You can get great quality even if you’re on a budget. These are my most effective tips on how to make a budget gaming setup and save A LOT of money your desk, PC, peripherals, and games.
I love tech, gaming, and setups, which is a very costly hobby. On top of that, I am obsessed with getting the most value for my money. To me, this means getting a product that delivers quality essentials without paying for a lot of unnecessary extras and by making smart choices. Consequently, I have accumulated quite some money-saving tips over the years.
Here’s how to make a budget gaming setup without compromising essential quality. I share tips on how you can save on your desk setup, PC, peripherals, and software.
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All setups start with a good foundation. This means furniture that makes the shell of your setup. You don’t need designer furniture or a Herman Miller office chair, but you do need basic quality. Here are my budget tips for your furniture.
The absolute cheapest desk you can get that also has decent quality is the IKEA LINNMON tabletop with 4 ADILS legs. If you can live without drawers, a fairly thick tabletop, and small surface dimensions, you have a desk for 40 EUR / 55 USD. At any other store at this price level, I would say that you are risking your setup because the legs might not hold. IKEA is, to my knowledge, the only store that offers a desk at this price level without compromising robustness. You can of course spend a bit more and get a larger tabletop, e.g. IKEA Lagkapten, which I would recommend, but at 55 USD / 40 EUR as a baseline, you know the money-saving party has started.
If you want a quality adjustable standing desk, you might be able to find a company that needs to get rid of its office furniture. I bought my standing desk legs from a company that moved headquarters, which actually happens quite often in larger cities and then I simply added my own tabletop, so it looked as new. The tabletop that came with it looked very used, but the condition and quality of the standing desk legs were much better quality than any consumer-targeted standing desks I could find at the same price level.
I got my quality Kinnarps 6000 Free-Float office chair as second-hand from an outlet at literally 1/5 of the price as new. The condition was guaranteed by the outlet with a 2-year warranty, just like if I’d bought it new. I could try the chair in their showroom and they delivered. I believe the professional warranty and the fact that these outlets live on their reputation (making them go out of their way to satisfy you), makes it a superior choice compared to buying second-hand from private people. The outlets also only sell real quality brands, as their margins on cheap brands will not be worth the effort.
I’ve written a post on how to make your own DIY desk shelf in 5 minutes at a cost as low as 13 USD / 11 EUR! Sure, the one costing you 300 USD will maybe have a slightly better finish, but oh boy that price… for a small piece of wood.
Yes, I’m a huge fan of IKEA. Not for everything, but for things where the difference between their budget options and something that costs 10x more barely matters. The BURHULT / SIBBHULT shelf combination is such a thing. As soon as you have mounted these on your wall and put your stuff on them, you won’t notice the difference between these and much more expensive designer shelves. Shelves are not the highlight – the things on display are. One shelf will set you back a mere 5 USD / 4 EUR.
If you think about it, posters are just a piece of paper with some creativity behind them. It’s not hard to imagine that running a store, buying equipment, negotiating with designers, marketing, and distribution will add quite a lot to the costs of this. You can bypass that by simply printing your own. You will most likely only be able to get them in A4-size since that’s what consumer printers support, but if you have a large wall, you just print some more. Then you add some frames of your own choice, e.g. in oak or bamboo, and your wall will lighten up. You can also easily swap out your posters when you want to renew your look because the frames can be reused. Read my post on how to easily design your own posters if you feel like being creative.
A large part of your budget will be your PC, where in particular the graphics card will be costly. Here are my tips for saving one your gaming rig.
I’ve had several gaming laptops and never really got hooked. Despite technological advances, they are still huge compared to productivity laptops, their battery life is terrible, and the displays are usually dark. This means they aren’t great at transporting or gaming outside your home. You get much more bang for your buck if you buy a desktop instead. You will get gaming at a far better price with a desktop. You get better performance, it doesn’t have a battery that will degrade and it is easier to upgrade and repair.
Assembling your own PC is not as difficult as you may think and there are a lot of tutorials on blogs or YouTube that can assist you. Having assembled my own PC, I have done calculations on the savings. On the one side, a professional will be able to assemble a PC faster and when you buy an entire PC, the store can give you a larger discount than if you buy the parts separately. This means that with a completely 1:1 specification, i.e. the exact same brands and models, you will most likely not save anything by assembling your own PC. However, you will be able to save money on a different setup with similar performance. Your PC store will only offer select brands and models. You, on the other hand, are free to choose from the entire market. Assembling on your own gives you these advantages:
Utilizing these advantages, I was able to assemble a PC and save approximately 20% compared to what the cheapest PC store offered with equivalent performance.
There is great potential to make a budget build by picking your parts from the previous generation, which usually has a better price-to-performance ratio. These parts are both cheaper and probably also on sale. This applies particularly to GPUs, CPUs, and motherboards. I don’t recommend going further back, as this will be too much of a compromise. You can also consider this for RAM and SSDs, but I’m not sure the savings are as pronounced in these categories.
Picking a motherboard is arguably the most confusing part when you want to build your own PC. There are a ton of different chipsets and features with small very difficult-to-remember names. The fact is, most people only need the basics. You don’t need the ridiculously expensive extra features unless you are a real enthusiast and want to showcase your build. Many features only add to the aesthetics when someone is looking directly into your case. Other features are more technical, but they are only important if your other components are powerful (and expensive) as well. Make sure that the socket is compatible with your CPU and that it has the necessary slots for your other hardware then choose from a quality brand and that’s it – you got the essentials.
Your graphics card is the single most expensive part of your PC by a wide margin these days. Playing games at 1920×1080 resolution will save you a lot of money because you can buy a less powerful GPU and you can manage with a less powerful CPU as well without it being a bottleneck. Moreover, you can save money on your monitor, because it only needs to support 1080p resolution. I would recommend that you buy a smaller monitor because it will give you a crispier picture, as you will have more pixels per inch of your monitor.
After spending huge on a PC, it’s easy to forget that it’s worthless without proper peripherals. Luckily, you can get great essential functionality on a budget. Here are my tips for saving on gaming peripherals.
I really like wireless peripherals, but there is no denying that wireless comes at a premium, and the essential performance of wireless peripherals is at best only on par with a wired counterpart. Getting a keyboard, mouse, and headset with wires will give you the same or better-quality peripherals. I reckon with a saving of more than 50%.
Another non-essential feature of most gaming peripherals is RGB, which is something you pay extra for, especially if it comes with a lot of customization software that the manufacturer also has to factor into the price. Yes, it looks cool and can add to the immersion, but it is only a matter of aesthetics. Your mouse, keyboard, etc. will work just as well without. A good example of this is the Logitech G305 gaming mouse.
A monitor with a VA panel is a good choice for a budget setup. IPS will arguably look slightly better, but it is also more expensive. A TN panel may offer higher refresh rates, but the picture quality will be worse. A VA monitor offers the best balance between picture quality, refresh rates for gaming, and price.
You rarely see a setup on YouTube or Instagram without a whole lot of extra bling. Most of which you really don’t need for a good gaming experience. Don’t get fooled to think that these are necessities despite what claims you may hear.
Lastly, your PC is worth nothing if you don’t have an operating system. For gaming, there’s really only Windows to consider. Moreover, you need some games to fire up your new gaming setup. Here is also savings to be had.
Windows licenses come in different types, which can be quite confusing. The essence of it is; don’t buy your Windows in your local supermarket or PC store. I saved up to 70% by buying the license from a legitimate digital store that buys the licenses in volumes but doesn’t participate in Microsoft’s official partner program. This means they are not bound by official price policies set by Microsoft. I got the license by e-mail, downloaded the Windows installation to a USB, and typed in the license after installation. That was it.
Games are very expensive at release, but will quickly go on sale with savings of up to 50%. I made an analysis of when new games go on sale, which indicates how long you will have to wait for a discount. Just because a game is new doesn’t mean it’s better. For instance, it’s still very hard to beat the likes of The Witcher 3, GTA 5, and the Batman Arkham series. All of these are discounted frequently in digital stores.
Nothing is truly free, but quite some games offer great essential gameplay without having to pay unless you want cosmetics. I can e.g. recommend Fortnite, Counter-Strike, Overwatch 2, Destiny 2, Lost Ark, Brawlhalla, Genshin Impact, Rocket League, and The Sims 4. Not to mention that sometimes, you can get full-blown free games for free, which I’ve also written about.
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Never built a PC from scratch before? Here is a checklist of parts you will need to build your dream PC.
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What do you want the computer for? Gaming, business use or personal computer
Build Your Own PC Checklist
Build the perfect personal computer
Case
A box where all the hardware is installed and gives protection to the delicate internal components.
Choosing the right computer case is important so remember to select a case that fits all your components.
Motherboard
The heart and backbone of every computer. A circuit board containing the principal components of a computer where the processor and RAM live. The motherboard coordinates everything that happens inside your computer.
Also, you plug in your other parts like SSDs, hard drives, and peripherals.
The main difference between these is size.
Processor: CPU (Central Processing Unit)
The brains of your computer where all the data will be crunched. Executes instructions from the software performing the arithmetical, logical, and input/output operations.
Storage: Hard drives (HDDs) solid-state drives (SSDs)
Long-term storage like operating system, software programs, and personal files.
Size determined by megabytes (MB), gigabytes (GB), and terabytes (TB).
HDD: Hard Drives – High capacity but slow
SSD: Solid- State drive – Quicker write speed
M.2: Solid state drive attached to the motherboard – Very Quick
TIP: Check you have a SATA socket or M.2 depending on choices.
Cooling: Fans / CPU Cooler
Fans / CPU Cooler dissipates the hot air from the computer.
CPU fan or water cooling? This is down to personal preference.
Air cooled: Fan circulating air through the radiator attached to the CPU.
Water Cooling: Block attached to the CPU with pipes coming off it full of water with a pump pushing it around to cool the PC.
Water cooled PCS have the option of a sealed loop or custom loops.
Memory: RAM (Random Access Memory)
Temporary, short-term storage of information for rapid retrieval without it a computer can’t perform simple tasks.
RAM: Random Access Memory. Performs two jobs, handling the main memory and the memory for graphics
ROM: Read-only memory.
Power: PSU (Power Supply Unit)
PSU (Power Supply Unit) converts power from the wall socket which is alternating current AC to low-voltage regulated DC power that your motherboard and processor needs.
Decide on the other components first so you know what power supply will need.
Calculating how much power you need in watts. Add all the components power consumption together and add an additional 20% and that is the amount of wattage you need.
OPTIONAL: GPU graphical process unit
Purpose of rendering images.
OPTIONAL: Sound Cards
Allow the use of audio components.
OPTIONAL: Ethernet card
Transmit data from the network to your computer.
Some of these cards can include WIFI
Peripherals
Keyboard, Mouse, Webcam, Speakers, Microphone or headset.
Build your own PC tools
Now that you have a checklist of the items required to build your own PC, you should know how to go about it. At first, glance, putting together a computer yourself looks easy, and it can be. However, unless you have done it before, it can be a bit overwhelming.
This DIY project takes some work, and you should be ready to put that in. If not, you could end up ruining the whole thing, and that would be a shameful waste. For that reason, we compiled this simple guide to tell you what to do to ensure that your DIY computer assembly turns out as planned.
Regardless of how comprehensive a written guide is, it’s not the same as watching someone actually doing the work. Therefore, take the time to watch PC building tutorials.
Loads of how-to videos are available for free. Watching a well-done tutorial gives you a good understanding of the basics. You can learn how to mount the cooler, seat the CPU and fit the RAM. Different people will use varying tactics to assemble PCs.
Watch various assemblies then decide which method is the best. Of course, you have to consider the styles that suit your computer type and components.
A common mistake some people make with DIY PCs is trying to cut too many corners. Understandably, you might want to save money. However, be careful where you do it. Don’t fall for the temptation to skimp out on the power supply, especially if you are building a gaming machine.
If the computer is going to have high-end parts to facilitate gaming, then it needs sufficient power. A cheap, low-wattage PSU might have trouble handling the necessary load.
Also, if at some point you have to upgrade your PC, you must be certain that the power supply will be enough. Be careful, though, not to get a PSU that is too powerful for the computer, because that would be wasteful.
One tip that you will find in any PC building guide is to avoid static as much as possible. Static can destroy electronic parts. Although you might not necessarily have enough latent electricity to cause damage, it helps to be careful.
First-timers should be particularly cautious. Wearing an anti-static bracelet or wrist wrap is recommended.
However, an experienced builder could do without one. A neat trick to get rid of static is to touch a metal surface before holding components.
Another precaution is to avoid working near a carpet. Extremely dry work areas are also likely to generate static.
Before settling to build your own PC, get some opinions from experienced builders. Even if you have done this before, you could still learn a few things.
Post your computer configurations and building process on message boards and forums for some feedback. You can quickly learn about common mistakes that could save you a lot of trouble and money.
Putting together a PC can be fun and rewarding, but only if you get it right. So, make sure that you educate yourself on the best ways to assemble a computer for the best results.