Global

Com­pi­la­tions of the best proces­sors, the best RAM, moth­er­boards and dri­ves are great. But not all users will be able to com­bine them into a well-func­tion­ing and well-bal­anced sys­tem. There­fore, from time to time we also make full-fledged con­fig­u­ra­tions for a cer­tain bud­get, which make it as easy as pos­si­ble for self-assem­bly of a com­put­er.

This time we invite you to famil­iar­ize your­self with our assem­bly of a very good gam­ing com­put­er for 800$. It involves the pur­chase of com­po­nents in two stages: it lacks a dis­crete graph­ics card, and so far it relies only on the proces­sor’s inte­grat­ed GPU. But, if in the future you add an RTX 3060-lev­el video card to it, and prefer­ably an RTX 3070, it will pull almost all the games that have been released to date.

Content

• Choos­ing a proces­sor
• Choos­ing a cool­ing sys­tem
• Choos­ing a moth­er­board
• Choos­ing RAM
• Choos­ing dri­ves
• Choos­ing a pow­er sup­ply
• Choos­ing a case
• Results

Choosing a processor

• Intel Core i5-12600K — 220$

The price of our assem­bly is lim­it­ed to 800$, so with all our desire we will not be able to install the fastest Intel Core i9-12900K gam­ing proces­sor into it, and lim­it­ing the assem­bly only to games by choos­ing a high­ly spe­cial­ized AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D can hard­ly be called the best option either. There­fore, our choice fell on per­haps the best mid-range proces­sor today — the Intel Core i5-12600K.

The Intel Core i5-12600K not only boasts supe­ri­or per­for­mance for its price range. Equal­ly good for gam­ing and work, this ver­sa­tile proces­sor sup­ports DDR5 RAM, can han­dle fast PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs, and sup­ports PCIe 5.0 as a good future-proof.

Choosing a cooling system

• ID-COOLING SE-226-XT ARGB — 30$

Well, since we chose not a boxed ver­sion of the proces­sor, we also need an appro­pri­ate cool­ing sys­tem. By itself, the Intel Core i5-12600K has a fair­ly low TDP. But this proces­sor runs great, and this should be tak­en into account when buy­ing a cool­er — you need to choose it with a large mar­gin of pow­er.

The rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive ID-COOLING SE-226-XT ARGB is per­fect for our tasks. This cool­er can effi­cient­ly cool proces­sors with TDP up to 250W. And, there­fore, when cool­ing the Intel Core i5-12600K in nor­mal mode, it will not need to go to full speed — the noise from its oper­a­tion will be almost imper­cep­ti­ble, and the cool­er itself will last you much longer. It also has the much-loved RGB light­ing.

Choosing a motherboard

• GIGABYTE Z690 UD — 190$

GIGABYTE Z690 UD based on the flag­ship Z690 chipset boasts an excel­lent pow­er sup­ply sub­sys­tem and a very good cool­ing sys­tem for all key ele­ments of the board. It will not only eas­i­ly cope with the Core i5-12600K, but also allow you to over­clock this proces­sor, there­by fur­ther increas­ing its per­for­mance.

In addi­tion, the moth­er­board offers a wide range of USB ports, includ­ing high-speed USB 3.2 Gen2x2, three M.2 slots and six SATA con­nec­tors. Of the minus­es of the board, one can note, per­haps, the cool­ing on all M.2 slots. Oth­er­wise, this is a great solu­tion at a very rea­son­able price.

Choosing RAM

• Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600 2x8 GB — 100$

We are build­ing a com­put­er on the Alder Lake plat­form, and it would be fool­ish not to take advan­tage of one of its key advan­tages and not install DDR5 RAM in the PC. For­tu­nate­ly, its price has recent­ly dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly. For our assem­bly, we chose not the most expen­sive Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600 mem­o­ry. Or rather, a set of mem­o­ry from two bars of 8 GB each.

Of course, DDR5 per­forms best in mod­ules with a capac­i­ty of 16 GB, but 8 GB sticks also pro­vide a notice­able per­for­mance boost com­pared to DDR4, reach­ing up to 20% in some appli­ca­tions. There­fore, it is actu­al­ly point­less to assem­ble a mod­ern com­put­er based on DDR4. Well, the Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600, in addi­tion, uses Sam­sung chips and runs very well.

Choosing drives

• Kingston 512 GB M.2 SKC3000S / 512G — 76$
• West­ern Dig­i­tal WD Blue 1 TB WD10EZEX — 41$

Any mod­ern com­put­er involves the use of a sol­id state dri­ve for the oper­at­ing sys­tem and a hard dri­ve for stor­ing infor­ma­tion that is not demand­ing on access speed — videos, pho­tos, games, soft­ware dis­tri­b­u­tions, etc.

As a sys­tem dri­ve, we decid­ed to use the Kingston KC3000, which has already been in our tests and has proven itself well. One of the fastest SSDs on the mar­ket deliv­ers up to 7,000MB/s sequen­tial read speeds and up to 3,900MB/s write speeds, with 4K block ran­dom access per­for­mance of up to 450,000/900,000 read/write IOPS, respec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, if your bud­get allows, you can eas­i­ly take the even faster Kingston KC3000 in the 1TB ver­sion.

Using an expen­sive SSD to store infor­ma­tion that does not require high access speed is unwise. And it is much more effi­cient to buy a reg­u­lar hard dri­ve for these pur­pos­es. And here we did not rein­vent the wheel, sim­ply pre­fer­ring the unchanged clas­sics in the face of the West­ern Dig­i­tal WD Blue 1TB WD10EZEX. This HDD has long estab­lished itself as a reli­able and fair­ly fast solu­tion.

Choosing a power supply

• Chieftec PPS-850FC 850W — 88$

Remem­ber, we said that in order to real­ize the full poten­tial of our assem­bly, we def­i­nite­ly need a suf­fi­cient­ly pow­er­ful dis­crete graph­ics card? With this in mind, buy­ing a bud­get and weak pow­er sup­ply is a thank­less task. And we decid­ed not to save on such an impor­tant com­po­nent of the sys­tem, choos­ing the Chieftec PPS-850FC 850W mod­el.

This pow­er sup­ply uses a qual­i­ty com­po­nent base and boasts excel­lent volt­age reg­u­la­tion and a ful­ly mod­u­lar cable sys­tem. Its effi­cien­cy is more than 80 PLUS Gold, and its 850W of pow­er is more than enough to pow­er both our sys­tem and a pow­er­ful graph­ics card. The only dis­ad­van­tage of the PSU is a fair­ly high noise lev­el under heavy load.

Choosing a case

• Zal­man S2 — 30$

An excel­lent and at the same time inex­pen­sive Zal­man S2 case pro­vides very good cool­ing due to the low­er loca­tion of the pow­er sup­ply, a mesh front pan­el and seats for five fans. And the case comes with one fan on the rear pan­el.

A clear acrylic poly­mer side pan­el gives you a view of the sys­tem’s inter­nals, while mag­net­ic air fil­ters keep dust out. How­ev­er, the fil­ters them­selves are not very effec­tive, and one way or anoth­er you will have to clean the case from time to time.

Results

As a result, we got a very good assem­bly of a mod­ern com­put­er. Adding an Nvidia RTX 3060/3070-lev­el graph­ics card to it, you will get a PC that will run all mod­ern games with­out any prob­lems. For­tu­nate­ly, in recent months, the cost of graph­ics adapters has fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and their pur­chase is no longer such a prob­lem as it used to be.

• Proces­sor Intel Core i5-12600K — 220$
• Cool­er ID-COOLING SE-226-XT ARGB — 30$
• Moth­er­board GIGABYTE Z690 UD — 190$
• RAM Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600 2x8 GB — 100$
• SSD Kingston 512 GB M.2 SKC3000S / 512G — 76$
• HDD West­ern Dig­i­tal WD Blue 1 TB WD10EZEX — 41$
• Chieftec PPS-850FC 850W pow­er sup­ply — 88$
• Case Zal­man S2 — 30$

Total: 770$.

The Intel Core i5-12600K not only boasts supe­ri­or per­for­mance for its price range. Equal­ly good for gam­ing and work, this ver­sa­tile proces­sor sup­ports DDR5 RAM, can han­dle fast PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs, and sup­ports PCIe 5.0 as a good future-proof.

Choosing a cooling system

• ID-COOLING SE-226-XT ARGB — 30$

Well, since we chose not a boxed ver­sion of the proces­sor, we also need an appro­pri­ate cool­ing sys­tem. By itself, the Intel Core i5-12600K has a fair­ly low TDP. But this proces­sor runs great, and this should be tak­en into account when buy­ing a cool­er — you need to choose it with a large mar­gin of pow­er.

The rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive ID-COOLING SE-226-XT ARGB is per­fect for our tasks. This cool­er can effi­cient­ly cool proces­sors with TDP up to 250W. And, there­fore, when cool­ing the Intel Core i5-12600K in nor­mal mode, it will not need to go to full speed — the noise from its oper­a­tion will be almost imper­cep­ti­ble, and the cool­er itself will last you much longer. It also has the much-loved RGB light­ing.

Choosing a motherboard

• GIGABYTE Z690 UD — 190$

GIGABYTE Z690 UD based on the flag­ship Z690 chipset boasts an excel­lent pow­er sup­ply sub­sys­tem and a very good cool­ing sys­tem for all key ele­ments of the board. It will not only eas­i­ly cope with the Core i5-12600K, but also allow you to over­clock this proces­sor, there­by fur­ther increas­ing its per­for­mance.

In addi­tion, the moth­er­board offers a wide range of USB ports, includ­ing high-speed USB 3.2 Gen2x2, three M.2 slots and six SATA con­nec­tors. Of the minus­es of the board, one can note, per­haps, the cool­ing on all M.2 slots. Oth­er­wise, this is a great solu­tion at a very rea­son­able price.

Choosing RAM

• Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600 2x8 GB — 100$

We are build­ing a com­put­er on the Alder Lake plat­form, and it would be fool­ish not to take advan­tage of one of its key advan­tages and not install DDR5 RAM in the PC. For­tu­nate­ly, its price has recent­ly dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly. For our assem­bly, we chose not the most expen­sive Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600 mem­o­ry. Or rather, a set of mem­o­ry from two bars of 8 GB each.

Of course, DDR5 per­forms best in mod­ules with a capac­i­ty of 16 GB, but 8 GB sticks also pro­vide a notice­able per­for­mance boost com­pared to DDR4, reach­ing up to 20% in some appli­ca­tions. There­fore, it is actu­al­ly point­less to assem­ble a mod­ern com­put­er based on DDR4. Well, the Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600, in addi­tion, uses Sam­sung chips and runs very well.

Choosing drives

• Kingston 512 GB M.2 SKC3000S / 512G — 76$
• West­ern Dig­i­tal WD Blue 1 TB WD10EZEX — 41$

Any mod­ern com­put­er involves the use of a sol­id state dri­ve for the oper­at­ing sys­tem and a hard dri­ve for stor­ing infor­ma­tion that is not demand­ing on access speed — videos, pho­tos, games, soft­ware dis­tri­b­u­tions, etc.

As a sys­tem dri­ve, we decid­ed to use the Kingston KC3000, which has already been in our tests and has proven itself well. One of the fastest SSDs on the mar­ket deliv­ers up to 7,000MB/s sequen­tial read speeds and up to 3,900MB/s write speeds, with 4K block ran­dom access per­for­mance of up to 450,000/900,000 read/write IOPS, respec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, if your bud­get allows, you can eas­i­ly take the even faster Kingston KC3000 in the 1TB ver­sion.

Using an expen­sive SSD to store infor­ma­tion that does not require high access speed is unwise. And it is much more effi­cient to buy a reg­u­lar hard dri­ve for these pur­pos­es. And here we did not rein­vent the wheel, sim­ply pre­fer­ring the unchanged clas­sics in the face of the West­ern Dig­i­tal WD Blue 1TB WD10EZEX. This HDD has long estab­lished itself as a reli­able and fair­ly fast solu­tion.

Choosing a power supply

• Chieftec PPS-850FC 850W — 88$

Remem­ber, we said that in order to real­ize the full poten­tial of our assem­bly, we def­i­nite­ly need a suf­fi­cient­ly pow­er­ful dis­crete graph­ics card? With this in mind, buy­ing a bud­get and weak pow­er sup­ply is a thank­less task. And we decid­ed not to save on such an impor­tant com­po­nent of the sys­tem, choos­ing the Chieftec PPS-850FC 850W mod­el.

This pow­er sup­ply uses a qual­i­ty com­po­nent base and boasts excel­lent volt­age reg­u­la­tion and a ful­ly mod­u­lar cable sys­tem. Its effi­cien­cy is more than 80 PLUS Gold, and its 850W of pow­er is more than enough to pow­er both our sys­tem and a pow­er­ful graph­ics card. The only dis­ad­van­tage of the PSU is a fair­ly high noise lev­el under heavy load.

Choosing a case

• Zal­man S2 — 30$

An excel­lent and at the same time inex­pen­sive Zal­man S2 case pro­vides very good cool­ing due to the low­er loca­tion of the pow­er sup­ply, a mesh front pan­el and seats for five fans. And the case comes with one fan on the rear pan­el.

A clear acrylic poly­mer side pan­el gives you a view of the sys­tem’s inter­nals, while mag­net­ic air fil­ters keep dust out. How­ev­er, the fil­ters them­selves are not very effec­tive, and one way or anoth­er you will have to clean the case from time to time.

Results

As a result, we got a very good assem­bly of a mod­ern com­put­er. Adding an Nvidia RTX 3060/3070-lev­el graph­ics card to it, you will get a PC that will run all mod­ern games with­out any prob­lems. For­tu­nate­ly, in recent months, the cost of graph­ics adapters has fall­en dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and their pur­chase is no longer such a prob­lem as it used to be.

• Proces­sor Intel Core i5-12600K — 220$
• Cool­er ID-COOLING SE-226-XT ARGB — 30$
• Moth­er­board GIGABYTE Z690 UD — 190$
• RAM Patri­ot Viper Ven­om DDR5-5600 2x8 GB — 100$
• SSD Kingston 512 GB M.2 SKC3000S / 512G — 76$
• HDD West­ern Dig­i­tal WD Blue 1 TB WD10EZEX — 41$
• Chieftec PPS-850FC 850W pow­er sup­ply — 88$
• Case Zal­man S2 — 30$

Total: 770$.

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