It cost me about $500 to build a good mid-high performance rig. Granted I already had peripherals and a monitor. It'll play BallisticNG on highest settings no problem. Mid to High settings for most modern games. The only time it's ever noticeably struggled is with Tarkov but that's one of the most poorly optimized games I think I've seen. It runs PSP and PSX emulators without an issue when I want to play the older games. It was my first build and it's really not that difficult as long as you're careful and patient. The hardest part for me was diagnosing crashes and trying to get your software and drivers sorted.