[Hardware] How to Build a $350 Gaming PC That Can Play AAA Games

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How to Build a $350 Gaming PC That Can Play AAA Games?
A GTX 1650 GPU, SSD and 16GB of RAM make a budget powerhouse.

While the budget you need to get into pc gaming is not astronomical, even a cheap gaming PC is more expensive than most modern consoles. We’ve shown that you can build a sub-$500 gaming rig, but what if that’s beyond your budget? Using a combination of new and used parts, you can build a very capable gaming PC for only $350. 

So...how exactly do we build a gaming pc for only $350?

The answer to that question is simple! We buy  a preowned desktop computer that's several years old and upgrade the main components. Most of the affordable pre-owned desktops you'll find are office computers utilizing the Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or Haswell platform. 

Although these architectures have aged, they still offer adequate performance at a great price. $100 often gets you an i5 2000 or 3000 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a hard drive all enclosed in a case. Throw in an SSD and a modern video card, and you have yourself a solid gaming computer without breaking the bank! 

We ordered an HP Compaq Elite 8200 for $145 shipped on eBay. This serves as the base for upgrades, but it is in amazing shape already. Other great alternatives are the Dell Optiplex Series and the Lenovo Thinkcentre series. Just make sure the case is a mini-tower (MT) model if you want to use full-height video cards. 

Here are the components we used for our $350 gaming PC. Some came with the HP Compaq Elite 8200 and others we bought separately as upgrades.