Unfortunately nowadays, in the world of gaming computers, $600 is a relatively low budget but the hope is not lost, you can still get a decent setup capable of running most games.
You might be on the fence as to whether you should buy your gaming PC prebuilt or in separate parts, and we’ll go into that in a lot more detail later, but essentially we side of the fence of the pre-builds, which is what we’ve detailed for you.
In this article, you’ll find our recommended best gaming computers under $600, describing each product and breaking down what’s under the hood. We’ll also then provide you with a bit of a buying guide, describing what you should look at in a gaming PC and what else you might need to buy to get you started.
You can use the table of contents below to navigate to the section you’re most interested in.
- Our best gaming computers under $600 options
- What are the main things to look at in a gaming PC?
- Should I build my own, or buy a prebuilt one?
- What other equipment might you need for your gaming computer?
Our best gaming computers under $600 options
Although it isn’t a large budget, you can still get a good gaming PC for $600, and we can prove it! We’ve spent a lot of time trying to research and find the best computers at this price range, and we’ve listed them below with a description, their main features and our opinion, as well as where you can find the product.
What are the main things to look at in a gaming PC?
So you want to buy a gaming PC on the cheap, what the most important elements that you should consider? We’ve detailed them and explained what to look for below:
Processor
The processor is important, and it’s likely you’ll have AMD or Intel. AMD are Ryzen, 3, 5 or 7 and Intel is i3, i5, or i7 – and the number that follows those will dictate what generation it is. It’s best to look at benchmarking companies before making a purchase to understand how good and capable the processor is compared to others, we recommend using CPU Benchmark.
Graphics Card
This is one of the most important parts of a gaming PC, the graphics card. You want to ensure that it can keep up with the latest games. The best way of doing this is to understand how your graphics card benchmarks we recommend using Video Card Benchmark.
Harddrive / SSD
This is important because games are large now, there 50GB+ each, so if you plan on having several games you’ll have to think about if your storage can cope with it. The other thing to be concerned with is ideally you want your games & operating system on your SSD – they are a lot faster than an HDD (Harddrive), so the set up you tend to see on cheaper gaming PCs is a primary smaller SSD for the games you play regularly and a backup HDD with more memory for all your file storage.
RAM
RAM is Random Access Memory, the higher the RAM the better your computer is able to process and facilitate the storage of files – it’s short-term memory for file transfer. Now a days you want at the very least 8GB DDR4 RAM in order to be able to game.
Other Things
There are a few other things that you should be concerned about such as power supply or motherboard, but when you buy a pre-built PC on a budget you tend to find that these are on the lower end. That’s not a problem, but all it means is if you come to upgrade your PC dramatically, such as a new graphics card for instance, that you’ll likely need to upgrade the power supply to cope with it as well.
Should I build my own, or buy a prebuilt one?
You’ll see a bunch of posts online about how you should build your own PC as it will be cheaper and more cost-effective, and a lot of the time with higher-end PCs this is true.
It’s not always true however with cheaper gaming computers as we’ve detailed, especially with ones under the $600 price point. You might be asking why that’s the case? Well, because the companies that produce these cheap PCs buy the parts in massive bulk, and get large discounts when doing so and on cheaper PCs you’re working with much smaller margins so these discounts can go a long way to making it cheap.
Let’s take a random one from our list, iBUYPOWER Gaming PC Computer Desktop Element Mini 9300, which at the time of writing this is $584.99.
Let’s look at the pricing of the individual components:
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 – Priced $182.67
- RAM: The specific sticks aren’t specified, so we went for the cheapest DDR4 8GB stick we could find, HPE RAM Memory 1 x 8GB DDR4 – Priced $29.95
- SSD: Again, the SSD isn’t specified so we found the cheapest possible 240GB option – Inland Professional 240GB SSD – Priced $32.99
- Graphics Card: The actual graphics card is by AMD, but we couldn’t find the specific one, so we found a very similar one by – Riiai Video Card Radeon RX 550 GPU 2GB – Priced $125.98
- Power Supply: Not specified, but let’s assume it’s a 400W – Raidmax XT Series RX-400XT 400W ATX12V – Priced $32.99
- Motherboard: Again the motherboard isn’t specified, so we went with the cheap – ASUS PRIME A320M-K AMD Ryzen AM4 – Priced $64.99
- Case: Again, you can’t find the specific case so we found a similar RGB one – Raidmax NEON Gaming Computer Case – Priced $58.98
- Windows 10: Windows 10 Home – Priced $119
Total: $647.55
There the cheapest options that we could find, and that’s not to mention they also supply you with a free keyboard and mouse!
What other equipment might you need for your gaming computer?
To complete your gaming set up there might be a few other things that you need to buy in order to get going. We’ve listed a few of the additional required accessories and given a budget recommendation for each below.
Keyboard
You’ll need a keyboard and ideally a gaming one at that. If you’re budget can stretch to it, choose a mechanical keyboard as it has better feedback, that being said you can still get a decent gaming keyboard for a cheap price, here’s one we recommend:
NPET K10 Gaming Keyboard USB Wired Floating Keyboard
Mouse
For a mouse, you need one with a high DPI, especially if you’re planning on playing a first-person shooter game. The higher the DPI the quicker response time the mouse has at moving across the screen, here’s our recommendation:
Razer Viper Mini Ultralight Gaming Mouse: Fastest Gaming Switches – 8500 DPI
Headset
We’ve actually written a whole post about cheap gaming headsets, you can find it on our best gaming headset below $100 article.
Monitor
On a monitor when you’re gaming the main aspect you want to look at is the response time, which you ideally want at 1ms and Hz, which you ideally want at 144Hz. Here’s our recommendation:
Dell S2421HGF 24inch FHD TN, Anti-Glare Gaming Monitor – 1ms Response time, 1080p 144Hz
