No matter how much money you have to spend, you can put together your own PC that will play games well now—and leave you lots of room to grow.

Of all the reasons to build a gaming-oriented desktop computer yourself rather than buy one from a manufacturer, the best of them might just be the control it gives you over your money. Sure, big companies may get bulk discounts that they can pass on to you, but you're still stuck with the components they want you to have—or a limited selection if they let you choose some yourself—and uncertain upgradability. If you decide later that you want a faster processor, a more powerful video card, or more storage, you might find upgrading too much of a hassle to bother with.

Build your own computer and you don't have that problem. You get exactly the parts you want and can afford, and can sleep easy knowing that as technology evolves and hardware changes, you can make an easy swap-out yourself so you can always stay current. Plus, once you get into the build cycle, you'll never spend more money than you need to: Just replace this piece of hardware with a new one and you have a new computer—for a fraction of what you may have to pay a major manufacturer.

Over the last six months or so, we've run a series of stories showing you how to build a gaming desktop of your own, regardless of your budget. We've explored the psychology of parts selection, shown you how to put the pieces together, and even explained how targeted upgrades can make all the difference in the games you play and how well. All of that remains good, basic advice for how you should approach your own purchases when you're looking to build a computer, and we wanted to round those stories up here so you can find, with just a click or two, the information you need to get started.

That said, technology moves pretty fast, and not all the choices we made the first time around are ones we'd make today. So along with each of the stories below, you'll find our updated hardware and pricing (obtained from Newegg.com, and accurate as of the date of publication, or based on the advertised list price if that's not available) recommendations, along with staying true (or as true as possible) to the previous stories' attempts to improve on earlier configurations in the series. When you're making your own computer, what you have is often as important as what you buy—especially when you need to stay within a budget. But even if that's the case, it's still always possible to take advantage of the best the current world of DIY offers you. Happy building!—



Of all of our recent budget-based gaming PC builds, this was the most difficult to redo. When we first assembled the parts for this toward the end of last year, the devastating had not yet occurred, so the prices of many components—particularly hard drives—were much more reasonable. The impact from that disaster is still being felt on the hardware market, so we had to make a number of sacrifices and replacements this time that we'd have preferred to not have to. All things considered, we think we did pretty well. The big change, as shown here, is that we can no longer justify devoting even the least-expensive CPU slot to AMD. Besides issues of price and performance, the upgrade path isn't there the way it is with the competition; Intel's 7 Series chipset, which offers bidirectional compatibility with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips, sealed the deal and offer the user a better way to use more powerful CPUs all the way up the chain. A nice additional bonus: an extra Newegg discount on an overclocked video card that made it the same price as the standard-clocked version.

Updated Component List

CPU: ($74.99)

Motherboard: ($84.99)

Video Card: ($144.99, after mail-in rebate)

Memory: ($24.99)

Hard Drive: ($64.99)

Optical Drive: ($17.99)

Case: ($29.99)

Power Supply: ($49.99)

Total: $492.92



Interestingly, a lot of the problems we encountered with the $500 weren't issues here at all. In fact, we had considerably more upgradability and future-proofing here than we expected. Granted, most of our savings came by way of a hefty rebate on the video card, which uses the chipset, but we'll go with whatever works. This also means sticking with our tried-and-true favorite CPU of the last year, the Intel Core i5-2500K—but paired with a current-generation motherboard, you'll be all set to upgrade to an Ivy Bridge chip at some point in the future if you want. Though our PCs start getting more aesthetically interesting at $1,000 and offer even better gaming performance, this system shows just how drastically building can change in even a few months' time: A system as powerful as this, for this little money, wasn't possible late last year.

Updated Component List

CPU: ($219.99)

Motherboard: ($114.99)

Video Card: ($179.99, after mail-in rebate)

Memory: ($31.99)

Hard Drive: ($99.99)

Optical Drive: Lite-On DVD Burner iHAS124-04 ($17.99)

Case: Rosewill FBM-01 ($29.99)

Power Supply: Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus RS-550-PCAR-E3 ($49.99)

Total: $744.92



We've said it before and we'll say it again: The $1,000 price range is our preferred entry point for building a gaming PC because it's the first point at which you attain the best balance of power and upgrade potential. That shows here mainly in the video card, based on AMD's design, but more options as far as the case and power supply are concerned don't hurt, either. Though we still wish we could cram in a slightly larger hard drive, 1.5TB is still a goodly chunk of space, and going with it saves us just enough money to max out our purchases elsewhere. Building against a predetermined spending limit always means having to give up something, but with this system we don't feel like we had to give up too much.

Updated Component List

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K ($219.99)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H ($114.99)

Video Card: ($349.99)

Memory: Kingston HyperX Blu 4GB ($31.99)

Hard Drive: ($119.99)

Optical Drive: Lite-On DVD Burner iHAS124-04 ($17.99)

Power Supply: ($64.99 after mail-in rebate)

Case: ($79.99 after mail-in rebate)

Total: $999.92



Intel's (current) top-level Ivy Bridge CPU makes its debut appearance here, and offers solid performance as well as power efficiency. We got a double dose of that by also choosing a video card using the GPU—not only the fastest out there, but also one that draws much less energy than last-generation models or even this generation's competition. Most of our other choices didn't need to change that much, and when their prices adjusted they generally did so in our favor. There's almost nothing you won't be able to do with this PC, except convince yourself that you were able to put it together for less than $400.

Updated Component List

CPU: ($332)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H ($114.99)

Video Card: ($499.99)

Memory: ($64.99)

SSD (Primary Storage): ($124.99 after mail-in rebate)

Hard Drive (Secondary Storage): ($129.99)

Optical Drive: ($74.99 after mail-in rebate)

Power Supply: Thermaltake TR2 TRX-650M ($64.99 after mail-in rebate)

Case: NZXT H2 ($79.99 after mail-in rebate)

Total: $1,486.92



As was true when we ran these stories originally, our $2,000 gaming PC is basically a souped-up version of our $1,500 model—mostly with an additional emphasis on video potential. In order to make room for the dual-GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 we had to pull back on the RAM, and improving the power supply was also a most, but that was about the extent of the tweaks required. This is a screaming system that uses a lot less electricity than you might expect (or would have seen last year at this time), and is ready for plenty of future innovations and upgrades as well.

Updated Component List

CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K ($332)

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H ($114.99)

Video Card: ($999.99)

RAM: ($37.99)

SSD (Primary Storage): OCZ Vertex 3 (120GB) ($124.99 after mail-in rebate)

Hard Drive (Secondary Storage): 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX ($129.99)

Optical Drive: Asus Black Blu-ray combo drive ($74.99 after mail-in rebate)

Power Supply: ($104.99 after mail-in rebate)

Case: NZXT H2 ($79.99 after mail-in rebate)

Total: $1,999.92



As our most recent (and least fiscally responsible) gaming PC build, this monster needed almost no major changes to be brought up to date. The big thing we did is swap out the two (excellent) overclocked cards we used for one GTX 690, similar to what we did in our $2,000 build; that gives us better frame rates and considerably improved power efficiency. Because the price of quad-channel memory kits has come down in the last couple of months, we can also bump our RAM up to 16GB—and pay less in doing so. But otherwise our choices, some of which have also come down in price or have new rebates in effect, remain among the best ways out there for you to get the best gaming computer possible when money is no object.

Updated Component List

CPU: ($589.99)

Motherboard: ($359.99)

Video Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 ($999.99)

RAM: ($124.99)

SSD (Primary Storage): ($229.99 after mail-in rebate)

Hard Drive (Secondary Storage): 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARX ($129.99)

Optical Drive: Asus Black Blu-ray combo drive ($74.99 after mail-in rebate)

CPU Cooler: ($62.99 after mail-in rebate)

Power Supply: ($229.99)

Case: ($349.99)

Total: $3,152.90