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The Starter — Budget Build (~$775)
A genuinely good PC for under $800. It plays modern games beautifully at 1080p, flies through school and office work, and there's not a single junk part in the list — nothing here you'll regret in a year.
Wait, why does this cost more than it used to?
Fair question. Right now there's a worldwide shortage of memory and storage chips — AI data centers are buying them by the truckload. RAM that cost about $80 in 2025 costs several hundred today, and budget builds feel it the most. It's not you, it's the market. We show real, current prices instead of pretending it's still 2024. The bright spots: processors and graphics cards are reasonably priced, and the Intel Arc A750 below actually sells below its launch price while beating its rivals. Funny how that works.
The Parts List
Buy exactly this list and you're done thinking about compatibility. Prices were current as of October 2026.
| Part | Model | Why this one | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor (CPU) | AMD Ryzen 5 5600 | The brain of the PC. Six cores is plenty for gaming and everyday stuff, and it's the best bang-for-buck budget chip you can buy. Bonus: a cooler comes in the box, so that's one less thing to purchase. | ~$140 | View on Amazon |
| Motherboard | MSI PRO B550M-P | The circuit board everything plugs into. This one's affordable without feeling cheap, has the fast slots your graphics card and SSD want, and works with the Ryzen 5 5600 straight out of the box — no updates needed. | $69.99 | View on Amazon |
| Memory (RAM) | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB (2×8GB) DDR4-3200 | 16GB is plenty for gaming — grab 32GB only if you edit video. This kit is two sticks, which gives your processor a nice speed boost (that's "dual-channel"), and it's low-profile so it never bumps into the cooler. | $139.99 | View on Amazon |
| Storage (SSD) | Seagate FireCuda 530 1TB | The fast kind of storage — Windows boots in seconds and games load quickly. 1TB holds Windows plus roughly 8–12 modern games. It also has a 5-year warranty and excellent endurance. | $104.99 | View on Amazon |
| Graphics card (GPU) | ASRock Intel Arc A750 Challenger D 8GB | The part that draws your games. This is the best new graphics card under $210 right now — it beats NVIDIA's RTX 3050 and AMD's RX 6600. It also has XeSS, Intel's smart upscaling trick that makes games run smoother. One setup note: turn on "Resizable BAR" in the BIOS (our guide shows you where) — it's a free performance boost for this card. | $206.43 | View on Amazon |
| Power supply (PSU) | MSI MAG A550BN 550W, 80+ Bronze | Converts wall power into clean power for your parts. 550 watts from a brand you can trust, with a 5-year warranty. Your whole system uses about 340W at full tilt, so there's comfortable headroom. (80+ Bronze is just an efficiency rating — it means the unit doesn't waste much electricity as heat.) | $54.99 | View on Amazon |
| Case | Montech AIR 100 LITE | The box it all lives in. Mesh front panel so air actually gets in, two fans already installed, and plenty of room for the graphics card. The glass side panel is for admiring your handiwork. | $59.99 | View on Amazon |
| CPU cooler | AMD Wraith Stealth | Keeps the processor from overheating. This one comes free in the Ryzen 5 5600 box, and it's perfectly fine for this chip. Nothing to buy here. | $0 | Included with the CPU |
| Total | ~$776 | |||
Will it all fit together? Yes.
We checked everything against everything else, so you don't have to: the processor fits the motherboard's socket. The RAM is the right type for the board. The power supply has plenty of watts to spare. The graphics card fits in the case with room left over. Buy exactly this list and you can't pick wrong. Two things to know during setup: turn on Resizable BAR in the BIOS (a setting that lets the processor use the graphics card's memory more efficiently — free speed, and our guide shows where it is), and plug your monitor into the graphics card, not the motherboard — the Ryzen 5 5600 has no built-in graphics, so the motherboard's video ports won't do anything.
Bring the price down
- Watch for sales on RAM and storage. Those two prices swing week to week right now — a sale on either can pull this build toward $700.
- Silicon Power's 16GB DDR4 kit was recently spotted around $133 — same speed, about $7 cheaper than the Corsair.
- Skip the Windows license for now. Install Windows 11 free (unactivated) or use Linux, and buy a license later if you want one. That saves $100+ today.
What this build is (and isn't) for
This PC plays modern games at 1080p on high settings — smooth and pretty, no stuttering. It's also great for school, work, and everyday use. It's not a 4K gaming rig or a heavy video-editing workstation. For that, look at the Mid-Range or High-End builds.