The Ultra-Cheap PC Build – Less than $350!

This ultra-cheap Ryzen 3 2200G PC build is going to surprise you! For right around $350, you can put together a PC capable of 1080p gaming without an issue! It doesn't even need a graphics card!

As long as you don't expect The Witcher 3 to run at 1080p 60fps on this ultra budget PC, then it's not going to let you down. It'll easily support an upgrade to a stronger Ryzen CPU and it also has plenty of room to add a dedicated graphics card down the line - a GPU should be your first upgrade.

Without wasting any more time on this intro, let's jump into the build! Check the tabs below for a list of the basic items you'll need as well as the steps required to build this PC. If you need a more detailed explanation, check out this build FAQ and this guide.

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.

This little budget build is everything you need if you're trying to get into PC gaming for as cheap as possible. There are ways to go even cheaper, like downgrading the APU to something less powerful, but then you're sacrificing very important (and much needed) gaming potential.

Keep in mind that the price listed above is only for the core components - you will still need to add an operating system and any peripherals you don't already have (mouse, keyboard, audio, etc). 

Case: This ultra-budget gaming PC build is running a fairly basic case from Rosewill. Their SRM 01 is a basic mATX case with the most basic options you need for this build. It has enough room for everything and even comes with a single fan. 

That being said, in a build like this it's better to get a good case with enough room to "grow" into. Buying a cheaper, smaller case only limits your ability to add graphics cards, aftermarket CPU coolers, etc. That being said, your case is what you see every time you look at your PC, so you should make sure you're building inside of one that you like!

Motherboard: The ASRock B450M Pro4 is a good mATX-sized motherboard that delivers all of the features you'll need for an AM4 socket build like this; including the ability to support processor overclocking.

With it, you're getting integrated audio, a built-in ethernet controller, plus 4x SATA headers and 1x M.2 ports for storage, basic 2.1-channel audio, a total of 8 USB ports, and enough fan headers to support this build.

The B450M Pro4 is also one of the few "budget" B450 chipset boards to feature actual heatsinks on the VRMs.

Processor: The 3.7GHz Ryzen 3 2200G from AMD is an awesome processor for what it is. The 2200G is what's referred to as an APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), it's effectively a GPU and CPU mixed into one chip. This is what will be handling ALL of your graphical and processing needs until you add a dedicated graphics card.

If you're wondering how well the R3 2200G can perform, check out the following benchmark of CS:GO. It's in 1080p on low settings and averaging above 120fps - that's damn decent!

In more demanding games, or AAA releases, the 2200G is more likely to hold around 30fps in 1080p, just for reference value. Something like PUBG will have a lot of trouble running on this build, just something else to note.

The R3 2200G comes with a pretty good Wraith Stealth CPU cooler from AMD, but if you're going to be overclocking it would be wise to upgrade. If that's you, check out the best CPU coolers!

Graphics Card: The one major caveat with this build is that it has no graphics card.

However, it does have the R3 2200G's integrated GPU as you saw in the previous section. It's not going to give you quite the same experience as a discrete GPU while gaming, but it will be enough to play most games without too many issues. Basically, it'll work well enough until you're ready to install a discrete GPU of your own.

RAM: When it comes to RAM, 8GB is the baseline for any gaming PC build in 2019. With that in mind, this build is running 8GB of 2400MHz DDR4 RAM in a dual channel configuration of 2x 4GB sticks.

If you want to add more RAM, you should know that the motherboard will support 2 more sticks; ideally, they should be the same speed.

Power Supply: 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 500W supply will do the trick just fine.

I've picked Thermaltake's Smart 500W 80+ Bronze PSU which is a good budget option offering more than enough connections for everything you need, it also comes with a decent 5-year warranty just-in-case the worst were to happen.

Storage: For storage, I opted to load this build with a 240GB SSD. For one, SSDs are significantly faster than HDDs - the difference is mind blowing if you haven't used one. For two, 240GB is often more than enough space to get a build up and running and install a handful of games.

Luckily, storage is the easiest part of a gaming PC to "upgrade". It's simply a process of plugging a new drive in and voila, you have more space.

All-in-all, this build serves as a great foundation to start with for any aspiring (and frugal) PC gamer. It can be expanded and upgraded into a really solid 1080p-144op gaming PC by simply adding a graphics card like the GTX 1660 Ti.

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 it being a Windows 10 exclusive, 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 for this.

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.

This build isn't guaranteed to max games out in 1080p at 60fps, let alone in 720p. But, what it will do is give you a good foundation to build upon as well as get you into games on low-mid settings - in my opinion, gaming with low graphics is better than not gaming at all!

It will support various upgrades like adding a dedicated graphics card (recommended you do that sooner than later), upgrading to a stronger Ryzen-based processor on the AM4 socket, adding more RAM, adding more storage, and a whole slew of other upgrades.

At the end of the day, you're not here because you have tons of cash to blow on the best PC out there, you're here because you just want to enjoy PC gaming whatever way possible - that's exactly what this build allows.

If you have any questions about this build, feel free to ask me in the comment section!