My son has been wanting for playing Fortnite on a PC for a while, which gives me a much needed excuse for building a budget gaming computer during this Black Friday.
Here are the components I’ve got:
- DIYPC Zondda-O Black ATX Mid Tower Gaming Computer Case ($30, Newegg)
- AMD RYZEN 5 2600 CPU ($110, ebay)
- ASRock X570 PRO4 AM4 AMD X570 Motherboard ($130 after rebate, Newegg)
- Rosewill Hive Series 750W Modular Gaming Power Supply ($68, Newegg)
- Ballistix Sport LT 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop Memory ($76, Newegg)
- XPG Gammix S5 1TB PCIe 3D NAND PCIe ($90, Newegg)
- PNY GeForce GTX 1060 1.5ghz 3gb Graphics Card ($100, used, ebay), later was replaced with AMD Radeon RX 5700 in 2020 ($300, Newegg)
- Corsair Pro gaming bundle for keyboard, mouse and headset ($85, Bestbuy)
- Windows 10 Home license activation code ($4, ebay)
Since I already have an ASUS MG28UQ Black 28″ gaming monitor, I am able to save some expense there.
The total cost is about $700, not bad (approaching $1,000 after 2020 upgrade to the RX5700 graphic card). What really hurts is NJ sale tax, at 7%, on top of the actual cost of the PC parts :).
It took my son and myself a few hours in total to put everything together, in different phases. Though my son’s role was pretty much limited to holding the flash light for me, but at least I got him interested in the mechanics of a computer.
Fortnite runs admirably on this new gig – around 60 fps at 4K resolution; reaches to 100 fps at 144p resolution.
Since I don’t play games myself, my interest quickly moved away once I built it, but at least I got a new tool that allows me to negotiate with Eric for doing more math before he could get his hands on this new toy :).
2020 December update – here is the gaming PC set up as of today, a year from it was originally built.
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