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An in-depth step-by-step budget build guide

For the experienced, building a PC is an easy, often therapeutic experience. Each part fits into its designated slot, each cable is carefully woven around the frame, and each power-on is successful. However, for a vast swathe of folk, it’s nothing of the sort. PC building can be a daunting task, especially if it’s your first time. After all, you’re messing around with delicate parts that can cost upward of half a month’s paycheck. One little slip, one jolt of static, one cable in the wrong place, and boom – you’re out of pocket and out of luck.

So, why bother? You can pick up a pre-built PC for a similar amount of cash as building your own – and let someone else worry about everything. It’s convenient, easy, and saves a whole ton of time. Combine all that with numerous tech sources and journalistic outlets (ourselves included) focusing on the very extreme end of computing, and finding the info you need to take you through the process of building a system right from the start is challenging.

However, the fact is that, more than anything, building your own system is actually a relatively easy and satisfying experience. It’s about taking the exact hardware you want, and combining it all into something that suits you perfectly. By building your own rig, you know exactly what goes in it, where potential problems can arise, and what you can do to improve it. On top of that, it’s yours. You built that, nobody else, not another company – you did it.

This time around, we decided to pull out a bit of a double whammy. Firstly, we’re talking a sub-$1,000 hardware budget, and an attempt to build a fairly respectable 1080p gaming machine, with all the gizmos you need, including 620GB of storage, an SSD, 8GB of DDR4, and a fairly meaty processor. Or, at least, enough to get by just fine with the latest titles. We’re combining that with a super-granular, in-depth guide to take you from the very beginning to the very end of your own budget build.