Ars Technica System Guide: Five sample PC builds, from $500 to $5,000
Sometimes I go longer than I intend without writing an updated version of our PC building guide. And while I could just claim to be too busy to spend hours on Newegg or Amazon or other sites digging through dozens of near-identical parts, the lack of updatesusuallycorrelates with "times when building a desktop PC is actually a pain in the ass."
Through most of 2025, fluctuating and inflated graphics card pricing and limited availability have once again conspired to make a normally fun hobby an annoying slog-and honestly kind of a bad way to spend your money, relative to just buying a Steam Deck or something and ignoring your desktop for a while.
But three things have brought me back for another round. First, GPU pricing and availability have improved alittle since early 2025. Second, as unreasonable as pricing is for PC parts, pre-built PCs with worse specs and other design compromises are unreasonably priced, too, and people should have some sense of what their options are. And third, I just have the itch-it's been a while since I built (or helped someone else build) a PC, and I need to get it out of my system.