Best gaming PC in 2021: How to get most value for your money

As many long-time gamers know, video games are an amazing way to be entertained, have a moment of escapism, and hang out with your friends. Today, as the world faces the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, more people than ever are turning to video games as a way to have fun, learn and stay connected with their friends and family whilst staying at home and safe. While leaving your home can be a challenge, there are always plenty of digital worlds to explore. If you are looking to elevate your gaming experience, building your own gaming computer is one of the options that you might be thinking about. After all, it will not only provide you with an upgraded personal computer but it will also double as a gaming machine for your entertainment needs.

Of course, this means plenty of options and choices to make, which can be overwhelming when you’re new to gaming and trying to navigate what to buy for your gaming PC build in 2021. Deciding on what PC parts to buy can be incredibly difficult given the amount of options that are available. We know that everyone has different wants and needs to get the most out of gaming, so you will naturally have many questions about where to start and how much to pay when picking parts for your gaming PC.

If you are trying to build your gaming PC in 2021, you will find that the cost of the different components can quickly add up. In order to help you with your purchase decision, we have put together a list of gaming components that will not only provide you with the best gaming experience but they will also make sure that you don’t spent your money on things that don’t add any value. If you are looking to spend your money wisely, then check out our recommendation below for how not to overspend.

The Sweet Spot for Gaming PC Components

When it comes to building a gaming computer, there are around seven main components that you need to think about. However, we are going to focus on four main components (CPU, Motherboard, Graphics card, and Memory) as they can easily make the most expensive parts of your gaming PC. This is where you need to make sure that you get most value for your money.

Starting with CPUs, there are two main players: AMD and Intel. It is very hard to recommend Intel these days as they have not been innovating at the same pace as AMD. When picking your CPU, it is easy to get caught up in core count. The important thing to note is that the latest games of 2021 are still not going to leverage high core count CPUs to their fullest potential. Intel definitely gives you more compatibility with software but if you are looking for future compatibility, AMD will give you the most value for your money. For CPU of our choice, we recommend the AMD Ryzen 5 5600x (If you can find it) at around $450 price range, as it is a great option for getting high enough core count for multitasking, live streaming, and gaming while still being able to utilize the cores effectively.

Now that you have figured out the CPU, you need to decide on the motherboard. This is one category where you can easily throw away your money without getting any meaningful performance in return. The motherboard that you select will depend on the socket type based on the make and model of the CPU. In general terms, when it comes to AMD Ryzen, running the 50 series motherboard is much more beneficial than running a 70 series motherboard. There is no need to focus on the number of USB ports, M.2 storage ports, other plugs as it will not translate to a better gaming experience. Sure the build quality of a higher motherboard might be better but it only really matters if you are planning to overclock your CPU. If you are going with a 5000 series Ryzen CPU then overcloking is something that you don’t really have to worry about. The only thing that you might be giving up is the PCI-e Gen4 capability, which won’t mean anything if you are not running PCI-e Gen 4 storage device, not to mention the fact that most GPUs don’t even use PCI-e Gen 3 16X yet. Our recommendation is to save some money and go with something like Asus ROG STRIX x470 motherboard around the price range of $150.

Another area that is important is Memory. In the old days, there was a tendency to equate slow computer with low memory. However, in 2021, that is not the case today and memory modules can easily eat up your budget without giving any meaningful returns. You will find 32GB memory options with 4400 MHz. For gaming, you don’t really need 32GB memory capacity. The reality is that 16GB and 3200 MHz dual channel memory is the sweet spot when it comes to gaming performance. Also, RBG LED lighting is a big trend these days for gaming PCs, so if you can live without it, don’t spend more for lights that don’t add any performance value.

This leaves us with the graphics card, the most important part of a gaming PC. It is responsible for more than 90% of your gaming performance. When shopping for a graphics card, our advise is to spend the money, you saved from other components, on the most powerful graphics card that you can afford. It is important to make sure that you pair your power supply in accordance with the power rating of the graphics card. In general, you will want to get 750W power supply for rtx 30 series cards and 550W for something like 2080ti. One important thing to note is the custom cards that manufacturers love to charge extra for. This is where you can easily spend more money for a modified card compared to the reference design cards from AMD and Nvidia. You will get the best value for your money with something like RTX 3060 Ti, which is Nvidia’s latest 3000 series GPU with new Ampere architecture, 8 GB of memory and a power draw of just 200 Watt at $400 USD (if you can find it). Other options also include AMD 6800 or the last gen RTX 2060 Super or 2070 Super. In terms of other computer parts, you would want to get at least M.2 SSD with 500GB-1TB of storage. In addition, you can add a storage option with a 2TB hard drive for a fairly cheap price now a days.

Gaming PC Components with most value for your money

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600x
• Motherboard: Gaming board with PCIe 3.0 x16, M.2 Socket, Gigabit LAN (e.g. Asus ROG STRIX x470)
• Memory: 16GB DDR4, 3200 MHz, Dual Channel
• GPU: 8GB DDR6 with DisplayPort 1.4a, HDMI 2.1 (e.g. Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti)

Graphics cards are extremely hard to find these days as most high end models are out of stock across the board because of popularity of people building gaming PCs, COVID-19 stay at home offices, crypto mining, scalpers buying it for a quick profit, and worldwide chip shortages. This has given a boost to the usage of bots for automated purchase orders from scalpers. The manufacturers and retailers have seen bots at this scale and sophistication for first time, forcing the companies to manually monitor purchases to ensure cards get in the hands of legitimate consumers. Even with all of the controls, the graphic cards and some of the computer parts still remain vastly out of stock everywhere. We hope that the GPU shortage situation will get better with time, in the meantime, you will just have to be more vigilant and place an order as soon as new stock is made available.