With the holidays coming up and PC parts being a mess (unavailable parts, scalpers, and prices climbing), I wanted to look at a legit budget “PC stand-in” that doesn’t require you to know a ton about building. I’ve shown how to build a ~$300 used-parts budget PC before, but if you’re new to PCs it’s easy to make mistakes. So in this video I test the idea of using an original Xbox One as a cheap gaming PC alternative for around $200. Yeah, it’s a console and it’s old, but the big win is reliable performance at a relatively set price. You can still get up to 1080p 60fps in a lot of popular games, and Xbox’s backwards compatibility means you can buy newer titles and run them—though I’m not pretending every new AAA game is going to be smooth. Loading times can be long and some newer stuff can be choppy (and Cyberpunk 2077 is a whole situation), but games like Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Sea of Thieves can run at 60fps with little to no problems. My takeaway: this won’t replace a decent gaming PC, but it’s a solid placeholder while you wait for sane PC pricing. You can even plug in a keyboard and mouse to get more of that PC gaming feel and start building muscle memory now.