Xbox One X PC Build

Microsoft’s Xbox One X presents an interesting challenge for PC builders. Sure, if you want raw power, nothing beats the PC. But can you put together an Xbox One X equivalent for $500?

At that price point (and outside of that golden window of Black Friday sales and stellar combo/bundle deals on PC components), you're pushing the limits of what’s possible, particularly if you want to completely replicate the same experience Microsoft is promising hardcore console fans. Given today’s high RAM prices, the low availability of certain GPUs, and the dearth of 4K UHD drives, the results don’t come out cleanly in favor of a DIY PC.

Build #1: A basic 4K/30-fps gaming PC :

To start, we’ll walk through a baseline build, which makes a few sacrifices but should still perform at 4K/30 fps.

Part	Name	Price
CPU	AMD FX-8300 (3.3GHz, 8-core)	$90
Motherboard	ASRock 970 Pro3 R2.0 ATX AM3	$45
RAM	Patriot Signature 8GB DDR3/1600 (1x8GB)	$47
Graphics card	Gigabyte Radeon RX 580 8GB Gaming 8G	$266
Storage	Western Digital 1TB Caviar Blue 3.5” 7200RPM HDD	$50
Optical Drive	LG UH12NS40 Blu-Ray drive	$43
PSU	Thermaltake SMART 550W 80+ Bronze	$35
Case	Thermaltake Versa H21 ATX Mid Tower	$34
OS	Windows 10 OEM license	$32
Shipping	Motherboard ($1), Graphics Card ($9)	$10
Total:		$652

Build notes

1. Prices current as of June 15, 2017.
2. Retailers chosen with shipping costs in mind—and the assumption most people have an Amazon Prime account.
3. Cheap AM3+ motherboards like the ASRock 970 Pro R2.0 lack on-board Wi-Fi, so if you want wireless connectivity, prepare to shell out for either a Wi-Fi adapter or a better motherboard. 
4. The price for this ASRock motherboard is after a $20 mail-in rebate.
5. See the Build Summary section for notes on availability.
6. This price is after $20 mail-in rebate. 

   Build breakdown 

   When comparing our build to the Xbox One X piece by piece, each platform’s advantages are clear. Our PC has more flexibility and muscle, while the Xbox One X is both highly compact and set in stone.For the Xbox One X’s CPU, GPU, and memory, Microsoft chose a custom AMD APU that features eight 2.3GHz custom x86 cores, 40 Radeon compute units running at 1,172MHz, and 12GB of GDDR5 memory. AMD doesn’t have an equivalent APU available for DIY build purposes, so I chose to walk the line between the Xbox One X’s specs and recommended specs for a smooth PC gaming experience. In our build is the eight-core 3.3GHz AMD FX-8300, 8GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, and an 8GB Radeon RX 580. (My GPU choice does have one catch, which I’ve noted in the Build Summary below.)This configuration nets you a (faster) eight-core CPU, enough RAM to avoid bottlenecks in system performance, and a GPU capable of 4K gaming at a minimum of 30 fps on Medium settings. However, some Xbox One X games may end up running more smoothly or with better visual fidelity on console than on this homebrew 4K machine. Unlike with the PC, developers can fine-tune their games for Microsoft’s console through a low-level API.

   For storage, Microsoft hasn’t yet shared details on drive speed, type, or interface. All we currently know is what Digital Foundry revealed in its April 2017 preview: The Xbox One X will have a “1TB hard drive with a 50 percent increase in bandwidth.”
   
   Without knowing how Microsoft arrived at that 50 percent figure, we could spend a lot of time speculating on what it means. (Do they mean a shift from SATA II/3Gbps to SATA III/6Gbps? Use of a solid-state hybrid drive? A larger cache?) Instead, I chose to keep this exercise simple and selected a SATA III 7200rpm Western Digital hard disk drive. While it’s possible that the Xbox One X's $500 price tag includes a SSHD, like in its now-discontinued Xbox One Elite model, that raises the price of this build without explicit cause.
   
   The final pieces of this build are straightforward. In fact, you can use any reputable 500W power supply (the minimum you’ll need for this build), ATX case, and Blu-Ray drive—the ones listed in our build were chosen for how cheap they were at the time of publication.
   Speaking of that Blu-Ray drive, it’s a far step down from the Xbox One X’s 4K UHD Blu-Ray drive. To stay even remotely near a final total of $500, you have to ditch support for playback of 4K UHD discs. So that means you can’t play your collection of 4K UHD movies in HDR on a compatible TV, if you already own one.
   
   As for the operating system, we can’t go as cheap as the Xbox One X’s included variant of Windows 10, but we can get a W10 Home license at a heavy discount. How? By using a trick that Brad Chacos has mentioned to our staff for a while now: Buying a product key through Kinguin. It works, but be sure to get the Buyer Protection—the site functions like an eBay for software, and that insurance will protect you from shady sellers.