November 2018 Budget Gaming PC Build of the Month

Hello everyone and welcome once again to GR8 Tech 2Day. I am Will and this is our November 2018 Budget gaming PC build of the month. The purpose of this build is guide is to give you, our readers and/or viewers a list of PC components in which to build a budget gaming PC with a great price to performance value on a budget. So, without further delay, let’s get to this.

First up in this budget gaming PC build is our processor. For this budget PC build, I am going to go with a classic from a couple years ago, the Intel Pentium G4560 dual core processor. This is a very nice budget CPU coming in at under $70 right now and will give you fairly solid gaming performance on a budget. The Pentium G4560 is a dual core, 4-thread processor that comes clocked at 3.5GHz and is built on Intel’s 14nm architecture within the Kaby Lake series of processors. This Intel processor comes with a stock CPU cooler and has a TDP of just 54 watts. This is a good first component of a budget build and is still very viable today, particularly for 1080p gaming.

Next up is the motherboard. For this build, I wanted to go with a board that would give and upgrade path for the CPU, particularly to an i5 CPU. This thought however for me is to give an upgrade path to an unlocked CPU like an Intel Core i5-7600K and therefore, I went with a board with the Intel Z270 chipset. This motherboard is the Gigabyte GA-Z270XP-SLI ATX motherboard. This is a very budget oriented Z270 motherboard coming in at just $80. The board offers 4 DDR4 DIMM slots and can support speeds up to 3866MHz with up to 64GB. The Gigabyte board has 4 SATAIII (6GB/s) ports, 6 total PCIe slots at 16x (x1), 8x (x1), 4x (x1), and 1x (x3), and an M.2 NVMe PCIe slot. The board supports AMD crossfire and SLI. A pretty decent board for the price and will allow a decent overclock if you so choose to upgrade to an overclockable CPU. Keep in mind however, that you could change this board out for a slightly cheaper motherboard without overclocking capabilities for a few dollars less, particularly if you have no intention of ever overclocking.

Next up, I am going to group in our memory options from RAM to storage. For the RAM, I have gone with an extremely budget friendly option and at 16GB for just under $100, this is a steal of a deal. For this build, I went with the Team Vulcan DDR4 RAM at 16GB in 2 modules of 8GB at 2666MHz. My goodness, it is so nice to see RAM at decent prices again.

For storage, I went with an SSD because all systems in 2018 need an SSD for at least a boot drive for the OS and this build is no different. For the SSD, I have gone with the Team L5 LITE 480GB SSD which you can have for just over $50. This is a SATAIII SSD so you will get fast speeds for sure. For gaming and other program storage, I went with the Seagate Barracuda 2TB, 7200RPM hard disk drive. Nothing special but you don’t really need a lot for your storage drive. In this build, I would recommend putting your most played game(s) or most used program(s) onto the SSD for even more optimal and fast load times and speeds.

For the graphics card in this build, I found a phenomenal deal over at Newegg on the ASRock Phantom Gaming X Radeon RX 570 OC, 8GB graphics card. This RX 570 comes out the box with 8GB of GDDR5 memory and a default core clock of 1280MHz with an OC mode offering a core clock of 1331MHz and a silent mode with a 1228MHz core clock. The GPU touts 2048 stream processors and offers 1x DVI, 1x HDMI 2.0, and 3x DisplayPort 1.4 video outputs. Currently, this GPU comes in at just $170 on Newegg and a promotion that gives you 2 free games. This GPU will get the most out of the G4560 and the G4560 will get the most out of this GPU. This GPU is a perfect pairing with the G4560 and will give you very nice and high framerates at 1080p and will allow you to dabble in 1440p gaming.

Finally, we get to the power source and the housing unit. In this budget gaming system, I will go with the Fractal Design Meshify C which is a phenomenal looking and very beautiful case. The dark tempered glass allows you to see your internal components with just the right tint to bring out the true beauty of your build. For just $70, this is also one heck of a deal. And to power this system, I am going with the EVGA 650 B3 650-watt 80+ Bronze, fully modular power supply. At 650-watts, you will have plenty of power to run this system and will give you substantial headroom for future upgrades.

So, there you have it. That is our November 2018 budget gaming PC build. For roughly $675 (Iess if you choose a few different components) you can have a fantastic, budget, and powerful gaming PC for 1080p gaming. Would you change any components? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you next time. Have a great day!