Best gaming PC build under $3000 in 2024
Built & Tested By Our Team
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Table of Contents
Best Gaming PC Under $3000
When building the best gaming PC under $3000, you are opening yourself up to the very latest flagship products from all accounts. A PC at this price point can handle pretty much anything you have to throw at it, including 4K gaming, virtual reality, fast video rendering, and plenty more. With a $3000 budget, you have the luxury of being able to tailor this build to your exact specifications. We’ve opted for a system that brings maximum performance, and beautiful aesthetics, all rolled into one. Before we take a look at what’s in this build, let’s go over exactly what we expect from this Goliath of a gaming PC.
$3000 PC build of the month
This $3000 gaming PC offers almost the best performance possible in the modern PC market, because of this, you can expect incredibly high frame rates and a buttery smooth gaming experience. The RTX 4080 in this machine can handle pretty much anything you throw at it, whether that be AAA titles in 4k or high-fidelity virtual reality. The Ryzen 9 7900X3D in this PC is also geared toward top-tier gaming, this is thanks to its stacked v-cache allowing uninhibited access to cache memory, something that modern games love. The result is a CPU that can gain a notable advantage in a lot of modern games when compared to a competing processor of similar power.
These components are built onto the Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX motherboard, which facilitates ultra-fast connections between components, not only that, but the motherboard features the latest in PCIe technology. This motherboard takes full advantage of the new PCIe 5 storage technology, allowing the use of PCIe 5 NVMe SSDs. These components alone are a recipe for fast-paced, high-fidelity gaming, all at your fingertips for under $3000.
The WePC experts that worked on this build
As a Junior Staff Writer, Jack is involved in writing and maintaining a bunch of hardware guides & reviews. With an interest in PC gaming, he now focuses on writing about monitors, headsets, and more.
Shaun is a gaming enthusiast and computer science graduate who has been working with computers for the last 15 years. He took a shine to competitive FPS back in the mid-2000s and hasn’t looked back since.
Prebuilt Gaming Desktop Under $3000
Skytech Azure Gaming PC (RTX 4080)
CPU
Ryzen 7 7800X3D
GPU
RTX 4080
RAM
32GB DDR5
Storage
1TB NVMe Gen4 SSD
Skytech Azure Gaming PC (RTX 4080)
CPU
Ryzen 7 7800X3D
GPU
RTX 4080
RAM
32GB DDR5
Storage
1TB NVMe Gen4 SSD
Here is our best $3000 prebuilt gaming PC recommendation.
By now, you should have a pretty good idea of whether or not you’re going to be able to tackle this $3,000 custom build. If you’ve gotten to this stage and you think it might be too big of a challenge, then fear not, we have you covered. I mean, custom PC building isn’t the easiest thing to do if you’re a newbie.
For people who want similar punching power as our $3k build, along with software and a warranty, then why not check out this list of suitable prebuilt gaming PCs that take the stress of PC building away.
Our custom gaming PC for under $3000
- Last Updated - Mar 19, 2024
If you’re looking for the absolute best results, whether that be gaming or workstation tasks, then look no further. The $3000 high-end gaming PC will handle everything you have to throw at it, and all in stunning 4K high-definition visuals. Let’s check out the parts that make this build in more detail.
Our $3000 Custom Gaming PC
At this price range, few compromises need to be made to accommodate the budget. The best gaming PC under $3000 pretty much does it all. It comes equipped with one of the best GPUs money can buy – paired alongside a stunning CPU that is the best in its class.
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The Ryzen 9 7900X3D is one of the best all-around CPUs on the market right now. The powerful chip is part of AMD’s Ryzen 7000, which is renowned for excellent performance across the board.
It boasts an impressive 12-core/24-thread design, which makes it more than capable of handling the most intensive workload scenarios. Its single-core performance is still extremely high and is generally considered the best CPU currently available for the price. Plus the addition of X3D brings a great boost to performance in games that can utilize the cache properly. Putting it a step beyond the competition.
Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX
Form Factor
ATX
Socket
AM5
Memory Type
DDR5
Max Memory Frequency
6600 MHz
M.2 Slots
4x 2280
Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX
Form Factor
ATX
Socket
AM5
Memory Type
DDR5
Max Memory Frequency
6600 MHz
M.2 Slots
4x 2280
Now to house the Ryzen 7000 processor, you need the latest platform to harness the full potential of the Ryzen 9. We recommend an AM5 motherboard, and not just because that’s the only motherboard socket compatible with the 7000 series right now. We have chosen the Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite. This chipset brings the top features without going over the top with the pricing. The connectivity and features are more than adequate with the Aorus Elite AX.
This board features excellent VRMs, a bunch of M.2 slots for future upgrades, and plenty of PCI-e lanes, including PCI-e 5.0 M.2, DDR5, and wifi6E.
Corsair iCUE LINK H150i LCD Liquid CPU Cooler
Air or Liquid?
Liquid
Radiator fans
QX120 RGB
Max RPM
2400
Max Noise
37dB
Dimensions
11.69" (L) x 1.06" (W) x 4.72" (H)
Corsair iCUE LINK H150i LCD Liquid CPU Cooler
Air or Liquid?
Liquid
Radiator fans
QX120 RGB
Max RPM
2400
Max Noise
37dB
Dimensions
11.69" (L) x 1.06" (W) x 4.72" (H)
We have selected the Corsair H150i Elite LCD XT to cool your 7900X3D. This AIO liquid cooler features three 120mm fans, which are, of course, quiet and full of RGB. The radiator is 360mm, giving you plenty of room for heat dissipation and keeping those high CPU temps at bay. Not only that, but the installation of this AIO CPU cooler is very straightforward. You can also customize your build with the installed LCD screen that this CPU cooler comes equipped with.
CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MHz
Capacity
32GB (2x16GB)
Speed
6000MHz
Timings
CL30
CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 RAM 32GB (2x16GB) 6000MHz
Capacity
32GB (2x16GB)
Speed
6000MHz
Timings
CL30
When you look up the perfect RAM pairing for this top CPU, fast speeds are easy to come by, however, we favor the Corsair Vengeance RGB kit for its reliability. The top DDR5 RAM pick brings speed at a great value for it. Ryzen CPUs love fast RAM, so the faster the kit of memory you can afford, the better. With 32GB at your disposal, you’ll be able to run every game you could imagine, stream, multi-task, and do plenty of heavy workloads too.
The $3000 build was designed with gaming performance in mind, for that reason, the first component that was chosen for this build was the powerful RTX 4080. It comes equipped with a generous 16GB of VRAM and an impressive cooling solution which doesn’t just look the part, it plays the part too. There probably isn’t anything that this GPU cannot handle, you can expect high FPS gameplay in 4k with the ability to boost higher with DLSS 3.0 integration.
If you’re after one of the best consumer-grade graphics cards money can buy, look no further, this will play any game, in any setting, at any resolution. We’d have loved to squeeze in an RTX 4090 for this build, but that would stretch the budget quite a bit.
SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 2TB
Storage Capacity
Total: 2 TB PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 SSD
Read Speed
Random: 1,000,000 IOPS Sequential: 7000 MB/s
Write Speed
Random: 1,000,000 IOPS Sequential: 5100 MB/s
Dimensions
3.16 x 0.89 x 0.09" / 8.03 x 2.26 x 0.23 cm
SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD 2TB
Storage Capacity
Total: 2 TB PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 2280 SSD
Read Speed
Random: 1,000,000 IOPS Sequential: 7000 MB/s
Write Speed
Random: 1,000,000 IOPS Sequential: 5100 MB/s
Dimensions
3.16 x 0.89 x 0.09" / 8.03 x 2.26 x 0.23 cm
Having a rapid SSD for your operating system and primary games is essential in the modern age of PC gaming.
SSDs, on average, offer massively increased performance over their HDD counterparts. The same difference can be said for M.2 SSDs over SATA ones. This Samsung 980 Pro M.2 is one of the highest-performing SSDs on the market and has a 2TB storage capacity, which is more than enough for your OS, most of your games, and some backup media storage as well. You could also expand on it further down the line. Getting an SSD massively reduces load ti