What You Get For Your $800
Although this PC is a formidable one for this price point, certain compromises have to be made when trying to stay within our $800 target. While you may not be able to get more than six cores from your CPU or an RTX GPU, you can still achieve high FPS in high settings with this PC. AMD’s processors bring almost unmatched value to the table, meaning you are always able to get great all-round performance for your money.
This gaming PC will play any game you throw at it, and this is thanks to the combination of components. There has never been a better time to build a PC and this $800 build is going to provide you with a solid 1080p gaming experience, with high frame rates to pair with those high refresh rate monitors.
To ensure high levels of gaming performance, we had to compromise on some of the tertiary components. That being said, you still get a 500GB NVMe SSD, which is plenty for your operating system and a couple of your favorite games. Along with the storage solution, we have selected 16GB of fast DDR4 RAM. While you could argue this is slightly more than needed in this price range, it future-proofs your system, giving you less to upgrade at a later stage. Of course, the components inside this system are all older generation parts, but they still provide great results and are ideal for those on strict budgets.
This PC is considered to be on the edge of budget, with just enough power to satisfy both hardcore and casual gamers alike. For those out there who want to future-proof their PC or play in 4K, you may want one of our higher-tier gaming PCs. It is worth noting that while we try and keep these gaming PC builds within the target budget, Amazon prices can fluctuate.
AMD or Intel when building a PC under $800?
At this price range, there isn’t much difference in terms of gaming between Intel and AMD, but they certainly are in terms of value. We recommend choosing an AMD processor here for under $800, simply because the CPU offers excellent value. While choosing AMD may not change things drastically for gaming, all your over tasks on the PC will be handled more efficiently by the AMD CPU. We feel the AMD build not only makes this a strong gaming PC overall, but its multithreaded nature gives you greater flexibility too.
Upgradability and Future-Proofing the $800 build
An important area to think about with a gaming PC is how easily upgradeable it is going to be. You do get great performance from this $800 build, but you will eventually want to upgrade further down the line as the build becomes obsolete. Time is the enemy of all. We’ve outlined a sensible upgrade path to help you choose the appropriate components to upgrade and in what order to make the most out of your PC.
Overclocking on a $800 budget
Overclocking is a great way to squeeze extra power out of your components, and the further down the price ladder you go, the more beneficial this becomes. Both the AMD and Intel processors can be boosted to give you slightly higher clock speeds, and we have selected a motherboard that comes with a robust enough power delivery system to support CPU overclocking, should that be of interest to you.
When overclocking, it is important to note that you will increase the TDP of the CPU, this means it’s going to need a more efficient cooler than the stock one that comes with the 5600X. We have also included fast DDR4 memory in this build as Ryzen core communication speed is directly tied to RAM speed, but you are going to need to overclock the RAM (enable DOCP) in the BIOS to take full advantage of the speed of this kit.
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