Best Gaming PCs for Elden Ring

To call Elden Ring—From Software’s latest title—a success would be a massive understatement. Having sold 12 million copies within a month of its release, Elden Ring has received glowing reviews across the board, making it a strong contender for 2022’s Game of the Year, despite its February release date.

It’s garnered so much attention that it’s even attracted demographics that aren’t usually interested in the modern-day video game scene. My father is among this number—despite having shown little to no interest in video games, his love of high fantasy led him to ask whether I could build him a computer, specifically for Elden Ring.

To help out others in his position, I’ve thrown together a few builds at differing price points capable of running Elden Ring on a variety of settings.

For reference, Elden Ring’s minimum and recommended specs are as follows:

Elden Ring Minimum System Requirements

CPU	Intel Core i5-8400 / AMD Ryzen 3 3300X
GPU	NVIDIA GTX 1060 / AMD RX 580
RAM	12GB of Memory
OS	Windows 10 or newer

Elden Ring Recommended System Requirements

CPU	Intel Core i7-8700K / AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU	NVIDIA GTX 1070 / AMD Radeon RX VEGA 56
RAM	16GB of Memory
OS	Windows 10 or newer

For anyone not “in the know”, these requirements are pretty beefy. Still, though, there’s some leeway to be had—cutting corners where you can and focusing on the more important components can lead to respectable performance at a reasonable price.

It’s also important to note that Elden Ring’s framerate is hard capped at 60 FPS—without modding, it’s impossible to push it any higher. That works in our favor here, though, as it means there’s no point in trying to push for 100+ FPS on average.

As a point of reference, there’s a number of components that are still exceedingly expensive. I am, of course, talking about Graphics Cards (GPUs). Even with the recent crypto crash resulting in GPU prices lowering substantially, they’re still being sold for prices far higher than their intended MSRP.

The builds listed below have been put together with this in mind: You may be able to find it cheaper, or you may be forced to spend more than projected.

With that in mind, let’s talk about the first build on this list.

$750 Intel-Based Build for Elden Ring

First, a disclaimer: We’ve historically included a $500 budget build in these types of articles before. I really did try to include one here—but given the current market, and the demanding specifications of Elden Ring, it’s rather difficult.

It’s also worth noting that it is possible to save money by purchasing a cheaper PSU—however, given the volatility of low-quality PSUs, installing one is an inherent risk, as upon dying, a non-rated PSU is likely to do damage to one or more other components with it.

Including a 6500 XT in this build is also a bit of an… unpopular opinion. The 6500 XT itself is little more than a cash grab from AMD—but a graphics card is a graphics card, and it’s one of the few models that is readily available at this point in time. It helps that, as previously mentioned, Elden Ring is capped at 60 FPS—as such, the 6500 XT is, for better or for worse, a part of other builds on this list.

On the other hand, Intel’s i3-12100 has proven to pack a huge punch despite sitting at such a low price point. Previously, including an Alder Lake CPU in a “budget build” would have been a laughable prospect, given the price of the once mandatory Z690 motherboards. The release of budget LGA 1700 motherboards has made including such CPUs much more feasible. Despite having only 4 cores, the i3-12100 will hit 60 FPS at 1080p low settings, and will perform respectably even on higher graphics settings. Given the CPU’s relatively low power draw, a fairly cheap air cooler will be enough to keep temps manageable.

Storage and RAM in this build are selected purely from a monetary standpoint. In my experience, 16GB of RAM may as well be mandatory, and 3000MHz should be the lowest clock speeds you’re willing to settle for. At the time of writing, the listed Kingston SSD is simply the cheapest SSD available—these two components in particular are likely to fluctuate in price in the near future.

As for cases, there are a ton of different options—and new ones are constantly being released and prices fluctuate regularly. Find one that suits your budget, and has at least manageable airflow. A good point of reference is Corsair’s 4000D—it might be a tad pricey, but it offers everything you want in a case.

~$1,000 AMD-Based Build for Elden Ring

For the most part, the main difference between this build and the $750 build above is this configuration features a CPU upgrade. The reasoning for this is simple: Not only is Elden Ring a CPU intensive game, a better CPU is far easier to attain than a better GPU.

And despite the 5800X being a superior CPU to the i3-12100, Zen 3 having access to cheaper motherboards mitigates the higher cost of the chips, even if only slightly. Overall, you should expect to pay somewhere from $920 to $1,070 for this sort of build—depending on whether or not you opt into buying higher quality ram.

It may also be concerning to see a fairly high-end chip like the 5800X being cooled by such a relatively cheap air cooler. This is the configuration I use for my personal rig: While temperatures are slightly higher than they would be with a higher-end cooler, they remain more than manageable even under heavy load, and are well within safe ranges.

An RTX 3070 Build for Elden Ring

This is the only build on the list to include a 30 series GPU—and for good reason. Sitting at a whopping $700 dollars, the RTX 3070 was meant to serve as a budget price-to-performance card, but given the crypto crazy, its retail price has been jacked way past what it was ever meant to be. The card alone costs nearly as much as the first build on this list, making this the “premium” build for this entry. This entry serves more as a point of reference, than anything—it’s proof that moving to more powerful GPU’s increase the price of systems substantially.

Intel’s 12600KF has been selected in this build, as it hits all the necessary requirements and then some. It may be confusing to see its cores split between P&E cores (performance and efficiency cores), but it’s an extremely powerful chip for the price. Upgrading this further to a core i9 wouldn’t yield enough of a performance increase to justify it, and throws other issues into the mix as well—in turn increasing the price even further.

A full-price Z690 board benefits both the CPU and GPU in this instance. A DDR4 board has been listed in this specific instance, though DDR5 boards are available, but will drive up the price even further, as DDR5 RAM kits cost around $300 at the time of writing.

NZXT’s 240mm AIO has been selected, as the 12600KF produces enough heat that it’s worth investing in a high-end CPU cooler. Alternatives to this include Noctua air coolers, as well as other premium-brand AIO’s.

It’s also worth noting that this computer is meant to handle a lot more than just Elden Ring—it’s the type of system that’s meant to handle any sort of game that you can throw at it.

Need A PC to Run Elden Ring? These Three Builds Will Do the Trick

With Elden Ring’s demanding system requirements and the ongoing GPU shortage driving graphics cards prices over MSRP, it is currently an expensive prospect to build a PC that will run the game adequately. However, this guide gives you three different PC build options for running Elden Rings at an acceptable average framerate—including one option that will come in ~$750.