How to build a $1,000 gaming PC in 2026: Don’t

PC gaming has never quite been affordable, but you could always save money—and get a surprising amount of value and power—if you knew how to build your own desktop. That advice has held true through thick and thin for the last few decades, but the RAM crunch is ruining things.

I conducted a little experiment and picked a number: one thousand US dollars. In my mind, that’s a mid-range gaming desktop that shades a bit into budget territory (depending on your own tolerance for spending greenbacks on entertainment). It’s definitely a step up from console gaming, which currently ranges from $400 for the Xbox Series S to $750 for the PlayStation 5 Pro. On top of that one grand, I thought about the minimum specs I’d be willing to accept for a new gaming PC that was meant to play at least most new triple-A 3D games.

It’s an arbitrary distinction and entirely subjective, but I did get some input from my colleague Alaina Yee, an expert on PC gaming and budget builds in particular. Here’s where I landed:

• 6-core CPU that’s no more than one generation behind.
• 32GB of RAM. (Yes, I can see you wincing.) I consider 16GB to be the bare minimum for a current Windows 11 machine. But for gaming I want some extra breathing room, especially since I often have something else running on a secondary monitor.
• 1TB of Gen4 SSD storage. Current PC games are BIG.
• Recent-ish GPU with 8GB VRAM. Valve says this much should handle the vast majority of recent games, and they happen to be looking into this area at the moment.
• Adequate power supply that can get all that done. One from a reputable brand, at the very least.

I can compromise on a lot of other things. A motherboard without all the extra trimmings like Wi-Fi. A generic PC case. No official Windows license. (Microsoft doesn’t seem to care if you never register, so why should I?) But those are the bare minimums I would need to hit before I could consider this $1,000 PC acceptable, if not exactly a good buy.

So, I let my fingers do the walking over to PCPartPicker. Here’s how I fared, with prices and availability as of February 2nd, 2026:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X — $176.99
• GPU: Gigabyte Eagle OC GeForce RTX 5060 8GB — $329.99
• Motherboard: ASRock B650M Pro RS Micro ATX — $99.99
• CPU cooler: Be Quiet BK047 — $24.88
• RAM: Crucial Pro 32GB (16GBx2) DDR5-5600 — $312.99
• SSD: Patriot P400 Lite 1TB — $134.99
• Case: Zalman T6 Mini Micro ATX — $28.99
• Power supply: Corsair CX750M — $59.99

Add in $10 for shipping the case from Newegg and that brings me to a subtotal of… drum roll please… $1,178.80. Sales tax for my home in Pennsylvania takes me to a grand total of just under $1,250.

Yeah, no. $1,250 is too damn much to pay for a gaming PC with that many compromises—especially that case, which can just barely fit the GPU (208mm), can’t be upgraded with standard ATX motherboards, and includes just one 80mm fan.

Also, fun fact: when I went back to grab some screenshots the day after doing this experiment, that $330 RAM was out of stock and the price of the GPU and the SSD had already risen. Woo.

Alaina suggested a switch to a Ryzen 5500X CPU, which she admits is a pretty big step down from a Ryzen 7000-series chip, but has access to cheaper DDR4 RAM. Combined with a Gigabyte A520M motherboard, this got the price to squeak in at $1,003.62 including taxes and shipping. But again, that doesn’t include Windows (maybe you’re okay with Bazzite?) and it needs some more cooling. It’s also making some pretty big compromises on my initial requirements. So, the center can’t hold… and my experiment ends with a failure.

Of course, my theoretical budget-minded PC gamer has more options. Maybe they have some parts they can scrounge from a previous build, as I’ve been doing for almost 20 years. Maybe they’re okay with refurbished or used. Maybe they’ve got graded Pokémon cards sitting around.

But for my imaginary money, I’d give up at this point. Though it would hurt my PC gamer soul, I’d recommend a PS5 or Switch 2 instead, especially since Microsoft has now dug its publishing hole deep enough to put its biggest franchises on PlayStation.

There are alternatives for playing PC games, if you insist. Xbox Game Pass—though not as good a value as it used to be—can still get you tons of games and some brand new titles for (sigh) yet another streaming subscription. Nvidia’s GeForce Now is a better alternative if you already have a huge library of Steam games… though I’m loathe to give money to a company that’s at least complacent and at worst actively contributing to the problem. Neither of these options is great if you don’t have access to an excellent internet connection.

You can get a Steam Deck, which is also less of a deal than it used to be, but still a great way to experience PC gaming with optional portability. Alternatives like the Asus ROG Ally and Lenovo Legion series are out there, too… though you should look for a sale and give up on securing the latest and greatest hardware. At $1,000 retail, the ROG Xbox Ally X is almost as expensive as the imaginary desktop I specced out, and it won’t be anywhere near as powerful.

The hows and whys of this abysmal situation are well-documented elsewhere, but the quick answer is “AI.” The prices for consumer-packaged RAM are the most visible issue, with DDR5 and even DDR4 absolutely skyrocketing in the last few months… and seemingly unlikely to improve within a year or two. That will affect the prices of all finished electronics, but consumers get the short end of this particular memory stick, getting the knock-on effects of output for everything except industrial RAM slowing to a crawl. The same thing is affecting consumer graphics cards, with Nvidia reportedly slashing production in favor of industrial “AI” cards, and even the cards we can get keep rising in price because of their expensive memory.

The immutable forces of supply and demand are hammering PC gamers from every direction. But it does create a strange situation: this is one of the very few market conditions in which a pre-built PC makes sense, even if you have the skills and inclination to build a PC yourself.

Let’s take my list of necessary components as an example. For around the same price as my sad $1,250 build, I found this Thermaltake pre-built on Amazon with almost identical specs except the RTX 5060 is traded out for an RTX 4060. Not bad, considering it also includes Windows 11 and a much more flexible ATX case. Another example is this ABS pre-built with a Core i7-14700F and an RTX 5060 on Newegg for $1,179.99.

If you have a Micro Center near you, well glory be, you can get a toned-down Dell Tower Plus with a brand-new Core Ultra 7 265 processor and 32GB of DDR5 RAM. It even has an RTX 5060 Ti, though it is the less powerful 8GB version of that card. You also get a few creature comforts like Wi-Fi and an SD card reader. With a miraculous $800 discount and a complete lack of RGB or tempered glass, that Dell desktop is going for just $999.99. Damn, this must be what Gimli felt like.

There’s no two ways about it: PC gaming in 2026 kinda sucks. If you don’t already have a gaming PC, you’re looking at some big compromises—in price, in capability, possibly even in format. I’m looking for a positive note to end this article on… and I can’t find one. Why? Because prices for RAM and other PC components will remain high for another year or two at least, possibly much longer.

And if they don’t, it’s because the “AI” bubble will have burst. At which point a stick of DDR5 might once again be affordable, but it’ll be worth less in trade when you’re trying to afford groceries. Hooray.