Today, we’re going to walk you through the best gaming PC build under $1500. Our goal is to provide you a gaming experience far beyond anything a mere console could dream of and to give you the best possible PC gaming experience for your money.
In this article, we’re going to provide three main options for you. Our main Intel-powered gaming PC build, our secondary AMD-powered gaming/streaming PC build, and our pick for best-prebuilt gaming PC under $1500. We’ll also provide detailed performance information, as well as resources concerning peripherals and PC building. If you’re new to PC gaming, don’t worry: we still have you covered.
If all that sounds interesting to you, let’s hop into it!
Introducing The Best Gaming PC Build Under $1500
This high-end gaming PC build will be equipped for true, native 4K gaming, VR gaming, 1440p, and more. Consoles like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X are only able to achieve 4K at 30-60 FPS and by upscaling from resolutions like 1440p and 1800p- by and large, these consoles are not providing true 4K gaming experiences.
With this $1500 gaming PC build, you’ll be able to play games at true 4K, with the added benefit of higher visual settings and real-time ray-tracing to further improve immersion and quality.
The GPU in this build will also power VR headsets like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive with ease, providing a higher level of VR experiences than anything possible with PSVR.
If you choose to play at lower resolutions like 1440p, you’ll also be able to push framerates well above 60. With a 144 Hz monitor, you’ll actually be able to see all those extra frames, which makes a massive difference when playing eSports games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, CSGO, and Dota 2. Whether your goal is accomplishing the best possible visual fidelity or the most competitive gaming experience, we have you covered with this build.
The PC Parts
Case
Thermaltake V200 Tempered Glass RGB Edition
The chassis that holds everything together, boasting RGB lighting and great cooling.
CPU
Intel Core i5-9600K
An overclockable Intel CPU from the 9th-Gen Core i5 series, ideal for maximum gaming performance.
Cooler
Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler
An excellent air-cooler from Noctua that should provide great overclocks without breaking the bank.
RAM
ADATA XPG GAMMIX D10 16GB DDR4-2666
A whopping 16GB of RAM from ADATA, allowing for better multitasking than ever.
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z390 UD
A high-end Intel motherboard unlocking overclocking capabilities and more.
GPU
EVGA Nvidia RTX 2070
One of the most powerful GPUs on the market, beating out the last-gen GTX 1080 with ray-tracing features as a bonus.
SSD
Crucial M.2 P1 1 TB
An NVMe SSD with 1TB of storage, balancing blazing performance and capacity.
HDD
Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB HDD
A massive 3TB HDD at a great price.
PSU
EVGA BQ 650W Semi-Modular Power Supply
A high quality, semi-modular power supply to provide a superior building experience.
The PC Parts Details
Now, we’re going to dive into each of the components in detail.
Case: Thermaltake V200 Tempered Glass RGB Edition
The Thermaltake V200 Tempered Glass RGB Edition is our choice of case.
It’s a larger ATX Tower from Thermaltake, boasting 3 RGB fans on the front and 1 pre-installed exhaust fan in the back. There is also an RGB controller included inside the case, which means that out of the box you’re getting the following features:
- Fully-fledged RGB lighting
- An amazing airflow solution
- A large, high-quality case to build in
It’s pretty hard for us to fault that, and to be honest we really can’t. Add in the tempered glass panel for improved durability and presentation and you have a truly flashy case without breaking the bank. That’s not even taking into account the plentiful drive bays, PSU, and cable management compartments built into the case, ensuring an easy building experience.
The only real downside of a case like this is its size and weight- it’ll be a bit tougher to move around. In exchange, though, you’re getting a truly amazing experience for the money.
CPU: Intel Core i5-9600K
The Intel Core i5-9600K is our pick for this PC build, thanks to its best-in-class single-core performance and strong multi-core performance. For gaming purposes, this baby is only marginally beat by its i7-K and i9-K older brothers…when those CPUs both cost hundreds of dollars more, the choice becomes obvious. The i5-9600K here has all the power you need for gaming, and will have it for years to come.
Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler
Since the i5 doesn’t include a cooler and we’ll want to achieve some overclocking, we opted to include a high-quality Noctua air cooler with this PC build. The Noctua NH-U12S will provide all the cooling performance you need to keep the i5 cool, and even with some heavy overclocks you shouldn’t find yourself being pushed into dangerous temperature zones.
You also have the benefit of Noctua’s included fan, which is powerful and pretty quiet. Combined with our RTX 2070, you should have a surprisingly quiet PC build once all is said and done.
RAM: ADATA XPG GAMMIX D10 16GB DDR4-2666
We’ve included 16GB of DDR4 RAM in this build- specifically, the ADATA XPG GAMMIX D10 kit. With a nice 2666 MHz speed and more than enough capacity for gaming and multitasking purposes, ADATA us covered well without overspending on RAM. While we could’ve spent a bit more on RAM in this build, opting for higher RAM speeds and capacities would’ve provided diminishing returns at best, so we stuck with what works.
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z390 UD
The Gigabyte Z390 UD motherboard offers pretty much everything you need for a build like this. High-speed NVMe SSD support…overclocking support with the Z390 chipset…plenty of PCI Express slots…and even some nice extra software features, like Smart Fan 5. The general build quality here is fairly high, and (in our opinion) the aesthetic is sleek and refined, perfect for any PC build.
GPU: EVGA Nvidia RTX 2070
The real star of the show in this build is the EVGA Nvidia RTX 2070. This is where all of that stellar 4K, VR, and 1440p gaming performance is going to be coming from. We went with an EVGA card thanks to their stellar build quality and customer support- on the infinitely slim chance you encounter an issue with this GPU, EVGA is the most likely manufacturer to make it right, so long as you don’t toss any receipts or warranty information.
If you want a more detailed breakdown of how this card will perform in your favorite games, scroll on down to our dedicated performance section. Otherwise, rest assured: this card is equipped for tackling modern games at max settings and high resolutions, and it will be for years to come.
SSD: Crucial M.2 P1 1 TB
Let’s start with the bombshell: the Crucial P1 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD offers a whopping 2 GB/s in read performance. Its 1.7 GB/s write performance is a little bit slower, but this is still eons beyond anything a SATA SSD could pull off. (Those usually cap out at around half a GB/s.) The reason this is possible is because NVMe M.2 SSDs use PCI Express bandwidth, allowing them to access the same high-bandwidth capabilities as a graphics card.
While ~$150 may seem like a lot to spend for 1TB, you’re getting storage here that will load everything just about instantly. That means your operating system, your browser, and your favorite games will load up faster than ever. With 1TB of storage to spare, you’re unlikely to hit a wall too quickly but in case you do, we’ve also provided an HDD.
HDD: Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB HDD
The Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB HDD speaks for itself. It is a massive 3TB HDD, which you can use to store everything that doesn’t fit on your SSD. Namely, you’ll be slapping movies, music, and your less-played games on this one. Even 4K media won’t suffer on a hard drive, and games won’t load too slow either, they just won’t load very fast.
PSU: Corsair TXM 550W Semi-Modular Power Supply
Last but not least is the Corsair TXM 550W Gold-Certified Semi-Modular Power Supply. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but truth be told it tells you pretty much everything you need to know about this PSU.
Its Semi-Modularity means it will be significantly easier to build with than a Non-Modular power supply. Combine that with our massive chassis, and you’ll have all the room for building and cable management your little heart could ask for.
The 80+ Gold certification means it will have a high level of power efficiency. This means lower power consumption, less heat exhausted into your case, and less noise generated when the PSU isn’t under heavy load.
The 550W capacity may seem low, but it’s more than enough for a gaming PC like this one…and finally, the Corsair name means high quality and a 5-year warranty.
What This Build Plays
Above, we’ve embedded two videos you can use as a resource to find out how this gaming PC should perform.
To summarize our findings, though, the RTX 2070 should be more than capable of playing most games at 4K and maximum settings at 60+ FPS for second. At 1440p and 1080p, you should be able to push as high as 144+ FPS without any significant settings decreases, though a few particularly heavy games may prove problematic.
In games that have RTX features enabled, like Battlefield 5 and Metro Exodus, expect solid 1440p and 60+ FPS performance at max settings. You aren’t going to push 4K with ray-tracing enabled on this card, though- even with the 2080, that’s a hard sell sometimes.
Our Selection Process
Our selection process is fairly simple: take a look at what competitors are doing, then find a way to do it better using our own skill and experience. The focus here is on providing the best possible gaming PC experience to our readers, not shilling any particular manufacturer or brand. We want to make sure you’re getting the best PC build for your money, with balanced components, and we feel like we’ve accomplished that goal here.
Recommended Upgrades
If most of this build seems fine to you but you don’t want to jump up to our $2000 gaming PC build, then we recommend one upgrade to make a difference, especially if you plan on streaming or rendering.
CPU: Intel Core i7 9700K
The Intel Core i7-9700K won’t improve your gaming performance by very much. This is already a fairly high-performance gaming PC build, and the i5-9600K is among the best gaming CPUs on the market. In terms of gaming, the improvement here will be marginal.
What will improve is your headroom for streaming and rendering. If you’re a Twitch streamer or video content creator who doesn’t want to sacrifice any gaming performance for streaming power, then the i7-9700K is a great option for you, since it has strong multi-core performance, too. This will add another $100 and some change to the total cost of your PC though, so keep that in mind before buying.
AMD Ryzen Best Gaming PC Build Under $1500
Case
Thermaltake V200 Tempered Glass RGB Edition
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
Cooler
Noctua NH-U12S CPU Cooler
RAM
ADATA XPG GAMMIX D10 16GB DDR4-2666
Motherboard
Gigabyte AORUS X470 Ultra Gaming Motherboard
GPU
EVGA Nvidia RTX 2070
SSD
Crucial M.2 P1 1 TB
HDD
Hitachi Ultrastar 7K3000 3TB HDD
PSU
EVGA BQ 650W Semi-Modular Power Supply
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that this build is pretty much the same as our main Intel build, sans a few key differences in CPU and motherboard. This is well, pretty much exactly the case, but we’re going to dive into a little more detail as to what this changes.
First of all, the Ryzen 7 2700X. Like the i5 in our main build, this CPU is fully overclockable, and provides some pretty strong gaming performance. As is often the case with AMD vs Intel, though, the gaming performance will actually be slightly worse, a bit more significantly so in games that aren’t well-optimized for multi-core CPUs.
Intel focuses on providing great single-core performance, while AMD focuses on providing great multi-core performance. In terms of gaming, especially at 4K, you generally shouldn’t see any difference between these two versions of the build, since you aren’t going to be pushing much higher than 60 FPS in either case. If you’re gaming at a lower resolution, especially 1080p, however, you will notice a loss in framerate, but only something that would be noticeable with a 144+ Hz monitor.
The benefit of the Ryzen processor here is dramatically improved multi-core speed- as high as 70% more multi-core speed, actually. This means that for streaming and rendering purposes, the Ryzen 7 will annilihate the Core i5 in the main build, which makes this a viable alternative for gamers who double as Twitch streamers.
There’s also a higher-end motherboard with built-in RGB.
Basic Mouse and Keyboard Set
Logitech MK120
The Logitech MK120 is a fairly basic mouse and keyboard set, but it’s built solidly and durable enough to last for years. These are commonly deployed in school and office environments thanks to that durability and quality. While there are no advanced gaming features present here, you still have some perfectly adequate mice to start with.
AUKEY Mechanical Keyboard
If you want something a bit better for a gaming experience, we recommend an AUKEY Mechanical Keyboard. The AUKEY may not have special software, but it has great build quality at a steal of a price and comes highly recommended.
Logitech G403
The G403 is a stellar gaming mouse despite its low price point, offering all the features you should need out of a gaming mouse, including an excellent optical sensor.
There still is a lot better mouse in the market that fits your interest. For example, if you are in search of a better MMO mouse, then here’s a detailed guide. You can also switch to some ergonomic options if you lose time behind the screen.
Sound
Budget Headset: AUKEY GH-S4 Scepter
The AUKEY GH-S4 Scepter offers strong sound quality and a virtual 7.1 surround sound experience that’s perfect for gaming competitively. While higher-end options do exist, this is recommended if you don’t already have brand preference/loyalty, and don’t feel like digging through an assortment of specs and options. For most gamers, this will be more than enough for a great gaming experience.
Budget Speakers: Logitech Z313
If you don’t have speakers, Logitech has you covered. The Logitech Z313 speaker set offers high-quality sound in a stereo + subwoofer array at a very fair price. These speakers will be more than enough for gaming and content consumption, though we recommend wearing a headset when playing competitive games for better spatial awareness.
Display
Now, let’s talk monitors. Below, we’re going to provide two options: a 144 Hz monitor to prioritize smoothness, and a 4K monitor to prioritize visuals.
144 Hz Gaming Monitor: ViewSonic XG2401
Our 144 Hz monitor is Viewsonic’s XG2401. It uses a TN panel with a 1ms response time and an excellent 144 Hz refesh rate, ensuring the smoothness needed for an ideal competitive gaming experience. Combined with the power in this build, you should easily be able to push 144+ FPS at 1080p, even with high-to-max settings enabled. This is the choice for eSports gamers, but it will come at the cost of colors, resolution, and viewing angles.
4K IPS Graphics Monitor: LG 27UD58-B
If you aren’t a competitive gamer and don’t think you’ll be anytime, we recommend the LG 27UD58-B. This is a FreeSync IPS monitor with excellent color reproduction, viewing angles, and a high resolution. Its 4 ms response time isn’t bad either, especially if you’re primarily playing single-player and casual multiplayer games. This monitor matches the power of our RTX 2070 in this build, and will allow you to reach levels of visual fidelity that consoles won’t match for another six years.
Getting Your Operating System
If you’re worried that you’ll have to spend an extra $100 or so for an operating system, don’t be! There are other options.
Windows 10
While you can buy Windows 10 outright from the link above…you can also just create installation media and use an unactivated copy. You won’t be able to change your Windows theme or wallpaper, but most of your features will remain intact, and your gaming performance will not be impacted in any way.
If you find yourself missing what few features are cut from an unactivated Windows installation, you can purchase an activation key from within Windows 10, whenever you can afford it. We recommend getting to that when you can, but there are no performance downsides whatsoever in using unactivated Windows for a gaming PC build.
Ubuntu Linux
If you don’t want to bother with Windows and you want a truly free and untethered PC building experience, Ubuntu Linux is the way to go. This will come at a penalty to game compatibility, though, and this will be much harder to set up and get running. This option is recommended against for those new to PC and casual users- if you don’t already have decent experience with diagnostics and tweaking, Windows is the best option.
How To Build
If you don’t know how to build but you’re willing to learn: don’t worry! It isn’t actually that hard, just a little time-consuming if you’re a newcomer. While we’d love to pad wordcount and SEO here, the truth is that no written PC building guide is actually going to be very helpful. Instead, we’re going to embed an extremely helpful video guide below, which you can use as study material and a real-time reference during your building process.
Best Prebuilt Gaming PC Under $1000
iBUYPOWER Pro Gaming PC
If you’re still worried about building your own PC and are willing to make a few compromises, we have you covered.
The iBUYPOWER Pro Gaming PC linked above boasts an i7-8700, 16GB RAM, and an RTX 2070. This will mean similar but slightly worse gaming performance across-the-board, and better streaming performance than the main build. (The AMD build, however, will still be much better for streaming and content creation.)
The other big compromise you’ll be making is in storage space. While we managed to squeeze 1TB of NVME SSD storage and 3TB of SATA HDD storage into our PC builds, this prebuilt only manages 240 GB SSD storage and 1 TB HDD. This means not only dramatically less storage, but dramatically slower storage, too- even with the SATA SSD, which won’t come close to matching the speed of an NVMe SSD.
If these compromises are worth it for you, then we recommend this prebuilt. Otherwise, we recommend going with one of our two builds and simply taking it to a local shop to have it built for you. If you’re on the fence, feel free to ask for our help in the comments below.
Conclusion
And that’s it!
Whether you went for our Intel build, AMD build, or prebuilt, we hope that the options provided to you were satisfactory. Did you find what you’re looking for? Did our extra information help? Comment below and let us know! We’re here to help if you have any questions, too, but rest assured that we’ve already verified build compatibility ten ways from Sunday.
