Budget Builds: The Finale

Welcome to the grand finale of the first edition of Budget Builds! If you haven’t checked out the first two entries in this series check them out here and here. If you’ve been following along this whole time, welcome back! 

So far I’ve shown you how I typically go about upgrading old desktop PCs into gaming PCs without breaking the bank. The process is extremely easy and is a great way to dip your toes into PC gaming without making a huge investment. If you’re looking for a prebuilt gaming PC online you can expect to spend anywhere from $400 on the low end to over $1000 on the high end.

So how much did we spend on our build?

I spent $91 on the Dell Optiplex from eBay that I used as a starting point. If you’re doing this yourself you might already have a PC to start and won’t need to account for this. The 16GB memory upgrade cost $16, another deal found on eBay. For WiFi I bought a USB wireless adapter found on Amazon for about $13. I had the SSD on hand but was able to find similar options on eBay for $16. The GPU was also in my parts bin but I found the exact same model going for $45 on eBay as well. If you can’t tell, eBay is your friend if you’re looking to build on a budget. 

So our grand total for our first budget build comes to just $181. That is a bargain for any modern gaming device! Just as an example, the Xbox Series S goes for around $300. This PC can play a lot of the same games as the Xbox and works with Xbox game pass too. Oh and you can still use the PC for work and normal everyday web browsing too. Good luck doing that easily with an Xbox.

So how does it perform?

While this PC won’t be breaking any speed records, it certainly performs well enough to play many popular modern games. I tested it out with Rocket League, Apex Legends, and GTA 5, and all 3 games ran at a smooth 60 FPS without any issues. The only hiccups I experienced were while playing GTA 5 with the Chaos Mod turned on which is to be expected (if you know you know).

So if you’re looking to get into gaming but want to save a little money I highly recommend using the same strategy I used in this series. It’s extremely easy to do even if you aren’t super familiar with computers and will save you a ton of many in the process. However, if you need help getting started feel free to send me a message on the contact page. Want something a little more powerful or want it built for you instead of struggling with it yourself? I’m always happy to help! Thanks for following along throughout this project, and stay tuned to see what other fun tech projects I have going on in the future!