Building a Gaming Rig for Under $600

A few weeks ago my friend asked me to design him a custom gaming desktop for under $600 that could handle Starcraft II on Ultra settings. Being the arrogant nerd that I am, I took the challenge and went off with his credit card to buy the parts. I looked over the Falcon Guide and tweaked it depending on the prices at the time and the wants of my friend. I also replaced the graphics card with a budget one that I know could play SCII on max settings (the same one that I use now).

The parts are all listed below and all bought from Amazon. I chose Amazon compared to Newegg because I’m a prime member and get free 2-day shipping on most things. Plus we bought these during ‘Cyber Week’ and there were some pretty good sales on Amazon.

They all came in just a day ago and we started constructing the PC seen above (my first complete desktop build). The computer handles Starcraft II with no lag and hasn't gotten hot enough to even notice a difference from the air temperature. The build was smooth and all disks/drivers needed were provided. The only issue we ran into was realizing that we didn’t buy a disk drive. Luckily you can put anything on a disk onto a flash drive and use that instead. Or resurrect an old drive from another computer (just make sure it’s SATA if you use the motherboard below). I would normally post a how-to but there are hundreds online and the build is pretty simple for the tech people out there.

Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions on Facebook or Twitter and be sure to try to build a desktop yourself! Gaming just isn’t the same on a laptop.