The positive aspects of building a PC today is you don't have to sacrifice a large sum of currency to purchase hardware. In fact, it's entirely possible to construct a system that's priced well under $1,000 and still handle resource taxing tasks such as gaming and video editing. Go on YouTube, and you'll see system builders create stable systems out of reasonably priced hardware.
So while brainstorming what content I want post on this website, an idea struck my brain, use PC Partpicker to put together a stable system for just under $1,200. PC Partpicker is a comparison shopping website that enables users to compare prices of various PC components from multiple online vendors. This post is for those first time PC builders who may find hardware shopping difficult.
Without further ado, let's begin this build; hopefully, this should ease your decision making a bit.
The Processor
Purchasing a processor can be an expensive acquisition, luckily, we're using an AMD Ryzen processor which have a good rep for being high performing and price friendly. We kick this build off by going with AMD Ryzen 5 2600X. This bang for the buck CPU has an atsounding six working cores and 12-threads.
Listed Partpicker price: $225 Where to buy? B&H
The CPU Cooler
We're going to need to keep the processor cool and stable, my pick here is the Deepcool-GAMMAXX 400 White 74.3 CPU cooler. It has a decent peak RPM speed at 1500.
Listed Partpicker price: $37.99.......Where to buy? Amazon
The Motherboard
I present you the Gigabyte-GA-AB350-GAMING 3 ATX AM4 motherboard. I pick this particular system board, not because it's priced reasonably low, but it actually stands up to riggers of computing workload, that includes gaming and overclocking. I actually have this motherboard in one of my builds so I can attest to its great performance.
Listed Partpicker price: $76.99 Where to buy? Newegg
The Memory
For our memory let's play it safe and go with the Corsair-Vengeance LPX DDR-2400 ( 2x 8GB). This particular memory module has gotten a very high approval rating from many and yours truly.
Listed Partpicker price: $149.99.... Where to buy? Amazon
The Storage
For storage, I like to always use the SSD for boot and HDD ( spinning internal hard drive) to store all my applications and various other files. Solid state drives are dirt cheap now, on the market you can find plenty 500GB SSD's for just $135. Since we're trying to keep this build under $1200, the cheapest SSD I can find this build is a 240GB SanDisk. We're going to dump most of our applications on this ever so reliable 2TB 7200 RPM Seagate Barracuda.
Listed Partpicker price: SSD $53.99.... Where to buy? Amazon Internal hard drive: $58.89 Where to buy? OutletPC
The Graphics card
The most expensive piece of hardware in this build is the graphics card. You never want to shortchange yourself when it comes to quality and performance, so you may have to make the necessary sacrifice and spend the money. Good news, graphics cards are starting to come down in price as the supply is on the verge of rebounding. With that said, my graphic card of choice here is EVGA-GeForce 6GB GTX 1060. I consider this to be a 2nd tier graphic card which will still allow users to game in ultra high settings at 60 frames per second. You will undoubtedly get high performance for the buck at just $299.
Listed Partpicker price: $299.99.... Where to buy? Amazon
The Power Supply
Reasonable priced power supply units with a high power efficiency rating are plentiful on the market. But for this build, the EVGA SuperNOVA 650 watt unit is definitely the obvious choice. Aside from all the impressive features, it has a 80-Plus Gold rating and is a fully modular unit.
Listed Partpicker price: $69.99..... Where to buy? Amazon
The PC case
Finally, we have the PC case, the last thing needed to complete this build. For me, Thermaltake View 21 has everything you need in a near-perfect chassis, a beautiful compact design, spacious interior, and cable management capabilities. Oh and that tempered glass adds sleek flavor to the overall design. Whats standout to me is you can mount your hard drives vertically on the motherboard tray or horizontally on the PSU tunnel.
Listed Partpicker price: $59.99.... Where to buy? Newegg
The grand total for this Pc Partpicker build................................... $1001.92
Saving: +$200 ( give or take a $1 and change)
Potentially we have here a well-constructed system that's capable of handling any high intense workload and importantly I kept cost well below $1200. PC Partpicker is a useful tool that makes PC building fun and simple. It cuts down on the brain wrecking researching for sure. If you're looking to build your very first computer head right over to PcPartpicker.com so you can pick and choose your hardware.