We’ve
walked you through building your own computer before. In this post—which we’ll update periodically as prices and components change—we’ll walk you through the hardware we’ll need for three different system builds: a budget workstation, a powerful all-purpose PC, and an enthusiast’s system for gamers and media professionals.
While some consider the desktop a dead platform, there are still plenty of us who use them as much as or in addition to laptops or tablets, love to play PC games, or just enjoy getting our hands dirty and building our own systems. Before we go any further, we should point out that these PC builds are designed to optimize your all-around computing experience, with
some emphasis on PC gaming. The components that give you the best bang for your buck depend heavily on what you’re planning to do with the system: Your parts will be different if you’re building an HTPC on the same budget, or a super-speedy file server for your home network.
We’ve talked about
our own experiences building a system, why it’s important, and some awesome tips for first-timers already. If you’re ready to set out on the task of building your own computer, here are the components you’ll need to build the best system you can get for your money.
Update – September 2014: It’s been a while since our last update, and since then AMD has solidified itself among budget PC builders, and the new generation of Intel-friendly motherboards—all ready for Broadwell (coming later this year or early 2015) have hit the market. Even so, not too many people are hyped about Broadwell, and component prices have come down in a few areas. The holidays are coming, so we’re seeing a little spiking in some areas (likely to make room for discounts when holiday spending starts), but it’s still an all-around good time to build a powerful PC without spending a ton of money. If you’re in the mood to wait, hang in there—prices will likely only go down over the holidays, and these components won’t be superseded before the end of the year.
As usual, we’re using
PCPartPicker to put together our builds. We love it, and think you should use it too—it gives you more flexibility in your part buying, helps you eliminate possibly incompatible components. Plus it makes sure you get he best prices for the items you plan to buy, even if it means you have to buy them from different retailers. If you have your own PCPartPicker builds you want to show off, make sure to link them up in the discussions below!
As always, keep in mind that prices change all the time, so if you’re checking this and the prices have changed, just head back to PCPartPicker and see if you can find a better price.
Build Versus Buy
The old debate over whether you should build your own system or buy a pre-built one is an old, long-standing argument that will never be easily washed away. However, there are some benefits to building your own system that can’t be weighed in terms of dollars and cents. You may be happier with your own hand-built system, or you may be able to score bargains and rebates that lead to a more powerful computer stuffed with higher quality components than a manufacturer would use.
Building your own PC also gives you complete and full control over that system’s components and extendability. Unlike buying an OEM PC, assembling your own gives you the ability to make decisions about when and how you’ll upgrade that system in the long run as opposed to simply taking what the manufacturer sells you. For example, you can buy into a new motherboard chipset early and wait to spend money on the next generation of graphics card later, giving yourself a timely upgrade when the moment-or your budget-is right.
Ultimately, while it may be easier to just pull out a credit card and buy whatever’s on sale from your preferred OEM, there’s something about assembling the components of a system that you’ve selected for your needs, powering it up, installing your favorite OS, and using it every day that’s’ incredibly rewarding. We’ve
talked about this in more detail here, if you’re curious.
Choosing The Right Parts
There was a time when building a PC was all about buying the most expensive and most powerful components you could on the budget you had. While some of that is still true, even budget components can be remarkably powerful, and if all you’re planning on doing with your system is word processing, surfing the web, and some light entertainment like streaming video or listening to music, almost any system build will work for you.
You don’t need to spend a grand on high-end gaming components if you’re putting together a system for your friend who doesn’t know or care what graphics card is going into the box. At the same time, that doesn’t mean they’re doomed to a computer full of sub-standard components. We’ve explained before that you should
carefully assess your need before rushing off to start pricing out components, and that advice is still true today.
Ultimately, there’s no reason for you to rush out and buy the most expensive components you can afford unless you’re an enthusiast and want the most top-of-the-line system you can afford. Don’t be fooled by brand names, either. Here we’ll detail two separate builds, a high-end system for enthusiasts and power-hungry users, and a mid-range build that will cost about half as much but still pack a punch.
The $300 Budget System
The first few times we did this guide, a few people noted that $600 and $1200 were more than enough to spend on high-powered PCs, but a good machine at around or less than $400 would be a great project. Well, here you go—not only is it possible to come in under $400, we opted for $300, and the system we put together on that budget is no slouch.
The Parts
This parts list assumes that you’ll need the basic components: a case, a motherboard, processor, memory, storage, graphics card of some type, power supply, and an optical drive. We’re going to assume you have a perfectly good USB keyboard, mouse, and display you can repurpose for use with your new system. Before you blindly buy what we’re about to suggest, take a moment and look at our
Lifehacker Night School article on choosing PC components, where we discuss some of the things you should think about before buying your components. For example, our $300 PC here is made for economy and general use, not necessarily high-end gaming or video editing. Remember to consider what you’ll use the system for before buying.
That said, here are the parts for our budget-friendly PC:
The case: Rosewill FBM-01 MicroATX Mini Tower Computer Case – It’s compact, it’s roomy enough to actually get your hands in there, and it’s small enough to go on top of or underneath a desk without taking up too much space. It’s not the sexiest case in the word, but it’s lightweight, sports front-side USB 2.0 and audio ports, has dual fans for airflow, and is well reviewed and regarded. Plus, you really can’t argue with the price tag. You could step up to a full-size tower if you want and spend some more money, maybe on a $40 NZXT Source 210 Elite (which we use later in this guide) if you have more to spend. For the money and the size though, this’ll do just fine.
The power supply: Corsair CX430 430W Power Supply – This build won’t take a ton of horsepower. We used PCPartPicker’s calculator to estimate the total wattage our final build would draw (~185W) and this 430W power supply will handle that, and it gives us room to add a graphics card or more power-hungry components down the line. It’ll also fit in our mini tower nicely, and it has enough juice to power some upgrades if you ever want them. As always, just make sure you do the math on the wattage your system will likely pull down before you select a power supply, and try to buy from someone with good reviews and a solid track record of quality. If you’re not using PCPartPicker, try the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator.
The motherboard: MSI A78M-E35 – AMD A78 Chipset FM2+ MicroATX Motherboard – Yet again, our budget build is an AMD-based system, and just as well—at this price point, AMD offers incredible performance bang for the buck. This board will give you eight USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, six SATA III ports, gigabit Ethernet, supports up to 32GB of RAM, and 8-channel on-board audio. It packs on-board video-out (DVI, VGA, and HDMI), and since the AMD Trinity that we’re about to slap into it is an APU, it’ll handle graphics for us. It’s a pretty powerhouse board for the money—it’s worth noting that it does have onboard USB 3.0 headers, but the case we chose doesn’t have frontside USB 3.0, just USB 2.0 ports.
The CPU: AMD A8-5600K APU 3.6Ghz Processor Quad-Core CPU with Radeon HD 7560D GPU – Don’t underestimate AMD’s A-Series APUs. They can handle more than you might think, and they’re a staple in our favorite HTPC builds. Because it’s a combination CPU and GPU, this also means we don’t need to add a stand-alone graphics card in our build. This A8 is a step up from the A6 we previously had in this build, and prices have dropped enough that we could give the brains of our budget build an upgrade. Plus, it has the equivalent of an AMD Radeon HD 7560D built right into it. It’ll still handle everyday duties easily, and video at 1080p on a wide-screen display without blinking an eye. You can even fire up pretty much all of your favorite games on this thing, many at 1080p with great framerates, as long as you adjust your graphics settings appropriately. If you don’t do any gaming at all though, the A8 gives you a speedy processor that can handle tasks like surfing the web, watching web video, listening to local or streaming music, and getting actual work done.
The memory: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (1 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) – RAM prices are still higher than they used to be, but this is a pretty budget-friendly stick. We would normally consider going two-sticks for dual channel, but the nice thing about this stick is that you can just buy two and populate both RAM slots on the motherboard if you want 8GB, or stick with one for now and leave the other option for a later upgrade. The board can support up to 32GB, so if you want more RAM, you can always upgrade. If you have more to spend, replace this single stick with the more expensive 8 GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 MHz (PC3 12800) 240-Pin Memory Kit and get a solid 8GB in there. It would put us over our budget, but it’s a worthy upgrade. That said, 4GB will be enough to get our budget PC up and running with enough RAM for just about anything it’ll need to do.
The storage: Western Digital 7200RPM 1TB Hard Drive – This $65 1TB model is speedy at 7200RPM, sports a 64MB cache, and is affordable enough that we decided to use it again in our $600 build below. If you have a different brand allegiance when it comes to drives, try this similar Seagate 1TB model. Whichever you choose, make sure you make note of the warranty, and, of course, keep your data backed up. Every hard drive fails, it’s just a matter of when.
The total: $297.92 ($322.92 before Discounts and Rebates)
Buy this build from PCPartPicker
The $600 Powerhouse PC
Long gone are the days where you should immediately budget at least a grand for a decent self-built system. Unless you absolutely have to have a top of the line PC, this mid-range system will power through everyday tasks, handle PC gaming, streaming movies and music from the web, and even those bigger projects like ripping your music collection quickly or editing home movies easily.
The Parts
Again, we’re going to assume you have a perfectly good USB keyboard, mouse, and display you can repurpose for use with your new system. Our $600 PC here is made with bang-for-the-buck in mind, something that will earn you high performance without breaking the bank—not necessarily silent operation (although there are ways to get a quieter budget PC if you want one) or tons of expansion bays. Remember to consider what you’ll use the system for before buying. You may very well want to tweak some of the components we suggest below.
Here are the parts for our $600 powerhouse:
The case: NZXT Source 210 Elite – The NZXT Source 210 Elite is a roomy mid-sized case that, thanks to its steel body, is both lightweight and should last you longer than just this build. It’s large enough to accommodate large components, and roomy enough to move your hands around inside without too much of a squeeze. The case is loaded with grips to easily remove drive bays inside without a screwdriver, slots to route your cables through cleanly, extra fan grills for superior airflow and cooling, it’s just a nicely designed case. You also get a pair of 120mm fans for your money, and front-side audio and USB 3.0 ports are a nice bonus in this budget case. Plus, our own Whitson Gordon swears by NZXT cases, both for their interior space and how easy it is to install and remove components from them.
The power supply: Corsair Builder Series CX500M 500W Power Supply – Most PC builders, especially starting off, tend to completely overestimate how much power their components will actually need. This 500-watt power supply from Corsair should be enough for our components (which will draw around 400W, leaving room for more power draw under load), and Corsair is a trusted name. We opted to step up a bit from our old 430W PSU to give you a little extra leeway, and we had the budget to go modular, which is great and will keep your PC’s innards nicely organized. Pay attention to warranties and return policies as well, but try to make sure you’re getting the right amount of juice for the system you’re building. If you have a few more dollars, step up to this 600W model for a few more bucks. There are some great calculators on the web that will help you determine how big your power supply should really be, like the eXtreme Power Supply Calculator.
The CPU: AMD FX-6300 Six-Core 3.5GHz AM3+ Processor – We’re flipping the script this time around and going with one of AMD’s Vishera CPUs. We struggled with this decision a ton, as we usually do, but here’s the clincher—if you’re building a solid, multipurpose PC, the FX-6300 offers a solid multi-core system that performs well whether your goal for this build is PC gaming or general, more multipurpose use, which makes the system more applicable to people who could use the extra cores and may not necessarily be gaming. We honestly could have gone either way on this. This Intel Haswell Core i3-4330 is a bit more expensive, but offers more power per-core than the FX-6300, while the FX-6300 packs more cores. If you’re a gamer, read up on the titles you play and see how they benchmark. We’re not about to settle this debate here—frankly, if you want to go Intel, do it. It’s a stellar buy and you won’t regret it. This thread over at the buildapc subreddit and this thread at Tom’s Hardware both run down the pros and cons of each, and there’s plenty of opinion to go around. These benchmarks from AnandTech shows the FX-6300 offers some performance gains over the last i3 we had in this build, although the Haswell i3-4330 isn’t included there for comparison. Choose what suits you best.
The motherboard: MSI 970A-G43 ATX AM3+ Motherboard AMD 970 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Motherboard – We thought it would be tough to find a more feature-rich, well-reviewed motherboard than the one in our last build, but this one offers great power management and a stellar feature list for the price. It packs 4 dual channel memory slots, six SATA III ports, six USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, 8-channel audio on-board, and gigabit Ethernet. There’s no on-board video (but that’s okay), but it does include overclocking features if you want to make use of that FX-6300’s overclocking capabilities. We didn’t design this build with overclocking in mind, but the door is open to you if you’re interested. Best of all though, if you do decide to upgrade this system beyond its current capabilities, this motherboard will give you the room to add an SSD, more memory, a beefier graphics card, or whatever else you’d like. Want an alternative? A few more bucks more gets you the ASUS M5A97 R2.0, an equally feature-packed board. If you’re going Intel, like we mentioned you could in the previous section, swap this out for the similarly-priced, similarly feature-packed ASRock Z97 PRO3.
The memory: G.SKILL 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1600 RAM – RAM prices are still higher than we would like to see, but it’s about time our $600 build went 8GB—and we have the budget to make the move. This is a solid 8GB kit from one of our favorite memory manufacturers, it’s fast, and it’s affordable. Our board is dual-channel, so we want to make sure we take advantage of it. If you’re feeling fancy, our board has four slots—you could double up and go 16GB. It would put us over our budget, but it’s a worthy upgrade, and honestly the board can support up to 32GB total, so if you have more to spend, aim for the top.
The storage: Western Digital 7200RPM 1TB Hard Drive – Hard drive prices have stabilized, and even come down a bit. If you catch a sale, you can do well enough to pick up an SSD for your mid-range system along with a standard spinning, high-capacity hard drive. This 1TB model is speedy at 7200RPM, sports a 64MB cache, and is affordable enough that we continue to rely on it for our primary storage. If you have a different brand allegiance when it comes to drives, try this similar Seagate 1TB model. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you make note of the warranty, and, of course, keep your data backed up. Every hard drive fails, it’s just a matter of when.
The graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 280 3GB Video Card/NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 3GB – Either of these cards will be more than enough to power 1080p gaming without much hassle. The R9 280 is one of this generation’s best bang-for-the-buck graphics cards, and the GTX 760 is a killer card that’s on par with it. Either one is a great pick, and if your favorite titles are any of this generation’s (or any generation’s) graphically challenging games, you’ll be able to turn up the settings good and high and keep those great frame rates that make it fun to play. If gaming isn’t your goal at all, and instead you prefer watching HD video on large displays, you won’t have a problem here either, and in fact, this may be overkill and you can step down a bit to a more affordable card.
The total: $605.92 ($656.94 before Discounts/Rebates)
Buy this build from PCPartPicker
If you want more options…
You can build a seriously powerful system for $600. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room to improve it, or cut it down a bit if it’s too much. You could get below $500 by swapping in a cheaper processor (like the AMD Athlon X4 760K, for example.) If you really need to save some money, and you’re not a gamer at all, pull out that pricey video card and slap in a mid-tier card like the
AMD Radeon R7 250 or the R7 250X – both great bang-for-the-buck budget cards that can power multiple monitors, play HD video, and if you do choose to do some PC gaming, it’ll handle graphically challenging games on medium settings.
One thing we mentioned earlier; you could also go Intel with this build. That probably won’t exactly save you money, although depending on what you’re willing to trade off and where, you could get price parity.
This thread over at Reddit’s buildapc subreddit caught our eye for some Intel-based options, although we’d be a little wary of stepping back to an i3, or going with less reputable RAM or a smaller PSU just to cram an i5 into the build. Still, it’s a good starting point for Intel build options if you’re looking for them.
If you have a few more dollars to spend, the first thing we’d suggest you do is add an SSD into the system in addition the 1TB Western Digital already in the build. SSDs don’t have to be pricey; this
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB is around $170, and is one of the best, fastest, SSDs you can buy right now. The Wirecutter has some thoughts on the best SSDs, and they suggest this Crucial MX100 512GB for tons of space without breaking the bank.
The $1200 Enthusiast’s PC
Now that we’ve covered two systems that can be purchased and assembled on a decent budgets, now it’s time to have some fun. We’re not targeting our upper limit here, we just want to give you an idea of some of the high-end components that would make a good enthusiast’s build. If you’re a fan of PC gaming, have to play the latest releases as soon as they’re out, have multiple huge, high-resolution displays, or just want the beefiest box you can afford, this build is for you.
The Parts
As with the $600 PC above, we’re going to assume you have the basics, like a keyboard, mouse, and display. In this case though, we’re going for the big, pretty, and powerful, as opposed to trying to keep the budget down. We won’t necessarily aim directly for our high-end, but we will slap in some pricier components that we know would make a noticeable difference in your computing experience if you had them in your system.
Again, remember to consider your use case before buying – the people who’ll really love this build will be PC gamers, media professionals, and enthusiasts who want to futureproof themselves or just prefer the top of the line.
Here are the parts for our enthusiast’s PC:
The case: Corsair Carbide Series 500R – We’ll miss our old Carbide 300R, but this time we decided on a little upgrade. The Carbide 500R is well loved, well reviewed, and will contain as much possible power as we can cram into it with the rest of our budget. The Carbide 500R is sleek black, lightweight steel and plastic, with more than enough expansion bays and slots on the rear to accommodate everything we want to put into it and more. It has great airflow to keep your components cool, and a front-side I/O panel for power, USB 3.0, and audio. It’s large enough to fit aftermarket cooling or long graphics cards. Warning though: there are some very pretty cases on the market – buy one that has the features and look that you want. You could try this Fractal Design Arc Midi sleek, steel case for the same price, or step back to the trusty Cooler Master HAF 912 for great airflow without a ton of money. Want more options? We did a Hive Five on desktop computer cases a while back (although most were a bit more expensive, like the winner: Cooler Master HAF X), another Hive Five on small form-factor cases, or alternatively you could spend nothing and repurpose an old case from a previous build.
The power supply: CORSAIR CX600M 600W High Performance Modular Power Supply – Speaking of Corsair, the company makes good power supplies, and 600 watts of juice should be enough to power the rest of this build (which comes in around 450W, leaving room for more draw at load). This power supply is also modular, which was a pleasant surprise at the price, so you only use the cables you actually need for your components. It’s quiet and offers great, steady power at a solid price. There are more expensive power supplies out there, but this one gets the job done without being overkill. Plus, if you decide to swap out any of the components here for higher-end ones, you can do so without worrying this PSU won’t be able to handle it.
The CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor – Intel’s Core processors still lead the market in power and performance. After all, this is one notch up from the same processor that CustomPCReview put in their most recent $1200 gaming rig, and our friends at Logical Increments think this—not the i7—is the best processor for high-end performance without spending all the money in your budget just on a processor. We think it’ll handle whatever you throw at it pretty handily, whether your PC is going to be a gaming machine, a workhorse, or a video-editing or multimedia powerhouse. We spent the extra few bucks to get the unlocked version (and a complimentary motherboard below), so if you’re interested in overclocking, this is a great setup to try it with. If you need the hyper-threading that the i7 offers and you have the money for it, the Intel Core i7-4790K is your next natural step up – it’ll cost you an extra hundred roughly, but we know some of you out there need the horsepower, especially if you’re doing 3D effects, video conversion or high-end video editing, or anything else that can make use of the hyperthreading that comes with the i7.
The motherboard: MSI Z97-G55 SLI ATX LGA1150 Motherboard – A good, all around motherboard with high end features to match its modest price. It’s one of the new Z97 motherboards that’ll support Broadwell if you’re interested in an upgrade next year, but we’re skeptical you’ll want to. Either way, you get all the features you would expect from a board of this class, including dual channel RAM slots and support for up to 32GB, six USB 3.0 ports and two USB 2.0 ports just on the back, with connectors on-board for four more (along with six more USB 2.0 ports) six 6Gb/s SATA III ports, 8-channel audio, gigabit Ethernet, and more ports on the back than you’ll probably actually need, including DVI-D and HDMI. The board also supports SLI and Crossfire if you want to step up your graphics power, and it’s generally well reviewed. If you’re no MSI fan, you could always step over to the Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H LGA 1150 Intel Z97, which is a little more expensive, but also overclocker friendly, and has slightly better audio.
The memory: Crucial 8GB (2x4GB) Ballistix Elite Series 240-Pin DIMM DDR3-1600 RAM Kit – An enthusiast’s PC just wouldn’t be right without a full 8GB of RAM in it (if not more). If we had the budget to cram more in here, we’d consider it, but 8GB is your natural starting point (and RAM prices just aren’t what they used to be, frankly). This Crucial 8GB kit is a solid buy, and it’s good and speedy (although we’ll be the first to tell you more RAM is more important than faster RAM.) If you want to skimp a little bit, the G.SKILL kit we used in the $600 build is a perfect fit and a bit less. If you have the budget to go wild, you could just load up the board and call it a day.
The storage: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB 2.5″ SSD + Western Digital WD Black 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive – At this point, we probably don’t need to convince you that a Solid State Drive (SSD) is one of the best upgrades you can buy for your computer, especially as your boot drive and for your most used applications. This Samsung was built to be a speedy, high-capacity, affordable drive, and hits all of those points. It’s a top-tier drive, and if you don’t believe us, just read AnandTech’s detailed review. If you don’t need the speed, step down to the Samsung 840 EVO 250GB and save some cash, or the Crucial MX100 256GB for even less. Want more space? The Wirecutter recommends the Crucial MX100 512GB for about $200, which is ridiculous space and speed for the money. Of course, if you’re using an SSD as your boot drive, you’ll need a nice, speedy standard drive for the rest of your files and any applications that don’t need to be on your SSD, and this WD Caviar Black is a bit of a splurge, but it’s made for performance.
The graphics card: AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card/NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB Video Card – We’re sticking with our pickes for these enthusiast, solid value cards. They’re pricey, make no mistake, but they’re both still the “best performance for the value” for those folks willing to drop a few hundreds on a graphics card. Anandtech’s latest GPU Benchmark tests put these guys smack in the bang-for-the-buck category, with respectable benchmarks (even though it’s not totally fair to compare these two directly except for price—the 4GB version of the GTX 770 may be a better comparison, but it’s significantly more than the 280X, and we get into AMD and NVIDIA leapfrogging each other at that point). If you’re a PC gamer and you love turning up all of the settings on your games, pick your brand allegiance (or better yet, check how each of these two cards performs when benchmarked in your favorite games) and go with one of these. They’ll get you great framerates at 1080p, and even if you’re gaming at 1440p or powering multiple displays, you shouldn’t have a problem at all. You might run into a little trouble if you’re stepping up to a 4k display for anything but work (full-screen video and gaming will probably challenge these GPUs at that resolution) but if that’s what you want, we have a separate guide for you.
If you want more options…
Sometimes building an enthusiast’s PC is more difficult than building a budget one because you have room in the budget to buy high-end components, but you don’t want to go overboard or make decisions that waste your money. We hope this sub $1200 build walks the line between spending good money on components that matter without spending too much on the ones that don’t.
If this is too much though, some of the biggest money sinks here are clearly the video card and the processor. While you could bump down a more affordable motherboard and save about $30, the real savings is in choosing a less powerful and high-end video card, especially since you can upgrade a video card more easily than a processor. Consider the
AMD Radeon R9 280 we used in the $600 build, or step back even further to the R9 270. If you’re an NVIDIA fan, consider the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760, or the GTX 660 on for size. All three will play the latest titles on high settings without trouble, and with solid framerates.
Finally, we mentioned it in the hard drive section above, but we were really close to packing in that 512GB Crucial MX100 SSD in this build. Technically, we had the budget for it, but 512GB is probably overkill for most people in a new build—but if you like the idea, by all means, be our guest!
A Note About Your Operating System
You’re undoubtedly noticing that we haven’t included the cost of an OS license in this roundup. The reason for that is because we don’t want to assume what operating system you’ll install on your build, and frankly, there are so many ways to get a good OS these days on the cheap (office licenses, student discounts, OEM licenses, sales, etc) that there’s no reason to include stock prices. If you want to go Linux, then your cost is nothing. If you’d rather install Microsoft Windows, you’ll probably want a license for Windows 8.1 (
unless you plan to downgrade.)
Newegg has OEM versions of
Windows 8.1 64-bit for $99.99, which is likely what most of you would buy Enthusiasts can grab the $139 Windows 8.1 Pro x64 if needed, but odds are you won’t need the added features (although Bitlocker is a useful tool.)
If you want a different version, a download code to download your own ISO or install media, or want to score a copy of Windows 7 instead of Windows 8,
Newegg has plenty of options for you as well, as does Amazon, in some cases with great prices on old versions of Windows 7. At the same time, you can probably score an even cheaper copy with an educational discount if you have one, or through an employee purchase program if your workplace has a enterprise licensing agreement with Microsoft. Finally, since we didn’t include optical drives with these builds, here’s how to create Windows install media on bootable USB.
Additional Reading
Don’t take our word for these builds. We’re sure you have your own opinions on what should have made it in and what should have been excluded.
One reference that is constantly updated and invaluable for determining exactly
how enthusiast you’re being when it comes to the components you’re buying and how much you should be spending on them is the Logical Increments PC Buying Guide. We used it as a reference extensively here, and the site is super user friendly and regularly updated with new pricing. It’s a big help, and can serve as a good sanity check if your build is getting out of hand.
Also, make sure to read up on your most critical components before you buy.
Anandtech’s 2014 GPU benchmarks, Tom’s Hardware’s 2014 GPU benchmarks, and the Tom’s Hardware forums are invaluable when looking for benchmarks and opinions on some of the components you may buy before you add them to your cart. The BuildaPC subreddit is also a great place to ask for opinions and guidance if you’re having issues or just want the thoughts of people who have been where you are now.
We’ll come back to this system builder’s guide periodically to make sure it’s updated with the best components for each of our builds. Remember though, take our builds as guidelines for your own research and your own PC-building project. If you have a superior build or noticed an error above, let us know in the discussions below.
Photos by Adam Snyder, and Edmund Tse.