How to Build a Gaming PC: A Step by Step Guide To Building A PC 2020 Edition

Today, we’re going to walk you through our step-by-step guide to building a gaming PC in 2020.

By the end of this guide, you’re going to know everything you need to know to begin your pilgrimage into the wonderful world of PC building. We’re going to help you:

1. find the PC components for your build including budget, purpose and types of games you will be playing
2. help you understand how each PC component works, what's the difference and why they are important
3. ensure you are fully equipped, tell you what tools you need to build your first PC and prepare you

Quick note: whilst this guide specifically talks about building a gaming PC, the guide its self is applicable to those simply looking to build a PC.

Now let's dive in!

Things To Consider Before Building Your Own Gaming PC

Before building or buying a PC, you need to make sure that you have a solid understanding of your needs in relation to what you can actually afford.

Choosing Your Budget

When buying new, we recommend starting with a budget of at least $300 for the core components of your PC build. This would be very entry-level, however, and wouldn’t be suited for more cutting-edge modern games like Monster Hunter: World or Doom Eternal.

For playable framerates in cutting-edge modern games, you’ll want to bump up into the $400-$600 range.

From $700-$800, you’ll be more than well-equipped for modern titles and you’ll even be able to get into some VR gaming and content creation on the side.

Once you start breaching $1000, all the way up to $2000 and higher, you’ll find that your returns in actual performance begin to diminish. You’ll only find this extra performance useful if you must have the best of the best, or if you plan on streaming/rendering video daily.

Note: if you decide to purchase a PC rather than building one, remember that it will cost slightly more due to the cost that the PC builder adds on to the price of the build once completed. You can use our list of the best PC builders to find the right company for you.

Understanding Your Needs

You’re here, so chances are you’re definitely going to be using this PC to play games. That being said...what kind of games will you be playing?

eSports titles are made to run decently on low-end systems and very fast on mid-range to high-end systems. If you’re only interested in these games, you shouldn’t need to spend any more than $400. This also applies to console emulation and older games.

As we alluded to earlier, cutting-edge modern titles will work best at $600 and higher. You want immersive gameplay at high framerates, beautiful graphics settings, and you want it to stay that way for at least the next three or four years.

If you fancy yourself a professional gamer, or you want to become one, this is when you start treating your PC as an investment. This is when you pay $1000 or more for your PC build, with a CPU beefy enough for the streaming and rendering you’ll be doing on a daily basis.

What do you need to build a PC?

When choosing the parts to build your PC, there’s a lot more to take into consideration than just price and popularity.

You need to make sure that your parts are all compatible with one another and that they’re reasonably-balanced. The worst thing you can do is spend $200 on your GPU, only to find that your $50 CPU is bottlenecking it to the point where you can’t play your favorite games.

PC Toolkit Note: in terms of tools, we recommend you purchase this fantastic PC toolkit from iFixit which has everything you need to begin building your very first gaming PC.

Here is our gaming PC parts list of all the components you will need:

1. Processor (CPU)
2. Motherboard (MOBO)
3. Graphic Card (GPU)
4. Memory (RAM)
5. Storage (SSD or HDD)
6. Power Supply Unit (PSU)
7. PC Case

Now, let’s walk you through each one.