Everything you need to build a PC, and nothing you don't.
Guides sorted by budget, honest data on every part, and the market numbers that decide whether this is a good month to buy. Here's where things stand right now.
The state of the market, September 2026
Graphics card market
Price against performance
Every card we track. The further below the line, the more performance you get per dollar.
Where a build's money goes
Our mid-range build, by share of total cost. Memory is where it used to be a rounding error.
Start somewhere
Build guides
Complete, compatible parts lists with a note on why each part is there. Prices are current, which in 2026 means higher than you were probably expecting.
Budget breakdown
Reading this build
| Part | What we picked | Price | Why | Find it |
|---|
Before you buy the power supply in any of these lists, check it against the Cultists Network PSU tier list. The exact model matters more than the brand — the same manufacturer sells units in tier A and units that shouldn't be sold at all, and the wattage number on the box tells you nothing about which one you're getting. Stick to tier A or B; tier C is acceptable if you're on a tight budget.
Build advisor
Answer a few questions and get a parts plan sized to your money and your actual use.
Beginner basics
The eight parts in every desktop, and the one thing to get right about each.
Build creator
Pick your own parts. Compatibility, power draw, frame rate and physical fit are checked as you go.
Parts
How it looks
Compatibility
Budget breakdown
| Part | Choice | Price | Find it |
|---|
Bottleneck check
A bottleneck is just the part that runs out of headroom first. A small one is normal — in a gaming PC you want the graphics card to be the limit.
These are modelled estimates from relative performance indexes, not measured results. Real bottlenecks depend heavily on the game.
Keeper Score
One number for whether a card is worth owning, not just whether it's fast. Five things go in: speed, price, efficiency, memory and how long it should stay relevant.
How it's put together
Each part is scored against the best card in that category, then weighted and added. 100 would be a card that wins every category at once, which none of them do.
| Card | Your price | Keeper Score | Breakdown | Speed | Value | Efficiency | Memory | Longevity |
|---|
Change a price and the score moves. That's the point — a card is only as good as what you can actually buy it for this week.
Compare builds
Put two builds side by side to see exactly what the extra money buys.
| Part | A | B | Difference |
|---|
Hardware lab
Questions we wanted answered properly, worked through one at a time. Every experiment shows its data, so you can disagree with the conclusion and still use the numbers.
Hardware market
Five graphics card generations, 2016 to today, on one scale.
Generation over generation
Each line follows one product class across the years. Click a line in the key to hide it.
Launch price against street price
A card is only a bargain at its launch price if you can find one at that price.
What each generation gave you
| Generation | Year | Gain over previous | Avg launch price | Avg cost per point | Avg memory | Avg power |
|---|
Price history
Street prices move far more than launch prices do. Watching a part for a few weeks often saves more than switching brands.
| Part | A year ago | Today | 12-month low | Change | Read |
|---|
Price feed
What the feed has to return
{
"updated": "2026-09-17",
"gpu": { "GeForce RTX 5070": 529 },
"cpu": { "Ryzen 7 9800X3D": 459 }
}
Graphics cards
The graphics card sets your frame rate more than any other part. Everything else exists to keep it fed.
| Card | Price | 1440p index | Keeper | Memory | Power | Length | Per $100 | Best for | Find it |
|---|
The 1440p index is relative: 100 is the fastest card listed. A card at 50 renders roughly half the frames in the same game.
Processors
For gaming, more cores past eight rarely helps. For video, rendering and compiling they help a lot.
| Chip | Price | Gaming | Creative | Cores | Power | Socket | Find it |
|---|
Where to buy
Every part on this site links out to the places worth checking. Here's what each is good for.
Power supply tier lists
The power supply is the one part where the brand on the box tells you almost nothing — the same brand sells excellent units and dangerous ones. Tier lists exist because the people who take these apart keep records of which factory actually built each model.
The one most builders use is the Cultists Network PSU tier list. Anything in tier A or B is safe. Tier C is acceptable for a low-power build. Below that, don't, no matter how good the price looks.
Check the exact model number, not the family name. Manufacturers regularly change a unit's internals while keeping the name on the box.
Buying used
With memory and storage priced the way they are in 2026, used parts have gone from a nice option to the main way people are getting builds finished. A used graphics card one generation back is often the best value in the whole build, and cards rarely fail quietly. Test one inside the return window with a demanding game rather than a benchmark.
Two exceptions. Used power supplies age invisibly and can take other parts with them. Used SSDs have finite write life, and the seller has no reason to tell you how much is left — though at current prices, checking the drive's remaining health and buying used anyway is a defensible trade.
About this project
What this site is, where the numbers come from, and what they can't tell you.
Why I made this
I enjoyed PC building and wanted a simple, clean website that simplified everything I needed to know into a beginner-friendly guide.
Most build sites are either forums where you have to already know the vocabulary, or affiliate pages that recommend whatever pays best that month. I wanted one place that shows its working.
What I measure
Four things, for every part in the databases:
Where the data comes from
How the scores are calculated
Three numbers appear across the site, and they're all built the same way — normalise against the best in the set, then weight.