BUDGET BUILD
Enjoy 1080p gaming without breaking the bank
H270M Bazooka MSI $95
Kaby Lake has landed and the 270 series chipsets with it. MSI’s Bazooka H270M is a perfect fit for our new CPU.
Pentium G4600 Intel $88
Two cores, four threads, and a lot of single core IPC performance. This core performs just as well as an i7-7700K in games.
Radeon RX 480 4GB Powercolor $190
If you’re gaming at 1080p, 4GB of RAM and a Polaris GPU will keep your framerates well up into that 60fps sweetspot.
Fury Black 8GB @2400 HyperX $65
DDR4 packs higher speeds, better energy efficiency, and larger capacities. 8GB is still perfect for most games, too.
EVGA 500W 80PLUS Certified ATX12V/EPS12V EVGA $40
A reliable PSU with enough juice to run your CPU and a reasonably power-hungry GPU.
CS1311 120GB SSD PNY $50
It’s a budget offering, but for $50 and with sequential reads and writes of 550 and 520MB/s, it’s hard to argue with.
Caviar Blue 1TB 7200rpm Western Digital $49
One terabyte of old-fashioned hard storage is the perfect home for all of your media, backups and AAA titles.
Neos Bitfenix $50
The Neos provides decent airflow, good support for 3.5-inch hard drives, and a fairly painless build experience.
VS247HR 60Hz 1080p Asus $110
1080p resolution, 60fps—it’s a monitor made for PC gamers. Coupled with the RX 480, playing on this will be silky smooth.
ZIBAL Mionix $99
The perfect introduction to mechanical switches. Uses the heavier Cherry MX Black, has a single LED and a sweet design.
Rival 100 SteelSeries $30
SteelSeries’ Rival lineup is ideal for those looking to get a quality gaming mouse at a respectable price.
HyperX Cloud Kingston $76
Our favorite gaming headset, and it happens to be as cheap as plenty of inferior cans. A good buy for any gaming rig.