What should I look for in a budget $300 gaming PC in December 2018 and early 2019 and beyond?

Hi,

What should I look for and what should be included in a well-balanced and well-rounded budget gaming PC in December 2018 or early 2019 and beyond for the foreseeable future? I'm thinking of maybe a budget of, say, $300 for a budget gaming PC with very good bang for the buck and using the most absolute newest parts to future proof it as much as possible.

Also, I'm not sure if I should build my own, buy one that's already built, or have one built to order.

Thanks for any suggestions

$300 can get you a low end motherboard, a decent CPU and half of the RAM you need (or a half-decent CPU and proper RAM). That's assuming you live in the USA or you can buy parts from there without shipping and import fees.

The Ryzen 3 2200G might be the best option for you.

A build with this chip might look something like this: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/K2H8w6

Notes:

• It comes in at $350. We could have made it cheaper, but....
• I have opted for a 500GB SSD instead of spinning drive. Not as high a capacity. but it will make the system much snappier. A must, IMO.
• I went with an 80+ Bronze PSU, because you should never cheap out on your PSU if you want your computer to have a long life
• Motherboard could have been cheaper, but I went with a board that has 4 RAM slots because....
• 8GB of memory, two 4GB dimms. Take advantage of dual channel now, while allowing for an upgrade to 16GB in the future.

Speaking of... Upgrades:

• More storage
• Double your memory

More Long-Term Upgrades:

• You can always opt for a discrete GPU at some point down the line
• Since the motherboard has a B450 chipset, it is compatible with most modern Ryzen chips, and will likely be compatible with the next generation of Ryzen chips with a firmware update.

There's no point in "future-proofing" a 300$ build

300 dollars? That's not much for a PC, or any gaming device for that matter. Barely enough to get a console.

Do you already have a PC? You might be able to buy a video card and drop it into your existing PC.

The best way to future-proof here is to take that 300 dollars and add more to it at a later date.

Wondering if this is a drunken system wars troll...

Far cry 5

For $300 you should just get a console.

@punchy71: This is more of a Hardware related topic so I moved it to PC & A/V Hardware forum

There're the new Ryzen G APUs that come with integrated GPU as @pyro1245 mentioned which is a good option if you want to add a dedicated GPU later on you could.

I did made a different rig build https://pcpartpicker.com/list/CMxdWD went with SSHD because I had to use 16Gb of RAM which is important these days and is a future proofing thing to do for the next couple of years, fully modular PSU which also important since picking low end case will cause airflow issues.

A tad more expensive build but you can't really go lower than 400$ if you want a decent PC gaming experience, going below it as you can see is making huge sacrifice which is not owning a dedicated GPU on your system.

I would also look for console deals, I saw them drop to 350$ sometimes Black Friday etc, you won't have Steam, Humble Bundle and GoG deals and free giveaways but then again I saw PS/Xb deals from time to time.

Buy a used Dell optiplex with an i7 for $150, spend the rest on a graphics card.

Since we are on the topic of "300 dollar" builds, I had a question: are onboard video options worth a damn?

Obviously you're not going to be playing Battlefield 5, AC: Odyssey, and so forth, but would it be good enough for a lot of the "retro" indie games and maybe even Fortnite?