Gaming PC for €1,000 in 2026: What Still Works During the Memory Crisis
Image: Jacek Halicki / CC BY-SA 4.0 (Wikimedia Commons)
In short: A €1,000 gaming PC is harder to build in 2026 because RAM, SSDs and graphics cards have become much more expensive during the memory crisis. PC Games Hardware (PCGH) suggests a build with an Intel Arc B580, AMD Ryzen 7 5700X and 32 GB of DDR4 for about €1,090. To stay at exactly €1,000, pick a Ryzen 5 5600 and an Arc B570. Waiting is unlikely to pay off: insiders expect no improvement in 2027.
The parts list
| Part | Model | Approx. price |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | Intel Arc B580, 12 GB | €350 |
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 5700X | €150 |
| Cooler | Arctic Freezer 36 Black | €25 |
| RAM | Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB DDR4-3200 | €215 |
| Motherboard | MSI B550-A Pro | €105 |
| SSD | Verbatim Vi5000, 1 TB | €130 |
| PSU | FSP Vita BD, 650 W | €60 |
| Case | Deepcool CC560 V2 | €55 |
| Total | about €1,090 |
Prices according to PCGH as of 8 October 2026. The build uses AMD's older AM4 platform so it can use cheaper DDR4. The RAM alone costs almost as much as the CPU and motherboard together.
Minimum requirements
PCGH says a new gaming PC should have at least six CPU cores with SMT, 8 GB of VRAM, 16 GB of RAM (32 GB is better) and an NVMe SSD. Hard drives are outdated for the system and games. The Arc B580 offers 12 GB and is often faster than the GeForce RTX 5050; enable Resizable BAR in the BIOS.
Build or buy?
Building gives you full control and a good price, while a prebuilt saves time and comes with one warranty for the whole PC. PCGH lists a comparable prebuilt with Ryzen 5 5600, 16 GB DDR4, Arc B580 and 1 TB SSD for about €1,065, or about €1,255 with 32 GB.
Build checklist
If this is your first build, check that the B550 board's BIOS supports your Ryzen 5000 chip, put two RAM sticks in the slots the manual recommends (usually A2 and B2), enable XMP so the memory runs at its rated speed, connect the graphics card's own power cables and install the latest graphics driver from the manufacturer after setting up Windows.
Buy now or wait?
PCGH sees no major new products around €1,000 and expects prices to stay high in 2027. This PC suits Full HD and WQHD gaming, not 4K with ray tracing. See our memory price report and our laptop comparison. More in the gaming PCs section.
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