Digital Home Thoughts: MaximumPC Helps You Game on the Cheap

"Back in December, we gave you the low-down on how to build a kick-ass $800 gaming PC. Well, lately the economy has been in a bit of a shamble, so we’ve lowered our price ceiling to spec out a tightly budgeted $500 rig that will deliver admirable gaming framerates and still leave you some cash to actually buy some games and pay off that credit-card debt."

Off-the-shelf PCs bought for under $500 these days are powerful, but generally lack any graphical juice to make current games shine. The solution is to build it yourself and MaximumPC shows how you can do this without asking for a bailout. All of their choices look pretty sound but I have to say that they did kind of cop-out by excluding the price of an OS. What I think is most telling about the breakdown of their PC is how much of it is spent on the GPU. While this has been true for many years, I find it very telling where most of the resources for both developing and playing games is spent. In reading review after review of games and how the storyline is weak, the characters are dull and the AI is about as intelligent as a stump, I think it may be time to get game developers to focus more on just pretty lights.