What you get for your $1000
We know the budget in this case is around $1000, but it is still important to make sure it’s the right budget for your gaming needs. For the hardcore gamers out there, it could be worth considering the next step up to truly enhance your overall gaming experience in those AAA games. It is worth mentioning, that at the $1000 mark, you’re getting an excellent price for performance and great value for your hard-earned cash. The cost of this build may slightly change from time to time as the prices on Amazon can fluctuate, but in any case, it’s a top gaming build.
At this price point, there is a little bit more planning required to get the absolute best experience out of the system. That being said, you are still going to get a high-end gaming PC for your $1000. Nvidia’s RTX 4070 graphics card brings ray tracing and Nvdia’s cutting-edge DLSS 3, plus exceptional results for gaming in all resolutions. At this price range, you’re going to struggle to get the very best graphics cards out there, but the RTX 4070 is a fantastic option.
You could easily go for AMD or Intel CPUs in this build, however, AMD’s 5000-series still offers excellent price to performance. Graphically, you can expect excellent results in 1440p while playing in max settings or with a high refresh rate monitor, and even 4k with moderate expectations – although we recommend this build for those with a 1440p monitor and below.
With this build, you are getting a 1TB Samsung 980 NVMe SSD, which is more than enough to store your operating system and games. This SSD will not only give you quicker boot times, but it will also improve the gaming performance. While we are talking about performance, it is important to mention the 16GB RAM kit in this build too. A high-capacity memory kit is essential, and while this kit only features a clock speed of 3200MHz, it will still increase your gaming performance and serve you well for years.
Non-Gaming Performance
So how do these powerful gaming builds stack up for non-gaming performance? The AMD CPU and its twelve threads make light work of multitasking and give you great workstation potential. That being said, both paths will handle whatever you throw at them. With that being said this $1000 build powered by AMD offers great flexibility and performance no matter the workload.
How to upgrade your $1000 gaming PC
There are an infinite number of possibilities when it comes to upgrading PCs, you can usually find a better part than what you currently have, and even if you have the best of the best, there will be more parts out in a year or so.
Upgrading this gaming PC will be costly if you want to upgrade the platform to AM5, for the Ryzen 7000 series or LGA 1700, to accommodate for Intel 12 – 14th gen. Both of these upgrade paths will require new motherboards, memory, and CPUs. So it’s the dealers’ choice. If you want the best of the best Intel has to offer, you can always grab an i9 with a Z790 motherboard. Or if you want to stick with AMD, a Ryzen 9 with an X670 motherboard might be worth considering.
The trick is to do all this upgrading without introducing a bottleneck to your system.
Overclocking on a $1000 budget
This $1000 gaming PC may not feature the same level of components you would see from the $2000 gaming PC, but it is still high-end and features plenty of room for overclocking. Squeezing extra power out of your PC becomes a bit more important for some, especially when the budget is tight. With that in mind, we have selected products we know can handle overclocking.
Both processors are ‘unlocked’ and ready to roll with a clock boost if you need a little more performance. To back up the CPUs, we have selected motherboards that can handle such tweaks. It is also worth noting that you will need to XMP overclock your RAM to get it running at its advertised speed of 3600MHz. This can be done in the BIOS, most manufacturers have simplified the process, and it takes less than a few clicks to apply the standard XMP profile.
Can you get nice Aesthetics on a $1000 budget?
This gaming PC features a sleek case and gives you some fantastic aesthetics out of the box. Of course, if you desire extra style, you can always add touches of RGB here and there. Not everyone wants to pimp out their PC, but RGB fans or even lighting strips can make a tempered glass case look even better.
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