$500 BUILD IT CHALLENGE

WE’RE BACK with another featured build, and this time our focus is customizability. We wanted to make a straightforward, versatile system to act as a launchpad for future expansions. As such, we had a budget to work with: $500. And we stuck to it (sort of). We decided early on that integrated graphics would be the way to go; we’ve got the space to add a dedicated GPU (or any other expansion cards that strike our fancy) later, if we want.

Flexibility is king here, but our system needed to be a capable PC in its own right, too. A mix of old and new components proved to be the cocktail we