Gaming PC

If you want the power of next-gen consoles with a game library that dwarfs the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, there is another option, however. For $600, you could build a gaming PC that blows them out of the water. It's certainly not as easy as just plugging in a console, but putting components together isn't as difficult as you might think, and the payoffs are huge. Practically every game can look better on PC, and PC games go on deep discount all the time. Steam's summer and winter sales are incredible, and the Humble Bundle regularly offers pay-what-you-want deals for older games and indie titles. Since the PC has such a long history, you can find loads of classic games, and with a wireless controller and an HDMI cable, you can play many titles on your TV.

The hard part of building a PC is finding the right combination of components for the right price, as technology advances quickly, and prices can change day to day. The things you need to remember are that you should spend the lion's share of the money on the graphics card, a little bit on the CPU, and as little as possible on everything else — but only buy motherboards and power supplies that have lots of positive user reviews.

Here are a couple of example builds: one all-AMD system for $588.48, and an Intel / Nvidia rig for $589.90 after rebates. You'll also need a mouse and keyboard, but those can be had for a song, and you can save another $15 if you borrow an optical drive from a friend instead of buying one right away. You'll probably only ever need it to install the operating system.

You might think we didn't leave any room in the budget for games, but that's not entirely true. The AMD GPU comes with a copy of Battlefield 4, the Nvidia GPU comes with Assassin's Creed: Black Flag and Splinter Cell: Blacklist, and you'll probably find more excellent free-to-play titles on PC than every game for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U combined.