Best PC Builds for Gaming 2024: From $500 Budgets to $4,000+

Choosing a gaming computer in 2024 involves understanding the key components that affect performance and value. From the CPU and GPU to RAM and storage, each part plays a crucial role in your gaming experience. This guide will help you navigate the latest options and make informed decisions for building or buying the perfect gaming PC.

If you want a computer that meets your exact needs and budget, you need to put it together yourself. When you build a gaming PC, you get total control of the parts, choosing the exact make and model of motherboard, a case with the look you like and even the layout of RGB (or non-RGB fans). You could save time by purchasing one of the best pre-built gaming PCs, but you'll give up control and spend more.

By constructing your own PC from components, you will likely save hundreds of dollars over the cost of buying a prebuilt system. For example, right now, getting a desktop with specs similar to those in our best $1,000 PC build will cost you $1,439 or more at Best Buy.

To help you assemble the best PC build for gaming or productivity that you can get, we've created recommended parts lists for every budget: from a super-cheap sub-$500 system to an affordable sub-$1,000 build to a $4,000+ dream machine for those with deep pockets.  

Picking and Pricing the Best PC Builds

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware  Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Note that our best PC build recommendations are based on our component expertise, market research and testing we've done of the key components in each build, namely the CPU, GPU and SSD. However, because we are trying to hit price points and frequently changing these lists (as prices change), we have not tested all of the parts in each build together and some of the less performance-centric parts such as the case, motherboard and PSU may be ones that we have not reviewed.

We are also going to recommend GPUs rather than specific makes and models of graphics cards. For example, we'd recommend an RTX 4070 Ti and link to a list of available cards rather than, for example, the Zotac RTX 4070 Ti. Given frequent price and stock changes in the space, you should get whichever third or first-party card is available with the GPU you want for the best price at the time you read this.

Also note that we don't include the cost of an operating system, because you can get Windows for Free or Cheap. Nor do we include the price of peripherals such as the best gaming monitors, best gaming keyboards or best gaming mouse. And if you've never made a computer before, see our article on how to build a PC. 

Best $500 PC Build for Gaming

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For around $500, you can build a PC that has a discrete graphics card. You won't get the fastest GPU around, but you will be able to play games at 1080p with modest settings. That's a big improvement over relying on integrated graphics.

For the graphics card in this system, we're going with Intel's Arc A380. We didn't love the card at launch, but it's readily available at Newegg for $99 and has been for a long time. Besides that, it's faster than AMD's competing RX 6400, comes with more VRAM, and most importantly it has full video encoding/decoding acceleration — including AV1 support for the future.

The card averaged 54.7 fps in our benchmarks at 1080p medium, though updated drivers may have improved things another 5–10 percent. If you want something a little faster and can expand your budget by just a few dollars, your best bet is this RX 6500 XT card, which goes for around $139 and can take you up to 65.8 fps in 1080p medium.

For our CPU, we're going with Intel's Core i3-14100F which is just over $100 but delivers plenty of pep for the price. This CPU has four cores, all of them performance cores, and a solid boost clock of 4.7 GHz. It comes with a cooler in the box so there's no need for a third-party one. We found that the 13100F was about on par with AMD's Ryzen 5 5600, which costs about $30 more.

To work with our 14100F, we need an Intel 700-series motherboard. Finding the right balance of features and pricing is critical, and you need to be careful that you pick a board that uses the correct type of memory. DDR5 boards can sometimes be $10 cheaper but then the memory can cost $20 more. The best overall value right now is the Gigabyte B760M DS3H DDR4, a microATX board that uses DDR4 RAM and comes with two M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots for SSDs, plus four memory slots, offering decent options for future upgrades.

At this price, the motherboard has one big trade-off, which is that you don't get built-in Wi-Fi. So, if you need wireless, you'll need to buy your own USB or PCIe Wi-Fi dongle, which usually costs between $25 and $40. You may already have one or maybe you'll be using Ethernet. Alternatively, you could look for a similar board that includes Wi-Fi, but the least expensive DDR4 board we could find is this MSI Pro B760-P WiFi for $149 — a $50 bump for that one feature.

We chose the Silicon Power UD90 as a very affordable PCIe 4.0 SSD that delivers up to 5,000 MB/s for sequential reads and 4,800 MB/s for sequential writes. The UD90 uses TLC NAND, which means performance won't collapse as the drive fills up — a common concern with SSDs that uses cheaper QLC NAND. When we tested the 1TB model a couple of years back, we declared it the new value champion for SSDs. There are cheaper drives, but nothing can match the overall performance without increasing the price. It doesn't have a DRAM cache, so if you want that feature you'll need to buy a more expensive drive (see the builds below for other options).

We selected 16GB of DDR4 PC-3200 RAM in a 2x8GB configuration for our memory. Again, choosing RAM that works with your motherboard is critical. The Silicon Power Value RAM we chose isn't the flashiest, but it's inexpensive and memory has become a commodity item. Whatever you do, don't build or buy a gaming PC with less than 16GB of RAM.

Our case is the Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L. Available in black or white, the chassis has solid build quality for the price, including built-in dust filters, support for up to a 240mm AIO cooler on the top, and plenty of mesh to allow airflow in. It even has a modular I/O panel you can place in six different locations. One small trade-off is that its clear side panel is acrylic rather than tempered glass.

Finally, we need something to power the whole system, and this is an area where we opted to compromise in pursuit of the $500 price point. The $40 500W PSU should be fine for this basic build, which will likely peak at around 200W of power use, but the Thermaltake Smart series isn't exactly highly regarded, and the listing mentions Haswell support (circa 2014) and it only has 80 Plus certification, which are clear drawbacks. If you want a quality PSU, check out the Thermaltake Toughpower GX2 600W that costs $20 more. It's an 80 Plus Gold certified PSU, from a reputable brand, albeit overkill for a build like this.

Best $800 PC Build for Gaming

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If you can stretch your budget up from $500 to $800, you can enter a whole new world of gaming performance and productivity that will be good enough for some serious 1080p gaming (without ray tracing). Here we're stepping up from a Core i3 to the Core i5-14400F, which has 6 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores and 16 total threads, along with a boost clock of 4.7 GHz. 

To be fair, the 14400F is not the fastest gaming CPU in its price range as that honor belongs to AMD's Ryzen 7 5700X3D and its generous V-Cache. However, AMD's chip requires a slightly-more-expensive motherboard and needs a third-party cooler while Intel's chip comes with a stock air cooler in the box. As you can see in the chart below, the 14400F (listed as the 14400, but the F model is just the SKU without integrated graphics), was behind some competitors but still turned in solid performance.

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To go with this Intel processor, we're using an ASRock B760M-HDV motherboard because it supports 14th Gen CPUs without a BIOS update. It's a DDR4 board so we can save money by using DDR4 memory. It also features two M.2 slots for SSDs, with one of them supporting PCIe 4.0 drives.

Our graphics card at this price point is the Nvidia RTX 4060, which comes in just under $300. The 4060 has strong performance at 1080p, ultra settings, having averaged 84.9 fps on our suite of tests. It ranks just above the RTX 2080 and below the Raden RX 6700 on our GPU benchmarks hierarchy.

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The card can also do some ray tracing as it averaged 41.7 fps on 1080p ultra with ray tracing enabled. Forget about playing in 2K with ray tracing as that only gave us 25.8 fps. 

For our storage, we're going with the 1TB Silicon Power UD90. This budget-oriented PCIe 4.0 SSD can't beat the top-of-the-line drives like the Samsung 990 Pro or WD Black SN850X, but it has really strong performance for the money, promising sequential reads and writes of 4,800 and 4,200 MBps.

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We're going with 32GB of TeamGroup T-Force Zeus DDR4 RAM and we're stepping up to a 700W version of the Thermaltake Smart  power supply so we can support our higher wattage CPU and GPU.

Our case is the Gamdias Aura GC1, a full-size ATX case that comes with four ARGB fans. The GC1 has a mesh front for optimal airflow and plenty of room for expansion.

Best $1,000 PC Build for Gaming

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If you can stretch your budget up to around $1,000, you can build a PC with the ability to play games really well at 1080p and competently at 1440p. The best GPU option in this price range right now is the Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti, which goes for as little as $374. While the Radeon RX 6750 XT, which has 12GB of VRAM to the 4060 Ti's 8GB, is in the same price range, Nvidia's GPU is much better for ray tracing.

In our 8-game rasterization test suite at 1080p ultra settings, the RTX 4060 Ti offered an impressive frame rate of 101.7 fps while delivering a still-strong 75.5 fps at 1440p with ultra settings. At this price point, don't expect to do much ray tracing, however. The card managed a very-playable 52.8 fps at 1080p and a usable 33.5 fps at 1440p. 

Our recommended CPU for this build is the AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D, which is one of the best gaming CPUs  you can get, particularly for the price. This 8-core, 16-thread CPU has 96MB of L3 cache, which makes it great for 1080p gaming. On our tests, it edged out more-expensive competitors like the Ryzen 5 7600X and the Core i5-14400.

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To support our Ryzen 7 57003XD, we're using a Gigabyte B550 UD AC motherboard. This board has built-in Wi-Fi 6 and it also has Q-Flash, which allows you to update the  BIOS, before you install the CPU. This may be necessary as the 5700X3D just came out a few months ago.

The Ryzen 7 5700X3D doesn't come with a stock cooler so we're adding an inexpensive, 240mm AIO cooler to the mix.

We're sticking with 32GB of DDR4-PC3200 RAM here. There's no real need to go faster or increase the capacity at this price point. Using DDR4 saves us money over DDR5.

For storage, we're stepping up to a faster, higher-capacity SSD: the 2TB version of WD Black SN580. This PCIe 4.0 drive promises sequential read and write speeds of 4,150 MBps, along with random read / write IOPS of 600K and 750K respectively. It's not the fastest drive on the market, but it gets the job done.

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We're going with the Phanteks XT Pro as our case, because it has a quality, mesh design, room for up to a 360mm AIO up top and the ability to support back-connecting motherboards, should you get one in the future. For $20, you can get the Phanteks XT Pro Ultra, which comes with four ARGB fans.

Finally, we've stepped up to a 750-watt power supply and we're going with Corsair CX750M, which is 80+ Bronze certified and semi-modular. You can get a modular PSU or one that's 80+ Gold certified for a bit more, but that's money you don't need to spend at this price point.

Best $1,500 PC Build for Gaming

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As we step up to a build that should be brilliant at 1080p gaming, really strong for 1440p gaming and capable of running ray tracing games well, we're looking at around a $1,500 budget, depending on the current prices on graphics cards. We recommend going with an RTX 4070 at this price point.

At press time, RTX 4070 cards selling for as little as $5.  In our GPU benchmarks hierarchy, the 4070 beats the RTX 3080 (10GB) and comes in just a step behind the 3080 (12GB) at non-ray tracing 1080p gaming.   On our suite of 8 games, at 1080p ultra settings, the 4070 managed 123.6 fps. At 1440p resolution, it offered a smooth 98.6 fps and, even at 4K, it provided a very-playable 67.2 fps. 

With ray tracing enabled, the RTX 4070 delivers 69.4 fps at 1080 ultra and a playable 45.2 fps at 1440p. In some titles, the numbers are much higher. For example, in Spider-Man: Miles Morales at 1440p, the card returned an average frame rate of 69 fps. 

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We're also upgrading the CPU to Intel's Core i5-14600KF, an overclockable processor that has 6 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores, 20 threads and a boost clock of 5.3 GHz. That's before you attempt to overclock it.  

We're going with the Gigabyte Z790 Gaming X AX motherboard, which allows overclocking with a 16+2+1 phases digital VRM design. It also comes with built-in WI-FI 6E, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps), 2.5 GbE LAN and Q-Flash Plus BIOS updating ability.

Though Intel 14th Gen CPUs can use DDR4 or DDR5 RAM, this motherboard utilizes DDR5 RAM. So we're going with an affordable 32GB kit from Crucial with a top speed of 5600 MT/s. 

We're going with one of the best PCIe 4.0 SSDs you can buy, WD's Black SN850X at 2TB. In our tests, it was neck and neck with the other top drives, including the SK hynix Platinum P41 and the Samsung 990 Pro.

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Our case for this build is the $99 Lian Li Lancool 216. When we reviewed the Lancool 216, we praised its included dual RGB 160mm front and single 140mm exhaust fans, excellent cable management and attractive looks. There's also plenty of room for a top-mounted radiator that's up to 360mm. 

Our power supply is a 750-watt Corsair CX750M. This 80 Plus Gold certified PSU packs enough power to support our GPU with plenty of juice to spare. However, it's not fully modular, with some of the wires being built-in.

Best $2000 PC Build for Gaming

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At a current price of $1,906, our high-end gaming PC build should provide enough performance to play games at 1440p ultra settings with strong frame rates, and 4K ultra with playable frame rates. The system gets its GPU muscle from an Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Super which is currently available for $799. The card is backed by AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is the best CPU for gaming if you're able to pay its $339 asking price.

In our tests, the RTX 4070 Ti Super delivered a really-smooth 102.9 fps on our test suite of games at 2K settings without ray tracing. It even managed to hit 73.7 fps at 2K with ray tracing enabled. 

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The AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D offers a superior experience thanks to its 104MB of 3D cache, along with its 8 cores, 16 threads and 5-GHz boost clock. Yes, AMD makes the Ryzen 9 7950X3D which is even faster overall, but it costs a lot more money and either ties or comes in behind the 7800X3D on many gaming tests.

On our suite of Windows 11 tests, running at 1080p with an RTX 4090 card, the 7800X3D averaged 224 fps, putting it slightly ahead of the Ryzen 9 7950X3D (222 fps) and way ahead of Intel's top-ranked Core i9-13900K (200 fps).

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To cool the CPU, we're using an Iceberg Thermal IceFLOE Oasis 360. When we tested the IceFLOE, we were impressed with its low noise output and fantastic cooling output that allowed it to disperse up to 237 watts of heat. It has attractive RGB and you get all of that for a measly $89.

Our motherboard is Gigabyte B650M Aorus Elite AX which is one of the more affordable AM5 motherboards  you can buy but it still packs in Wi-Fi 6E radio. AMD Zen 7000 chips require DDR5 RAM so we're going with 32GB of G.Skill Trident Z5. The Trident Z5 kit tops our list of best RAM, thanks to its tight-timings, fast performance and overclocking potential. In our tests, the Z5 also had the lowest memory latency of its competitors.

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For the SSD, we're sticking with the WD Black SN850X at 2TB. You really can't do much better without spending a lot more money on a PCIe 5 drive or a 4TB capacity.

Our case is Hyte Y40, which is a great showcase for our components. It has beautiful wraparound glass that extends from the front to the left side. The case is available in three colors but we really like it in red. 

To power all these high-end components, we're using a Corsair RM750e PSU which is 80+ Gold certified and fully modular.