It’s astonishing what a difference 15 months makes.

That’s how long it’s been since we last built a gaming rig for $800. Since then, the price war between AMD’s ATI division and Nvidia has become a pyre upon which Nvidia’s profits have been sacrificed. AMD’s CPU group and Intel have duked it out, too, with the low and midrange of the processor lines undergoing a price war.

Meanwhile, the price of storage and memory has also plummeted. About the only thing that hasn’t dropped much is the cost of the case and power supply. That all means that this year’s edition of the $800 gaming PC comes pretty close to being a no-compromises system, particularly if you’re running on a 20- or 22-inch, 1680×1050 display.

As with all our recommended configurations, we’ve built and tested the system. The system does not include a mouse, keyboard, or display. You probably already have that gear. All the components work together. Prices are the best we could find at a given moment in time through Internet shopping sources, and prices may vary when you check them. Also, we don’t take into account shipping charges and sales tax, as those can vary widely.



Note that we do include the price of the operating system. If you’re willing to take a (slight) risk, and use the freely downloadable Windows 7 release candidate, you can either save $100 or add some beefier components. As with all our systems, if you don’t completely agree with our component choices, that’s fine—consider this a working template for the system you want to build.

With these notes in mind, let’s look at the system. Continued…