GB SSD to install OS and a couple of applications in addition to the HDD, which used to store rest of the data. But like RAM, SSD prices have gone down a lot. SSD can have SATA interface like HDDs or they can have M.2 interface. I would advise to go for NVMe PCIe based SSD with M.2 connector. They are fastest amongst the lot. You can also put an HDD for storing your other media and data.

6. Power Supply:

Your PC parts should get adequate power to properly function. A good Power Supply/SMPS is even more crucial if you plan to overclock your system. You can use an online calculator to calculate how much power your system would require. Add 100 Watts to be on safer side as your systems power requirement can change depending on use and overclocking ability. There are few good brands for Power Supply like Corsair, Cooler Master, and Antec etc.

Power Calculator: https://www.coolermaster.com/power-supply-calculator/

7. Cabinet/Case:

Even if we are considering cheapest gaming PC, you need a case to house all of the above components. Size of Cabinet depends on the motherboard you picked. Go for the same size. ATX for ATX. Some cases provide number of large and small fans to proper ventilation which is important considering the fact gaming would generate lots of heat from the CPU, GPU and other components. You can choose from huge range of products here. Some with RGB lightings and custom designs. Just ensure that it is correct size to house all the components you have bought and sufficiently ventilated. Choose a case with a sufficient number of fans, which are able to maintain airflow inside. There are few good brands for cases like Cooler Master, Antec, and Corsair etc.

8. Cooling Solution:

If you are planning to overclock your CPU/GPU/RAM, then cooling becomes quite important. If you are seriously aiming to build the cheapest gaming PC, then I won’t recommend this. It’s even more important given the fact India has tropical climate in most of parts except some areas so ambient temperature could be quite high. Even with AC, it’s going to require some decent level of cooling. You can go with the air cooling solution or liquid based AIO solutions. If your case has some custom water based cooling solution, it’s good. Since Intel has stopped supplying the in box CPU cooler with most of their core series CPU line up, so it’s necessary to buy one.

Air cooler are generally cheaper and okay in normal tasks while liquid based AIO are more expensive but really helps in maintaining temperature while overclocking. Some of companies like CoolerMaster and Antec makes both Air Coolers and AIO. Noctua is one of the company which manufactures really good quality Air Cooler. They can compete against even high quality water cooling solutions.

9. Monitor:

Since most games are basically audio-visual experience, hence a good quality monitor is quite essential. Here are 4 parameters to consider resolution, type of Panel, refresh rate and response time. Most common gaming monitor resolutions are 1080p (FHD), 1440p (QHD) and 2160p (4K or UHD). There are some unusual ones like Ultra Wide Monitors but they are expensive and sometimes Games don’t support them. There 4 types of panel, 3 types of LCD TN, VA and IPS, and OLED.

TN are most common, VA are slightly better than TN. IPS has better image quality. While OLED TVs have become mainstream, but not many option when it comes to monitor. They offer outstanding contrast levels with the best picture quality.

However, they are very expensive given their entirely different technology. And we are discussing about cheapest gaming PC. Next comes refresh rates, TN panels can offer very high refresh rate, while VA are somewhat in middle. IPS and OLED panel typically offer lower refresh rates compared to TN and VA panel. Normal monitors offer 60-75 Hz refresh rates. However, for gaming I would recommend 120 Hz or higher. Response time the lesser is the better. Modern OLEDs have the lowest response time but have lower refresh rates as well, usually below 90Hz. Response time of less than 8 ms is recommended while most dedicated game monitor with TN panel can offer 1 ms. Hence you have to choose the best compromise between budget, picture quality, refresh rate and response time.

10. Keyboard and Mouse:

Especially for FPS games, Keyboard and Mouse can play very important role. A high precision mouse, can improve accuracy. For cheapest gaming PC, there are lot many options to choose from here. Razer, Logitech, CoolerMaster and Corsair are some of the good brands.

Keyboards have different kinds of switches to trigger the key press action like Mechanical Switches, Cherry MX switches. Mouse you can buy wired or wireless. As per some reviewer it doesn’t make much of difference.

You can also buy combos offered by different brands. And like everything else they do come in RGB backlighting. Consider this if you have good budget to build your cheapest gaming PC.