DON’T Overspend On A PC - Best Performance To Price PC For 2026

You're being lied to about what it costs to play games in 4k. In 2026, tech companies want you to believe that if you aren't dropping thousands of dollars on a flagship setup, you might as well give up on high-end gaming and 4k video editing. But what if I told you that they're totally wrong? By using the power of AI and modern GPUs and strategically mixing a few high-value used parts with new ones, I'm building a 4k monster without overspending. Welcome back to The Saving Squad. Today I'm showing you the ultimate price-to-performance PC build for 2026. Let's get into it. When people usually build a PC, they fall into the trap of buying the absolute latest motherboard platform just to feel future-proof. But paying a premium for brand new unoptimized chipsets is a massive waste of cash for most creators and gamers. Instead, we're pivoting to the Asus Prime Z790M. Because it's an established platform, you can easily snag it on the used or discounted market. This gives us the exact LGA1700 socket we need for our heavy-hitting Intel CPU, support for incredibly fast DDR5 RAM, and plenty of high-speed storage slots. To house it, we're using the Asus Prime AP201 case, a compact mini-ATX style case that keeps your desk space clean. The payoff here is all about thermal efficiency. By choosing a high-mesh design with strong fan support across the top, bottom, and sides, we can run high-tier power-hungry components without choking them or overheating the system. Best of all, choosing the Z790 platform over the newest alternative saves you a clean Benjamin right out of the gate. It's incredibly easy to overspend on a current-gen CPU, thinking you need the newest flagship architecture to process 4K video or heavy gaming titles. My pivot pick is the Intel i9-13900K. This CPU is a couple of years old now, meaning the used market is flooded with them, yet it still ranks as one of the And to tame its appetite for power, we're pairing it with the Asus Prime LC360ARGB CPU cooler. This combination gives video editors a massive pool of hyper-fast cores for rendering high-resolution timelines without breaking a sweat. The 360mm triple fans and massive radiator handle the thermal load perfectly, giving you flagship-level performance at a fraction of the cost. You guys are well aware RAM and SSD prices have been a nightmare and one of the trickier areas of this video I needed to tackle. Modern PC architecture is designed to stream heavy assets directly from your high-speed SSD straight into your GPU's VRAM, so it's important not to take too many shortcuts here. I would strongly encourage going for 32GB of RAM. You'll see boosts in performance for both video editing and gaming, and in the long term, you'll be glad you did. After all, it only seems like the RAM crisis is going to get worse, and I know you'd hate to buy 16GB now and then 16GB later at even more money, so for this pick, I went with the Kingston Fury DDR5 32GB model. It's a great choice for speed-to-price ratio and can be found for a relatively fair price range of about $200 to $280 used. And because RAM works so closely with the SSD of your computer, we are going with the Samsung 990 EVO Plus at 2TB of storage. The storage is plenty for both gaming and storage alike, and 7,000Mbps read speeds are certainly no joke. If you wanted to go with just 16GB of RAM, you certainly can, just keep in mind you're going to see a 10-20% drop in performance depending on the game or task that you're doing. Just do what makes sense to you. This build is going to pull about 700W of power, and I'm sure a lot of you are tempted to try to hit that exact number or something similar like 800W. And sure, 800W could get the job done, however, I urge you guys to keep longevity in mind. If you're like me and want to buy something important for the long rather than the short term, the Thermaltake ToughPower 1050W 80PLUS Platinum offers over 1,000W of power while still giving you that sweet 80PLUS Platinum certification. PSUs are a very overlooked part of any PC build, and it's important to remember that efficiency rating, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, etc., is a very important factor to consider because just like PC parts, electricity bills are also pretty expensive. The more efficient the power supply, the cheaper your electricity bill and the cooler your PC and your room are. For this particular build, around 700W is the expected, but something like this runs about $150-200 depending if you buy new or used, and it gives you some nice buffer for upgrading your PC again down the line. I know the savings might seem tempting here, but for the difference in price to something with lower wattage, you'll be happy you bought more if you ever upgraded something like your GPU down the line. Besides, it's not like your PSU is going to be outdated in a few years from new AI stuff, right? Hopefully, I didn't just give NVIDIA any ideas. Alright guys, GPUs are where the hardware industry gets greedy. They want you to believe that true 4K gaming requires the best of the best. I have two different suggestions here, so listen up. The way I see it, the ASUS NVIDIA RTX 5070 Ti GPU is the best GPU for most people, but its $750 MSRP price tag is really hard to come by given how often this item is out of stock and being resold online. So, if you are willing to be patient, set up stock alerts, follow the various restock forums and pages on places like Reddit and Discord, the 5070 Ti would be my suggestion. Now, if you're looking for a wonderful GPU that still delivers excellent performance and DLSS support but can be purchased quite easily, the NVIDIA 5060 Ti with the memory model of 16GB can be found for about $500 to $650 depending on the brand and the amount of fans that you want. This particular one I have is the ASUS Prime model that retails for $590. In 2026, gaming at 4K is rarely done natively, unless you want to burn an insane amount of money. Thanks to DLSS, this card uses advanced AI upscaling to deliver 4K performance in pretty much every single AAA title. Because it shares the exact same 16GB VRAM capacity as the more expensive 5070 Ti, you still get excellent performance, especially at the price. Here we go. Okay, there's lights, there's fans, there's action. Putting a balanced, high-value machine together like this takes some strategy, but in a world where hardware and console prices are skyrocketing, building a smart workaround rig like this is completely worth it. If this guide helped you figure out how to beat the tech pricing game, hitting that like button and subscribing to the channel is still totally free and is your way to say thank you for the hard work that we put into this video. With that said, we did try to link you to the components that I used here today, so check out the description if you're interested in picking up some of these products. You definitely won't want to miss our upcoming Saving Squad videos where we help you save hard-earned cash on the latest tech, gadgets, and gaming gear. Let me know down in the comments what kind of value build you want to see us tackle next. As always, I'm Phil Rodriguez, this is Tom's Guide, and I will see you in the next video.