$1491 Mid-Range Gaming PC Build Guide - February, 2026

Specs Overview & Part Choices

As we’ve sadly had to say in our build guides for a while now, the price of RAM (and now SSDs) is driving total system cost up to painful levels at every tier. This results in the unfortunate decision between paying more for what you want, or making sacrifices to stick to your budget. We’ve done our best to draw a line right down the middle by spending less on parts that don’t add to performance in a meaningful way and meet the bar for “good enough” without going too low-end.

For example, we would have liked to recommend the current-gen 8-core Ryzen 7 9700X for this price tier, but AMD's 6-core 9600X CPU is more than good enough for gaming and saves real money. The Gigabyte B650M GAMING PLUS WIFI motherboard isn’t bursting with extra features, but it won’t hold the system back by any meaningful measure.

$1491 AMD Gaming PC Build List - February, 2026

Component prices and availability can change daily. We’ve done our best to ensure compatibility between these specific parts; so do your own checks if considering alternatives. Any prices mentioned were accurate at the time of writing.

OS, Upgrade Options, and Recommended Extras

PC Parts List

Now we’ll provide more detail on each component selection, including additional commentary and potential alternatives.

CPU / Processor

The CPU we’ve chosen for the heart of this mid-range build is the 6-core AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. The 9600X is the current-gen entry level for AMD’s AM5 platform, which opens up future opportunities for an upgrade in a few years. (Perhaps to a used 9800X3D.) We’d like the 9600X to be even less expensive than where it sits now at just under $214, but that’s far from the biggest price concern today. That dishonor falls to RAM and, to a lesser extent, SSDs.

Newegg’s 9600X listing currently includes a free MSI MAG Coreliquid A13 240 CPU cooler, but that won’t last forever. Amazon’s 9600X listing is currently less expensive, but obviously doesn’t come with the MSI cooler.

Now for a couple charts. Bear in mind that these charts show performance when using our standardized bench, not the parts of this build guide. Specific FPS numbers will vary depending on the GPU being used and many other details. Relative performance is what matters here.

In F1 25 at 1080p, the 9600X reached 252.8 FPS AVG, or 16.5% faster than the previous gen Ryzen 5 7600 (non-X). The 9600X barely edges out the lead in a functional tie with the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K. The ~85$ gulf in favor of the 9600X renders the 265K meaningless in this comparison.

In The Outer Worlds 2 at 1080p, the 9600X and 265K swap, giving the 265K a 21.7% lead for 67.6% more money. Not worth it.

GPU / Video Card

NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 video card is one of NVIDIA’s better value GPUs at the beginning of 2026. We’ve seen the lowest-priced 5070 move anywhere from $550 to $630 lately. The 5070 performs meaningfully better in gaming than the previous-gen RTX 4070.

The RTX 5070’s closest competition is AMD’s RX 9070 (non-XT). The RX 9070 usually comes out slightly ahead of the RTX 5070 in games, but not all the time, and costs more at the time of writing. With this relative positioning, it’s worth considering how much you may or may not value driver and software features like DLSS and FSR, or NVIDIA’s new G-Sync Pulsar technology. Also consider each GPU’s performance in your most played games – it doesn’t matter which card is better on average if your favorite game doesn’t run well on it.

Best Buy’s listing for the RTX 5070 Founders Edition was briefly in stock when we looked. We point that out because the FEs MSRP of $550 – when you can get it.

Memory

The price of RAM continues to be a major pain point for PC builders and the industry at large. At this point it’s a question of how little RAM you can get away with buying, and how little you can manage to overpay for it. 32GB kits are currently going for $300 and higher, and 16GB kits are at least $200.

Those things taken into consideration, our choice of the Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB DDR5 RAM Kit (2x16GB) CL36 6000MHz is the result of finding the cheapest available 32GB kit with 6000MT/s speed or higher. This specific listing (or any other) may go out of stock at any point, so be prepared to check for the cheapest equivalent.

If you’re on a really tight budget and you’re willing to actively police your system’s overall memory utilization, you may be able to get away with just 16GB of total system RAM. The value is technically worse with these kits, but the dollar amount spent is lower. We were able to find this Patriot Viper Venom 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR5 6000 as one of the best options at the time of writing.

Motherboard

Our choice of motherboard for this system is also primarily cost-driven, but with some guardrails. The Gigabyte B650M GAMING PLUS WIFI Micro ATX offers 2x Gen4 M.2 slots, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C, onboard WiFi 6E, and even comes with a combo PS/2 port for the couple dozen IBM Model M (or F) enthusiasts that may be reading this guide. The B650M GAMING PLUS WIFI doesn’t have any PCIe Gen5 connectivity – while that’s technically a limitation, it’s not impactful in any practical way for the overwhelming majority of use cases.

Case

The Lian Li Vector V100 MINI is one of Lian Li’s most recent budget cases, and gets our pick for this mid-range gaming PC based on value and the unique visual element of the angled front part of the PSU shroud. The V100 MINI is available for just $50 without fans, or $65 with 4x ARGB fans. We suggest the latter, unless you already have a stack of extra fans ready to go.

The V100 MINI is strictly an mATX case, and doesn’t support standard ATX motherboards. If you want to keep that compatibility open, Lian Li also offers the standard V100 for a slightly higher price.

CPU Cooler

At the time of writing, Newegg is running a promotion for a free MSI MAG Coreliquid A13 240 liquid cooler along with purchase of a Ryzen CPU. As long as that’s still the case, that’s our pick. Once the promo ends, you’ll need to buy one.

The Ryzen 9600X isn’t difficult to cool relative to more powerful CPUs like the 7950X or even the 9800X3D, so a high-end CPU cooler isn’t necessary. If the Newegg MSI deal runs out, the ID-COOLING FROZN A410 TD is an adequate and good-looking single-tower air cooler with a simple temperature readout on top.

As a more premium option, the Lian Li Galahad II Lite AIO ARGB 360mm matches the Lian Li case well. It’s just overkill for the 7600X.

Power Supply

Newegg’s listing for MSI’s RTX 5070 Ventus 2X OC Black currently comes with the MSI MAG A750GL PCIE5 PSU bundled in as a free bonus. Just like with the CPU cooler, this won’t last forever. If that deal is gone, read on.

Power supplies are a great place to keep costs in check as long as you don’t have a specific need. PSU manufacturers have been stepping up their game in the low to mid-range, likely due to the more stringent requirements of the ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 standards.

The Rosewill VSB 750W is a perfect example of a unit that leaves out unnecessary frills in order to reach a low price while still hitting modern compliance targets. For efficiency, the VSB 750W is only rated at 80 Plus Bronze, but it’s important to know that the 80 Plus program applies only to power efficiency and has no bearing on quality or durability. On top of that, the extra power cost incurred due to efficiency losses by a PC with relatively low total power consumption doesn’t usually add up to very much at all.

Storage

Flash storage has been consistently growing more expensive in recent months, but more subtly than RAM. However, it’s getting bad at this point, driving consumers to prefer whatever’s cheapest at the time they buy. We’ve chosen the Crucial P3 Plus PCIe Gen4 NVMe 2TB SSD based on availability at the time of writing, but it’s worth manually checking for better deals when you actually want to buy.

The speed differences between modern NVMe SSDs generally don't impact gaming performance significantly. However, if you want something faster, the TEAMGROUP NV5000 2TB NVMe Gen4 M.2 SSD is a modest step up in rated performance.

Conclusion

This sub-$1500 DIY rig is close to the peak of where value, game performance, and practicality cross over, making for one of the best gaming PCs in early 2026. In more sane times we would expect the total price for this collection of components to be closer to $1200, but with prices going up seemingly everywhere, there’s no way around the unfortunate reality of the situation.

Our opinion is that the AM5 platform is the way to go for the majority of users currently, and it offers a defined path for future CPU upgrades. Intel’s Arrow Lake 265K and 245K CPUs aren’t performant enough or cheap enough to justify choosing them over the Ryzen 9600X.