Counter-strike has been one of the most popular esports titles for years now, spanning back to the turn of the millennia when the original was born. Fast forward more than 20 years and Counter-Strike is still one of the biggest games around, with the latest iteration being CS2 (an upgrade to CSGO), turning over millions in prize money and filling stadiums as it goes.
Thanks to the current climate, an increasing number of individuals are taking up CS2 and computer gaming as a hobby. Whilst this is great for gaming, it leaves less knowledgeable people in a bit of a pickle on what components to buy.
Luckily, here at WePC, we’ve had years of experience building PCs (and playing Counter-Strike), so we know a thing or two when it comes to getting the most for your money. For that reason, we’ve decided to put this comprehensive guide to the best custom build PC for CS2 together. That way, you don’t have to go through the stress of testing, reviewing, and deciding which components are best for the job – we’ve already done it for you!
Before we go into what this build is capable of, perhaps it’s a good idea to take a quick look at the CS2 PC requirements. Over there, you’ll find that the game isn’t demanding to run at all – it’s a highly-optimized esports title that aims to cater to as many players as possible.
What You Get For Your Money
When it came to the CS2 build, we decided to choose a budget that was around $1000. Whilst many may feel this is a little too much – and they may have a case – having a slightly bigger budget allows you to increase the gaming experience exponentially. CS2 is by far one of the most competitive games out there, if you decide that you want to take on the competitive scene, this build is going to provide you with the performance you need to do so.
Performance
That leads us nicely onto the performance. So, with the components we’ve put together, you’ll easily be driving over 200FPS in CS2 – max settings. Now, once again, to some that might seem a little overkill. Why would you need over 150FPS? Well, when it comes to competitive gaming, gamers try to get the edge over their competition any way they can. That being said, if you can drive the frame rates required to properly utilize a 240hz monitor, you’ll be certainly getting the edge over users playing on lesser quality displays.
Also, because CS2 isn’t an overly intensive game, you’re able to ramp up the performance by increasing the build budget by only a few hundred dollars. That means you’re getting extremely good value for money for the components we’re choosing. Ultimately, it was a no-brainer for us.
How We Choose
We have more than enough experience building computers, with years in the business. Giving advice out to our readers, as well as friends and family, comes naturally at this point. We carefully research all of our recommended builds – whether it’s for a specific budget or targeting a particular game like CS2.
Here at WePC, we have years of experience building computers and giving advice to friends, families, and our readers. All of our build recommendations have been carefully researched, benchmarked in full, and, most importantly, are built with budget and performance in mind. We work tirelessly to ensure our builds are up to date, efficient, and offer high performance across both gaming and workflow scenarios.
We don’t just use our own personal knowledge and experience, we also keep up to date with the latest tech in our industry and use various benchmarks to allow us to quickly compare multiple components to ensure the best is always recommended. We like to keep an eye on our builds on a regular basis – monitoring price levels, system requirements for games, and more.
How We Test
With a vast amount of experience building our own gaming PCs (and PCs for work) from scratch, it’s easy for us to recommend parts which work well together and fit into the case of choice without a problem.
PCs that we build are used for a number of things – from general daily work to jumping into the latest AAA games on the market. We run benchmarks while testing to fully understand how well our builds perform, making sure to keep an eye on the temperature of components.
We tested our AMD builds against their Intel counterparts and found that these CPUs performed to a higher standard in most situations – and for a lower price. This is why we recommend an AMD build right now for playing games like CS2.
The last thing to touch on is overclocking. We’ve noticed that many of our readers enjoy overclocking their PCs, which means we test that as well. That means you can push these rigs beyond their usual capacity. However, we have to disclaim that you need to know how to overclock before trying to push this build to the limit.