How to build a gaming PC for $2,500
Sure, you can buy a gaming PC in pretty much any configuration you desire, but anyone can do that! By building one for yourself, you can make sure you’re getting maximum value for money and get a PC that’s customized to your exact specifications.
Also: Smaller budget? How to build a gaming PC for $550
With prices rising across the board, decisions have to be made so as to not waste money frivolously on PC components that don’t contribute to the performance of the whole. In many ways, this is more important when building a high-end PC than a $550 budget system, because when you have a few thousand dollars to spend, it’s easy for a few bucks overspent here and there to add up to hundreds of wasted dollars.
To help spend your money effectively, I’ve assembled this hardware build list so that all you will need to add is your own peripherals and operating system of choice. Need a Windows license for your build? You can get one here.
Note that prices might fluctuate on either side of this $2,500 mark — the components market is rather volatile these days.
Now, let’s see what you can get for the money.
This is a monster of a processor considering the sub-$700 price tag. It’s a 16-core, 32-thread lump of silicon capable of 5.7 GHz when running at boost, can be overclocked (a little, in my experience, but enough to make a difference), comes equipped with a whopping 144MB of cache memory, and offers support for DDR5 RAM.
Such an incredible processor deserves an outstanding board, and Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX offers everything you need in a package that’s not going to be budget-busting. You get DDR5 support, superb thermal management, lots of ports, support for 128GB of RAM, and up to five years of warranty.
A powerful, high-end graphics card at a reasonable price (if you consider a couple of hundred dollars shy of a $1,000 reasonable). It’s powered by Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture specially designed for professional graphics, video, and AI, and offers 2,310MHz core clock and 2,610MHz boost clock speeds. This card comes with 12GB of GDDR6X (192-bit) onboard memory and 7680 CUDA processing cores.
It’s a monster of a GPU!
Want even more power? Upgrade the GPU to the PNY GeForce RTX 4090. This will double the price of the GPU but give you an absolute monster 2,235MHz core clock GPU (2,520MHz boost) along with 24GB GDDR6X (384-bit) onboard memory, plus 16,384 CUDA processing cores and up to 1008GB/sec of memory bandwidth.
This RAM has been specifically designed for the AMD X670 Series Chipset with Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs, so it’s perfect for this built.
This kit comes with two 16GB, DDR5-6000 modules at a price that’s really hard to beat!
A high-performance 2TB M.2 drive that delivers twice the data transfer rate of PCIe 3.0, allowing for read speeds up to 7,000 MB/s. But with high speeds comes heat, and Samsung has addressed that with a nickel coating and heat spreader label, all of which means performance and stability.
The monster CPU needs a cooler, and AMD recommends a liquid cooler. This kit comes with everything you need — a CPU cooling block, a radiator, a built-in pump, and three low-noise, speed-control fans.
There’s even RGB lighting to give your case some extra style!
This PSU brings enough power for everything in this build at a reasonable price. It comes with modular cabling — which means that unwanted cabling can be detached from the PSU — to keep the inside of the PC as tidy as possible.
Cases are a very personal thing, given that you’re going to be looking at it for a few years.
Here I’ve gone for a case that offers lots of cooling, easy, tool-free modular design, dust filtering, and built-in cable management.
