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$500 Gaming PC Buyers Guide 2020 – Gaming on a Budget

What’s up guys welcome back. I am starting a new series called Gaming PC Buyers Guide. I keep seeing lots of people in Facebook groups asking to help them out with a 500, 800 or a few thousand pc part list. So I thought I will use PCPartPicker platform and make different builds for different price points. And the first build for today is $500 Gaming PC. Witch is Ryzen 5 2600 and RX 570. Also, I should point out that it’s only core components and not including say a monitor, mouse or a keyboard.
So right now, we are looking at a total of about 502 us dollars. And for those who really need to stick under 500, I will have few tips on how to do it.

In case you are interested in similar content, be sure to check my YouTube channelsubscribe and click that bell button so you do not miss upcoming content. And let’s get into it.

So, this a budget build is based on a Ryzen platform with a decent upgrade path for upcoming years. And the first item we have on a list is Ryzen 5 2600. It’s a 12 nm 6 core 12 thread CPU with a boost clock of 3.9 GHz. It’s very capable of handling modern games as well as streaming or video editing workloads. One of the benefits of this CPU as it comes with an included Wraith Stealth cooler so you do not need to spend another 30 bucks + on aftermarket cooling solution.

As for a motherboard, I picked B450M PRO4 from ASRock. It’s a budget micro ATX board, but make no mistake, it has quite good features. Such as 4 RAM slots which can help you out if your budget is even less than 500 bucks. I will get back to this later on. Also, it has a few m.2 slots witch is quite rear for a budget motherboard.

Next, we have memory, and I was about to recommend Crucial 16 GB kit for $59 – it’s DDR4 3200MHz witch is good for a Ryzen 2000 series CPUs. Bust just before posting this article, this sale has ended so I suggest going with Patriot Viper 4 Blackout 16 GB instead. But in case your budget can stretch a bit take a look at 3600MHz kits since they will be a bit more of the future proof. But have in mind you will pay around 10-20 bucks more.

For storage, I would recommend getting a 240 GB SSD disk. Just to keep prices down and have a quick and snappy system. I’ve chosen PNY CS900, but basically any known brand such as Kingston, Crucial or Adata SSD will work just fine. Take the best available price at a time you are buying this system. You can get 480 GB SSD for just 20 us dollars more, so consider that if you need more space. Also, there is an option to go for 120 GB SSD and let’s say a 1 TB hard drive. But then, I would stick with 500 gig SSD for cheaper than using a hard drive combo.

The graphics card choice for this build is the XFX RX 570 4GB model. As RX570 is one of the best value for the money cards, it’s an obvious choice, at least for around 120 bucks. It’s one of the cheapest RX models since we are trying to build up to $500 Gaming PC, but since we are using Ryzen 2600 CPU, in this build, you can upgrade your GPU in a year or two in case you want to go for 1440p gaming. CPU is cable of handling lets say RTX 2060 Super or RX 5700 so you have a good upgrade path if needed.
To get the best value for the money, you have the possibility to go for a used graphics card, since you could buy RX580 8gb model for around 110 US dollars from eBay. But in case you want to go with a new card, RX570 is quite a solid choice for a price.

The case of my choice is a Deepcool MATREXX 50. Basically it’s one of the best price tempered glass ATX cases you can get for 48 bucks. There is a newer version of this case called MATREXX 55, but it has no PSU shroud and no fan included. Just to note, It’s not a micro ATX case, and so it’s bigger than you need, but in case you want a smaller one, you will need to spend at least 10 bucks more.
If you decide to go for a micro ATX case I would recommend checking Thermaltake Versa H18. It has a nice mesh front panel for better ventilation and included rear fan as well. Sure, there are quite a few cheaper cases for around 35 us dollars. But I would not recommend going that road since you will lose fan mounting positions, the looks, and quality too.

The last but equally important component we need is a power supply. I’ve opted for an EVGA BR 500 W 80+ Bronze unit. It’s non-modular one, but all the cables are black and since we took a PC case with a PSU shroud,
they will be hidden and will not mess with a build aesthetics for sure. And 500 watts is enough since overall system power consumption will be up to 300 watts. The power supply has two 6 + 2 PCIe power connectors, meaning even if you decide to upgrade your GPU to a better one, this should be enough to feed RX 5700 / RTX 2060 super or a similar GPU.

So that’s my $500 Gaming PC build. In case you really need to save few more bucks, you can go with an 8 GB of ram and you could add another 8 gigs later on since as I mentioned earlier a motherboard I’ve picked has 4 ram slots. Well, you might lose some fps in modern games, but it’s quite an easy way to make this build cheaper and it’s really easily upgraded later on.
Just be sure, you go with two sticks of 4 GB to get a dual-channel working.
And again, if you want to remove any of these parts and use the ones you like more, please do so.

Regarding an upgrade path for this build. AM4 platform is a great one in terms of upgradability. Meaning you will be able to add 3rd gen Ryzen like R7 3700x or an RTX 2070 Super graphics card. And your gaming experience will jump through the roof.

In case you want any advice regarding your PC parts list, just post a comment in my video and I will share my thoughts with you.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I am planning to make another video for a different budged pc build. Most probably I will pick a build for around $1000.

I hope you got some value out of my video. If so, please Subscribe to my YouTube channel like and click that bell button so you do not miss upcoming content. And see you soon.

Links to all the PC parts

CPU – Ryzen 5 2600
https://amzn.to/39pRIJo (US)
https://amzn.to/3bZJudq (UK)

RAM
https://amzn.to/3406HsJ (US) – Patriot Viper 4 Blackout 16 GB
https://amzn.to/37NAJAb (UK) – Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB

GPU – XFX Radeon RX 570 4 GB
https://amzn.to/2UJHvCe (US)
https://amzn.to/2Thl07h (UK)

PSU – EVGA BR 500 W 80+ Bronze
https://amzn.to/2xsCGFH (US)
https://amzn.to/2vWM97u (UK)

Motherboard – ASRock B450M PRO4
https://amzn.to/39k1BrZ (US)
https://amzn.to/3bXQCHq (UK)

Storage – PNY CS900 240
https://amzn.to/39onCpR (US)
https://amzn.to/2T0eeT4 (UK)

Case – Deepcool MATREXX 50
https://amzn.to/3brcHNx (US)
https://amzn.to/2ujBq6x (UK) – RGB version



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