Economical PC: A Gaming PC Under $600

Specs On A Good Gaming PC For Less Than $600. Go Ahead And Give It A Build.

Happy New Year everyone! With every new year there will be plenty of triple A titles being released all throughout 2015. So the time seems right to revisit the economical gaming PC building articles, and what better way to do that then with an awesome gaming PC packed full of power that comes in just under $600 dollars.

Here’s a quick look at this gaming PC’s build components. If $600 is too pricing you can also look back at the cheaper previous gaming PC builds.

• Case: Cooler Master Elite 311 (Blue) ATX Mid Tower Case — $37.99
• Motherboard: Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 ATX AM3+ — $99.98
• Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX — $34.99
• RAM: Kingston Fury Black Series 8GB DDR3-1600 Memory (2 x 4GB) — $66.99
• Hard Drive: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB — $54.99
• Processor: AMD FX-4300 3.8GHz Quad-Core — $84.70
• CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo — $29.99
• GPU: MSI Radeon R9 280 3GB TWIN FROZR Video Card — $179.99

Total: $589.52

Normally I don’t add a CPU cooler to a gaming PC build guide since most regular CPU’s will come with a stock cooler which do their job just fine. This upgrade though will allow for some overclocking, give us better temperatures, and a slightly quieter performance overall. If you want to spring for the Hyper 212 Plus it is basically the same as the Evo with an extra fan and a few slight redesigns.

The motherboard has some great upgrade ability for future proofing this gaming PC; it also will give us great benefits for the now with four RAM dimms, room for an SLI or Crossfire configuration. Asus is a very well-known brand with a great warranty so you can buy this motherboard without fear.

The Crossfire compatibility on our motherboard will work great with the graphics card we picked. The R9 280 is a great mid-range card that performs really well running games at 1080p with respectable framerates. The only problems with most AMD cards are the high watts needed to power them and the amount of heat they kick off.

Choosing 8 gigs of Ram is a must for any gaming PC that wants to run most modern games on recommended specs. There is always plenty of room to go for a 16 gig configuration in the future like six months to a year down the line.

This year I believe to be the death of dual core gaming. Especially for the triple a titles coming out. Most require a minimum quad core clocked at around 3.3 GHz. So I chose the AMD FX-4300 since it has a base clock of 3.8GHz with some overhead for overclocking. Paired with our CPU cooler this thing will perform great when overclocked. Even better is you don’t have to overclock it to get a great performance the base clock will work just fine for 1080p gaming.

To be quite frank with each title with each new blockbuster release the recommended specs are increasingly staggering. This is not a 4K monster PC. This is a more than capable 1080p, 60fps gaming PC master. This will easily outperform the “Next Gen Consoles” to give you the best gaming experience and all for under $600.