Trying to build yourself the best $800 gaming PC possible? With that kind of budget you can easily build a powerful gaming PC that won’t need any upgrades for a long time! This $800 build is fully loaded with an AMD R5 3600, a 6GB GTX 1660 Ti, 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 500GB of SSD storage, just to make sure you don’t fall short anytime soon!

All of that hardware gives you a seriously awesome custom gaming PC that will help you destroy your competition without doing the same to your wallet! It’ll easily be able to handle AAA games in 1080p at 60fps or better and it’ll even give you solid 1440p performance as well!

A budget of $800 is going to get you the core parts you need to build a really solid mid-level gaming PC with a lot of gaming potential – one that won’t need any kind of upgrades for quite a while. This beast won’t go obsolete for at least a couple of years, which is saying something when you’re talking about tech in 2020.

Have a question? Ask me in the comment section or look at our PC build FAQ. 

Complete Build Breakdown

When you’re picking parts to build yourself a gaming PC there are a lot of considerations to keep in mind. Do you plan on upgrading it in the future? Do you just want what you can get now, or do you want to eventually overclock your processor? Each path potentially poses a lot of new considerations if your goal is effectively balancing price vs performance.

But, why do all that when you could have me do it for you?!

Case: Corsair iCue 220T is a solid mid-tower ATX case. It’s giving you premium features like a full tempered glass side panel, and great cable management options without forcing you to spend on a premium price.

It comes with 3 fans so no need to get extra unless you want to personalize your build further.

Alternatively, there a tons of other cases to choose from.

CPU & Cooler: AMD’s R5 3600 is a complete beast when it comes to gaming, streaming, and pretty much anything else. With a sub-$200 price tag, the R5 2600 simply cannot be beaten in terms of price vs performance.

Motherboard: The default motherboard, ASRock’s B450M Pro4, is an awesome mATX option for a Ryzen-based build. It gives you support for all of the features we need with room to expand down the line, including 4x SATA3 ports, multiple case fan headers, 8x USB ports, 4 slots for DDR4 RAM, integrated audio, a built-in ethernet controller, and even M.2 NVMe SSD support. 

If you’re going to be running Windows 11, it will be compatible with this motherboard as it’s loaded with a TPM module as all modern motherboards are. 

Graphics Card: For the GPU, we’re going with a 6GB GTX 1660 from MSI that offers up some of the best price vs performance out of any currently released card of the same tier.

MSI’s GTX 1660 Ventus XS 6G OC is one of the best options right now and it’s definitely the one to go for if you’re trying to save as much as you can on your build. It’s capable of 60fps+ on ultra settings in pretty much any AAA game and significantly higher frames in less intensive games like CS:GO, LoL, Overwatch, Fortnite, etc.

RAM:16GB of RAM is the perfect amount for a gaming PC at this level. With that in mind, this build is running 2x8GB sticks of Corsair Vengeance LPX at 3000MHz. This leaves you with lots of room for future expansion and if you wanted to run more than 16GB that’s completely possible – when you do upgrade try to stick to the same speed as your RAM will automatically change its speed to match your slowest stick.

Power Supply: EVGA’s 500 BR power supply is a good, reliable, power supply. It’s rated to 80+ bronze and comes with a 3-year warranty + 24/7 technical support from EVGA. As the 500 BR is a non-modular unit, all cables are permanently attached. If you’d prefer a semi-modular supply, I’d suggest checking out the 500 BQ instead – it’s a little more expensive but objectively much better.

Storage: When it comes to storage, there’s a Kingston A400 480GB SSD in this build by default. Beyond that, you can easily add up to 3 more drives based on what the motherboard will support. All you’ll need are extra SATA data cables and the additional drives themselves.

Peripherals

Operating System 

WiFi

Since the motherboard in this build does not have built-in WiFi (most don’t) you will need a WiFi adapter if you plan on using a wireless internet connection. That said, if you have the option to run a wired connection, do that instead because it will be faster & more reliable.

Since there are tons of options available when it comes to picking a WiFi adapter, it can be a little confusing at first; but don’t worry because I’m going to help sort that out… Or, at the very least, I’m going to try to make it as simple as possible.

Basically, if you have a newer router/modem, chances are it’s on the AC protocol and supports both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands – perfect. If it’s older, it might be on the N protocol which is a little slower than AC, but your modem/router might still be new enough to be “dual band” and support both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. This is the first thing you want to figure out – search the model number which will be stamped somewhere on it if you’re unsure what you’re running.

Next, it’s basically just a matter of matching numbers with numbers and letters with letters. If you have a dual band (2.4GHz + 5GHz) modem on the AC protocol capable of 1300Mpbs, you want a dual band AC1300 adapter. 

Conclusion

If you came here looking to build yourself an awesome $800 gaming PC, I KNOW you found what you were looking for! This build puts out a lot of power for the price and, in my opinion, it’s probably the best value when it comes to a 1080p 60fps gaming PC, or even 1440p 60fps!

Like I said at the beginning of this build guide, it’s going to take more than a year for this build to need any kind of serious upgrades; and even then, you might only need to throw in some more RAM or something else easy like that. 

All-in-all, you will be hard pressed to build a better 1080p gaming PC for $800 in 2018; unless you’re building it with a specific game or purpose in mind! The power this build is packing is more than enough to handle all of your favorite AAA games in 1080p at 60fps without a problem! 

If you have any questions or comments about this build, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments!