Home Boycotter’s Guide Overview

Building the Poor Man’s Gaming PC

No need to pay for overpriced parts. In the “age of the Linux desktop”, we now have a lot of options for cheap parts and classic time-tested game titles.

Parts to Look For

As of writing this (February 2026), the prices of modern computer hardware are through the roof, and they are only predicted to climb higher. For this reason, you need to look for older parts. Exactly how old depends on what kind of machine you’re looking for and the tasks you want it to be capable of running. I think 2010-2013 is the sweet spot between performance, price, and availability. As a bonus, older PCs are much, much easier to build than modern PCs.

Typically, you’re going to want at least 16GB of DDR3 RAM if you want to make this a gaming PC, but 8GB can be acceptable depending on what kind of games you’re playing. For the processor, I aim for the higher end of the era, so you’re gonna be looking for 4-6 cores and no lower than 3GHz base clock. There are a lot of options for graphics cards, and you’re going to want a at least a solid 4GB GDDR5 in most cases, no lower than 2GB. For speed, you want your GPU to run no lower than 1200MHz for a smooth experience on many older titles.

The current specs of my crappy PC are:

Part Model Specs
CPU AMD FX6300 6 cores, 3.5GHz base speed
Memory Unknown 16GB DDR3 @ 1666 MHz
GPU Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050ti 4GB GDDR5, 1290 MHz base
Storage Samsung SATA SSD 512GB 550MB/s

A really nice upgrade to that system would be a GTX 1650 or similar.

An important note is compatibility. You want to make sure that your CPU socket type and your RAM matches your motherboard. You also want a case that your motherboard will fit in, so look out for things like full ATX, mini ATX, etc.. You don’t want to end up with hardware that won’t fit together, especially if you are inexperienced. Also, this guide uses Linux for a reason, a lot of older PC parts are no longer supported by newer versions of Windows, such as Windows 11. More on this in the Linux section, as there are aging workarounds.

Where to Find the Parts

Finding the parts is easy right now, but you should get to it sooner rather than later. Older components are not being manufactured anymore, and it is being increasingly popular to scrap them in order to salvage the gold from the components. Don’t get any ideas, those suckers will never payoff the resources that go into extracting that metal. The best way to make money is to save it by using the parts for what they are meant for instead of spending money on newer hardware.

In my experience, the best place to buy is online exchange platforms, like eBay, Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, and similar. I’m eventually going to write an article providing tips on online marketplaces, but for now you can follow this small set of rules that I go by:

Building the PC

Building the PC is easy since its made of older parts. Old form factors were simple, with far fewer steps in assembly. The internet is your best friend, and you can find many guides on building budget PCs. Here is just one example.

Linux

The biggest argument against Linux desktops is that they do not have the best support for games. It’s true, numerous games run on Windows only. However, many older titles tend to work well with compatibility layers, especially Proton, which is included with Valve’s Steam. Some of them even run natively, and Linux’s lightweight nature often provides performance benefits to games.

With that being said, maybe you would rather go through the trouble of getting Windows to work instead of learning a new family of operating systems. Maybe you want Windows for some other masochistic reason. In either case, you might be interested in workarounds to Windows deprecating older hardware. There are ways to bypass Windows 11 hardware requirements, or use an obscurer version of Windows 10 with LTS.

If you choose to go ahead with Linux, there are numerous Linux operating systems that are optimized and/or relatively user-friendly.

Once you decide on your distribution, you should follow a proper tutorial for installing your specific OS. In brief, you can follow these general steps:

  1. Download the ISO from the relevant official website. Make sure its for the right architecture. If you don’t know what that means, it will probably be x86_64 (arch64).
  2. Flash a 16GB-minimum USB thumb drive with the ISO image. A good software for this would be Rufus, assuming you have access to a Windows machine.
  3. Plug the USB into your poor-man’s PC.
  4. Look up the BIOS key or, even better, the boot menu key for your motherboard. You typically don’t need the exact model, just the brand. Search “ motherboard BIOS/boot menu key".
  5. Boot the computer. As soon as the power button as pressed, start spamming the key described above.
  6. If it’s the boot menu key, you should be brought to a menu with a short list of boot options listed by storage space. You’ll probably see your hard rive/SSD and your USB stick. Select the USB stick and press ENTER. Proceed to step 8.
  7. If it’s the BIOS key, navigate to the “Boot” section with your arrow keys or TAB. Look for “boot order” or similar. You want to move your USB to the top of the boot order. Make sure your SSD or hard drive is still somewhere on the boot order. Save and exit BIOS.
  8. Reboot the computer or wait if it does so on its own. It should now boot into the operating system’s installer that is on the USB. Go through the steps provided to install the operating system. When the computer reboots for the final time, remove the USB stick before it posts.

Some of My Favorite Games for This PC

Some games work well with compatibility tools, but not across all hardware. I’m going to list the games I’ve personally played that work every time or almost every time. If they don’t work for you, you should look into installing alternative drivers for your GPU. I personally had to do this for the 1050ti twice. I tend to have most success with AMD cards.

The games that usually work out of the box are: