Now that we're well into a new year and still feeling the lingering effects of all the epic components we saw at CES, what better time to do the first budget gaming PC build of the year. As usual, we scoured the internet for the best components at the lowest price range, piecing together a PC that will be great for an entry-level gaming rig.

For less than the price of a current-gen console, we assembled a PC that can play most games out at medium to high settings. This budget gaming PC uses a do-it-yourself approach, landing the price at under $500 for an entry-level system.

We've had a great year here at GamersNexus, having officially launched our brand new website and “look.” While we have grown considerably, we still consider ourselves dedicated to our readers and to PC gaming culture in general. It's time to look ahead to the new year.

This year has seen the rise of many new technologies arise, from affordable SSDs to small form factor PCs, but we also have bid farewell to a few older technologies. Even though they are still in general use, the optical disk drive and pretty much anything AM3+ is quickly becoming obsolete. With this build, we wanted to welcome the new year with new tech. We decided to post a ~$2000 enthusiast gaming PC build that not only includes the newest CPU from Intel, but also DDR4 memory, a Maxwell GPU, and much more. This gaming PC will work flawlessly for live streaming, video rendering, YouTube content creation, and playing games on ultra / near-max settings. The GTX 980 ensures a high FPS for most games on a 1440p monitor and very high FPS for 1080 displays.

With the Black Friday sales in full swing, we decided to assemble the cheapest gaming PC reasonable using the holiday's savings. This PC build offers the lowest priced PC build we've ever done.

In doing so, we put together a PC that is great for streaming videos, games, and even playing less intensive games like League of Legends, Minecraft, Path of Exile, and DOTA2. This PC should not be considered a viable option if you're looking to play games like Far Cry 4 (benchmark) and Assassin's Creed Unity (benchmark). If you're looking to build the best general purpose streaming PC for the lowest price, this $299 gaming HTPC build is perfect for you.

This launch season has been one of the most hectic I can remember. The entire year has been a bit chaotic, actually; we had major GPU announcements, architecture changes (Intel & NVIDIA), several AAA game titles (Dragon Age, Warlords of Draenor, ACU, Far Cry 4, Call of Duty), and more. It's been non-stop games news for the entire year, and that's indicative of a healthy industry.

We recently benchmarked Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4, both Ubisoft titles, and found that each game is fairly graphics-intensive and demanding of system resources. This ~$1000 DIY gaming PC build allows for near-max settings in Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4, and with help from ShadowPlay, it'll stream to Twitch with relative ease.

In these “Cheap Bastard's” gaming PC builds, we put together the best build possible for less than $500; this one comes to $488 after rebates. Even though Black Friday is weeks away, we were able to find some great deals on PC components right now. We decided to go with AMD for this build, seeing how Team Red offers some of the best performance for the low-end PC user – especially for the PC gamer.

This time around, we were able to put together a formidable low-end gaming PC for under $500. We paired an AMD R7 265 with an Athlon X4 860k, which should be able to play most games out at medium to high settings. This build is perfect for those of you who are looking to upgrade for Warlords of Draenor or the upcoming Shadow of Revan MMO expansions; gamers seeking performance for the likes of Assassin's Creed Unity need to invest substantially more for a capable PC.