Bit-Tech published a guide on how to build a great gaming PC on a budget

Gaming on this system was incredible fun once we'd finished tweaking it, but up until that point it wasn't looking particularly good. In fact, I found myself reaching for my beloved Xbox 360 controller on more than one occasion through sheer frustration. The great thing about PC gaming though is that the bounds are limitless -- you can improve the graphics further down the line and you can tune to get better performance. That's something you can't do with a console, but it does require time investment on the user's part and that's not for everyone.

Anyway, I'm not here to create a debate the benefits and downsides of PCs and games consoles -- I came here to prove that PC gaming isn't as expensive as everyone seems to think. You don't need the biggest, baddest and most power hungry high-end graphics card on the market to enjoy games at their maximum in-game settings, and you don't need the world's fastest processor either.

You can get a great gaming experience---a great computing experience, in fact---on a system that costs less than that high-end CPU or graphics card //on its own. This industry focuses on the 'sexy' high end stuff far too often in my opinion and it's that that is killing a lot of //our enthusiasm because it's no longer fun -- we've said it before and I'll say it again: enthusiasts are being misinterpreted. Building a PC that burns holes in ones pockets isn't what enthusiasts are about; building a PC that delivers maximum bang-for-buck is what it's all about and I think we've achieved that right here.

How to build a great gaming PC on a budget