You will always find many people suggesting you purchase a pre-built gaming PC to end the discussion about whether to buy a new PC or build one yourself. However, the fact is that assembling different components to build a PC of your own choice is always more rewarding. Building a gaming PC by yourself means you are the one responsible for choosing from the exact model, motherboard, GPU even the CPU cases to the number of RGB fans you want. Apart from building a PC of your choice, you will also be able to save a few hundred bucks for you. Remember, those savings are important and can help you upgrade your PC in the future.
Since the prices of graphics cards have gotten seriously cheap and the new deals have brought these cards even below MSRP. This could be the best time to bag yourself a great deal on a powerful GPU.
In this article, we will talk about how to build an epic gaming PC featuring the king of mainstream GPUs; the RTX 3080 for a budget of around two thousand dollars.
Table of Contents
CPU and GPU
Let’s start the build by looking at the CPU and GPU combo that we’ve opted to go for. These two are the most important components when it comes to gaming performance and the heart of this system is Intel’s Core i5 12600k. With Intel’s latest performance and efficiency cores, this is one powerful yet efficient CPU. It also boasts great clock speeds and even better-overclocking capability. This chip is unrivaled when it comes to providing solid gaming performance. I would recommend bumping it up to an i7 12700k or an i9 12900k if you want to do video editing and rendering on this build. But for gaming, this i5 12600k is a great combo. It is backed up by a 12-gigabyte RTX 3080 gaming OC.
Now the RTX 3080 is a bit of a cornerstone when it comes to high-end GPU performance. It beats out some of AMD’s competition in terms of the 6900 XT. The 6900 XT perhaps comes closest of all of their cards leaving the 6800 XT for dust. It also provides a really solid bump in performance over NVIDIA’s own 3070 and later released 3070 Ti. Additionally, this RTX 3080 12 gigabyte model gains another 2 gigabytes of VRAM from the original 3080 that first launched back in September 2020 and still provides market-leading performance.
Motherboard
Next, we need something to install all of our components into and that is of course the motherboard. The reason we had gone for the i5 12600k is to look at things from a value perspective. Although it’s fair to say that GPU prices are low, if you go and pick up a GIGABYTE 600 USD motherboard or similar ones and waste a few hundred extra dollars, what for? A great motherboard right? However, you will not exactly get that value for money that this whole build is designed to try and cater for.
We suggest you opt for the z690 AORUS Pro. It gives you all the great features including overclocking support, PCI generation 5, super-fast SSD support, DDR5 memory, and a 2.5-gigabyte ethernet. It has all the bells and whistles you may want at a price point that is much more stomachable for those of you looking to build a system perfect for gaming at those high settings. The z690 AORUS Pro costs you about 269.99 USD.
RAM
After thorough research and self-testing, we believe the Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR5 White, 32 Gigabyte is the best choice here. It is the best value RGB DDR5 kit you can currently buy. It can also sync up with some of the other components through Corsair iCUE. They are awesome but module height can cause some clearance issues with other parts in your build. You can buy a 32 Gigabyte Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro DDR5 White for about 185 dollars.
Storage (SSD)
Another component we can install onto the motherboard before we go ahead and talk about the case is the “storage”. A one terabyte SEAGATE FireCuda 530 SSD is the right fit here in our build. As some of the latest GPUs from both NVIDIA and AMD are so powerful that you need to make sure to pick up a solid SSD to drive enough data to them. In this case, the Seagate FireCuda 530 ticks all the boxes. Whether it is speed, capacity, or endurance, the Seagate FireCuda 530 covers everything that you need. We also recommend you a non-heatsink drive for this system as the heatsink on the motherboard is going to do that job for you.
Case
Let’s talk about the “Case”. For this build, we suggest you pick up an NZXT H7 Elite in white. You can go for the black version of the case as well. They are also available in a non-elite airflow design as well as a non-elite non-airflow design. There are so many different colorway options available and you can buy them from the NZXT store directly. The reviews of this case prove it to be highly rated and one that is easy to install a motherboard into.
CPU Cooler
Whether it be stock or third-party, you need a CPU cooler regardless of whether you overclock or not. In case you do not install a CPU cooler, your computer will undergo a thermal shutdown because the CPU reaches high temperatures very quickly.
Here we will talk about the two coolers and then will suggest to you the one with a high cost-to-performance ratio. The NZXT Kraken Z73 costs you about 250 dollars and the NZXT Kraken X73 costs you about 124 dollars. The latter one only loses the fancy screen and everything else is the same except the price. Thus, we recommend getting the one without the screen unless you specifically want the one with the screen.
Performance Test
We tested this build on high-end games such as Apex Legends to Forza Horizon 5, Battlefield 2042, and even Fortnite in competitive settings. We were able to achieve some phenomenal frame rates. Whether it’s 1440p or 4k gaming you’re after, this card will look after you.
SPIDERMAN
We were particularly pleased with our results in a couple of titles including Spiderman – the latest game on our list today. We tested it at 4k with DLSS set to performance and high settings overall. Here we were able to pull in around 97 FPS on average with really strong 90 and 99 percent results. This will surely make you happy if you are a big fan of Spiderman. At 4k, the game looked awesome and of course, the addition of DLSS is fantastic to see. Spiderman supports NVIDIA performance boosting DLSS to increase frame rates and real-time ray traced reflections which enhance the game’s graphics.
APEX LEGENDS
Apex Legends was a similar story to Spiderman. At 4k high settings, we pulled in around 119 frames per second on average, with strong 90 and 99 percentiles too. Of course, drop down to 1440p or 1080p and you will be heading nearer to 200 frames per second.
FORTNITE
While at Fortnite, we did test the built PC at that lower 1080p resolution. At competitive settings, we were able to pull in 234 frames per second on average, with strong 90 and 99 percentiles results here too. All of our frame rates were tested with MSI Afterburner Riva Tuner and NVIDIA FrameView to ensure maximum fairness.
Final Thoughts
This is an amazing two thousand dollars gaming PC build. You will observe that on more demanding titles you are averaging above 100 FPS and way above the 200 FPS threshold for some of the lighter titles. Convincingly, this is one of the best high-end gaming PCs you can build for 2000 USD. It can easily and smoothly handle 4k gaming. It also offers ideal performance for 1440p and 1080p gaming.