Best Gaming PC Build Under $500 in 2024

There was a time when PCs were very expensive. This goes for parts and complete devices. Also, average gaming PCs were so expensive that a person with an average salary would need to give a big chunk of his paycheck to buy one of these. Thankfully, we can say that these times have passed and that all of us can buy a gaming PC with a great configuration for a small amount of money. When we say small, we mean compared to the amount we used to give for this type of devices.

Naturally, you can still give a couple of thousands for a PC, but today, you have much more possibilities with just a couple of hundreds. You can buy a gaming machine with powerful performances for less than $500. As we already said, this wasn’t possible just a few years ago. But you need to know what you are giving your money for. So, in order to help you with your future buy, we are going to make a list of the best pieces of hardware available today. This is a great start in making your dream configuration under $500 in 2024. If you are ready, let us begin.

The Hardware and What it Can Do

Later in the article, we will explain to you all of the details about these pieces of hardware. However, before that, we are going to talk about the configuration itself. Naturally, the main goal of this configuration is to reduce costs. Moreover, this configuration makes a really great set of hardware that will not occupy too much space on your desk.

So, you will have plenty of room for future updates. When you decide that your PC needs an update you will have room to upgrade storage, memory, graphics card or CPU, you can do one piece of hardware at the time. That way you can prevent too much money spending.

Now, we are going to talk about hardware in details.

Thermaltake Versa H17 – $40

This is a fantastic mATX case that has some of the best high-end features. It’s needless to say that it looks great. Plus, it has separate chambers for all types of hardware and it provides the user with a great cable management aid. Our recommendation is that you should buy another cooling fan on the front. This investment will not be a big one, but this little piece can be of great help. When it comes to the cooling fan on the rear, for the first time it will do the job. However, this is not a long-term solution.

Seagate BarraCuda 1TB HDD – $45

If it was up to us, we would like it better to have an SSD storage in this configuration. They are much faster than HDD and they have a huge impact on the overall gaming experience. But they are costly, so we decided on Seagate’s 1TB HDD.

With this one, you will have more than enough storage for storing all of the games you might want to play at some moment. This is more than a good deal for just $45, right? Or better yet, you can invest a $30 more and add one more SSD. That way, this PC would turn into the monster.

Asus Rog Strix RX 570 4GB

Usually, RX 570 stays in the shadow of its bigger brother RX 580. Nonetheless, this is an exceptional 1080p graphics card that comes with a really cheap price. It easily beats all the competition within this price range. For example, one of the cards on our shortlist was Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti.

IT was a close time between RX 570 and GTX 1060. But in the end, RX 570 won. It has an extra GB of memory which can really have with the prevention of bottlenecking in some of the newer PC game titles.

Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 2,666MHZ 8GB – $50

One piece of 8GB RAM maybe doesn’t look like a lot of RAM memory in these days. However, with most of today’s gamers, this is more than enough starting point. If you want, you can buy two of those and take full advantage of dual-channel memory capacity.

But having two of these is a bit costly, so it doesn’t fit in into our price range. Instead, you should wait and buy one RAM memory stick of 16GB. Moreover, buying one of these will not cost you much and their 2,666 MHz has more than enough pace for entry-level build.

Gigabyte AB350DM-DS3H – $70

This motherboard is running on an X370 chipset. Even some of the more advanced features are disabled with this one, you will have a motherboard of the highest quality. You can fit up to four RAM memory slots, it has support for M.2 storage drives, high-quality audio capacitors, and a great RGB LED light support.

It is a part of the first generation of Ryzen motherboard. That means that maybe you will need to flash the BIOS in order to make it compatible with second-generation of CPU.

AMD Ryzen 2200G – $95

The second generation of AMD processors proved that they can be competitive with famous Intel. What’s best about them is that they are much more affordable than Intel’s processors. This is where we got to the AMD Ryzen 2200G. This is a quad-core CPU that offers really great performance.

It can go up to 3.7GHz when it is boosted to the maximum. Especially if you didn’t decide on your graphic card yet, you should use this CPU. This is a great starting point for building a great gaming PC.

EVGA 500 B1 80+ Bronze – $40

EVGA is a company that produces some of the best entry-level power supplies, and EVGA 500B is one of the best examples of their work. Furthermore, it has an 80+ Bronze certification, which guarantees its efficiency.

If you are not feeling this one, you can see some alternatives, because we opted for this one as the best solution within this price range. Also, we choose it because the graphics card RX570 and a cheaper PSUs are asking for quite a lot of power and bring other hardware with them when they collapse.