Here's what a $1000 Gaming PC looks like in 2026

What's up guys, this is my gaming PC build for March 2026. When I've been asked recently about building a gaming PC because there's a pretty major hardware shortage going on, I've recommended that you shouldn't. You should just buy a pre-built. But if you come to me and say, Paul, I really want to build my own system and assemble it, I want that experience, well then I would say buy a pre-built, take it apart, and then put it back together. But if you're like, Paul, I have an aversion to pre-built systems, or I'm allergic to them, or I don't like other people handling my PC hardware, well, then this build is for you. Today's video is brought to you by the Paul's Hardware store on paulshardware.net, the only official source for Paul's Hardware merchandise, tantalizing t-shirts, brilliant beer sets, high quality hoodies, and more, all featuring the classic thumbscrew for tasteful and refined viewers, or the 8-bit thumbscrew for tasteful and refined viewers who hate curves. New designs are added sporadically and at random, so head over to paulshardware.net and get some of that sweet, sweet merch right now. Or not right now, after you watch the video. Either way. Okay, so I'm just trying to be real with you guys. When Corsair approached me and said, hey Paul, we're launching a new computer case, it's the 3200D, which is available for $80 without RGB or $90 with RGB, pretty reasonable prices for this ATX mid-tower case, I was like, let me assemble a budget-ish system around that, even if you wanted to build with the new Intel 250K, which actually launches next week, it's coming at $200 on the LGA 1851 platform, but the build based around that came in at $1,500, and that's partially because it was a $350 32GB DDR5 memory kit, and then for the graphics card, if you want to claw your way up to something above 8GB of VRAM, the AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB cheapest option available is $440 right now, it should be $350. But all that is to say, if you're really trying to stick to a budget and keep the price less than $1,000, you really need to build on the last generation platform right now, which is AMD's AM4 platform, which allows you to use DDR4 memory, which is quite a bit cheaper. This build comes in at about $1,000 right now, buying all parts new at retail, and you could even get it down a little bit less than that if you leverage combo deals, because there's a lot of those available on Newegg, but let's get into it and go over the parts. I'm going to start off with the parts that are not overpriced because of the hardware shortage first, so our case is the This is a brand new case, it just launched. It's available for $80 without RGB or $90 with RGB, either way it's going to come with three fans pre-installed, which is nice. Powering our system on the CPU side, we have the AMD Ryzen 5 5500. This CPU has actually become extremely popular recently because of builds like this that use DDR4 memory in order to keep prices down. I often recommend the 5600 or 5600X over the 5500. The 5500 has half the cache, it's got instead of 32 megs, which actually can hurt gaming performance if you're pairing it with a higher-end graphics card. However, we have to also consider price, and the 5500 is available for about $80 to $90 right now, depending on whether or not this promo code is still available. It comes with a stock Wraith Stealth air cooler, so that's going to save you a few bucks there as well, and if you're pairing it with the not-the-highest-end graphics card like our Radeon RX 9060 XT here, you're only going to see a drop off of maybe one to three or four FPS in most gaming titles that you play with if you're comparing it to the performance of a 5600 or 5600X. This is of course AMD's older platform, their AM4 platform, which has been around for quite some time, but because of that there's also a lot of motherboards available, and we're going with the B550 Eagle Wi-Fi 6 from Gigabyte because it's only $100. It's available at retail right now, it has Wi-Fi integrated, and going with the 500 series chipsets like a B550 or X570 is going to get you PCI Express Gen 4, whereas if you tried to save a few more bucks and go with like a B450 motherboard, those would be limited to PCI Express Gen 3, but I recommend B550 if you're buying new right now. The power supply I have linked in the description is actually an ASRock 750 watt 80 plus gold rated model that's available for $55, and power supplies are one of the components that have not gone up a lot in price. I do not have that specific model on hand though, so we're building with the Corsair SF750 because it was available to me. And that kind of rounds out the non-overpriced components. The prices that have gone up include graphics cards of course. The Radeon RX 9060 XT is the least expensive 16 gig current generation graphics card on the market, and I wish it still costed at least its MSRP or even less at $350. It has gone up to about $440 now for the cheapest model available, however they haven't gone up in price as much as Nvidia's graphics cards like the 5060 Ti 16 gig is currently selling for $550. That's the price of a 5070. But speaking of Nvidia graphics cards, I will link some 5060s, 5060 Tis, the best prices I can find in the video description. There are people who get their hearts set on an Nvidia graphics card, and there's not to say that there aren't any available, but if you want more VRAM, the 9060 XT 16 gig is what I would point you towards right now. Also very overpriced at the moment are SSDs, so we're sticking with a 1TB SSD. You can get a decently good performance PCI Express Gen 4 1TB SSD for about $130 to $140 today. That's why I'm using this 1TB model here, but this is just a stand-in because again I'm using parts that I have on hand. And yes, I'm trolling a little bit because this is a PCI Express Gen 5 drive, which I'm going to be somewhat limiting by putting it in a PCI Express Gen 4 system. And then there is the memory, and this is the biggest pain point for PC building right now. Memory kits are very overpriced, but whereas with a newer generation DDR5 system for a 32 gig kit, you're going to have to spend about $350 right now for a DDR4 kit. And yes, it is less memory. We're going with a 2x8 gig 16 gig total setup versus 32 gigs. The kits comparable to this G.Skill Flare X kit are available for about $120 to $130 or $140, and that is a lot less money. And that is why AM4 is having a bit of a revival right now. It's because people still want to build PCs, but they don't want to pay DDR5 prices, and this is the most viable platform to build on that still uses DDR4. So those are the parts I'm building with today. Comparable parts to these are linked in the video description down below. And this feels like quite a throwback. I was thinking to myself, I did a like one last AM4 build quite a while back. It was in September 2022. I thought I was doing my last ever AM4 build. Times have changed. Before we do our motherboard setup, we're going to take a quick look at this new case from Corsair. 3200D. There's a single screw here holding on our tempered glass side panel. This is a standard ATX case, ATX mid-tower, and the layout is pretty straightforward other than your tempered glass side panel here. There's a power supply basement down at the bottom. I was noticing this interesting fan mount that's angled, so it's just sort of recessed a little bit. So I guess that will blow fan a little bit more up towards your components. You can fit up to nine fans total in this case. It comes with three pre-installed 120s at the front. It does look like Corsair has sent us the RGB version, which honestly I'm kind of sad about. I was thinking this is going to be a pretty stealthy build, but maybe I won't plug in the RGB and we'll pretend that it's a non-RGB setup. Beyond that, you can see the motherboard tray has our standoffs pre-installed, so that is appreciated. There is a GPU anti-sag bracket right there, which I think is probably positioned far enough out that our 9060 XT is not going to reach it, but it's still good to have it there nonetheless. And then you'll probably notice this motherboard tray has lots of cutouts because it is reverse connector compatible if you want to do one of those hide-your-cables builds with a back-to-front or Project Stealth or Project Zero motherboard from Asus, MSI, or Gigabyte. Taking a look at the front panel, we have a unique design here. It's actually kind of a con-convex? Concave. Concave. So it sort of dips in in the middle, but has a design that you can see right there. For the top, we've got a mic and headphone jack, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, as well as a single Type-A port next to the power button. I'm assuming this front panel will remove in the typical way. Yes, it does. So you can pull it off like that to access a bit of dust filtration beneath it that's held on by magnets. The cables for the front panel are still connected up there though, so I will need to keep this sort of adjacent to the case. I'll just pop it back on. Speaking of magnetic dust filtration, you've got another one of those up here on the top. It can also fit up to a 360mm radiator up on the top. We're not going to be doing that today. Looks like you've also got a little bit of dust filtration for your power supply down there. This one isn't magnetic, it just sort of tucks in underneath these metal tabs. And then on the opposite side, we have a couple captive thumb screws holding in the side panel for our cable management. And I've just realized you don't slide it that way. Once they're unscrewed, you pull it out that way to pop that off. I would say this is not the thickest steel I've ever seen, but for a more budget-oriented case, it is just fine. And they've got some rolled over parts there where it interacts with the rest of the case, and that provides a little bit more rigidity. The accessory box was inside. They've included your various mounting screws, as well as some zip ties. And then here in the back is our cable management area, where you have a fair amount of tie downs that are sort of scattered around. We've got a couple 2.5-inch mounting points here for those types of SSDs. Also, probably something that's good to have on a case, even though it seems like a little bit more of a throwback. If you need supplemental storage, and adding more NVMe drives is out of your budget, SATA SSDs are still pretty viable right now. Then we've got our cables coming from the front panel. There's a few of these. Some of these are daisy-chained addressable RGB connectors, and those are pre-wired up for you. So you just have a single 3-pin addressable RGB connector to plug into your motherboard. We've also got a single block for our front panel connectors. That's greatly appreciated. It simplifies that process. Single connector for the power for those front fans. Those are also pre-wired up, so you just plug in that single connector. And then beyond that, we have our HD audio connector, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C front panel connector, and then one more for our USB 2.0 Type-A. It's been a while since I did an AM4 build. Going back to the PGA processor, it has the pins on the processor itself, rather on the motherboard. I'm using my thermal paste spreading technique, which is to use some plastic wrap or a wrapper to spread out the paste a little bit, so you don't have to wait for the heat and pressure of the cooler to do that for you. But I should note that if you're buying a new Ryzen 5500 processor, the cooler will come with some thermal paste pre-applied to it. The only reason I'm having to do this for this build is because I've already used my Wraith Stealth cooler before, so I cleaned all the thermal paste off of it. Perhaps not my cleanest application, but it should get the job done. And now we mount our cooler with the included AM4 backplate. Another reason to go for a B550 motherboard is they tend to have a more likelihood of having more M.2 slots. We're going to install our SSD to the top M.2 slot on this board. We do have another M.2 further down if we want to add some storage in the future. All right, our motherboard's all set up with the CPU, CPU cooler, memory, and SSD installed. I'm going to drop that into the case now, but this being a bit of a throwback build, we've also got one of these, an I-O shield. Actually, an old-school metal one that you need to be a little bit careful with so you don't cut yourself on it. I have totally gotten spoiled by fixed I-O shields being very common these days with newer motherboards. But of course, you can use the butt end of a screwdriver to seat these if they're giving you any trouble. Another thing I recommend doing with these older I-O shields is making sure there's no metal tabs that have bent down in front of your ports. I had this USB port blocked by one, so I just had to pull the motherboard out, bend that up, and now it's just fine. So here's our little SFX power supply. I'm going to ask you guys to forgive me because I was not able to track down an SFX to ATX adapter. This case doesn't ship with one. I wouldn't have expected that. So we're going to have a little bit of a gap here, and then we're also going to be using some cable extensions. SFX power supplies often ship with shorter cables because they're expecting you're probably going to be installing in a smaller case. Unfortunately, I have these cable extensions that are a nice subtle gray color. They're made by ITCOM. I'll link them in the description as well. These are from a previous build, but all we need for this build is the 24-pin main motherboard power connector, one supplemental 8-pin for CPU power, and a single PCI Express graphics power connector and 8-pin there because we're completely not even having to worry about a 12V 2x6 power connector like I would have to if we were installing an NVIDIA graphics card, so that's cool. And here is our beautiful build. I did take a few extra minutes to do a little bit of cable trading since we have these extensions that have the combs that come with them. These are fairly inexpensive cable extensions, but it is something that is an aesthetic touch. So if you're working with a non-SFX power supply that has regular length cables, you can do without that, but it does add a nice little aesthetic touch. Also, I have not connected the RGB lights for our fans, just the power. And that is, I suppose, to simulate the slightly less expensive version of this case that has the all-black fans without the RGB. With our power cable plugged in, we now have the moment of truth. If I can find the power button. Oh, I bet this switches off. There, that's better. I didn't have the power supply switched off this time. I had the power strip everything was connected to turned off. That's better. I'm actually quite enjoying that there are no lights in this build, and that I know it's working because the fans have spun up. Other than that, everything is staying quite stealthy. So I'm going to take a few minutes to get Windows installed on this system, and next we will take a look at some benchmark performance numbers. Okay, I'm back. The system is all assembled. I did take a little bit more time to do some cable training just to make things look nice and put together, and I did decide to plug in the RGB LEDs just to show you guys how that would look as well. It's just on RGB vomit mode. I feel like a single static color would probably be a more appealing aesthetic choice for this build, but there it is. You can, of course, just unplug them if you don't want them on, or you could save 10 bucks and go with the $80 non-RGB version of this case versus the $90 RGB version of this case. But I do appreciate that either way you get three pre-installed fans, so functionally, you have airflow right out of the box. You don't necessarily need anything more than that. Just to verify performance, I did run 3DMark times by extreme. We've got an overall score of 6,450. The GPU score was 7,311, which is right about where it should be, even if you were to pair the RX 9060 XT 16GB with a higher-end CPU. It's still going to get right about that same score in 3DMark at least, so I think this system is fairly well balanced between the budget CPU that we have and the higher-end graphics card, which is also the most expensive part of this build. However, if I was installing a higher-end graphics card or if you wanted to upgrade the system down the line, that CPU is definitely a weak point. Not only does it only have 16 megs of cache, but it is also limited to PCI Express Gen 3 speeds. So although we have a motherboard with a B550 chipset that's compatible with PCI Express Gen 4, you would need to upgrade that CPU to a 5600, 5600X, or better, in order to actually get PCI Express Gen 4 speeds. That said, the RX 9060 XT does not need PCI Express Gen 5 by 16 bandwidth. It's actually running on a quarter of that bandwidth going from Gen 5 to Gen 4 to Gen 3, but it's still doing just fine in terms of performance. Meanwhile, the CPU scored 3870, which is not that impressive, but it's only an $80 CPU if you manage to get that promo code deal. But it's also being kept cool just fine by our stock cooler. It only hit 77.4 degrees Celsius max in the CPU part of that test. Meanwhile, our PowerColor RX 9060 XT 16 gig got up to 69 degrees. Nice. So it is good to know that even with the current PC hardware situation, you can actually get a system together for less than $1,000. I would say around $900-ish is what I would aim for, or below that, taking advantage of those combo deals as we already talked about, because you don't want to pay more than $1,000 for a system like this. Or of course, as I mentioned in the intro, keep an eye out for pre-built deals, because there's often better deals for pre-builts in terms of the core hardware than what you can buy directly at retail right now. Rounding things out for our Corsair 3200D case, I think this case did a fine job. It was easy to build in, everything was nice and open and accessible, plenty of cable management options there at the back as well. And if you can't tell, there's still more room in this case. So there's expandability options for larger size graphics cards, installing a 360mm AIO at the top, or just additional fans for more airflow if you were to add more hardware. One thing I would like to see in terms of upgrade is on the front panel IO, you have a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, which I definitely appreciate, and then you have a single USB 2.0 port. It's not USB 3.0, it is USB 2.0. So you've either got a very fast Type-C port or a pretty slow Type-A port, which I would only bother plugging in like a peripheral or a keyboard or mouse or something like that to. But that is all the time I have for today. I'm going to post links to the Corsair 3200D down in the video's description below, as well as maybe not the exact parts I built with, my recommended parts right now if you want to build a system for less than a thousand dollars in today's PC hardware climate. I want to say a big thank you to Corsair for their support with this video, and if you would like to help support my channel too, you can check out the link in the description to my store at paulshardware.net, where you can buy shirts, mugs, and pint glasses, all manner of high-quality merchandise to help support my channel. Thanks again for watching everyone, we'll see you in the next one.