One of the main caveats of PC gaming pertains to the overall cost of a system. While consoles usually cost less than $500, most prebuilt PCs cost nearly twice as much. On top of that, most of them offer the same level of performance as contemporary consoles. This is where building your own PC can have some major advantages. You can easily build a 1080p gaming PC for just over $600, one that destroys the Playstation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X in terms of raw performance.
Building a gaming PC isn’t hard. However, it’s important that you choose the right set of components. This will give you that extra bit of performance all the while keeping your spendings in check. When aiming for 60 FPS (regardless of the resolution), you don’t have to worry much about the CPU. Just pair any decent processor with a capable graphics card and you’re set. However, if you are looking to build a PC to game at 144 FPS, then things get a bit more complicated.
| Component | Name | Price |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 | $159 |
| Motherboard | ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING | $120 |
| GPU | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 | $299 |
| Memory | CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB | $85 |
| Power Supply | Seasonic S12III 500 | $55 |
| SSD | Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 1TB | $120 |
| Cabinet | Phanteks Eclipse P400 | $80 |
| Total | $919 |
Overview: Best Budget PC Build for 1080p 144Hz Gaming
You need to make sure that you go with a CPU that doesn’t bottleneck your graphics card. More importantly, the latter should be able to shell out 100+ frames per sec or the whole endeavor is bound to fail. Let’s have a look:
Best CPU for 1080p 144 Hz Gaming: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Price: $159|Rs. 15,599
| Socket | AM4 |
| Cores/Threads | 6/12 |
| Base Clock | 3.6GHz |
| Boost Clock | 4.2GHz |
| L3 Cache | 32MB |
| TDP | 65W |
| Memory Support | DDR4 3200 |
| PCIe Lanes | 16 |
AMD’s 3rd Gen Ryzen 5 3600 is hands down the best mainstream CPU on the market. Offering significantly higher single-threaded and gaming performance than its predecessor (R5 2600), it challenges Intel’s Core i7-8700K and the Core i5-9600K. Offering gaming performance within 5% of the Intel part, it is considerably faster in everything else from content creation to compression, encoding and other productivity-related tasks.
In light of the impending Ryzen 4000 launch, the prices have significantly dropped, with Microcenter selling the 3600 for as low as $159.
Motherboard: ASUS ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING
Price: $120|Rs. 11,100
ASUS has some of the best motherboards for both AMD and Intel CPUs. The ROG Strix B450-F Gaming comes with all the premium features of the ROG brand and then some. You get support for up to 64GB of 3466MHz DDR4 memory, dual-M.2 sockets, 3-Way XFX and 6 SATAIII ports. There’s also a fair bit of RGB as is customary with ROG boards and as many as 9 USB 3 ports. ASUS’ Supreme FX Audio is one of the best on-board audio chipsets you’ll find and the LAN chipset delivers speeds up to 1000Mbps.
Best Graphics Card for 1080p 144Hz Gaming: EVGA GeForce RTX 2060 KO GAMING
Price: $299|Rs. 25,799
| Cores | 1920 |
| Boost Clock | 1680MHz |
| Memory | 6GB GDDR6 |
| Bus Width | 192-bit |
| Memory Clock | 12 Gbps |
| Power Connector | 8-pin |
| GPU Length | 202 mm |
EVGA’s new GeForce RTX 2060 KO Edition brings down the price of the cheapest RTX card to just $279, on par with the GTX 1660 Ti while offering about 20-25% more performance and of course, ray-tracing capabilities as well. For high frame rate 1080p gaming and 1440p 60 FPS, this is the ideal GPU if you’re on a budget.
Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) CL18 (3600MHz)
Corsair’s Vengeance LPX memory comes with a rated frequency of 3600MHz and CL of 18 ms. This makes it suitable for just about any Ryzen 3000 CPU. For a better idea of how memory speeds and latency affect gaming performance, read the following post:
AMD Ryzen 3000 CPUs: Impact of Memory Speeds on Gaming Performance and Dual Channel RAM
Power Supply: Seasonic S12III 500
Seasonic has some of the best budget power supplies on the market. For the more fancier Gold and Platinum rated modular PSUs, Corsair has the best products but in this range, Seasonic rules supreme. A 500W PSU should be more than enough for this 1080p 144 Hz build.
Storage: Intel 660p Series M.2 2280 1TB PCIe
QLC based NVMe SSDs are the slowest Solid State Drives but they are still much much faster than traditional SATA HDDs. You get read/write speeds of up to 1,800MB/s which is almost 20x more than most HDDs. It’s best to get a small SSD for the OS and commonly used applications while an HDD for videos, images and other bulky files if you can’t afford a 1TB SSD.
Case: Phanteks Eclipse P400
The Phanteks Eclipse P400 is a solid case that comes with a hint of blue LED lighting and ample space. It has a full tempered glass side window and a clean built. For under $100, you won’t find a better cabinet.
Monitor Suggestion: AORUS CV27F 27″
| Resolution | 1920×1080 |
| Size | 27″ |
| Refresh Rate | 165Hz |
| Viewing angle | 178° |
| Display Colors | 16.7 Million |
| Brightness | 400 cd/m2 |
| Panel | VA |
| Response Time | 1 ms |
| Connectors | 2 x HDMI 2.0 1 x DisplayPort 1.2 |
| Adaptive Sync Technology | AMD FreeSync 2 |
