There aren't enough reasonably priced budget builds on here (or out there for that matter). As for the few that you do see, boy... more often than not, you wish you hadn't. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Two of the biggest myths in computer gaming are that you have to have a $1000+ PC to game and that low-cost builds have to trade aesthetics for performance. I regularly like to challenge myself to create these myth-busters (to the best of my ability) and I'd like to introduce my newest budget build: "Sleepwalker".

She looks like a 7, but she's atleast an 8 once you get to know her. Smooth lines, graceful curves, and damn classy.

The looks on this build ultimately ended up looking much better than I expected when I started the project with only a dirty 240mm AIO, two sticks of red Corsair Vengeance LPX, and a budget of only $500. Luckily I ended up snagging the Corsair 275R case and an Asrock motherboard on a flash-sale on Amazon for dirt cheap and that's when she started coming together. I went ahead and stripped the memory of their red heat-shields to match the new black/gray color scheme and got to cleaning all the dust from the old water-cooler that's been on my shelf for a couple years.

I managed to get an i5-8600 (hex-core) for $120 off of one of my customers who desperately wanted to upgrade to an i7, and I even managed to get a 1050 ti FTW new-in-box for about half as much as the processor (talk about a steal).

All-in-all, this is the most powerful $500 computer I think I've ever built (and she even looks good)! To be more realistic however, if someone were to try to build this on their own (using Amazon, eBay, and Craigslist) I'd expect the sum total to be around $650-750, which is still quite a good deal for a moderately powerful rig that isn't hideous.

Hope y'all like the build! Also, I'd love to hear about some of the crazy budget builds y'all have made!