Budget
The Starter
~$775
Plays modern games beautifully at 1080p and handles school, work, and everyday life without breaking a sweat. The smart-money pick.
See the parts list
Build Your Own PC. We'll Walk You Through It.
Never built a computer? Perfect — you're exactly who this site is for. Pick a parts list, follow our step-by-step guide, and a couple of hours later you'll own a PC you built with your own hands. It's easier than IKEA furniture, and the instructions are better.
Start Here — 3 Steps
"Building a PC" sounds like something engineers do. In practice, it's snapping parts into slots and plugging in cables. Here's the whole journey.
1
Pick a build
Choose one of our three parts lists below. Every part in a list is picked to work with the others — buy exactly the list and compatibility is one thing you won't have to worry about.
2
Follow the assembly guide
Our step-by-step guide shows what goes where and in what order, written for someone who's never opened a case. Give yourself an afternoon for your first build.
3
Boot it up
Press the power button, install Windows (or Linux), update your drivers, done. The guide has a first-boot checklist and a troubleshooting section for the "uh oh" moments.
Our Builds
Three complete parts lists, priced in October 2026. Each one is a full, working PC — just add a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (you probably already own those).
Mid-Range
The Sweet Spot
~$1,475
Smooth, high-refresh 1440p gaming plus plenty of muscle for streaming, editing, and multitasking. This is the one we'd buy for most people.
See the parts listHigh-End
The Dream Machine
~$2,565
The fastest gaming CPU on the planet paired with a monster graphics card. For 4K gaming, content creation, or just because you want the best.
See the parts listPrices move around a lot — memory and storage especially. The totals above were accurate in October 2026; always check the price on the product page before you buy.
Why Build Your Own?
You save real money
Prebuilt PCs charge a markup and love to sneak in parts you'd never choose — like a slow hard drive in a "gaming" PC. Building it yourself means every dollar goes where it matters.
You get exactly what you want
Need tons of storage? A quiet case? A specific graphics card? You pick every part. No mystery components, no compromises made by someone else's purchasing department.
Upgrades become easy
Once you've built a PC, swapping the graphics card in two years is a fifteen-minute job — you already know how everything comes apart. A prebuilt owner pays someone else to do it.
It's genuinely fun
There's nothing like pressing the power button on a machine you put together yourself. Fair warning: most people who build one end up building for their friends, too.
Guides & How-Tos
Not sure where to start? Start with the gaming builds — then use the explainers to understand the parts everyone gets stuck on.
Gaming PC Builds
Our three builds reframed the way gamers actually shop: by resolution. 1080p under $1,000, 1440p under $1,500, and a no-compromises 4K machine — with realistic frame-rate expectations for each.
Find your buildHow to Choose a Motherboard
The part beginners most fear getting wrong, demystified: sockets, chipsets like B650 vs B850, sizes, and which features matter (and which are just box art).
Read the guideHow Much RAM Do You Need?
16GB vs 32GB, answered straight — plus DDR4 vs DDR5, what speed and CL actually mean, and what today's unusual RAM prices mean for your decision.
Read the guideHow to Choose a Power Supply
How many watts do you actually need? A wattage-by-graphics-card table, 80 Plus ratings in plain English, and why this is the one part to never cheap out on.
Read the guideA Kid's First PC
For parents: a build-it-together first gaming PC that plays Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite — with the full cost including the extras, safety notes, and room to grow.
Read the guideBlack Friday 2026: What's a Good Price?
Target prices for CPUs, graphics cards, RAM, and SSDs — what each part costs now, what counts as a real deal this year, and how to spot a fake discount.
See target pricesQuick Answers
- Is building a PC hard?
- Honestly? No. Parts only fit where they're supposed to fit, cables are shaped so they can't go in backwards, and our assembly guide walks through everything in order. If you can follow a recipe, you can build a PC.
- What tools do I need?
- A Phillips screwdriver and some zip ties. That's the whole list. Every screw, cable, and bracket you need comes in the boxes with your parts.
- How long does it take?
- Give yourself 2–4 hours the first time, including reading the guide. People who've done it before finish in about an hour. Installing Windows takes another hour or so, and most of that is waiting.
- Do I have to buy Windows?
- Not up front. You can install Windows 11 for free and use it unactivated — there's a small watermark and a few personalization settings are locked, but everything works. Buy a license later if you want it, or use Linux (like Ubuntu), which is completely free.
- What if it doesn't turn on?
- Don't panic — it happens to almost everyone, and it's nearly always something simple like a forgotten cable. The guide's troubleshooting section walks through the usual suspects one by one.