Best $700 Gaming PC Build
In this guide we will go over a midrange $700 PC build, one that will deliver 60 FPS on all titles at 1080P.
Thanks to AMD‘s amazing midrange CPU and graphics card prices, we are able to create a really powerful yet well rounded build for $700.
Our Gaming PC for Under $700
| $660 - $750 No set price as pricing of components changes day to day * | ||
|---|---|---|
 | CPU Ryzen 5 2600 The hottest gaming CPU right now. Killer performance and value | |
 | GPU Sapphire RX 580 Nitro+ A powerhouse at 1080P with a 1411 MHz boost clock that is higher than any other RX 580 | |
 | Memory CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16 GB 3200 MHz Fast 3200MHz RAM for the Ryzen CPU | |
 | Motherboard GIGABYTE B350M-DS3H A standard budget microATX B350 motherboard - nothing much else here | |
 | SSD Kingston A400 240 GB SSD Though the A400 isn't the fastest SSD, you get 240 GB of SSD storage at under the price of 1 TB hard drive | |
 | HDD WD Blue 1TB SATA 7200 RPM 3.5" Plenty of hard drive space for those with a lot of games and large applications | |
 | PSU EVGA 500 BQ 80+ Bronze Reliable budget option for a semi-modular power supply | |
 | Case Cooler Master MasterBox Lite 3.1 A good microATX case that won't bust our $700 budget |
What is the Purpose of this Build?
Gaming performance is important, but there’s so many other factors that had a role in helping us decide what components we included for this build
1080P Gaming Performance
This build will run at 60 FPS on Ultra settings on basically every title today. The combination of 3200 MHz RAM, the Ryzen 5 2600, and the RX 580 allows this PC to destroy any game at 1080P. The limited VRAM on this 4GB RX 580 does make 1440P less viable, though.
Balanced Specs
We could have fit a 2600X and RX 590 in this build if we had really wanted to, but we would’ve been forced to sacrifice our SSD, half our RAM, and the quality of our power supply and case. Gaming performance is not everything for a PC as most gamers regard their PC as much more than just a engine that runs their games.
Workstation Performance
Good gaming PCs also function as good workstations. The multi-core performance of the Ryzen 5 2600 plus the 16 GB of dual channel RAM in this build allow this PC to function as well as a $1000+ pre-built workstation.
Parts List
CPUThe Ryzen 5 2600 is the most popular mid-range gaming CPU right now for a good reason — it’s simply a much better value than the blue team’s i5 8400. The decent stock cooler than the 2600 comes with doesn’t hurt as well.
If you want to, you can even do a small overclock on this CPU as it has an unlocked mulitplier (as long as your AM4 motherboard has a B350 chipset or better) — something that like i5 8400 is unable to do.
GPU
There are three viable graphics cards for this build: the GTX 1060, RX 570, or RX 580.
The RX 570 is pretty afforable, but it’s a little weak. The GTX 1060 is overall a very nice card, but it’s hard to justify it’s price for a 6 GB model as the 3 GB 1060 is not that good. Though some compact ITX GTX 1060 6 GB models are around $230, they have a smaller and louder cooling system and still cost more than RX 580s.
Sapphire Nitro+ cards are generally regarded as the best AMD Radeon cards with excellent clock speeds and cooling solutions, but the 4GB of VRAM on this particular model does mean that it can struggle in games that are VRAM hungry. Consider spending a bit more for a 8GB RX 580 if that applies to you.
Memory
We really struggled to decide what RAM to put on this build. Had we picked only 8GB of RAM, we would have a lot of extra room in our tight budget, but the PC would struggle under a lot of workloads with so little RAM.
Therefore, we decided with 16 GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX at 2400MHz. Although the Ryzen architecture benefits massively from higher memory speeds, 3000 or 3200 MHz RAM is just a tad too expensive to fit in our budget.
Still, being able to use 16 gigs of RAM will allow this PC to be viable far into the future.
Motherboard
Motherboard
The GIGABYTE B350M-DS3H is a Micro ATX motherboard with the featureset of a full-sized ATX motherboard. It’s got two full-sized 16 lane PCIe slots, four RAM slots for up to 64 GBs of RAM and and M.2 slot.
Don’t worry too much about this board being B350 and the CPU being a Ryzen 2000 series. By early 2019, all of the stock that does not have the updated BIOS has been long gone. Now basically all new B350s on the market have the updated BIOS to be compatible with the Ryzen 2000 CPUs and APUs.
The board is not Nvidia SLI or AMD Crossfire compatible, though.
SSDStandard SATA SSDs have become really cheap, and putting forty dollars of your budget towards 240GB boot drive will make your PC load times, game load times, and general speed of your much much better.
Obviously an SSD won’t change the amount of processing power your PC has as that is based on your CPU and GPU, but fast memory and storage make your PC feel much faster.
Hard Drive
Hard DriveA standard 1TB 7200 hard drive if you have a lot of files to store. If you don’t need that much storage, you should forgo getting a hard drive and instead get a larger SSD instead of a small SSD+HDD.
PSU
The EVGA 500 BQ is a really good power supply for its price. It’s basically the same as the higher end EVGA PSUs, just without the 80+ Gold certification.
A power output of 500W is sufficient for this build with an RX 580 and R5 2600.
This PSU is also semi-modular, so you can exclude the extra peripheral cables you don’t need from your build.
CASE
As our motherboard is the microATX form factor, we should get a microATX case to match our mobo that still stays within out fairly restrained budget. The MasterBox Lite 3.1 features a full sized acrylic side panel as well as three attachable trim colors that come in the box (red, black, and silver).
Upgrade Options for this Build
If you can stretch you budget a bit beyond $1000, here are upgrade options over our current $1000 build.
CPU
Ryzen 5 2600X
The 2600X is a higher binned version of the Ryzen 5 2600 so it’s a bit better than the standard Ryzen 5 2600.
It’s also got a AMD Wrath Spire cooler, which is bigger than better than the stock AMD Stealth cooler that comes with the Ryzen 5 2600.
It’s still not as good as most dedicated aftermarket air coolers, but it’s still pretty good. If you aren’t looking to buy an aftermarket cooler for your CPU, the 2600X is a viable option as the price increase over the regular 2600 is offset by the 2600X’s better stock heatsink.
GPU
Zotac RTX 2060 6GB GDDR6 Compact
Upgrading from the RX 580 to a RTX 2060 is going to probably add around 30-45% to your FPS, but is also going to make your system cost close to $900 due to how expensive these new Nvidia Turing RTX cards are.
If you’ve got the money, getting a better graphics card is the best way for you to increase the gaming performance of your PC. With an RTX 2060, you’re going to be looking at being able to max out a lot of games at 60FPS 1440P.
CPU Cooler
Cooler Master 212 Evo
If you want an aftermarket CPU cooler for extra overclocking capability, the good ol’ 212 Evo is still a solid choice as it’s so afforable.
Motherboard
MSI Arsenal Gaming B450M Bazooka
A microATX motherboard with the new B450 chipset that is specifically made for Ryzen 2000 series CPUs.
Storage
Samsung 970 Evo NVMe M.2 SSD 500 GB
Traditional 2.5″ SATA SSDs are fast, but they are fundamentally bottle-necked by the limits of the SATA interface. NVMe SSDs running on the PCIe interface solve this problem, and the 970 Evo is the gold standard of NVMe SSDs.
It’s pretty expensive, costing twice as much as the equivalent SATA SSD, but you get speeds 3.5x as fast and unparalleled reliability.
PSU
Seasonic FOCUS 650W Gold
The RX 580 is a very power hungry graphics card, and it will make a 500W PSU work pretty hard. The EVGA 500W PSU is perfectly sufficient for this build, but a power supply rated for a higher wattage will make your PC more upgradable and power efficient as you will be on the better side of the power supply efficiency curve.
Case
Options to Reduce the Cost of Build
We did a little false-advertising here for this guide, as we usually do.
So it’s only far that we give you some different component options so you can keep the cost below $1000 or possibly even $900.
CPU
GPU
ASUS STRIX RX 570 4GB
The RX 570 is around 15-20% worse than the RX 580, but it’s at most only 20-30 dollars cheaper than the RX 580 if both models have the same amount of VRAM. If you have tasks that require a lot of VRAM, a 8GB RX 570 might be a good choice as it costs around the same as a 4GB RX 580.
The RX 570 is still a great value, destroying the GTX 1050Ti both in performance and price, but we were able to fit a RX 580 in this build without going over the budget.
Motherboard
Storage
Crucial MX500 M.2 Type 2280SS 500GB
If you don’t need more than 500 GB of storage, get a 500 GB M.2 SATA SSD instead of both an SSD and hard drive. The Crucial MX500 M.2 SSD is the M.2 version of the MX500 SATA SSD, so it won’t be as fast as pricier NVMe SSDs.
An M.2 SSD is a lot easier to install. All you need to do is insert it into the slot on the motherboard and screw it down. No SATA or power cables are required.
PSU
Case
ROSEWILL Micro ATX Mini Tower
Rosewill’s tiny microATX case with a surprising list of features all for under $30 is our favorite budget case. You get four USB ports on the front panel (2x USB 3.0. 2x USB 2.0) as well as your analog mic and speaker ports. Also comes pre-installed with a 120mm frontal fan and 80mm real exhaust fan.
Peripherals
Sorry if you thought that you could get everything you needed to build a gaming setup for $700. The $700 is only for the actual gaming PC. The monitor, keyboard, mouse, and audio aren’t technically part of your PC.
The peripherals do bump up the true cost of a gaming setup a lot more than what a lot of people anticipate, but here are some great monitors, mice, keyboards and more that won’t bust your budget.
Monitor
MonitorThe RX 580 should run most games 1080P at 60FPS reliably on max settings, but don’t be afraid to go up to 1440P if your games are less graphically demanding. If you go with 1080P, try to find a monitor with FreeSync to prevent screen tearing!
 | Acer SB220Q bi 1080 x 1920 | FreeSync | 75 Hz | 21.5" | 4ms | HDMI | VGA The Acer SB220Q is a little small, but it's an amazing monitor for it's price coming with AMD FreeSync and 75Hz refresh rate at under a hundred dollars. | |
 | Acer G257HU 2560 x 1440 | 60 Hz | 25" | 4ms | HDMI | DVI | Display Port The RX 580 can handle 1440P gaming depending on what games you're playing, but expect to not be able to run max settings. |
Fans – Noctua SSO NF-S12 redux-1200
Fans – 120mm | 1200 RPM PVM | SSO Bearing | 150,000 hours MTBF rating | 100,6 m³/h
The Cooler Master Masterbox 5 case in this review already comes with three fans. If you’re going to replace those fans, you’d better be replacing them with fans that a lot better or it would be a waste. The Noctua NF-S12 redux-1200 airflow fans are some of the quietest bang-for-the-buck fans out there.
Noctua doesn’t mess with the RGB crap so you’ll have to give up your pretty RGB lights if you use Noctua fans.
Keyboard
KeyboardMechanical keyboards are really affordable now thanks to new Chinese brands like Redragon. You can get a basic mechanical keyboard for under $30 and a full-sized RGB mechanical keyboard for around $60. These affordable mechanical keyboards are pretty high quality as well.
 | Redragon K552 RED LED Mechanical Keyboard Mechanical | Blue Switches | 87 Switches | Red LED | Splashproof The best selling keyboard on Amazon -- 87 mechanical switches for thirty bucks. A killer deal | |
 | Redragon K557 RGB Mechanical Mechanical | Blue Switches | 104 keys | RGB | Waterproof | Anti-ghosting Full-size mechanical keyboard with RGB and waterproofing |
Mouse
MouseA good gaming mouse is a nice way to add the finishing touches to your PC setup.
 | Logitech G203 Prodigy RGB RGB | 6000 DPI | Wired | 2 Custom Buttons A really solid no-frills budget gaming mouse from a reputable manufacturer | |
 | Razer DeathAdder Elite RGB | 16000 DPI | 7 Custom Buttons | 5G Optical Sensor A perennial bestseller known for it's ergonomics and performance |
Audio
AudioHere are some budget headsets that match with our build.
 | Mpow EG3 20-20,000 Hz | Noise cancelling design A good looking budget headset. Even comes with a braided cable. | |
 | HyperX Cloud Stinger 18-23,000 Hz | Memory Foam A higher-end gaming headset for better performance and quality. |
Operating System – Windows 10
Operating System – Windows 10Buying an operating system sucks since it’s often a cost that doesn’t come to your mind until you realize your PC won’t run without a proper OS. While Linux is free, the vast majority of us use Windows — which with a proper license is far from free.
If you don’t feel the need to buy an official license from an official vendor, there’s many ways to get Windows 10 for very cheap or even for free.
On Kinguin, you can get a resale Windows 10 license for under $30.
If you’re ok with having an unlicensed version of Windows that has a small watermark and limited customization but otherwise is 100% fully functional Windows 10, you dont even need a product key.
Just click on the “I don’t have a product key” when you are booting Windows from a flash drive.
You Need To Build The PC
Building a new gaming PC in 2018 isn’t hard at all. It’s simply a matter of knowing where to place a few different crucial components and connecting them with wires and cables. There are so much resources online on how to build a PC. Here is a Youtube guide that does a great job of explaining the process of building a PC.