Counter Strike Global Offensive is one of the most popular games nowadays. And one of the main reasons of such popularity and fame for CS GO is the highly qualified and perfectly developed professional gaming scene. Hundreds of esports organizations exist in the world of CSGO, and thousands of gamers play tens of thousands of CSGO matches today on the highest competitive level.

Probably any gamer who ever started playing a ranked match in Counter Strike dreamed of becoming a pro. It would be great to play your favorite game together with top competitors, to gain worldwide fame, to win a major CSGO tournament and to earn much money, wouldn’t it?

To play CSGO seriously and to reach the esports level, one needs to practice a lot, to become better in the game day after day. But what if you want to get to the top ladder, and you feel you could do that, but your PC doesn’t allow you showing all your skill?

Old PC’s don’t have enough performance to guarantee gamers smooth gaming experience. Suffering a lag, shutter, control failure or a frame rate freezing in a decisive ranked match moment is a common reason for many good players to stay in low ladders for too long and to lose motivation.

How can they fix this trouble? The answer is simple – by purchasing a new gaming PC.

Of course, not everyone has lots of money stored to build a new gaming system on the first demand. But actually many people frequently overestimate the amount of funds needed to invest into their hardware to play CSGO and other modern games with no problem.

Now, try to answer a question from experienced esports gaming specialists: have you ever thought that it is possible to build a brand new PC for CS GO with just $350 of a budget? We’re serious. It is totally real.

$350 CSGO Gaming PC Build

So, before we start describing parts, there are a few things which should be remarked.

First, we didn’t review the second-hand market of used hardware. All the parts included in this build are new.

Second, we took prices from pcpartpicker.com (relevant for June 12, 2019).

Third, the monitor and peripheral devices are NOT included into the overall budget. We assumed you most probably had some old display and expendable mouse and keyboard devices to make it through a couple of weeks till buying new ones if necessary. In case you have been playing CSGO with a laptop, you’ll need to add nearly $100 to the starting budget.

Playing Counter Strike on a laptop… uhh… well. Let’s start building.

$350 CSGO Gaming PC: Processor

The central processing unit (aka CPU aka processor) is the heart of your gaming PC. As we aim to build the cheapest computer specifically for CSGO, our goal is to get the best single-core performance CPU for less money. So, the choice is the AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor with 3.1 GHz of stock frequency.

For the first look, it is a worse solution than its “blue” competitor – the Intel Pentium Gold G5400 which has 3.7 GHz for the same cost. The only “but” destroying all the arguments is that the user can easily overclock the Ryzen CPU to reach even higher frequencies with a box cooler (up to 3.9-4.0 GHz). And the Pentium isn’t overclockable. Additionally, the R3 1200 has 4 physical cores, while G5400 offers only 2 cores with 2 additional “virtual” threads in total.

Ryzen 3 1200 price: $65.

Cheap CSGO PC: Motherboard

Factors influencing our choice of a motherboard for the Ryzen 3 CPU are a bit tricky. At first, we refused going in for the AMD A320 chipset because it does not provide the processor overclocking option. At second, we decided to add some solid upgrade potential to a system, and denied B350 solutions. So, our choice was the B450M-HDV AM4 Micro ATX motherboard by AsRock.

It gives the user everything they might need from this product category: 2 DIMM slots for RAM modules, 1 PCI-Express slot, 4 SATA ports and even the M.2 slot for compact SSD storages. Additionally, you can easily upgrade your PC through replacing the current CPU with a more powerful one in future. B450 motherboards will support AMD Zen2 processors which are planned for release in July.

AsRock B450M-HDV price: $65.

Counter Strike PC: RAM

AMD Ryzen processors work better when paired with dual-channel high-frequency RAM modules. We didn’t go for 3000+ MHz sticks, but decided to pick two 4GB DDR4 Patriot Signature Line modules with a stock clock at 2400 MHz. The previously chosen board allows overclocking RAM, so one can try conquering 2933 MHz and even more. In case you don’t want to overclock your memory, 2x4GB stock modules will still be more than enough to play CS GO as a pro.

2x4 GB Patriot Signature Line DDR4-2400MHz RAM modules price: $38.

Storage for CSGO: SSD

The choice of a drive is totally yours, depending on how you plan to use your computer. Our solution was the Patriot Burst 120GB 2.5” SSD storage. In a modern gaming reality, possessing even the cheapest SSD drive is a must: it is much faster than standard HDD’s, so your PC will boot and load CSGO maps at a very high speed. In case you need more memory space for your comfort, buying either an additional SSD or a standard 1TB hard drive shouldn’t be a serious problem in future.

Patriot Burst 120GB SSD price: $19.

The CSGO PC: Video Card

Nowadays, there is only one king of budget gaming video cards (GPU’s). The goal we pursued was the same: to get more FPS in CS GO while paying less money. The most suitable option for the $350 budget was the Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4GB Gaming GPU. At the cost of $120, it does not have competitors in terms of a price/performance value. The NVidia 1050 Ti GPU of the same category offers up to 2 times less frames per second in different titles. Additionally, the RX 570 chip suits the Ryzen 3 1200 abilities perfectly.

Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4GB Gaming 4G price: $119.

Budget Gaming PC Power Supply

The power supply unit was actually the simplest to choose. We went for the cheapest 400-watt PSU with the 80+ Bronze certificate available on pcpartpicker.com. There were cheaper options, but saving too much money on a PSU can cause serious risk for the whole system. So, in case you have a bit higher budget, the first part to invest more funds into it is a power supply.

So, What’s Up?

The gaming PC we assembled can provide you with more than enough performance. The system gives out over 200 FPS in CS GO on “ultra” graphics settings in the 1920x1080 screen resolution. Keeping in mind that most of esports players use low graphics presets to minimize latencies and lags, we can guarantee your new PC is an overkill machine for Counter Strike Global Offensive.

The price summary table:

Part Title Price CPU AMD Ryzen 3 1200 $65 MB AsRock B450M-HDV $65 RAM 2x4 GB Patriot Signature Line DDR4-2400 Memory $38 SSD Patriot Burst 120 GB 2.5” drive $19 GPU Gigabyte Radeon RX 570 4 GB Gaming 4G $119 PSU EVGA BR 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified $33 Total Budget CSGO Gaming PC $339

Enjoy playing CS GO as a pro esports gamer!

P.S. I think we forgot about the PC case to put all hardware inside. If you have the case from your old computer, just use it with no fear. If you don’t, spend the remaining 11 bucks to get the used case on Amazon, or add 10 to 20 more dollars to buy a new one.

P.P.S. Or go in for some DIY, and turn a cardboard box into a PC case like this guy did.

Here, everything is ready for you to conquer CSGO esports. Climb up the ranks, assemble your team and then win Majors.

Have a good luck, and don’t stop playing games you like!