PC Build for UNDER $1500!?

So, you want to build a PC yourself, but you don’t know where to begin with selecting parts. You might also have a bit of a budget as well, so say the goal is to somehow manage a good PC build for under $1500. Sounds difficult right?

Well, never fear!

I challenged our resident PC builder/wizard Nick, to help us build a certain type of PC, and then explain why he chose the parts he did.

This was the requirements we set for him:

“A Gaming PC for a person who plays a lot of competitive games (League of Legends, Overwatch etc.) and might be interested in dabbling in content creation (casual streaming and YouTube content creation). This will be their first gaming PC as they previously used a gaming laptop. Budget is $1500.”

If any part of the above request sounds like you, then definitely keep on reading, because this might just be the post for you!

Case: Thermaltake Versa J24 RGB Edition Black ATC Vase (RRP: $99.00)

Our Thermaltake Versa J24 Case is a good price and comes with three preinstalled RGB fans in the front, so therefore you don’t have to purchase any additional fans. There is also a handy PSU shroud which can hide all your unsightly cables. The case is clean and sleek looking and the RGB fans add a nice splash of colour.

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (RRP: $315.00)

AMD make pretty great CPUs for gaming and also has great content creation support. Additionally, it allows for a good upgrade path to a newer AMD chipset if you once again decide to look at an upgrade. This CPU allows for PCIE 4.0 graphics cards and SSD’s.

Motherboard: MSI B450M BAZOOKA PLUS Motherboard (RRP: $139.00)

This MSI motherboard is affordable and very reliable. It provides a lightning fast gaming experience, and comes with extended heatsink design, to ensure that your CPU will run at full speed. It also has 4 slots for memory, which allows for a ton of memory upgrades inn future if required.

RAM: TOUGHRAM RGB Memory DDR4 3200MHz 16GB (RRP: $169.00)

Of course, we gotta tap in our awesome new ToughRAM. Not only does it have stunning RGB lighting, but it will also provide top speeds on the B450 Board while still remaining stable. Additionally, the Ryzen chip and content creation programs love higher RAM speeds, which is why we opted for the 3200MHz.

CPU Cooler: Standard Cooler with the AMD CPU (Comes with the CPU)

Because we are trying to keep this under a certain price, we’ve opted to go with the standard CPU cooler. It is very easy to upgrade later down the line and we feel it’s more important to have high quality a CPU and GPU to begin with. We recommend if you want to upgrade eventually, our awesome Thermaltake Water 3.0 240 ARGB All-in-one Cooler (RRP: $139.00)! It’ll work perfectly and will look amazing with all the other internals also.

PSU: Thermaltake Smart BX1 Bronze 650W Power Supply (RRP: $85.00)

Once again going with another of our old faithful items, the Smart BX1 Bronze 650W Power Supply. This is an incredibly affordable power supply and provides even enough power for an eventual GPU upgrade down the line. The cables are also flat, which will allow for easy cable management.

Graphics Card: ZOTAC GAMING GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Twin Fan, 6GB (RRP: $429.00)

This is the priciest item on the list, however for good reason. And even so, it’s far less pricey than other graphics cards. This card will provide good performance in the games requested, without all the pricey extra RTX features.

Storage: Seagate BarraCuda HDD 3TB, ST3000DM007 (RRP: $119.00) AND the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD (RRP: $99.00)

We’ve chosen to go with both an HDD and an SSD due to the potential interest in content creation and more long-term storage ability. The HDD provides plenty of long-term storage for content creation, as well as game storage also. The SSD is relatively cheap, and the speedy design of SSD’s mean that content creation assets load faster, as well as games.

GRAND TOTAL BUILD COST: $1454.00!

So, there’s our awesome gaming PC build for under $1500!

The main goal here Nick felt was to make a PC that would be easy to upgrade if the user was interested in it down the line, but would also handle all the requirements that they had asked for right now. It will have a sleek look with the Versa and it’s preinstalled RGB fans, and will be a good all-rounder to achieve everything asked for.

If you have any suggestions for a type of build that we should ask Nick for advice for, feel free to put your suggestion in the comments down below! If you also want to read a post about my first time EVER building a PC, click here!