How to Finance a Gaming PC
PC Gaming is a wonderful way to experience games since the number of options from AAA to indie companies is infinite, emulators allow you to play games from the past, and the amount of customization you can do is beyond the realm of our reality. Despite all these amazing characteristics, your wallet might shriek in horror when it comes to the bill. One of the things that deter people from PC Gaming is often the price point as it could easily rack up to a few thousand dollars. It often doesn't help that there's a running joke that when the newest graphics cards are actually available for purchase, companies like NVIDIA or AMD have just announced a brand new one that's twenty times as powerful as the past ones. However, gaming on a PC isn't all that expensive believe it or not since the whole point of building a PC is allowing your input for the machine that you want. There are hundreds of builds online that usually go under 800 bucks and still run modern games fine. In this post, I'll go over ways that you can finance a gaming pc by highlighting key details such as setting a budget, places to get the hardware, the accessories you want for your computer, ways of purchasing the parts, and finally ensuring that you get to play the games you want to play.
Step 1. Figure out what games you want to play
This is probably the most important step in this guide as this is probably the most relevant to you. Figuring out what games you want to play is important since it determines what hardware you need to get to run the games optimally. I encourage you to write a list of 10-20 games that you are interested in playing on a PC and check out their requirements to run said games. This is important as it will provide you a general guide of what parts are really important in building your pc. If your list sways to AAA games that have been released in the past couple of years will require hardware that is relevant to run it effectively which may cost more. If you plan on running old games on an emulator or games that you enjoyed once before but want to experience on the PC then running on some older hardware is fine. The most popular games that I know are on the PC are Counter-Strike, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft, and believe it or not; these can run on almost everything. These may be due that these games have been released over a decade or two ago, and are designed to have low spec requirements since international markets often don't have the latest GPUs or CPUs. Speaking of low spec requirements, modern releases from indie companies may also have low requirements due to the amount of money they could put into a project or simply because they don't need the most realistic graphics to make a good game. AAA companies are also picking up on this trend as well as sometimes the lowest video settings for their releases often aren't far off from what the best settings are, which is beneficial if you have older hardware.
QUICK TIP: If you need help figuring out which games you are interested in I encourage checking out some of the biggest services that provide games such as Steam and The Epic Store as they provide thousands of games with great details. If you have a favorite YouTuber that plays games check out what games they've gone over to see if any of them are of interest to you.
Step 2: Set a budget
This is another essential step to building a gaming pc as this will allow us to set a barrier on what we need to spend on our future rig. Compile all the games that you have an interest in and find a common ground when it comes to the minimum to recommended specs of each game. Usually on sites where you can see the specs for pc games they often show how much each individual part costs for a gaming pc. This is important as most of the cost of a gaming PC really is in the hardware rather than the external factors. Create up to three price points the first one being your ideal price for your pc and the two other ones can be variations of what if this computer is around 25% more expensive due to economic conditions and 25% less due to deals.
Step 3: Research where to get the hardware
As I mentioned in the previous step, the hardware is the most costly part of building a gaming computer. Luckily for us, there are many ways to get the hardware we need. While an obvious idea is to go to the nearest Best Buy or Walmart to see what parts they got, we can use the power of the internet to not only purchase our items but to find greater deals. Sites like Microcenter and NewEgg often provide tons of deals on the hardware that is common in gaming computers. Sites like eBay might also have used parts that may or may not be beneficial to us depending on their quality. Create a list that is based on the specs you set in step 2 as this will enhance our journey to finding the best prices for each part.
QUICK TIP: Some parts I would recommend when it comes to building a gaming PC is making sure you have a hard drive that is around 500GB to 1 TB and about 16GB of RAM. Usually, these are often the cheaper parts of hardware and with these sizes, you really should be able to have enough memory and space to run almost any game.
Step 4: Personalize your exterior
This is a really fun step as this really is a way to express your style on a PC. You can search for thousands of pictures of setups that look drop-dead gorgeous that can express your creative liberties. However, if your main concern is really just making sure you get the hardware necessary to run your games all you really need is a monitor that is appropriate to your specs (You really don't want a 4k tv when you're playing something like Mario 64 or a monitor with more space in the back than screen for something like ARMA 3) and a case to hold all your hardware in. Things like a mouse or keyboard are obviously necessary, but you really don't need to spend an arm or leg on them. In fact, if you really wanted to you can use the old office supply surplus for your gaming endeavors. You really don't need a keyboard that flashes the rainbow every 3 seconds or a gaming mouse with a billion buttons. Additional monitors are often common in most setups but I do have a general rule when it comes to this. Since we have two eyes, at most we could get two monitors. You really don't need three or more unless you plan on using the extra monitors to show stock prices and pretend you're on Wall Street. NewEgg.com is also a great source to purchase these parts as well since they not only sell the "Gaming Equipment" but also just regular equipment.
Step 5: Buy it
After gathering all the relevant information we need to purchase our computer it's finally time to buy it! Now there are many ways to do this whether it's just buying things directly or if we are a bit tight on money at the time we can set up monthly payment plans for various parts. It's also important to see where our total price is and what our budgets match. If there's an obvious increase from our final price to our proposed price then it's time to look at what we can spend less on. If we went under budget we have the option to splurge ourselves whether it's getting that fancy mouse or maybe even getting some better hardware. Obviously, make sure you factor in external expenses that may influence if you can afford your PC. After you sort everything out you should be good to go on purchasing that machine!
Well, that is my simple guide on financing a gaming pc. I hope that this guide assists you on your journey. These are some ways that I recommend when figuring out what games you want to play to match your required specs, ways to budget your computer, figuring out where to get the hardware and accessories, and ways to purchase the various parts. I will also provide links at the bottom of the page regarding the sites I would recommend using when it comes to purchasing parts. Feel free to leave a comment on your experience with this guide or any recommendations that you have that can help this guide. I hope you have a good one and make sure you game with great gear!
PC Pete
Links:
https://store.steampowered.com/
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