You can still build a budget gaming PC in 2026!

Hey, what's going on everybody? It's ETA Prime back here again. Today we're going to be putting together a budget gaming PC. And this is one that I've been wanting to put together for a little while now, at least this combo. But I needed to wait for some new drivers because I knew we could see much better performance out of something like this. And when it comes down to it, yeah, PC part prices are really crazy. But this build here consists mainly of used parts from eBay. And if you're patient, keep your eye out. You can actually build something like this pretty cheap. Really, the only new parts that I have here are the SSD, the cooler, which happens to be an Amazon Basics cooler. We'll take a look at that in just a bit, the case, and the power supply. And you could go a different way with this if you wanted to. There's a bunch of different combos that you could come up with building something like this, but this is the setup that I kind of settled on for this video. And with this one, I've got a lot to cover, a lot to go over. So, before we get into it, I do want to mention that this video is sponsored by URCD Keys. I've been using this site for quite some time now. They offer Steam keys, upplay, Ubisoft, but the main thing I pick up over here are Windows 11 Pro keys and right now if you use code ETA, you can get $25% off. So at checkout, we'll just enter the code ETA. That's going to bring the price down to $25. They're going to email you that key and then you can activate Windows. Speaking of that, let's head over to a new PC that I recently built. As you can see, we're running Windows 11. And from settings, we're going to go to activation settings. It's going to tell us that we're not active. We don't have a key installed. So, we're just going to paste it right in here. Choose next. It's going to activate Windows for us. And we're ready to go. If you're in need of cheap Windows keys, I'll leave a link in the description. And remember, you can use code ETA for 25% off. Getting right into it here. We're going AM4. And the AM4 platform is definitely not dead. I do think it's one of the best options in 2026 due to pricing right now, especially given that this supports DDR4. RAM prices are stupid right now, no matter which way you look at it, but if you pick up some used DDR4, you can still get a pretty decent deal over on eBay. This is a MicroATX Gigabyte B550. I've got a 512 GB M.2 SSD in here. It's a pretty inexpensive motherboard. no built-in Wi-Fi, but it will support up to something like the uh Ryzen 5800, which would be a nice little upgrade if you wanted to go that route later on because right now what we're going to be utilizing is the AMD Ryzen 5 5600. This the nonX variant. And if you wanted to spend a little more, you could go with the X, but I've been taking a look at eBay prices and for the X, they are overcharging in my opinion. But with this, we're still going to get the same amount of cash. Little lower clock than the X variant. Six cores, 12 threads. Not a bad performer. When it comes to RAM, like I mentioned, this uses DDR4, so we can get out pretty cheap. And I didn't go fancy with this. This is some used HP RAM running at 3200 mega transfers per second. I didn't want to go with 2400 MHz, so I did spend a little more here. I've got two 8 gig sticks, bringing the total up to 16 gigs. And if you wanted to spend a little more, you could go with like some TF Force. There's some used kits over there. They do have built-in heat sinks. you might be able to get a little higher overclock on them. Right now, these run stock at 3200 mega transfers per second, and that's what I'm going to be leaving them at. I didn't want to do anything crazy with the memory due to RAM prices. The stock Wraith Stealth is pretty cheap, but recently I was on Amazon, and I found an Amazon Basics CPU cooler. I thought this was pretty crazy. I think it'll cool pretty well. It's not the best looking CPU cooler on the planet, but I couldn't pass it up because I've never seen an Amazon Basics branded CPU cooler before. It was $18, and you can definitely get really nice coolers for like 20 bucks over on Amazon, but I couldn't pass this up because I've never seen an Amazon Basics branded CPU cooler, tower cooler, uh, four copper heat pipes here. Looks like we've got what a 90 millimeter RGB fan on it. And it looks like it might cool a little better than the stock RAID, but again, I just don't like the way it looks. Either way, we will be putting it in this build. Next thing I want to talk about here is the case, and this is one I've had my eye on for a couple months, but it's been kind of on back order over on Amazon. This is a little under $50. It's a Zelman Cubix G. They do make a black one and a white variant. It's a vertical airflow tower case. comes with three RGB fans. Doesn't really support an AIO. At least that's what they say. You could probably mount something in here, but this does support microATX or miniITX. And I really do like the overall look here. So, yeah, I do think that this is a pretty decent case and it's not super small form factor, but again, it does a microATX or a miniITX. Check out that Amazon Basics cooler. I just thought that was really awesome and I am looking for more parts. It would be pretty cool to build a whole PC using Amazon basic parts. So, uh, if I can, I will make a video. I'm going to go ahead and slide the board in here. I've already put my rear IO shield in. And with this setup here, since we've got the glass in the front and side, we can remove it. We don't even need to take the fans off to get everything mounted in here. Now, I need to add a power supply. And this does support a full-size ATX power supply in the bottom of the case. I went with a semi-odular 600 watt Aiva. This is actually the second one of these that I'm going to be using. First one is still holding up. Haven't really done super long-term with them, but for the price, not bad. And we've got a 600 W unit here. I need to mount the power supply, wire everything up, and then we can talk about the GPU. Everything went together really nicely. Clean little build. Not a lot of cable management round back, but I kind of wasn't expecting it for the price. Uh, now we need a GPU here, and there's a ton of different options. So, a couple that I would throw out there up front if you want to keep it real cheap and still get some pretty decent performance. RX6600 used on eBay or the 6600 XT. I've been seeing them around the same price and it really depends. Take it up a step if you want a little more VRAM, which would definitely help out a little more power over there with the 6700 XT. But what I opted to use is the Intel ARC A770. And this is the 16 gig version. But there's kind of a problem here on eBay with these cards. Prices are all over the place with them. I do think that some sellers are seeing these and saying, "Oh, it's got 16 GB of RAM. RAM's expensive. They're taking them way up." Even the Luna version that I have here, I was able to get for 220, but I see them listed for 460. So, it's kind of hit or miss with the Ark A770 if you're going to go with the 16 gig version, but that's what I'm going to be going with in this build. It does take two 8pin PCIe connectors and with the latest Arc drivers, this does support XESS multi-frame gen and games that support XESS frame gen. Just like the newer XC3based iGPUs in Panther Lake, all of these have been updated, so it will support that. And I'm really interested in testing it out on this older card. So, it's finished up. And one thing I didn't really even think about is this motherboard here doesn't have any RGB headers. So, the uh Amazon Basics fan does come with a little RGB controller that you can plug into a SATA porn. Got that set up. It looks like it's continuously powered once the power supply is on. Doesn't look great, and I don't like the RGB fans that come with the case, but I'm not a big RGB guy. I would probably just replace these with some cheaper black fans and be fine with it. But, this is what came with the case. Didn't have to spend any extra money on them, and it's definitely moving air. So, let's get into a little bit of testing here. First thing I did was run a couple benchmarks with 3D Mark. We've got Steel Nomad here coming in with a 353. Our FPS was 30.54. And this B550 motherboard does have a PCIe 4.0 slot. The 5600 does support PCIe 4.0. Perfect for the A770. So, we're not losing any there. The next one I ran was 3D Mark Time Spy, coming in with a 12,19. And given the specs, I don't think this is a bad score at all, but we are kind of lacking on the CPU. Now, adding a more powerful CPU to this B550 board like the 5800X would up the performance for sure, even in newer games. But we're going to test it just like it is to see what this thing can do. And the first game we have here is Cyberpunk 2077 1440p ultra preset. with that ultra preset XCSS does go to quality. Not horrible. We're a little over 70 FPS on average with it. But there is a way to get a lot more out of this. And if you're on a budget trying to build a gaming PC and you don't want to use frame generation, I mean, I understand, but it's going to be your best friend if you're on a budget. Cyberpunk 2077 does support XCSS frame gen with the latest Arc drivers. We can head into the Intel graphics software. And right at the top, we've got the XESS frame generation override. There's a 2x mode, 3x and 4x, so we can enable multi-frame gen even on the Ark A770. As long as the game supports XESS frame gen, we can use multi-frame gen with it. And now heading back into Cyberpunk 2077, we're still at 1440p ultra, but we've got XESS multi-frame gen set to X4. and we're now seeing a little over 180 FPS on average. This type of frame gen is definitely some of my favorite. Uh even if it's not multi-frame gen, just XESS frame gen. It's always been super smooth for me and I really can't even tell that I'm generating extra frames here. >> The next game I wanted to test here was Red Dead Redemption 2. We're at 1440p high, no scaling going on, getting over 80 fps on average within. You could do ultra, but you need to scale a little bit. Either way, I mean, I still think it looks just fine at 1440p high running over 80 fps. I mean, it's a really good looking game like this. I also wanted to test at least one fighting game. We went with Street Fighter 6. It's an easier one to run. We're maxed out here at 1440p, running at a continuous 60fps. Of course, I had to see how it would handle my favorite arcade racer. Kind of getting prepped for Fortza Horizon 6, but here's number five. We're at ultra no scaling 1440p over 100 FPS. I was kind of hoping for a little more out of it. I do think with a more powerful CPU, something that can just put down better single and multi-core performance that would up the frame rate significantly. And finally, Marble Rivals 1440p ultra XESS set to balanced. So, we do have some scaling going on here at 1440p. This is one of those games that does support XCS frame gen, so you could use multi-frame gen here, but I didn't want to do it. And I mean, at X4, it's going to be crazy, but it's an online multiplayer game. And even though there's very minimal input latency with XCSS frame gen, I still don't like using it online. >> The last thing I wanted to talk about here were CPU temps. And while we're not pumping a ton of power into the 5600, this Amazon Basics cooler actually did way better than I thought it would. It's a decently sized cooler and it will give you better performance than a Wraith Stealth. It's not something that I can recommend just because the overall look, but when it comes to average 1440p gaming temps, we're right there at 65° C. And the highest I saw this hit through all of my testing. I'm using hardware info in the background to record 69° C. So, it's definitely not anywhere near thermal throttle. And we really don't have to worry about it. In the end, I do think that AM4 is probably your best bet right now if you're looking to build a budget PC. There's a ton of different CPUs to choose from. You can go lowend right now and upgrade down the road, but DDR4 is going to be the big winner here due to DDR5 prices. It is astronomical right now and trying to build budget with DDR5 just really isn't going to work out. That's going to eat up a lot of the cost. This case I think looks good. It's really personal preference and I wouldn't mind building something a bit more powerful inside of here. And one thing I would definitely do is swap out those RGB fans. So, it'd be cool if they sold this without fans, but right now it's like under $50 and it's a pretty decent looking case. But that's going to wrap it up for this one. If you're interested in putting something like this together, I'll leave some links in the description along with some alternatives. It'd be pretty cool if you could hit that like button and think about subscribing so you know when I post the next one. And like always, thanks for watching.

Budget intel ARC Gaming PC Vip-URCDKey 25% code for software: ETA Windows 11 Pro Key($25):https://biitt.ly/RUZiX Windows 11 Home Key($23):https://biitt.ly/SQKqi Windows 10 Pro OEM Key($20):https://biitt.ly/KpEmf Windows10 Home Key($17):https://biitt.ly/2tPi1 Windows 10 LTSC 2021 Key($15): https://biitt.ly/W564e Office 2019 pro key($63):https://biitt.ly/o0OQT 2016 pro key($32): https://biitt.ly/xWmvn Buy Windows 11 Pro Key at: https://www.vip-urcdkey.com PC part prices are still wild, so I built a budget gaming PC using USED parts from eBay to see exactly how much performance you can get for around $450. Pairing a Ryzen 5 5600, a B550 motherboard, and 16GB of DDR4 with the Intel ARC A770, this ultra-budget build might just be the ultimate 1080p and 1440p gaming machine. Ryzen 5600: https://ebay.us/uSzdIp B550 Motherboard: https://ebay.us/uXND62 16Gb DDR4 Ram: https://ebay.us/OW5vKD M.2 SSD: https://amzn.to/3ONCTe4 Intel ARC GPU: https://ebay.us/EuKkXf Zalman CUBIX-G Micro-ATX PC Case: https://amzn.to/4aW4FfQ 600w PSU: https://amzn.to/4aW4H7s Amazon Basics CPU Cooler: https://amzn.to/473lOmF Follow Me On Twitter: https://twitter.com/theetaprime Follow Me On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/etaprime/ DISCLAIMER: This video and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you! 0:00 The $450 eBay PC Challenge 0:33 The Used Parts List & Real Prices 0:59 Video Ad Spot 1:49 CPU & Motherboard Setup (Ryzen 5600) 2:45 RAM & Storage Installation 3:35 Intel ARC A770 Install & Fit Check 4:30 BIOS Settings & Windows Install 5:30 Drivers & Intel Arc Control Setup 6:05 1080p Benchmarks & Gameplay 7:45 1440p Benchmarks (Can it handle it?) 9:30 Thermals, Noise, & Power Draw 10:15 Is This The Best Value Build Right Now? 12:20 Final Thoughts: Who is this PC for? 13:05 Outro #BudgetPC #PCBuild #IntelArc THIS VIDEO IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY!