Building a Budget Gaming PC in 2026 Is a Pain in the Ass

I ignored my own advice. I built a new PC from scratch in what is likely the worst financial environment to take such an expensive adventure. It involved months of scrounging, begging, and groaning through eBay listings before I could put together a PC within my meager budget. Was it worth it? Well, let’s break it down.

A few months ago, this same build I crafted may have cost less than $1,000 for the parts in total. Now, if you calculate this build’s every component at its current price and use equivalent parts for unavailable components, the 1440p resolution-ready mid-sized tower would demand closer to $1,300 (if you shop for an equivalent AM4 motherboard and CPU cooler). In total, I personally spent around $500 of my own money. The entire process was a bigger pain in the ass than it had to be if I had gone with brand-new off-the-shelf components. If I had, this PC would have blown past any semblance of my self-imposed budget.

Scrounging for parts

Ever since Valve announced its newfangled Steam Machine late last year, I had it in mind to craft my own slimmed-down PC built for Linux-based gaming. I’m in a naturally privileged position because of my job reviewing PCs. So when digging through the office’s old stock of gear, I stumbled upon an aging MSI MEG X570 Godlike motherboard and an NZXT Kraken X62 280mm liquid cooler. These parts are so old you won’t find them new anywhere but the bargain bin. I first thought they were archaic, but when DDR5 RAM prices started skyrocketing, these parts became the framework for the first personal desktop PC I’ve built in years.

The cooler is so ancient it makes use of a mini USB for connecting to the motherboard. The “God-like” MSI motherboard launched back in 2019 for the Ryzen 3000 series of AM4 CPUs (the older socket built for AMD processors before the modern-day AM5). In order to get it working with the most recent Ryzen 5000 series, you need to update the BIOS before you can do anything. That posed a problem, since the motherboard doesn’t sport its own video output.

I had my hands on an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT sent to me for review. When I first got my hands on it, the card had a suggested retail price of $350. Despite AMD’s promise to keep GPU prices low, you can only find this card new for close to $450. I originally planned on using an ancient full-sized tower that was home to my last hand-me-down PC. It was too big, too loud, and too obnoxious. I asked my contacts at Hyte for their latest $150 X50 mid-sized tower with its sleek curves and modern design. I’m so glad I did. As for the power supply, I was lucky to snag the Corsair CX750M for around $60. It was the least painful purchase of this entire process.

The end result is a Frankenstein’s monster of a PC, a cobbled-together mess of modern and venerable components that still somehow work even while operating under a Linux-based operating system. It’s a square peg, round hole of a gaming machine, one that is already outmoded as a fledgling child before it can even crawl.

A motherboard so old it didn’t recognize my old CPU

The ongoing memory shortage is impacting prices of all components, not just those with some form of memory in them. Because the makers of DDR5 memory priced their sticks at a 500% markup, PC builders started hoarding older, slower DDR4 RAM. As DDR4 resale became more expensive, so did older AM4 platforms, which supported the memory type. My original aim was to buy an older AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU or, if that failed, then the slightly less performant Ryzen 7 5700X3D.

These CPUs are notoriously strong contenders, so strong that resellers were jacking up prices for these chips across the board. I went trawling through reseller listings for weeks on end, and I refused to pay around $450 for a 3-year-old processor. Instead, I found a deal on a Ryzen 7 5800XT for $180 at Microcenter and squirreled it away. It offers demonstratively worse performance than the fabled 3D-cache CPUs for gaming. If I wanted this PC to stay in budget, I didn’t have much choice.

Then came the memory conundrum. I bought two used sticks of 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4-4400 memory for around $140 off eBay. The prices have been fluctuating over the last few weeks, though most offerings still sell for over $100 for similar speeds on used sticks. SSDs are also getting more expensive. Luckily, I had a 1TB Samsung 870 Evo SATA drive saved over from a planned build from well over two years ago. I bought the drive on sale for less than $80. Today, that same drive costs $150 on Amazon. It sells for even more elsewhere.

With all these compiled components, the hard part was making sure they all ran. The AM4 socket MSI motherboard does not support the Ryzen 5000 series without a BIOS update. Luckily, this board contains its own on/off button (many modern boards don’t have that) and a small screen to let you know if updates are complete (during regular use, it mostly functions as a playful screen to show you MSI’s mascot Lucky karate chopping ninjas).

I tried again and again to get MSI’s BIOS file to take. After enough searching online, I learned I needed to rename the .A10 file to MSI.ROM before the board could accept it. It may have been obvious to longtime PC builders, but to me it led to teeth-grinding levels of madness. After I successfully flashed the BIOS and finally saw the fans on the XFX Radeon RX 9060 XT start whirring, I didn’t feel so much satisfied as I did relieved.

Hyte’s X50 case was a breath of fresh air

The cooler was another spot of confusion. It runs three separate wires out the top for the pump, fan, and infinity mirror light that uses the first mini USB port I’ve seen in a while. Hyte’s case isn’t technically specced for a 280mm radiator; it fit on the front panel without much fuss and left clearance for an additional fan if I wanted one.

After I tested everything outside the case, I managed to pack everything inside Hyte’s X50 tower. This is where having at least modern component is so damn welcome. Hyte’s case is designed for high airflow, though it doesn’t support any top-mounted fans to make sure rising heat escapes the top. The case makers also sent me a bevy of fans (which are an extra $40 for a pack of four) to stick in every remaining cavity. The case has enough ways to route cables under and behind the motherboard. Both side panels come off just by lifting up and away, although that will inevitably lead to finger smudges on the glass panel, requiring some fine fingers or gloves to keep your machine looking pristine.

The whole case is designed to push airflow from the bottom and up through the back and side, allowing for a neutral pressure environment. That means the amount of cool air going in is equivalent to the amount of hot air going out. I managed to create an environment where I could get cool air to move through the radiator and out the side and back panel. I still have to go into the BIOS and adjust fan speeds for optimal performance. I also need to retry my hand at the cable management. The lucky thing is how Hyte gives you plenty of Velcro strips to play with. Some are built with brackets to contain your power and connection cables. There’s another pack that comes with the box for any lingering free-floating cables as well.

If I had one major complaint, it would be that those stock fans that Hyte sent are not what I imagine should be easy. The stock screws they come with are too easy to cross-thread. Other fans of this kind snap together with magnets to make installation easier as well. I would have preferred these fans use a contrasting color as well. The case is made to look sleek, rather than gamer-fueled. However, I intend to rack this thing with a few RGB strips, just because I can.

Going for older parts means screwing your future self

The end result is a PC that is the minimum of what’s needed for pushing games to their maximum potential at 1440p resolution. At 4K, the 9060 XT and 5800XT don’t have what it takes to get anywhere close to 60 fps if I also want to push ray tracing in some games for more realistic lighting.

The bigger issue is how this PC will necessarily be limited in upgrade paths. I could install two more sticks of 16GB DDR4 RAM and eventually—hopefully—upgrade to a Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. Other than slotting in a more modern GPU (one that is hopefully not bottlenecked by the CPU), that will be it, the end point for what I can possibly do on a machine such as this. If three years down the line I want to upgrade everything, my choice of socket and RAM will necessitate me gutting this whole thing and starting again.

The longer I wait to upgrade, the more expensive components get. I have only 1TB of SSD storage in this device. My plan was to shove another SSD into Hyte’s handy rear SATA compartment and then install Microsoft’s OS so I could dual boot Bazzite and Windows 11. In the time I spent writing this piece, a 1TB SSD I was looking at went from $100 to $125. Prices will only get worse the longer I wait.

You could spend more than $2,000 on a pre-configured machine from the likes of iBuyPower or Maingear, though you’ll still run up against ballooning DDR5 prices. We still don’t know how much Valve’s Steam Machine will cost. The makers of Steam have delayed their PC/console hybrid while they try to figure out the memory dilemma. Their device will still be in the same place as my current PC—with limited upgrade potential.

All I can say is that the experience of building and owning a PC is still worth the hassle. Would I change my original advice? No. This is still an absolutely awful time to build a PC.