Trying to build yourself the best $800 gaming PC possible? With that kind of budget, you can build an EPIC gaming PC that won’t need any upgrades for a long time! This build is fully loaded with an AMD R5 1600, a 6GB GTX 1060, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 1TB of storage to make sure you don’t fall short anytime soon.

All of this gives you a seriously badass custom gaming PC that will help you destroy the competition without doing the same to your wallet! It’ll be able to easily 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 upgrade potential – one that won’t need any kind of upgrades for quite a while. This beast will be relevant for at least 1-2 years, which is saying something when you’re talking about technology in 2017.

Have a question? Ask me in the comment section!

Below you’ll find some suggested add-ons for this build, some I’ll mention more in-depth further down this page, but some are pretty self-explanatory like optical (DVD/CD) drives. Although not entirely necessary, optical drives can sometimes come in handy and I strongly recommended having one; if you have an old PC kicking around, it’s optical drive will more than likely work for you and you won’t need to buy a new one.

When you’re picking parts to build yourself a gaming PC there are lots of things to consider. For instance, 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 gives you a lot of new things to consider to effectively balance price with performance. But, why do all that when you could have me do it for you?!

Keep in mind that the price listed above is for the core components only, you will still need an operating system, and any other peripherals you don’t currently have.

Corsair’s Carbide Spec 02 case is an awesome choice at this level as it gives you everything you’ll need and a bit more for a great price. It comes with 2x 120mm fans which is enough for a build at this level but you’re more than free to add more at your discretion. It also has 2 USB ports and front audio jacks. If you’re not a fan of this case, there are lots of other options available like the NZXT S340 or the Phanteks P400 just to name a couple. If you need a hand picking out a case, feel free to ask me in the comment section!

The MSI B350 PRO-VDH is a great mATX motherboard for the price and it’s giving you all of the features that you’ll need, like integrated audio, a built-in ethernet controller, 4x USB 3.0 ports, 4x USB 2.0, 4x SATA ports, support for up to 4 sticks of DDR4 RAM and lots of room for future expansion. The B350 chipset does support overclocking on AMD’s Ryzen processors, which means you don’t need to upgrade to a more expensive board if overclocking was your plan.

AMD’s new 6 core/12 thread Ryzen 5 1600 is an awesome processor that won’t have any issues with gaming or with content creation. It supports overclocking, but you really don’t need to overclock this processor to get great performance out of it anyways. It comes with a CPU cooler that will be more than sufficient, so you won’t need an aftermarket one, but you’re free to upgrade to something like the Cryorig H7 if you wanted a better cooling profile. Pound for pound, the R5 1600 is the best mid-range CPU for gaming right now.

The GTX 1060 is great graphics card in both price and performance, it’s easily the best options at this level without going too crazy on cost. Zotac’s GTX 1060 AMP Edition runs great, overclocks fairly well and doesn’t get too hot while doing it. It offers 6GB of GDDR5 VRAM, 5 display outputs, and a small profile that’ll fit inside any case.  The 6GB GTX 1060 is easily capable of supporting VR headsets like the Vive or Rift as well as getting 60fps in most AAA games.

When it comes to RAM, 8GB is all you need for gaming this far into 2017, really. There will come a time (sooner than later) when most games will demand maybe 12GB or more, but that time hasn’t come just yet. Even some of the very few games that currently “require” 16GB run perfectly fine with an 8GB setup. With that in mind, if you’re like me and you end up running Chrome with 100 different tabs open while gaming at the same time, you might want to consider upgrading to 16GB.

There are a lot of high performance parts in this build, so its fair if you’re assuming its going to need a gigantic power supply, but luckily it won’t! At most this build will only use a few hundred watts of power, so an 80% efficiency 550W supply will do the trick just fine. I’ve picked EVGA’s 550 B3 which is an awesome  fully modular supply offering more than enough connections for everything you need, it also comes with a nice 5-year warranty. 

I didn’t pull any punches when it came to squeezing every ounce of power from your $800 budget, and you will not be disappointed! This build is easily capable of running pretty much whatever you throw at it on at least high settings in 1080p at 60fps or better!

When it comes to picking an operating system, you have quite a few options laid out before you. But, the best / easiest two are either Windows or something Linux-based.

If you’re really strapped for cash, or you really just don’t like Windows, Ubuntu is a great option because it’s entirely free, and it’s really solid/secure. It’s a Linux-based OS and can play any game that supports Linux. More and more games are adding Linux support, but it definitely sucks when a game you’ve been waiting forever for ends up being Windows only…

The more expensive option is buying a copy of Windows. With DirectX 12 becoming more common and the Skylake-based processors basically demanding Windows 10, you might want to consider jumping on that right away, but it’s ultimately your call.

Installing your operating system can be done in a couple of different ways, either by DVD or a USB flash drive that you either create yourself or buy. Either will get the job done, but going for Windows & using the retail DVD (or USB flash drive) is going to be the easiest – any cheap DVD drive will work.

If you want to create your own USB flash drive to install something like Ubuntu from, you can find some decent instructions here.

If this is the absolute first gaming PC you’ve ever owned, then chances are high that you don’t have a very good keyboard + mouse combo, or that your monitor is sub-par to really enjoy your experience.

If this is the scenario that you’re in, then we have some really awesome suggestions for you to consider. Each peripheral was hand-picked for this build and they’re all guaranteed high quality.

If you came here looking to build yourself a badass $800 gaming PC, I hope 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 1080p gaming, or even 1440p!

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 another 8GB of RAM in there to maintain relevance.

All-in-all, you will be hard pressed to build a better gaming PC for under 800 dollars, unless you’re building it with a specific game or purpose in mind! Don’t forget to leave a comment below, and share this with your friends!