How to Build a Kick-ass $800 Gaming PC

by Benson Hong & Florence Ion

In October, we spec’ed out a respectable $800 gaming PC in our monthly Buyer’s Guide feature. While the price and parts looked promising, we had to see for ourselves if this sub-$1000 system could hold its ground against today’s top rigs. After all, if you don’t need to spend your next month’s paycheck on performance parts, why should you?

We had to make some careful choices to keep this machine within our constrained budget, but in the end we were surprised by this little PC’s kick ass performance. Want to learn how to build it yourself? We’ll walk you through our meticulous build process, explain why we chose each component, and give you our final thoughts on the benchmark results this little-PC-that-could throws down.

Parts List:

Antec Three Hundred ($60, www.antec.com)

Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz Wolfdale ($165, www.intel.com)

Visiontek Radeon HD 4850 ($185, www.visiontek.com)

Seagate 500GB Barracuda ($65, www.seagate.com)

MSI P45 Neo3 ($110, www.msi.com.tw)

Samsung SH-S223F DVD Burner ($25, www.samsung.com)

Antec NeoPower 500 ($90, www.antec.com)

Corsair 2x1GB DDR2 800 ($40, www.corsair.com)

Let's get to building!