By now, everyone has heard of Fortnite – it’s one of the biggest (if not the biggest) competitive esports titles on the market today, being Twitch’s second most-viewed esports game in 2019. In fact, Fortnite handed out the most prize money out of any esports title in 2019 – close to $65 million dollars ($64,422,992.50 to be exact). That was a few years ago now, but Fortnite remains one of the most popular games out there – and the release of Fortnite OG only brought more players back to give it another try.
With those sorts of figures floating around, it’s no surprise that the esports industry is blowing up in a big way. More and more gamers are starting to opt for gaming PCs over the more conventional consoles of yesteryear. And for that reason, we’ve decided to put together what we believe is the best gaming PC for Fortnite.
This article will be your one-stop shop for everything required to build the best gaming PC for Fortnite. We won’t just be recommending the best value hardware for a great gaming experience, but we’ll also be giving out helpful building tips and advice as you go.
PC hardware deals
If you are planning on building out your next gaming PC, then finding deals on some components is the best way to get something better for cheaper. In that case, you can find deals on GPUs, CPUs, coolers, motherboards, power supplies, and cases. There are always some discounts to be found even if it’s not any special sales time so you can save a few bucks here and there.
Before we go into what this build is capable of, let’s take a quick look at the Fortnite PC requirements:
Fortnite: Minimum Requirements
- CPU: Core i3-3225 3.3 GHz
- RAM: 8GB RAM
- HDD: 16GB Free Space
- GPU: Intel HD 4000 / AMD Radeon Vega 8 (integrated graphics)
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit
- DirectX: Version 11 or better
Fortnite: Recommended Requirements
- CPU: Core i5-7300U 3.5 GHz / AMD Ryzen 3 3300U
- RAM: 16GB RAM
- Storage: NVMe SSD
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 / AMD R9 280 or equivalent video card with dedicated memory of 2GB or higher VRAM.
- OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit
- DirectX: Version 11 or better
As you can see, Fortnite isn’t an overly intensive game. The build that we’ve gone for is more than capable of providing high FPS in the game’s highest (epic) settings.
What You Get For Your Money
For the Fortnite build, we decided (eventually) to go for a budget of around $500–$600. We felt this gave us enough monetary room to accommodate all the major hardware components required to achieve decent FPS across all graphical settings. Obviously you don’t have to stick to this budget, but anything more expensive would be classed as overkill if your only goal is to play Fortnite.
Performance
When putting this build together, one of the major talking points was how much performance power it actually needed. On one side of the coin, we knew a build of this price would be able to achieve 100FPS at 1080p in mid-high settings – which is pretty good. Having said that, investing a couple of hundred dollars more would have (most likely) yielded double the performance output. So it was a bit of a headscratcher.
After further deliberation, we came to the conclusion that 240 FPS would probably be over the top for most people. The only way you can justify purchasing a PC with the ability to support 250+ FPS in a game like Fortnite is to pair it with a 240Hz monitor – something we didn’t think the majority would be willing to do. So, we opted for the budget route.
Having said that, this PC is still well equipped to provide you with a very immersive gaming experience and won’t be held back by the game’s max settings. In 1080p epic settings, we expect to see 60FPS in Fortnite – very good when everything is considered.
How We Choose
Here at WePC, we have years of experience building computers and giving out advice – whether it be to our readers, or just our family and friends. All of our build recommendations have been carefully researched and are built with budget and performance in mind. We like to make sure the our builds are up to date with the relevant hardware, more than capable of handling Fortnite, as well as other games or workloads.
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 also monitor our builds on a regular basis, to make sure all hardware is stocked and the price still offers you the best bang for your buck.
How we test
We build these PCs from scratch in order to make sure that all the parts we recommend work well together, fit into the case we’ve picked out, and perform well for games like Fortnite.
There’s plenty of experience around the WePC office building desktops for general day-to-day work, as well as gaming. When testing builds, we also run benchmarks to see just how they perform, all keeping a close watch of the temperature of components to ensure everything remains in optimal working order.
We tested our AMD builds against their Intel counterparts and found that these Ryzen CPUs performed to a higher standard in most situations – and for a lower price. This is why we only recommend an AMD version. They’ve offered excellent value for money for gaming, just what you want from a custom Fortnite build.
What about overclocking? You may ask. Well, these builds can be pushed in terms of overclocking if you really want to maximize performance. But, please make sure you know how to overclock before trying to push this build to the limit.