Best 800 Dollar Gaming PC: Insane Performance in 2022

Best $800 Gaming PC Build (Custom Parts)

Component	Name	Features	Image
CPU	Intel Core i5-9600KF	6 cores Overclocking 3.7GHz
Cooler	ARCTIC Freezer Xtreme Rev.2	1500RPM 131mm 24.4dB
MOBO	MSI Z390-A PRO	4 RAM slots Overclock Support DDR4-4400
RAM	Patriot Viper 4 Blackout	2x8GB DDR4-3000MHz Overclockable
HDD	Seagate Barracuda HDD	2TB 7200RPM 256MB Cache
SSD	Kingston A400	120GB SSD SATA III
GPU	Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660Ti OC	1500MHz Core 12000MHz Mem 6GB VRAM
PSU	Rosewill 500W Power Supply	Efficient Warranty Cheap
CASE	Cougar MX330	Sturdy Window Front USB 3
Order This Build on Amazon

$800 is actually one of the best PC build budgets you can give yourself this year.

Coming short of $900 can bring forth a bit of trouble in fitting a modest GPU and SSD at the same time, but don’t worry, we’ve got you covered as always.

In this guide, we’re going to cover the best $800 gaming PC in 2020 – you’ll be able to crush 1080p and even 1440p with this build, so sit down and strap in.

Let’s get started:

Prebuilt Choice

The $800 price point is somewhat of a mixed bag when it comes to the odd landscape that is Amazon’s ‘Desktop Computer’ category.

So we scoured the bargain bin through the trash and the rubble to get you the best prebuilt your money can buy.

Pros

• Great CPU
• Fast RAM
• SSD
• Windows 10 Installed
• Comes with mouse & keyboard
• Great GPU

Cons

• Small SSD

CPU

R5 3600

Clock

3.6GHz

RAM

8GB DDR4

SSD

240GB

OS

Windows 10

WiFi

802.11AC

At $799.99USD, the N27W offers you almost similar performance to that of our build-guide picks below for a similar cost.

The only fields that this desktop lags behind in are the graphics and the memory, which may be a mightier blow than you’d expect.

Including a 1TB 7200RPM mechanical hard drive and a 240GB SSD, this desktop still holds its own in the storage category.

Unlike many prebuilt systems, it includes no preinstalled ‘bloatware’.

Though, with just 8GB of DDR4-2666 RAM instead of our 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM, you’ll be getting a little slower out-of-the-box performance (without overclocking) while also sacrificing 8 whole gigs.

In the graphics department, the N27W puts a good foot forward, but not its best. Sporting just a GTX 1660, as opposed to our chosen GTX 1660 Ti, you’ll be losing out on about 20% of performance in games.

For its many blunders, though, the N27W includes a pre-installed full copy of Windows 10 Home, an internal Wi-Fi adapter, RGB lighting, a beautiful tempered glass side panel, a mouse, a keyboard, 1-year warranty, and free lifetime tech support. Absolutely outstanding!

$800 Gaming PC Build Overview Video

Pros

• Lots of physical cores
• Overclock support
• Budget friendly
• Great overclocking

Cons

• No integrated graphics

Clock

3.7GHz

Boost

4.6GHz

Cores

6

TDP

95W

Type

Coffee Lake

Cooler

No

Now that AMD’s been flipping Intel the bird in the budget market for quite a bit, it seems Intel’s finally decided it’s time to show ‘em who’s boss.

Not only does it offer that amazing baseline performance, but you know what that ‘K’ designation means:

Overclocking, baby!

Paired alongside a Z390 motherboard, you can expect to hit upwards of 5GHz with the right cooler, and boy did we try to get you one.

One thing you should note with the 9th Gen Intel CPUs if you’re coming back from a long break is that the chips designated with the ‘F’ in the name do not have integrated graphics.

So don’t go into it without a dedicated GPU expecting something to happen, of course.

One of the best parts about this CPU is its overclocking potential. While some people have to pay for game server hosting, the i5-9600KF could handle an intensive task like hosting a Rust server with ease.

We haven’t really included CPU coolers all that much in a lot of our builds since nowadays included stock coolers have been holding their own against their aftermarket counterparts.

However, since the overclockable Intel processors do not include coolers at all we’ve gotta find something, and something good. Hence, the Arctic Freezer Xtreme.

The Arctic Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 is one of the cheapest 120mm CPU coolers you can find on Amazon, 120mm being the size of the fan.

Even with this low price, it delivers outstanding performance with its 1500RPM maximum speed output.

Don’t take that speed as a warning for high sound, though, even with that speed the Freezer only hits around 24dB (decibels).

With a huge heatsink and double-sided heat pipes number 8 total, the cooler does take up quite a bit of space but we assure you that with our case choice it’ll be no issue.

And with the PWM fan, your motherboard can fine-tune your fan speed to fit the temperature of your CPU, it’s honestly pretty amazing.

There are a couple of cheaper options for 120mm coolers, though with maybe a little bit less cooling capacity, but if you really wanna save that dough the Arctic Freezer 33 eSports in either Yellow or Green variants are around $30USD.

Pros

• Great overclocking
• Easy to work with
• Awesome BIOS
• Great overclocking

Cons

• None

Form

ATX

Chipset

Z390

Slots

4

SATA

6

M.2

2

Overclock

Yes

Z390 is all the rage with the new 9th Gen Intel chips flooding the market, and now’s the time to make your move.

Pairing this puppy with our chosen i5-9600KF will give you an amazing head start for gaming especially, and with this board, you’ll be able to push it towards 5GHz or even further as we mentioned before.

Sticking to that theme of overclocking (since that’s what the Z390-A PRO is all about), Intel has recently released a new overclocking utility to compete against AMD’s Ryzen Master.

Intel’s new “one-click” Intel Performance Maximizer utility allows you to overclock your processor from Windows and it handles all the numbers itself, subverting the need to enter the BIOS.

Though don’t go thinking you can get a cheaper board and use the performance maximizer, ‘cause it still requires an overclock-capable board. Oh well.

If you’re a little scared that you may damage your CPU or something like that, Intel offers a $20 warranty upgrade that covers damage caused by overclocking with their tool.

Pros

• 16GB
• Fast 3000Mhz
• Cheap

Cons

• None, we’re just picking awesome parts

Amount

16GB

Modules

2x8GB

Speed

3000MHz

Type

DDR4

CAS

16

Voltage

1.35V

Once again, overclocking may be your breakthrough, but unfortunately, there’s no automatic overclocking utility for RAM.

For a guide to overclocking system memory click here.

Even without overclocking, the base clock of 3000MHz makes sure you won’t lag behind anywhere, be it Chrome, Firefox, Brave, or god forbid, Edge.

And at 16GB total memory, trust me, you won’t run out (unless you really need 100 tabs and 12 games open at the same time — in that case, you’ve got 2 extra memory slots on the motherboard for upgrades!)

Pros

• Crazy fast boot speeds
• Maps load quickly
• No moving parts

Cons

• Only 120GB of storage
• More expensive than a mechanical drive

Type

SSD

Capacity

480GB

Price/GB

$0.11

Size

2.5″

Interface

SATA

NVME

No

Our solid state drive solution for this build is the Kingston A400 120GB SATA SSD.

This thing is blazing fast, which is why we highly recommend it as your Windows boot drive.

With your OS and drivers installed on your SSD, your PC is going to be fast and responsive, especially when booting.

However, although an SSD will help you load your games faster, it won’t actually improve your FPS.

Pros

• 2TB Storage
• 256MB Cache

Cons

• Games load more slowly on this drive

Type

SSD

Capacity

480GB

Price/GB

$0.11

Size

2.5″

Interface

SATA

NVME

No

This hard drive has TONS of storage space and a large cache, so it makes for a great mass storage drive.

You can install all of your games, applications, files, and more on this drive without having to worry much about space.

We recommend (as long as you can afford it, of course) upgrading the SSD to a 240GB model or more if you want to install your games on an SSD as well.

Pros

• 6GB VRAM
• GDDR6 Memory
• Fast clock speed
• Handles 1080p with ease

Cons

• Price (1/3 budget)

Core

1500MHz

Boost

1860MHz

Length

280mm

Fans

2

Memory

6GB

Ports

4

Graphics might be the single most important part of a gaming PC, which is why we made sure to knock this one out of the park.

We managed to include one of the best mid to high range GPUs on the market.

Everyone give a warm welcome to the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC from Gigabyte.

Paired with the i5-9600KF, expect the most out of your combo with amazing in-game performance at 1080p and 14440p resolutions, even with the graphics cranked up.

Especially after overclocking, this GPU seriously kicks butt.

Pros

• 80+ Bronze Certified
• Good bang for your buck
• Semi-modular
• Cheap

Cons

• Not the most efficient PSU on the market

Wattage

500

Rating

Bronze

Modular

Semi

Color

Black

SATA

5

Noise

Quiet

Next, we have the power supply. Though often overlooked, this guy is pretty important.

Choose a PSU that’s not powerful enough, and you could fry the PSU or worse, the entire PC.

Conversely, if your PSU is too powerful, you’ll waste a ton of money.

Not to mention you have to worry about noise, cable management, and whether or not it’s compatible.

Fear not, for once again we’ve done the heavy lifting for you – you’re welcome.

The Rosewill 500W is a pretty standard power supply, but it has a few key features that make it stand out for its price.

It’s Semi-modular, so you’re getting a good mix of affordability and practicality. It’s also 80+ Bronze Certified, which means this PSU is power efficient.

The Rosewill 500W is also pretty quiet, and compatible with the build components.

Pros

• Great design
• Great airflow
• Easy cable management
• Spacious interior

Cons

• Acrylic side panel window

Type

ATX

Airflow

Great

Design

Great

Window

Yes

Spacious

Great

Noise

Quiet

Fitting a full ATX board was the first criterion, and the MX330 met that requirement. It may be small, but it’s a full ATX case.

What the MX330 offers at this price, though, is the power supply shroud and that’s really wonderful, keeping your PSU and hard drives out of the view from the rest of your lovely components.

The one downfall of this case is the acrylic side panel which can be a huge turn-off for a lot of gamers.

Honestly, it really isn’t that bad — a friend of mine even sourced a random tempered glass side panel off of eBay that happened to fit!

This cool case even has 4 front USB ports (2 2.0 and 2 3.0) and a 5.25” drive bay if that suits your fancy.

If you want a smaller case than this, check out our guide about the smallest micro atx cases on the market.

Performance Benchmarks

Here we’ve got the performance benchmarks so you can see (just about) what you’re buying and make a decision based upon your needs.

Gaming Benchmark

As you can see in the graph, while the two sides do trade blows fairly well and frequently, Intel does come out on top for some of the bigger titles.

This test does not take into account overclocking, but based on the performance numbers for the CPU overclocks (below) the differences should stay pretty consistent.

CPU Speed Benchmark

Starting out with the base clocked performance, it’s just about what we expect in a normal Intel vs AMD matchup; Intel in the lead with single-core, AMD with multi-core.

This is a consistent trend across all price points when comparing the similarities, so get used to it.

Now, the results of the overclocking may change your mind a bit if you were thinking about going AMD.

While AMD technically offers more cores (albeit virtual cores) with their hyperthreading, the raw performance of Intel’s baseline cores just about beats it while overclocked.

This could mean an even better boost for gaming performance.

Read/Write Hard Drive Benchmark

The regular read/write speeds of HDDs are no surprise since they generally perform similarly across the board, but we thought we’d give you a little comparison between our selected drive and the most popular offering from Western Digital.

To say the least, it looks like we’re holding our own:

Moving on to the 4K read/write speeds, if you look closely (we apologize for the weirdness of the graphs) you can see why the WD drive is so popular due to its superior 4K read/write speeds.

Alas, the HDDs still stand no chance against the might of Solid State storage.

Another oddity appears in the 4K read/write of the SATA SSD as opposed to the M.2 contender, maybe that’s why the A400 is so popular these days.

Extra Stuff

After you build your gaming PC, you’re going to need some extra stuff too before you’re ready to game.

Peripherals

Most gamers opt to buy a good gaming monitor, a gaming keyboard/mouse, a gaming headset, and even a microphone.

We know you’re on a budget, so we made a list of our top peripheral picks in each category.

Here are our recommended peripherals for this build:

• Dell SE2417HG Gaming Monitor
• Redragon K558 Anala Gaming Keyboard
• Redragon M711 Cobra Gaming Mouse
• Behringer HX2000 Headphones
• Blue Snowball Microphone

Windows 10

If you’ve never built your own personal computer before, you may be a little baffled at the whole Windows 10 installation and activation process.

We happen to have a full setup and installation guide that you can check out by clicking here and scrolling to the bottom of the page.

The cost might also be a bit of an issue. Maybe you’re looking at Windows 10 keys from Microsoft or Amazon; you’ll regularly see them for $100+.

Crazy, right?

In reality, you can just go onto eBay and purchase an OEM key for around $5 from 1 of hundreds of sellers and even get instant delivery.

Internet Connection

For the best speed and lowest latency internet connection, you’ll want to stick with ethernet if you can, and most motherboards nowadays are fitted with a minimum of a Gigabit Ethernet port.

However, for those of you that really need the wireless connection, you can opt for an internal Wi-Fi adapter like the TP-Link Archer R4E, or a USB adapter like this Inamax USB Wi-Fi adapter.

Other Budgets

$800 is a good baseline for an entry level gaming PC, but we’ve got build guides for a bunch of other budgets as well.

• $400 gaming PC build guide
• $500 gaming PC build guide
• $600 gaming PC build guide
• $700 gaming PC build guide
• $900 gaming PC build guide
• $1000 gaming PC build guide