Strategies for Building a Low Cost Gaming PC

Assembling a state of the art gaming PC can be quite an expensive endeavor. If there is anything a hard-core gamer takes pride in, it will surely be the gaming rig that he or she has personally built. As a professor of game design and development technologies, I have heard many tales from students of gaming PCs built around the cost of thousands, with results of bragging rights, and ultimately overall disappointment.

Fortunately there are also low cost do it yourself alternatives that can provide a long life of high powered entertainment, while keeping the bank account intact. Realistically, a sufficient gaming machine that will prove to hold a long life of high entertainment value is possible at a low cost, even for around $1,000.

One of the most important things to consider when building a PC is expandability, and when planning a purchase, there needs to be give and take, and a balance of sacrifice when choosing the right components. Keeping expandability in mind, listing which components can be thought of as short term, which can be thought of as long term, and which may never have to be replaced is key. Short term components, are those that can be upgraded or expanded easily, such as memory and hard disk space. For example, as memory is easily replaceable and/or upgradable, the decision to buy a sufficient 4GB now, and upgrade to 8GB later, is a smart up-front money saving choice. On the other hand, long term components will include those that will hopefully never be replaced, or will at least live a very long life. Two core components on this list include the motherboard/CPU and video card. Depending on the place of purchase, a motherboard may or may not include a CPU. Although the fastest possible may be desired, here is where purchasing a motherboard that will support a number of CPUs provides some future long-term expandability options. As these are intended to be long term components, most of the up front budget can be spent here. Finally, components that may never be replaced are those vanilla devices that have had little to no advancement in technology including a DVD drive, sound card, power supply, and PC case. Brand-name, hi-quality versions of these components can usually be purchased for $99 each, sometimes even much less.

Nothing screams of price reduction like the introduction of a new model. Technology is ever evolving, and what is new today, is old tomorrow. By experience, items such as video cards and motherboards are often reduced, sometimes even up to 50% when a new model becomes available. For example, as quad-core technology becomes more mainstream, dual-core will reduce in price, and dual core can be an extremely fast and powerful technology. Using this shopping strategy will extend every dollar at purchase.

Overall, the important thing to remember in the world of technology is that nothing is state of the art forever. By strategizing and budgeting both the build and expandability of a gaming PC, there is a great opportunity to save money, all while enjoying the latest games.