The TBG DIY PC Build Guides

Introduction to the TBG PC Build Guides

Welcome to TBG’s DIY PC Build Guides! This is where you’ll find all the best PC builds on the ‘net, from ultra-compact home office PCs to screaming-fast gaming towers. In total, we offer 20 distinct DIY PC Build guides, constantly updated with the latest and greatest components.

The April 2024 Updates

Early 2024 saw a few major product updates, but nothing that shook up the DIY PC industry in a serious way. Much remains the same as it did in late-2023: the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D is simply the fastest, most cost-effective, energy-efficient gaming CPU ever made. We recommend it in a bunch of our higher-end gaming builds. We have a few other picks for lower-budget system (mainly AMD CPUs as well), and for our high-end professional or mixed-use systems, we mainly go with Intel’s latest Core i7 and Core i9 CPUs, which might not be particularly efficient, but certainly out-boost and “out-core” AMD’s options. That translates to amazing all-around performance.

In the GPU world, we’re going to be in stasis for a while, with no major releases predicted until the end of the year. That means our picks will likely remain consistent for a while: AMD sweeps at the budget end of the spectrum, while Nvidia and AMD trade blows in the premium segment, and nothing will touch Nvidia’s RTX 4090 at the high end. In fact, it’s so dominating that it appears Nvidia will buck previous trends and won’t bother to release a 4090 “Ti” or “Super”.

With regard to other key components, we’re continuing to see a steady rise in SSD prices, and this is not going to end soon, unfortunately. They’ve gone up 30-50% since late-2023, and will likely go up another 15-20% before the price correction is over. The good news is that the closely-related DRAM market has stabilized after bouncing off its price floor, and we have now seen RAM prices hold steady for several months in a row. That is great news, folks, because these prices are still very attractive historically speaking.

Finally, we wanted to give a shout out to cooler manufacturers, who have been releasing a steady stream of excellent new models that perform at significantly higher levels than older models, and importantly this is on a noise-normalized basis. We’ll take a bit of credit for weaning manufacturers off their habit of simply upping the RPM of fans on new models to juice the charts. We are now getting legitimately better designs, to the point where if you have a top cooler from just a few years ago, it is absolutely outperformed by mid-range models today. In fact, there’s not a cooler in our guides that’s more than one year old, meaning the entire market has been refreshed during that time!

Using the TBG PC Build Guides

Whether it’s your first, tenth, or hundredth time building a PC, these guides will set you up with the best components you can buy. To find the right PC for you, feel free to browse all of the options below, or alternatively choose specific criteria from our filter browser below, which will display just the builds that meet your needs. You can then click on the “View Specs” button to see a quick view of prices, parts, and dimensions, or click the “View Guide” button to jump straight to the full Build Guide for that build. Happy hunting, and good luck with whichever build you choose!

Our DIY PC Build Guides are updated monthly, and sometimes daily, to ensure you get the most up-to-date info. If you appreciate the work we do on these, don’t forget to use our Amazon and Newegg links to support continued publication of these guides. And if you’re specifically interested in Small Form Factor PCs, definitely check out our monthly guide to the Small Form Factor PC Market as well.

We’d like to express special thanks to SilverStone Technology Co., which sponsors the TBG PC Build Guides. Founded in 2003, SilverStone has made major contributions to PC case design, small form factor PC development, and power supply innovation!