When building a $500 gaming PC, you often have to cut corners. But not during Cyber Monday.
Building a computer at this time of year is great. You can stack multiple good deals to get nicer parts at big discounts. Other months are sparser for deals, making it harder to roll together a kickass machine cheaply.
And once again, you can put together a system capable of 1080p Ultra at 60fps for $500 or less—and you can still easily upgrade it down the road. All the parts are new and sold by first-party sellers, too. Need something different? You can scale up to a $700 1440p build or move down to a $350 720p build. I’ve got example builds for those below, too.
The only “catch”? Things look similar to last year. (If you’re a returning reader, parts of this article may sound…familiar.) That’s not a problem with the deals, though—and these PCs are still badass. Let’s dive into the details and I’ll explain.
This article is part of a series about the cheapest Black Friday gaming PC you can build. For fun, you can compare this year’s results to 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016!
This build may not have plushly padded specs, but no real corners are cut. In fact, it’s capable of 1440p if you drop the graphics settings in games. You also get a bonus of a free AAA game, thanks to an Intel promotion.
As typical for suggested gaming PC builds, the cost of a mouse and keyboard aren’t included in the list. But for the sticklers out there, you can mentally add another $28 for a budget mouse and mechanical keyboard to the total.
Part | Name | Price |
CPU | Ryzen 5 5600 | $130 |
Motherboard | ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4/ac ATX AM4 Motherboard[1] | $85 |
RAM | Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4-3600 (2x8GB) | $35 |
Graphics Card | Sparkle Arc A750 8GB | $180 |
Storage | MSI SPATIUM M461 500GB M.2 NVMe Gen 4 SSD[2] | $26* |
PSU | Thermaltake Smart 600W 80+ Non-Modular | $40 |
Case | Phanteks Eclipse G300A ATX Mid-Tower Case[3] | $35 |
OS | Windows 10 or 11 Pro OEM | $23 |
Bonus game | Assassin’s Creed Mirage | — |
Total | $553 |
Build notes
Build this PC and you get a solid 6-core, 12-thread processor that supports PCIe 4.0; an ATX motherboard that supports RGB and ARGB fans and has plenty of PCIe expansion slots; 16GB of DDR4-3600 memory (Ryzen 5000’s sweet spot for RAM speed); a high-performing NVMe SSD; on-board Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; and an attractive airflow case. The Windows 11 license is included, too, and the key is above board—the license comes from PCWorld’s affiliated shop.
Oh, and you get a copy of Assassin’s Creed Mirage as a bonus with the purchase of the Intel Arc A750 graphics card. Not shabby for a PC that comes in at about $550, and that you can soup up if you want flashier fans, more memory, more storage, or a faster CPU.
The main caveat: You may need to flash the motherboard’s BIOS to a newer version before the Ryzen 5 5600 will work in it. (It depends on the BIOS version your unit ships with—P2.20 and later shouldn’t require this step.) AMD loans free boot kits for this purpose. A local computer store may also be able to perform this service for a fee. (Or a good, well-supplied friend could do this for free, if they like you.)
By the way—if you’re disappointed that this build feels like old hardware, it’s true many of this build’s core components launched two years ago or more. (Ryzen 5000 parts and the B550 chipset launched in 2020, and while Intel Arc A750 came out in 2022, it performs on par with the Radeon RX 6600, which is of a 2021 vintage.)
The problem aren’t these deals, though. Hardware releases have slowed in the last couple of years, and what’s come out has generally been in the higher priced brackets. And even then, some launches have been downright minor. Fortunately, there was so much aggressive competing between AMD, Intel, and Nvidia that hardware from a generation back still kicks plenty of butt.
Still bummed about what this says about the industry? You’ll enjoy the kind of discussions we have on our podcast, The Full Nerd. You can join our Discord server to chat with other like-minded individuals about this topic, too!
This build comes in just a little over $700—though you could shave down the price even more if you really wanted. And you can pack in a heck of a lot more CPU performance if you’re able to build the alternative version of it.
Part | Name | Price |
CPU | Ryzen 5 5600 | $130 |
Motherboard | ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4/ac ATX AM4 Motherboard[1] | $85 |
RAM | Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4-3600 (2x8GB) | $35 |
Graphics Card | Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6700 XT | $310 |
Storage | Solidigm P41 Plus 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD | $50 |
PSU | Thermaltake Smart BM3 650W 80+ Bronze Semi-Modular[2] | $60 |
Case | Phanteks Eclipse G300A ATX Mid-Tower Case[3] | $35 |
OS | Windows 10 or 11 Pro OEM | $23 |
Total | $727 |
This 1440p build sports a 6-core, 12-thread processor that supports PCIe 4.0; an ATX motherboard that supports RGB and ARGB fans and has plenty of PCIe expansion slots; 16GB of DDR4-3600 memory (Ryzen 5000’s sweet spot for RAM speed); a high-performing and popular NVMe SSD; on-board Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; and an attractive airflow case. The Windows 11 license is included, too, and the key is legit—the license is through PCWorld’s affiliated shop. As for the GPU, we’re sporting a capable Radeon RX 6700 XT—and a nice model, too.
For this price point, I’ve bumped up the storage capacity, though you could still very easily jump up even further to 2TB.
Only one caveat exists for this build: You’ll need to flash the BIOS before the Ryzen 5 5600 will work in the motherboard.
Part | Name | Price |
CPU | Ryzen 5 5600G | $138 |
Motherboard | ASRock B450M/ac R2.0 Micro ATX AM4 | $60 |
RAM | Teamgroup T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4-3600 (2x8GB) | $35 |
Graphics Card | Integrated Vega graphics (7 cores) | $0 |
Storage | MSI SPATIUM M461 500GB M.2 NVMe Gen 4 SSD[2] | $26* |
PSU | Thermaltake Smart 500W 80+ Non-Modular | $35 |
Case | Phanteks Eclipse G300A ATX Mid-Tower Case[3] | $35 |
OS | Windows 10 or 11 Pro OEM | $23 |
Total | $352 |
Those who build PCs regularly won’t be surprised: This year’s most affordable Cyber Monday build relies on an APU (a CPU with more robust integrated graphics).
But if you only need a computer for Fortnite and other lightweight games, the Ryzen 5 5600G and its beefy integrated graphics will handle them like a champ. But it’s not a completely stripped-down system. It still has plenty of memory, and you’ve got built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the motherboard.
The power supply does restrict you to budget graphics cards, though, should you want to upgrade to a discrete GPU in the future. However, you can upgrade to the 600W power supply used in the $500 build above to circumvent that issue. As for recommended upgrades, you could go for a bigger SSD, but you don’t need to. Honestly, this is pretty good for the cost of just a few Benjamins.