Yes Virginia, you can still build an affordable gaming computer that can play most of the best recent titles available, and PC Mag can show you how. Don’t get me wrong – there are lots of configurations you could choose, and there are a few things I might do differently from this particular config, but all in all, the whole build was just over 800 bucks and sports a pretty speedy video card under the hood and plenty of memory.

Part of where they saved the money was by going with an AMD processor instead of the all-but-standard Intel CPUs these days that offer clearly more power but at a higher price point. Still, all of the prices used in the piece are list, and you can probably do better shopping on the Web, which most people will undoubtedly do.

Have to say, they picked a pretty snazzy case, too!