Mainstream Intel gaming PC guide: Best parts for a midrange Intel build

Intel used to be the brand that was synonymous with the word "premium" (or "overpriced" depending on how you look at it), but recently the company has embarked on an aggressive pricing strategy for its long-standing CPU lineup and its brand-new series of GPUs. This generation, it's Intel that has the most to offer for anyone looking for the best value when building or upgrading their PC. For just $1,000, you can build a PC that's great at gaming, productivity, and is ideal for upgrading in the future using Intel hardware.

This build guide targets a budget of around $1,000, and if you have more money to throw around you might be interested in our premium, $1,500 Intel build guide instead. Despite what we said about AMD not being the best value, it's not like you can't build a PC using Ryzen and Radeon chips. We have an AMD version of this article that also targets a budget of about $1,000, as well as a premium AMD PC build guide. We recommend comparing our build guides so you can figure out what's best for you.

The best parts for a mainstream Intel PC build in 2023

Thanks to Intel's aggressive pricing with its 13th-generation chips, it's hard to choose a CPU that doesn't have good value behind it. However, since there's a budget for this PC build, we need to figure out where the line should be. When it comes to gaming, the CPU isn't always a critical component, and at a certain point, higher-end CPUs largely bring more cores to the table, and for games, six is enough. At $207, the Core i5-13400F is a 10-core CPU that provides great gaming performance, good productivity performance, and high value for this build.

The 13400F (as well as the 13400, which is identical but has integrated graphics) is the successor to the Core i5-12400, and they're pretty similar except the 13400 has some key improvements. Firstly, 13th-generation CPUs come with more cache and higher clock speeds than 12th-generation models, which results in the 13400(F) having a 200MHz frequency and 4MB cache advantage over the 12400; this is especially important for games. Secondly, while both CPUs have six P-cores, the 13400 also has four E-cores, which is a performance boost in multi-threaded workloads.

In practice, the 13400(F) is about 30% faster than the 12400 in multi-threaded applications like Cinebench R23, but only has about a 5% to 10% lead in games. That's not a particularly substantial lead considering the 12400 is about $180 and the 12400F costs around $160 at the time of writing, but performance isn't the only consideration here. The 12400 and 12400F are likely to come up in price or go out of stock at some point since Intel has raised the official pricing, we're just not sure when exactly that will happen.

If you really want to reduce the budget on this build and need an alternative, the 12400F is probably your best bet, as long as it's still in stock for a good price. There's also the Core i3-13100 but it has just four P-cores, which isn't really ideal for this kind of PC. For those who want to spend a little extra, the Core i5-13500 (there's no cheaper -F model, sadly) is $250 and has eight E-cores, an extra four compared to the 13400(F). Still, the 13400F strikes the best balance of price and performance here, especially for gaming.

It's only been a few months since Intel came out with its first-ever gaming GPUs, which initially launched with buggy software and inconsistent performance. But in that short time, Intel has made remarkable strides in improving its Arc lineup with better drivers that have transformed Arc from a questionable choice into a real option. At $200, the Arc A750 is Intel's second-fastest GPU and delivers the best bang-for-buck in the entire lineup, not to mention some extra features you might appreciate.

The A750 is essentially a cut-down version of the $350 A770, with 28 of the 32 Xe cores the A770 has, a clock speed of 2050MHz as opposed to the A770's 2100MHz, and most importantly just 8GB of GDDR6 memory against the A770's 16GB. Despite how bad that may look, the A750 isn't really missing too much. It has almost 90% of the cores the A770 has, a 50MHz frequency decrease is miniscule, and 16GB is overkill on the A770 anyways. For $100 less, the A750 has very good specs and it's the main reason why it gets the recommendation over its more expensive sibling.

In games using the latest drivers, the A770 is only about 10% faster than the A750, which is exactly what you would expect based on the specifications. Compared to AMD's and Nvidia's GPUs, it's a bit hard to say where exactly the A750 lands because the margins vary significantly from game to game. Generally speaking, the A750 is most comparable to the RX 6600 XT and the RTX 3060; sometimes it's faster, sometimes it's slower, sometimes it's about the same. Newer drivers are the key source of improved performance for Arc since launch, and Intel still has some work to do.

If you're purely interested in gaming, the A750 probably stands well enough on its own, but it comes with some extras too. It supports ray tracing and XeSS, Intel's version of AMD's FSR and Nvidia's DLSS, but perhaps the most interesting feature is AV1 encoding. Arc GPUs were the first and are the cheapest graphics cards to support AV1 encoding. Most users probably won't care either way about AV1 support, but for those who need it, it's a great addition at a much lower price than AMD's RX 7000 series and Nvidia's RTX 40 cards.

Although the Core i5-13400F is suitable even for a more midrange B760 board, you'll probably want to upgrade later and for that you'll want a higher-end Z-class motherboard. It's unfortunate that cheap Z690 motherboards are getting hard to find now, but thankfully motherboards with the refreshed Z790 chipset are at a low enough price to be worth buying. Gigabyte's Z790 Aorus Elite AX DDR4 is one of the best options at or below $250, and it's good not just for this build but for any future components you upgrade to down the line.

Two of the most appealing features of the Z790 Aorus Elite is its fairly large 16+1+2 stage VRM, which is more than enough for the 13400 and should be able to handle a Core i9-13900K decently enough. It also has four M.2 slots with PCIe 4.0, and while it's a shame there's no support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs here, it's unlikely you'll want one too soon if you're just gaming. This board also uses DDR4 memory, which is slightly slower than DDR5 but much cheaper. Plus, the Z790 chipset offers unlocked overclocking, which you can take advantage of if you upgrade to a K-class CPU down the line.

The rear I/O on the Z790 Aorus Elite is good overall but not perfect. You get 10 USB ports in total (six being USB 3.2), Wi-Fi 6, and 2.5 gigabit Ethernet, and these ports tick the most important boxes. However, this board only has optical audio, audio in, and audio out jacks, which is really limited if you use audio jacks. Plus, that 2.5 gigabit Ethernet is from Realtek, not Intel, which is generally the better brand for this stuff.

At the time of writing, the Z790 Aorus Elite AX DDR4 is $230, which is pretty competitive for the Z790 chipset and all the features this board has. A motherboard that's almost as good is Asus's TUF Gaming Z790-Plus, which has Intel Ethernet, more audio jacks, and costs a little less, but has two less VRM stages and fewer USB ports. Overall I think the Gigabyte board is better, but if you really want Intel Ethernet and more audio jacks, then consider the Asus model instead.

The Core i5-13400(F) comes with the stock Intel heatsink so you technically don't need to buy a CPU cooler, but I still recommend it anyway for two reasons. With an unlocked power limit (which means maximum performance) the 13400(F) will consume lots of power and can easily overwhelm the stock Laminar cooler. Some reviews indicate you can achieve close to max performance with the stock cooler but it means the 13400 will run at 100 C at all times, which isn't great. At $35 though, you can get Thermalright's Peerless Assassin 120 SE, one of the best CPU air coolers today.

Despite being one of the cheapest CPU coolers, the Peerless Assassin tops the charts in pretty much every review out there. It might not be quite sufficient for a 13900K, but it's more than enough to cool a 13400(F) and get it to boost to its highest possible frequency. Also, it'll be much quieter than the stock Intel cooler and pretty much every other air cooler out there.

Until other manufacturers drop prices on their premium coolers, Thermalright's Peerless Assassin will truly remain peerless thanks to its great performance and low price. The Thermalright brand isn't as prestigious as Noctua or be quiet! but when you're on a budget, brand value isn't nearly as important as bang for buck.

Recommending a motherboard with DDR4 support rather than DDR5 wasn't a mistake on our part, but a deliberate choice in the interest of keeping the budget of this build in check. Besides, DDR5 RAM generally doesn't make a big difference for gaming whether you have a 13400(F) or a 13900K. 16GB kits of DDR4 memory are going for ridiculously low prices, especially Corsair's Vengeance LPX kit. At $38 for 16GB, it's not only a great deal for capacity but also a great deal for performance thanks to its relatively high frequency and low CAS latency (or CL).

You might think that one of the cheapest DDR4 memory kits would come with some kind of crippling spec but that's really not the case for the Vengeance LPX. The specific kit we linked is rated at 3200MHz and CL16, which used to be pretty high-end just a few years ago. Nowadays, there are kits with much higher frequencies, but these kits generally don't boost real-world performance very much and often cost much more. The worst you could say about this RAM is that it looks kind of boring, but the heatsink is at least low-profile and that means CPU cooler compatibility is as good as can be.

There are a few memory kits that provide the same specs for around $35, but all of them are from somewhat less established brands, which doesn't matter for performance but does matter for warranty support. Additionally, many of these cheaper kits use taller heatsinks that probably aren't quite low-profile, and it's always better to have low-profile memory since it's always compatible with any CPU cooler. You could save about $10 here by opting for another brand, but we're not sure if that's worth it.

SSD prices have been cratering since early 2023, and this means you can find high capacity drives for prices never before seen. For this kind of build, I recommend aiming for lots of storage rather than high performance as games don't require anything particularly fast, something like Solidigm's P41 Plus. The 1TB model of this drive goes for $40 or less, and the 2TB model has been seen between $60 and $80 when it's in stock, making it one of the cheapest SSDs for the space it provides.

In my review of the P41 Plus, I really liked how this drive performed in random workloads, putting it on par with even the highest-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs like the 990 Pro and MP600 Pro NH. Its sequential performance by contrast is barely PCIe 4.0 level, but is still good enough for both gaming and the kind of stuff you'd typically do on a $1,000 PC. Plus, Solidigm's Synergy Toolkit software provides a modern UI for SSD diagnostics, and you even get a first party driver with the P41 Plus, something that no other company does.

Although I would recommend the 2TB model of the P41 Plus, it's not in stock nearly as often as the 1TB version. Thankfully, the Z790 Aorus Elite has four M.2 slots so you can just buy two 1TB drives if you want and still have plenty of room for future storage expansion. You could instead get a higher-end drive like the MP600 Pro NH and still be within the budget, but it's about twice the price as the P41 Plus and probably won't benefit you very much.

It's always important to select a good PSU for any PC, but that's especially true for those using Intel's latest CPUs. The higher-end chips can consume over 200 watts under load and that means a power supply with a good amount of wattage is necessary. Additionally, on a PC like this you want extra headroom for future upgrades that may increase the total power consumption of the PC. We recommend a PSU that can deliver 750 watts, and Corsair's $95 RM750e is one of the best options on the market.

When it comes to PSUs, the esoteric technical specs aren't super important (and they're difficult to analyze anyways); the main things to look for in a PSU are brand reliability, wattage, rating, and modularity in that order. Corsair is a brand that we can trust to not only deliver a good power supply, but to make things right when something does go wrong. The RM750e in particular delivers more than enough power for this PC build and also has an 80 Plus Gold efficiency rating, which is great. It's also modular which means more convenient cable routing and management.

One thing to watch out for is the fact that there are two versions of this PSU, as Corsair has updated it to be ATX 3.0. This doesn't mean a ton other than the fact that the newer version comes with a 12VHPW cable, but when it comes to price you'll probably find that the older model costs way more since it's running out of stock. Make sure to get the newer ATX 3.0 model, which should cost $100.

There are certainly cheaper 750-watt PSUs out there, but they often cut corners on the efficiency rating or modularity, or even reliability. Cheaping out on a PSU is acceptable if you're on a really low budget and using lower-end components, but it's definitely not recommended on a $1,000 PC. Corsair's RM750e should last you quite a while (especially since it's modern and ATX 3.0), and that's worth spending $100.

The case that all these parts are going into is the final piece, and perhaps the least important one when it comes to our recommendation. All a case really needs to do is fit all the components and not have some sort of terrible drawback, and there are dozens if not hundreds of cases on the market that fulfill those needs. You're probably going to want a case that you think looks good, and we can't recommend one that suits everyone. For this particular build, however, Corsair's $90 4000D Airflow should be a good fit.

For this kind of build, it's important that you have room for a 360mm AIO cooler, room for high-end GPUs, and generally good build quality since you'll probably want to upgrade in the future. The 4000D ticks all of these boxes, and it also comes with two 120mm fans preinstalled, which may not be enough for this PC to operate super quietly but it's a good start. It's very unlikely you'll feel that the 4000D is insufficient for your PC unless you want custom water cooling or something in the near future.

Undoubtedly though some people won't be a huge fan of how the 4000D looks, and while there is an RGB version that comes with three 120mm RGB fans for $130, you still might not like it. Thankfully, there are lots of great cases on the market that should fit within the $1,000 budget of this build. Just look around and see if you see something else you prefer instead, though make sure what you set your sights on is compatible with your components and has wiggle rooom for future upgrades.

Mainstream Intel PC build guide: Price breakdown

Here's how everything comes together and how much you'll likely pay for this particular set of components. Obviously, these are just the prices at the time of writing and it's almost certain that the price of these components will go up and down over time. Of all the components here, the ones you might expect to have the most price fluctuation are the RAM and the SSD, which can be expected to go up in price in the long term. The PSU and case may also from time to time experience price variances, and there may be some days where components are more or less expensive than usual.

---

This generation, Intel is probably your best bet for a $1,000 PC, and we didn't even hit $1,000 exactly. The 13400(F) is good at both gaming and productivity, the A750 is fast for the money (though buggy at times), and the motherboard comes with basically everything you need to support future upgrades. All these savings allow you to spend more on the cooler, SSD, PSU, and other components.

We didn't cover peripherals in this guide, but we also have recommendations for the best gaming monitors, mice, and keyboards you can buy today. You can also check out the XDA Computing Forums for advice from our community.