$898 will get you a full 1440p gaming PC. One screwdriver required

DIY gaming PC deal
(Image credit: Ipason | ASRock)
Ipason gaming desktop | AMD Ryzen 5 5600G | 16GB DDR4-3200 | 500GB NVMe SSD | $849.99 $549 at Newegg (save $300.99)

Ipason gaming desktop | AMD Ryzen 5 5600G | 16GB DDR4-3200 | 500GB NVMe SSD | <a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/deeplink?id=kXQk6%2AivFEQ&mid=44583&u1=hawk-custom-tracking&murl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newegg.com%2Fp%2F3D5-001U-000Z3%3FItem%3D9SIAZEBGV98270" data-link-merchant="newegg.com"" target="_blank">$849.99 $549 at Newegg (save $300.99)
You can game on this machine to a certain extent—the integrated Vega GPU on the Ryzen chip will support 720p gaming at lower settings for sure. But we're listing it here as a good base from which to add your own graphics card for a quick, powerful new gaming PC. The AMD CPU is a good six-core, 12-thread job, and the 16GB RAM will run everything you need. The 500GB SSD could be bigger, but that's an easy, cheap upgrade down the line.

ASRock Challenger RX 6700 XT | 12GB GDDR6 | 2,560 shaders | 2,330MHz Boost clock | $359.99 $349.99 at Newegg (save $10)

ASRock Challenger RX 6700 XT | 12GB GDDR6 | 2,560 shaders | 2,330MHz Boost clock | <a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/deeplink?id=kXQk6%2AivFEQ&mid=44583&u1=hawk-custom-tracking&murl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newegg.com%2Fasrock-radeon-rx-6700-xt-rx6700xt-cld-12go%2Fp%2FN82E16814930059%3FItem%3DN82E16814930059" data-link-merchant="newegg.com"" target="_blank">$359.99 $349.99 at Newegg (save $10)
If you're looking for a mainstream graphics card upgrade right now, the RX 6700 XT is the GPU I'd recommend. It's capable of delivering RTX 3060 Ti levels of gaming performance, and packs AMD's FSR2 tech for its own take on upscaling. Ray tracing isn't the Radeon architecture's forté, but for straight rasterised gaming it's a great, more affordable option.

Buying a new gaming PC today can be a bit of a minefield given the price of new graphics cards and the fact that almost everything is more expensive. But there are still ways to get cheap gaming PC deals if you're willing to be a little creative, and exercise those screwdriver muscles.

Honestly, it's not that creative, I'm just recommending pairing a cheap base PC with an affordable graphics card and combining the two to make one excellent, affordable gaming rig. Easy.

Of course that does necessitate getting the side off your new machine and installing a new component yourself. Thankfully, jamming a new GPU into your rig is one of the most straightforward upgrades you can do, and the most effective as a PC gamer, too.

It's well worth learning how to do it, anyways.

This Ipason machine was the same price around Black Friday last year, and we recommended it then as a good base to build from and that stands today. We'd never recommend it at the $850 original price, but a full PC for $549 at Newegg is well worth the money.

It's got a quality gaming CPU in the AMD Ryzen 5 5600G. That's a six-core, 12-thread processor capable of running up to 4.4GHz, and it's integrated GPU will get you gaming in a 720p pinch. That's backed up with 16GB of DDR4 memory running at 3,200MHz, and it comes with a 500GB NVMe SSD. That's a bit light on the storage front, but is another affordable, easy to install upgrade down the road.

On its own it's not going to be capable of 1080p or 1440p gaming performance, however, but if you went ahead and dropped the ASRock RX 6700 XT for $350 into your Newegg basket, you'd have a system that was for less than $900.

Considering a lot of similar level gaming PCs are retailing for at least $1,200 that's a decent saving.

If that's still a bit out of your budget the $275 RX 6600 XT will deliver RTX 3060 level gaming at high 1080p settings for $824. 

Dave James
Managing Editor, Hardware

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he's back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.