With rising graphics card prices, you may want to save on other components when building a gaming PC. If you've read our CPU reviews, which compare current processors using high-quality motherboards, memory and PSUs, you may come to the conclusion that only the graphics card matters when playing at appropriate resolutions, and that the best-value PC is one built with the cheapest modern components elsewhere.
That couldn't be further from the truth. While the GPU is the most important component for gaming performance, skimping on parts like the motherboard, storage, PSU, or even the case can result in an inconsistent or frustrating experience. In this article, we'll cover seven types of components to avoid when building or buying a budget gaming PC.
Dual-core CPUs
As groundbreaking as they were two decades ago, dual-core CPUs are now obsolete, and they've essentially vanished from the consumer market. Modern CPUs support up to 24 or even 32 threads, making two- or four-thread processors fall far behind mainstream options that offer 10 or 12 threads.
Many games won't even launch on the Intel Celeron G6900, and chips like the AMD Athlon 3000G or Intel Pentium G7400 suffer from extremely inconsistent performance. In many cases, the 1% low FPS is roughly half of the average FPS, meaning gameplay stutters can last for noticeable portions of a second.
For around $80, you can get the quad-core Intel Core i3-12100F (or the nearly identical Core i3-13100F), as well as the six-core AMD Ryzen 5 5500. The choice between them depends on the games you play, so checking benchmarks is worthwhile.
With newer DDR5 memory, the Core i3 is definitely better, but it would require a more expensive motherboard, so you might as well get the six-core Core i5-12400F. If you go with AMD, the next step up would be the Ryzen 5 5600, offering double the cache and PCIe 4.0 support.
If none of these are within your budget, consider the Ryzen 5 5600G, which includes strong integrated graphics, allowing you to delay buying a discrete GPU or look into second-hand graphics cards.
Single-channel RAM
In the DDR4/DDR5 era, memory speed matters. Using a single stick with a CPU that supports dual-channel memory effectively halves your bandwidth. This may not always be your system's bottleneck, but if you rely on integrated graphics, it often will be, since VRAM is shared with system memory.
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