Building a gaming PC in Ireland is worth it, if you dodge the pitfalls

In 2023 I built a gaming PC. I call him PinkyBoi, it cost me a small fortune, and it taught me everything I need to know about building a gaming PC in Ireland. The pitfalls, the costs, the pure impossibles and the little wins. Living on an island makes this really tough, lads.

A console-beating gaming PC in Ireland will cost you roughly €1,400 to €1,500 before Windows and a screen, which is a lot more than an Xbox Series X at around €800. That said, a PC grows with you in a way a console never will, and it handles homework, coding and even TinkerCAD for 3D printing on the side. Whether you’re building for yourself or you’re in a cold sweat because your kid just asked for one, this guide covers what to buy, where to buy it and what to avoid.

My take is simple. Build one if you enjoy a challenge, buy a prebuilt if you don’t, and check the VAT before you click buy.

Why build a gaming PC instead of buying a console?

Because a PC is the longer play. When I was a kid, a computer arrived one Christmas morning. A jet black Dell. I couldn’t tell you a single spec, but I remember playing Need for Speed III Hot Pursuit and being blown away by the reflections on the supercars. I’d probably laugh at those graphics now. I even watched films on it at the desk in the hall, because it was the first DVD drive in the house. The Matrix, Deep Blue Sea, The One. All major memories for me.

As much as I loved my SEGA and my PlayStation, they never reached the heights that PC did.

The PC option isn’t cheap, and it definitely isn’t cheaper than console gaming. Consoles are built and locked in forever, until they become retro popular again, and yes, it hurts to see your old PlayStation called retro now. The right PC with the right parts can grow with your kid, or with you.

Is a gaming PC better than a console or a handheld?

Not always, so rule out the alternatives before you spend a cent.

The biggest game in years, GTA 6, arrives on 19 November and it’s practically the only game anyone wants to play. It’s only landing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S at first, and Rockstar hasn’t announced a PC date. If GTA 6 is all they’re talking about, a PC won’t play it at launch. And not to be a buzzkill, kids, but it’s rated 18 and very much an adult game, so maybe it shouldn’t be on the wish list either way.

A portable gaming handheld might be the answer instead. I have a ROG Ally, and it handles older big games like GTA 5, with Fortnite and Minecraft running easily. The battery lasts about two hours of gaming, which means a big Anker power bank on road trips. The big win is that you can dock it. On a desk you can connect a monitor, keyboard and mouse and it behaves like a gaming PC, minus the massive wow of a tower. It’s a hybrid of a Nintendo Switch, a console and a gaming PC. A gaming laptop sits in the same bucket for me.

It’s an important option to consider, because it’s often the shift to keyboard and mouse that kids are after above all else. But if they’ve been talking about their friends with the tower and the RGB fans, a handheld isn’t what they expect you to buy. They want a fully fledged gaming PC, so we move on to the next decision.

Prebuilt gaming PC or self build in Ireland?

A prebuilt is the easiest route, and for a lot of families it’s the sensible one, as long as it passes a simple test. It needs to be at least as good as the console, and it needs room to grow.

You have three options. You can buy a prebuilt off the shelf, get someone to build one for you, or build it yourself. Before you decide, here are the parts you’ll be dealing with. A motherboard, a processor, memory, a graphics card, storage, a power supply, something to keep it cool and a case. Those words make up the bulk of a great gaming PC, and I’ll go through each one below.

I recently looked at a prebuilt in Harvey Norman for €1,400. It has an RTX 5060 graphics card, so it passes on power and gives you PS5-style graphics. The catch is that the processor is a laptop chip soldered to the board, so you can never swap in a better one without replacing the entire motherboard. Console power, yes. Room to grow, no. The price looks fine, but you have to read past the graphics card to see what you’re really getting.

Not every prebuilt fails the test. Currys has a PCSpecialist one for €1,799 at the time of writing, on sale. It has an AMD RX 9060 XT graphics card, 16GB of DDR5, a Ryzen 5 processor and an AM5 board. Console power, yes. Room to grow, yes, as long as you know which motherboard you’re getting, because the listing doesn’t say. It doesn’t name the power supply either, so ask before you buy.

I priced the same parts myself. The graphics card, memory, processor, motherboard and drive came to €1,315 on Amazon. Add a power supply, a case with RGB fans and a cooler and you’re at about €1,500. That’s roughly €300 for someone else to build it, test it and stand over it for three years, which is peace of mind rather than a rip-off.

You’ll find other builders around Ireland, but I can’t recommend many because I’ve never used them. If you’re in Cork, I’ve chatted with Cormac in Crosshaven Computers loads of times and he really knows his stuff. He’d rather send you away than sell you something you don’t need just to meet your budget, and that’s worth its weight in gold.

The real rewards go to those willing to build from a parts list themselves. It’s the most work with the steepest learning curve, but I utterly enjoyed it. Bonus points if you can build it with your kid, even if that comes with some extra risk of missing something on the day. AI and YouTube videos were life savers for me, and Linus Tech Tips has a brilliant step by step guide. I pressed play and built everything along with it, like a nineties cooking show.

One lesson from building PinkyBoi is to pick a theme before you buy a single part. Mine was cyberpunk pink and blue, and as you can see, I have a bit of a thing for it. It made every decision easier and it made the build mine. The little sushi guy came home with me from a trip to Japan, and it’s small things like that which make a build unique. If you or the kids have a favourite colour, lean into it.

Gaming PC parts explained

Parts come and go, in and out of stock, especially when you live in Ireland. Stock can be fleeting and hard to get, so I’m going to give you philosophies rather than specific parts.

AMD or Intel

Two companies make the main chips for gaming PCs, and you need to pick one and stick with it. Broad sweeping statement alert, but they’re largely as good as each other. I picked AMD because it offered what I needed at the time for a better price, and in my experience AMD tends to be cheaper. Cue the fighting in the comments. I didn’t go the Intel route, so I can’t speak to it, and this guide is effectively an AMD build.

Motherboard

The motherboard is the big flat board that connects everything together. Think of it as the foundation, because every part you buy connects to it somehow and it decides what you can upgrade later. I started my whole build by picking mine. Because I went AMD, I was choosing between AM4 and AM5, AMD’s two most recent generations.

I picked a full sized AM5 board, the most modern at the time. It cost a little extra, but AM5 future proofed me to the max, because the latest processors and memory were open to me. AMD has said it will support AM5 until at least 2029. The full size is where you can save money, though. A smaller board does the same job for less, as long as it fits your case.

You may not need all of that, and you could be just as happy with AM4. DDR5 is the newest and most expensive memory, and RAM pricing has been wild lately. AM4 with DDR4 means you’re a generation older but saving money, which isn’t to be frowned upon in this economy. The processors in games consoles are closer to the AM4 generation than AM5 anyway. This should largely be dictated by budget, but AM4 is longer in the tooth, so if you can stretch to AM5 you get maximum future proofing for upgrades down the line.

CPU

The CPU, or processor, is the brain of your computer. Because this is effectively an AMD build, you’ll need a Ryzen CPU, and they’re bang for buck awesome. Make sure it matches your board, AM4 or AM5, because they’re completely different. One has the pins on the board and the other has the pins on the chip.

It’s a fig roll sized chip that drops into place with no force at all, then a latch holds it down. Go slow here. When I did mine I was filming, and the plastic cover on the socket shot across the room. I stopped filming, because getting it right mattered more than the footage. That pop is normal, by the way. The CPU also gets quite hot when the PC is running, so it needs cooling, which I’ll come to shortly.

RAM

If the CPU is the brain, RAM is its short term memory, the stuff it’s holding in its head right now. Too little and everything slows down. It’s also the part whose price has gone through the roof in the last year.

AM4 boards need DDR4 RAM and AM5 boards take DDR5. Newer is better, but DDR5 won’t work in an AM4 build, so budget dictates what you do. If you do go DDR4, buy all the memory you’ll want up front, because it’s being phased out.

When buying RAM, look at the four digit number. DDR5 6000 is faster than DDR5 5200, and for AM5 6000 is plenty. Faster costs more for very little gain.

Anything below 16GB is a waste of time right now. Buy it as two 8GB sticks rather than one, and if your board has four slots it’s easy to add more later.

Graphics card

The GPU is the gem in the crown. It draws the game and makes it look great, which is why a big chunk of your budget goes here. Even with RAM prices this year, it was the biggest single cost in both builds I priced.

This is where you pick your team. Team Red, Team Green or the lesser known Team Blue, and it doesn’t have to match your processor. An AMD processor with an Nvidia graphics card is one of the most common combos out there.

The good news is that most kids aren’t playing the most demanding games. Two in five Irish eight to twelve year olds use Roblox, and Fortnite and Minecraft run on surprisingly modest machines. You don’t need a monster, you need a console beater.

Team Red is AMD, and it’s the one I picked, because the card I got was AMD’s best at the time and had just launched. AMD’s minimum for a console beater is the RX 9060 XT, the 8GB version. Team Green is Nvidia, the household name for graphics cards, and you’ll want at least an RTX 5060. Team Blue is Intel, and yes, Intel makes graphics cards now, which is good for competition. They’ll offer you an Arc B580, the plucky underdog, but also the hardest to find in the Irish market.

One thing confuses people. The 8GB or 16GB in a graphics card’s name is its own memory, and it’s not the same as your RAM.

I can only personally recommend AMD, but your budget and the games they play will dictate which card you go for. You can even use newer graphics cards with AM4 if you want to invest that way. Pay attention to the size of your case here. My GPU only fit by a hair, and I got really lucky because the thing is massive.

Fans and cooling

Keeping all of this processing and power cool is important. I can literally heat a room in the winter with my gaming PC. You’ll want a couple of fans keeping air flowing across the parts. Will RGB on those fans make the computer cooler? No, of course not, but it does make it look cooler.

You can also put an all in one water cooler on your CPU, but I doubt you need to. If your CPU comes with a cooler in the box, just use that. Check the listing, because some do and some don’t.

Power supply

The power supply is the least sexy part of the machine and the part most people underspend on. Its size is dictated by your graphics card, and the card’s listing will tell you how much it needs. Don’t cheap out, and stick to a brand you’ve heard of. Bake in a little headroom too, because the more you have, the more stable it is and the easier it is to fit a bigger graphics card later.

Storage

Storage has also become shockingly expensive. You’ll want at least one M.2 drive, a little stick about the size of a stick of chewing gum, with at least 1TB. This is the fast drive for storing your games. I’d stretch to 2TB if you can, because when I priced it, 2TB was only about €90 more than 1TB. You can add cheaper SATA drives for general storage later, and when I built PinkyBoi I even used some older hard drives I picked up second hand.

Case

I’m being unfair putting the case under the unsexy parts, because it can absolutely make the PC. I don’t care what you have in your office, a glass case that shows it all off is class. Just make sure it comes with a few fans and has room for your graphics card.

Check your parts with PCPartPicker

If you’re terrified now, take a break and breathe into a brown paper bag. I hear you. I had countless spreadsheets going when I was building my PC, and then I discovered PCPartPicker. This is the fun part. You load up the PCPartPicker Ireland compatibility checker, start adding parts you find for sale, and it tells you if something is incompatible. It’s fairly accurate most of the time, but do your own double checks too.

If any of this has felt like double Dutch, that’s your answer. Pay someone to do it, whether that’s a prebuilt like that Currys one or someone like Cormac to plan it and build it. That’s not a failure, it’s the sensible call.

Here are two builds I’ve made myself through researching available products today; a console killer and a world beater.

Here are the full product listings with links to Amazon. Note, if you purchase from Amazon after clicking our links, we may get a small payment from Amazon. It doesn’t cost you a penny extra, but it helps keep the lights on here.

Build 1: The Console Beater

Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 7600: https://link.amazon/B060PF75x
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 Eagle AX: https://link.amazon/B0heNd7aG
Memory: Patriot Viper DDR5-5600 16GB, 2 x 8GB: Patriot Viper DDR5-5600 16GB
Storage: Kingston NV3 1TB M.2: https://link.amazon/B04muk50L
Graphics card: Gigabyte RTX 5060 Gaming OC 8GB: https://link.amazon/B00AB23Pd
Case: Corsair FRAME 4000D RS ARGB: https://link.amazon/B04sm0FUm
Power supply: MSI MAG A650BN 650W: https://link.amazon/B0iOUtMlb

Build 2: The World Beater

Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D: https://link.amazon/B0dJyI4AY
Cooler: Corsair Nautilus 240 RS LCD: https://link.amazon/B0gKhpofH
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 Eagle AX: https://link.amazon/B0heNd7aG
Memory: Patriot Viper Venom DDR5-6000 32GB, 2 x 16GB: https://link.amazon/B01l7sOYF
Storage: Crucial P310 2TB M.2: https://link.amazon/B0c5wOQCn
Graphics card: XFX Swift RX 9070 XT 16GB: https://link.amazon/B0fKEuZXX
Case: Corsair FRAME 4000D RS ARGB: https://link.amazon/B04DhoqSF
Power supply: Cooler Master MWE 750 Gold V2: https://link.amazon/B0bN74ThQ

How much does a gaming PC cost in Ireland?

A console-beating gaming PC costs about €1,400 in Ireland before Windows and a screen. That’s about the same as that Harvey Norman PC, but with room to grow.

I’ve put together two builds on PCPartPicker Ireland. The first is my console killer gaming PC parts list, and the second is a higher end world beater gaming PC parts list for anyone who wants to go bigger. Prices are moving fast at the minute, so treat them as a guide rather than a quote.

Where to buy gaming PC parts in Ireland

Online, nearly always, and Amazon is hard to beat. I might get destroyed for this, because we always say shop local, but it’s next to impossible to get everything on the high street, and even harder at a great price. Not every town has a Cormac.

When I built my PC I was looking at lots of different sites, and I didn’t realise until it was built that most of my parts came from Amazon UK. That was before Amazon Ireland launched. Amazon Ireland is underwhelming, but it’s still the best spot to get things. I compared two potential builds across Overclockers, Caseking and Amazon, and Amazon won every line except the processor. Add delivery charges and the fact that Amazon is typically sound on returns, and it’s a bit of a no brainer, even if I’d rather not be giving Jeff the money.

Buying from the UK can be a real risk. I bought my processor, motherboard and drive from a UK shop and sent them through a UK forwarding address. I paid UK VAT at the checkout, then about €190 of Irish VAT on top when it landed. I tried to claim the UK VAT back and never saw a cent.

So learn from me. Irish shops first, EU shops next. There’s no customs, you pay Irish VAT at the checkout, and you get the same consumer rights as here, including a two year guarantee. Some UK shops, like Overclockers and Scan, now add Irish VAT at the checkout too. If a site says taxes and duties are included, you’re sorted. If it doesn’t say, assume you’ll pay extra on the doorstep.

You might find parts going cheap on Adverts, too. I’ve bought parts there myself, namely the hard drives, and some lad got a great deal off me when I upgraded my RAM and sold my old kit on Adverts for €85. That same kit now costs more than three times what I paid for it new. I try not to think about that too much.

Buying from a person doesn’t come with the same rights as buying from a shop, so see it working before you hand over any cash.

Monitor, keyboard, mouse and Windows

Adverts is also a winner for the extras you’ll need, which are a monitor, a keyboard and mouse, and a headset. The monitor is the forgiving bit in my eyes, because a decent one doesn’t cost a fortune, new or second hand. The keyboard is one of the most affordable upgrades after a few months of gaming, so hold it back for a birthday if you have to. When you do buy one, get a clacky mechanical keyboard.

You’ll also need Windows. As much as I’d love to say try Linux, it isn’t a beginner operating system. A Windows licence typically costs about €145. I’ll be honest, I paid about €20 for a key from a reseller site, like loads of people do. Genuine second hand licences are legal in Europe, but you can’t always tell what you’re getting, and if it stops working you’ve no comeback.

Building a gaming PC for your kid at Christmas

I’m really torn on whether parents should build it before handing it over, because building is great fun. You need to know how your kid would react if something doesn’t work and you have to go back and buy more parts.

Here’s what I’d do. Build it and test it before Christmas, so any faulty part gets sorted while there’s still time. Then leave the fun bits for them, like setting up the lights, picking the wallpaper and installing their first game. Before it’s unwrapped, set up parental controls on Windows and Steam, and have a think about where in the house it will live.

If you’re a real sadist, you could build the whole thing, test it and then take it apart again. I really don’t recommend it unless you know what you’re doing, because lots of parts are easy to damage.

Is building a gaming PC worth it?

A gaming PC isn’t like the console everyone has. It’s theirs to change, upgrade and make their own. Somewhere out there is a kid who’ll remember their first gaming PC the way I remember a black Dell and Need for Speed.

And if this gave you the building bug, you could try building your own home lab and Netflix style media server next.