Best Gaming PC Builds Right Now! $700 / $1300 / $2000 PC Builds

Best Gaming PC Build 2026

Looks like Valve is going to release the Steam machine sooner than we thought, for a price between $600 and $700. But with RAM and GPU prices falling right now, can we actually build a better gaming PC ourselves? Welcome back to PC Builder. I’m Jason. This is our May 2026 best builds. And we’ve got three incredible builds. Starting with that $699 Steam Machine killer with a higher-performance GPU in it. Then we’re going to move on to a $1,300 1440p gaming PC capable of getting 100 FPS in all the latest titles. And we’ll finish out with a $2,000 either 1440p or 4K destroyer capable of crushing gaming. If you get value out of this video, please give it a like, of course, subscribe for more cool PC content. Let’s jump into it.

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$700 Gaming PC Build vs Steam Machine

This is a Steam Machine killer. Why are we doing this now? Well, because basically Valve just launched their $100 Steam controller, which got great reviews, but sold out instantly. It looks like, unfortunately, scalpers are flipping them for as much as $300 US. Don’t buy them from scalpers. So, I have to say that Valve right now also seems to be launching their Steam machine, or at least getting ready to launch it, because we’re getting a ton of rumors that they’re receiving deliveries of it right now. So, I wanted to go through, given the rumored pricing of about $700, maybe $800 for this

 Steam Machine Specs

thing, can you build something better than the Steam Machine, or should you just get this? Well, if you take a look at the tech specs for the Steam Machine as published on their own website, this is going to be a semi-custom solution. So, it’s not a completely DIY PC. It’s more like a laptop in a box. Basically, the CPU is going to be a laptop CPU. It’s a 30W TDP. That’s quite low. It’s going to be Zen 4 with six cores, 12 threads, but again, a very low-power CPU. We’re going to get RDNA 3. That is essentially the RX 7000 series of graphics cards. 28 CUS. That’s about as many as you’re going to find on like an RX700, not even XT, the 7700M, which is the mobile solution on it because it’s clocked down and only has a 110-watt TDP. It’s a relatively low-power PC. 16 GB of DDR5 and 8 GB of VRAM to it. And in terms of the SSD storage, the cheaper one is going to have 512 gigs. And the more expensive one, which we don’t have pricing for yet, is going to be 2 TB.

$700 PC Build 2026

All right, let’s jump into that $699 gaming PC build in 2026. It’s a Steam Machine killer. Basically, I finished out at $696.97. Not only that, not only are we going to hit that price point, but we’re actually going to give you significantly more performance than the Steam Machine itself. I think this is also aesthetically going to be pretty awesome. It’s also going to be something that fits on your desk pretty well. But let’s start with the GPU. Now,

Best CHEAP GPU in 2026?

I checked out the specs for the RX700S, which is the mobile solution for the 7700 that has similar specs to it. Here’s what we got from Tech PowerUp in terms of its equivalent desktop GPU. It’s basically an RX7600. It’s slightly slower than that RX, not the XT version of the 77600, just a normal 7600. If you look, the RTX 5050 is a little bit faster, about 7% faster. The ARC B580 is another one we could consider, a little bit faster still.

NVIDIA Wins?

So, the GPUs I’m going to consider for this is the RTX 5050 is probably the GPU that I’m going to go with. It’s got DLSS4 on it or 4.5, whichever one you want to use. It’s going to have 8 GB of VRAM, which is the equivalent of what we’ve got on the Steam Machine, and it’s a little bit faster than the Steam Machine’s GPU itself, and it’s $289. On the Intel side, if you want to consider an Intel GPU, we’ve got the ARC B580 12 GB for basically the same price as the 5050. It’s just a little bit faster than the 50/50. It’s got 12 gigs of VRAM. Yes, you don’t necessarily get the benefit of like DLSS4 kind of upscaling, but XSS3, it’s as good as what you’re going to get with FSR3, which is what you’re going to get with the Steam Machine. And if you want a little price cut, the ASRock Challenger Arc B570 10 GB GPU can be had right now for $260. Though, honestly, I would spend 30 bucks more and get the B580.

How Much FPS for a $700 Build?

So, what kind of FPS can you expect at 1440p from the $700 gaming PC build versus the Steam machine? Well, if we check out the Tech PowerUp RTX 5050 review, you can see the 5050 is good for about 50 average FPS. This is at 1440p ultra settings at 1440p across a wide range of titles. I believe it’s like 23 titles. I’ll link it down in the video description. You can check it out. The 7600 is slightly behind it. That is where we expect the Steam Machine to come in. Although we may have a slight CPU bottleneck to it because that CPU is pretty low-powered. We’ll have to wait and see on that. And then of course, we’ve got the ARC B580 up there at 57 average FPS, looking pretty good. So then the big question is, what’s the rest of the platform to hit that $699 price point?

Insane RAM Deals!

Well, honestly, we’re going to use a DDR5 system, but because we’re using a full desktop CPU, not a mobile CPU with a much higher TDP. You’re not really going to see the difference between DDR4 and DDR5. You’re going to see the difference in the power there. That’s why I’m checking out new combo deals. Remember, don’t buy RAM in 2026 without a combo deal.

Best Cheap Gaming CPU in 2026

Cuz look at this. $219 for a CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a motherboard is insane. And in fact, that is the combo that we’re going to go with. Not only does it come with that, but it also comes with a budget tower air cooler. Not that we need it. Ryzen 5500, which is the CPU that we’re going to be using, does come with an included stock cooler that would be perfectly adequate for it. But if they’re going to give us a better cooling solution with the Gamdas Borius M2510, why wouldn’t we take it? I did check out reviews for this. Seems like a pretty good budget tower air cooler. It’s an all-black version of it. We’re going to get RGB on the RAM. The motherboard’s a little bit of a hoham. It’s a B450 motherboard. If we wanted to spend 30 or $40 more dollars and get a B550, we could, but given the CPU is already PCIe Gen 3, I’m not sure why it’s going to benefit us. For the storage, I went with a Patriot P300 512-gigabyte NVMe SSD. Again, spec for spec, basically for the Steam machine.

 1TB vs 512GB SSD For Gaming

These drives cost about 90 to $100. I will note that for one terabyte, it’s only about another $40 to $45. I think that’s the best price to performance. And if you watch our best SSD for gaming 2026 video, we went through how you actually get a discount as you go up. But I would still recommend only buying the storage you need. For the PC case, I went with the Fantex XTM3. This is a value I’ve been highlighting for a while.

Cheap Case & PSU

It’s $45 after you take the promo code and the $10 rebate on it. If you don’t want to deal with a rebate, the Bitfix Nova mesh is also a pretty good value at $49 right now. Similar setup to this. Two included ARGB fans, intake, and one exhaust. I like this one a little bit better. I think it’s a little bit more compact, kind of more comparable to the Steam Machine box. And then for the PSU, for whatever reason, the Roswell VSB is a C-tier rated PSU. The 750-watt unit right now is on sale for $51. So, I spent $2 more than getting the 650-watt unit, and it’s a great unit. It’s semi-odular. The cables look pretty nice to it. And what else do you want for 50 bucks? So, all told, for $696.97,

Look At That $700 PC Build!

We’re going to get a pretty rock in a little box that’s going to actually go blow to blow with the Steam Machine, and I feel like will come out on top most of the time. I think we’ve come up with a really nice little package to beat the Steam Machine. All right, let’s jump into that 1300R gaming PC build for high FPS at 1440p.

1300 Gaming PC Build 2026

So, we’re going to leave behind the Steam Machine, all of its competitors. Let’s Enterland, where you could run a 240 Hz 1440p gaming monitor at competitive settings in all the latest kinds of shooter titles out there. This is going to give you high FPS, and I’m going to give you some flexibility for what else the GPU. So, let’s jump into that GPU.

Best 1440p GPU in 2026

I went with the RX 970, and that’s because right now I found another deal, $590 or $592 right now for the Gigabyte Gaming OC. This is a pretty good model, by the way, and people often forget that the 9070 XT is not that much faster than 9070, and right now there’s about a $100 gap between the two. I really like that. Now the pricing on this has been closer to $620, but we are starting to see some deals.

NVIDIA 1440p GPU in 2026

Of course, your Nvidia option here is the RTX 5070. And I will say right now in the 5070s argument, it’s coming in with a free game, which is pragmata, but it’s only coming in there until the 12th. Now, Nvidia may extend that. They often do, and you have to make sure it’s being offered at the retailer. I know some of the Amazon listings, for instance, didn’t have it listed. It is right here at Best Buy right now. $629 for the MSI Shadow 3 model is really nice. But how many FPS can you expect for about $1,300

How Much FPS for a $1300 Build?

right now in 2026? Well, let’s jump into Taxbots RTX 570 Ti versus 9070 XT with DLSS and FSR enabled comparison because they also threw in the 9070 and the 5070 in here. And you can see even at native the RX970 is a little bit faster, about 10, almost 11% faster than the 5070. Now obviously it’s going to vary by title. This is across 22 games at ultra settings. When we turn on DLSS4 versus FSR4, and obviously, they don’t have 4.5 in here, you can see that FSR4 is slightly faster. So, we get a slightly higher uplift on FSR4. You probably would never notice it. We’re talking about just a couple of frames. Honestly, either of these GPUs is really, really good.

Huge DDR5 RAM Deals!

Then, what are we going to do for the rest of the platform? Well, honestly, New’s got tons and tons of great combo deals right now. You can also get some of these at Amazon. You can also go to your local MicroEnter if you have one, or check out the spreadsheet of international combo deals that I’m finding. Check that out linked down in the video description. But look at all these different deals that we can get right now. I went ahead and just went with one of the cheaper ones. I did notice it just went up by $10 a second ago. I think what happened is that the motherboard was $119.

How is This RAM So Cheap?

Now it’s $129. So instead of $430, it’s now $440. So we can adjust by 10 bucks basically. But we get a Ryzen 7600X CPU with it. Really good CPU for this level of gaming. We get an AM5 motherboard that I like a lot in the ASRock B650M Pro RS Wi-Fi. And then we get 16 GB of DDR5 6000 CL38 RAM that’s RGB, and it’s going to look amazing. In addition to that, we’re also going to get the budget tower air cooler that we got with the previous deal as well, which is all that we need for a Ryzen 7600X. Rounding out the rest of the build, obviously, we want to get 1 TB NVME SSD storage.

Best SSD for Gaming in 2026

That is what I would recommend in 2026 for a mid-range gaming PC mode like this. It’s pretty much at the higher end of mid-range, but we don’t want to get more than we need because prices are probably not going to come down until 2027. That being said, a drive like this, the PNY CS2230. This has been one of my top recommendations. It’s PCI Gen 3, $144, it’s about the price that you’re going to pay. For the case, I went with the Thermaltake V170TG.

Insane PC Case DEAL

You can go with a different case if you want. I was reminded when we recently did our Ryzen 7600 X3D gaming PC build in this case that, unfortunately, the motherboard does cover the side slots on it. So you have to run the motherboard PSU cable either up from the bottom up over from the top, or you have to finagle it behind the motherboard. That’s what we did, and you can do that with this PSU. The cables are thin enough. But if you want to get a different case, you can. $60 for this case is kind of a steal.

 PSUs are CHEAP!

For the PSU, I went with the Sama G650 watt. We only need 650 watts for this build. That’s how power-efficient the Ryzen 7600X is. And on top of that, it’s ATX 3.1. It’s got nice flat cables to it, easy to work with. It’s a minus tier on the SPL PSU tier list. What else do you want for $66? So all told for $1,293, or if we add that $10 cuz the combo deal went up by 10 bucks.

LOOK At That $1300 PC Build!

133 in 2026, you are going to get a phenomenal performative 1440p gaming PC capable of 100 plus FPS and all the latest titles at great details, or turn those details down obviously for tons and tons of FPS. You’re going to get 1 TB of MGME SSD storage. You’re going to get a gaming PC that has future upgradability with that AM5 socket. So, what else do you need for 1,300 bucks?

$2000 Gaming PC Build 2026

All right, let’s jump to that $2,000 gaming PC build that you can build right now in May 2026. Now, here’s my criteria for this build. I wanted to get 32 gigs of system RAM. Yes, you can get away with 16 gigs and probably cut off quite a bit in terms of the overall price, but I also wanted to get an X3D CPU or super high-end CPU along with a relatively fast GPU, an upper-tier GPU, and I wanted to get a little bit better components all around. I finished out at $2,786. But kind of the piece of resistance really here is the GPU. In fact, let’s jump into that GPU. I went with the XFX Swift RX970 XT for $720.

Best 1440p GPU in 2026

But if you have access to Newegg in the US, $720 is kind of a safer price point. So, figure I go with that. But you can find deals like this. So, you go to Newegg, it’s like Jason, this one’s $739 for the Gigabyte Gaming OC one. But if you click on this here and you put your email address in and you log in with your account, it’ll give you a code. You copy and paste the code, and then you can basically go to checkout, and you can paste it in here. It’s already done, where you get a deal like this basically. So $40 off, you get it for $6.99. And there are a couple of different 970 XTs at Newegg for sale like this. Amazon’s also at times matching those same prices, even with the special promo code. Another one I just kind of dug up is the Sapphire Pulse, but it’s got a B-tier rated PSU. Now, Btier, you might be, “Hey, Jason, that sounds fine to me.” With the 9850 XVD, I decided to go A tier on the PSU, so I didn’t go with this deal, which is probably a little bit better, especially if you’re going to do a more mid-range gaming PC with the 970 XT. Now, in terms of your Nvidia options, unfortunately, the 5070 Ti,

RTX 5070 Ti Price Drop?

There was one at 899 that came in. It keeps coming into stock and selling out almost instantaneously or within 24 hours, especially after I post it. But right now at Newegg, you can find those similar kinds of deals on a 570 Ti. So this one is $9.99 for the Ventus, but if you do the thing you click on here, you put in your promo code. You do get it. Let’s scroll up. You do get it with the Pragmata game for 90 bucks left. So $99 and then you get the Pragmata game. So that basically makes it like $850. It’s not the absolute worst that we saw a couple of months ago. So prices are getting a little bit better. So, how much FPS do you get for a $2,000 gaming PC build?

How Much FPS for a $2000 Build?

Obviously, we’re going with a super high-end CPU as well. So, we’re going to get every ounce of performance out of these GPUs. But you can see the 5070 Ti and 9070 XT are about 10% faster than the 9070 with quality upscaling enabled. That’s DLSS4. Now, DLSS 4.5 has slightly higher overhead, I should say. So, you’re not going to get quite the FPS boost that you get out of DLSS 4. However, it’s within the ballpark, basically. So, we can just assume that these are relatively close and quite a bit faster than the RTX 5070.

32GB DDR5 RAM Deals!

For the rest of the build, honestly, we want a relatively good CPU to go with our GPU at this point. You could go with a lesser combo like a Ryzen 7600X. Nothing wrong with that. I just didn’t want to leave any FPS on the table in terms of our CPU performance. And I wanted to go up to 32 gigs because I know people with $2,000, you’re expecting 32 gigs of RAM. So, I sorted the combos by 32 gigs. There are a lot of different options here. I almost went with the Intel Core Ultra 7 just to see what that was like. It would save a little bit of money. We would lose future upgradability. There are some 9800 X3D combos. It went over the budget a little bit.

7800X3D is Back!

So, I decided to stay true to the budget, true to $2,000. And I went with the 7800 X3D along with a Gen 5 NVME SSD, which I t typically tell you not to get, but the bundle makes it such a good deal. I would pick this up for $899, a one-terabyte 9100 pro Samsung, and then we get DDR5 6000 CL36 Trenzy Neo RAM 32 gigs of it for $8.99 that basically, once you take the CPU cost out of this, it basically makes the RAM about 200 something dollars, and same with the SSD. Now it does come with a C-tier rated PSU that’s 750 watts; that PSU would probably be fine in this build. However, for a build of this magnitude, I really want to go at least B-tier if not A-tier. So, I did decide not to use the PSU. If you want to save some additional money, you could do that instead.

Air vs Liquid Cooling in 2026

Now, for the cooler, I know I always use 360 mm all-in-one liquid coolers on these bigger, high-end builds. So, this time I’m going to give you what you want. We’re going to use an air cooler. There’s nothing wrong with air coolers. Absolutely nothing wrong. In fact, the Thermite Peerless Assassin is one of the top air coolers in the world. This is a dual power cooler. Absolutely adequate for the 7800 X3D. In fact, probably a little bit overkill, but we want good cooling with this. And I love the digital one because, on top of this, we used the single tower version of this in our recent 7600 XD build guide. This has a cool digital readout on it for your CPU and GPU temps. I absolutely love it.

TUF Motherboard Price Drops!

For the motherboard, I went with the ASUS Tough Gaming B850- Plus, $180. Asus is doing a great job with motherboard pricing. I’ve beaten them up so much in the past. I just want to acknowledge they’re doing a phenomenal job. The B650 E- Plus that had been on sale for like $145 is still weirdly overpriced. I would pick it up if it goes back to like $145, but $179 is really hard to argue with. Upgraded audio, really all the features you need for a high-end motherboard. 3M M.2s on it, amazing VRM. It looks incredible. There’s also the X870 TUS you can pick up, but it would have pushed me too far over budget, so I picked this up instead. For the case, I went with the Leanly V100.

Best PC Case in 2026!

I absolutely love this PC case for its included ARGB fans, including three reverse-blade fans on the side intake. We used this in our 9850 XVD build guide. It looks incredible. It’s super easy to build in, and it’s incredibly cheap. $75. In this kind of case, before the RAM crisis and all kinds of PC slowdown, this case would have cost you probably closer to $100. That’s the savings you’re getting in other components right now. For the PSU, I wanted an A-tier rated PSU.

 A-Tier PSU for Cheap!

We could certainly use that Corsair PSU that comes with the RAM combo deal, but I decided to go with an A-tier rated unit. The Azerox Steel Legend is frankly quite amazing, particularly if you don’t need the 12-volt high-power cable, although it’s good with that as well. I like this one a lot. The cables are really easy to work with. They look nice. It’s $89 for 850 watts at rated.

Look at that $2000 PC Build!

So, for just about $2,000 US, you are getting a phenomenally performative 1440p or 4K gaming PC capable of basically just crushing all the latest titles. You’re going to get future upgradability with that AM5 socket. Not that you necessarily need it right away with the 7800 XRD. Incredibly powerful. We got off with a lot of premium components, including 32 gigs of RAM on this thing. Super high-end NVME SSD. So, just hard to beat this value right now. All those builds are linked down in the video description. Check those out.

GPU Prices Fall!

I’ve also linked the combo deal list internationally and all the combo deals at Newegg that you can check out. If you got value out of this video, please give it a like. Of course, subscribe for more cool PC content. Like, did you check out GPU prices are coming down. GPU prices are absolutely falling in May 2026. It’s a good site to see after they went way, way up at the beginning of the year. Check out how much GPUs cost right now, and where the GPU price is going. Check it out, and we’ll catch you next