Alien: Isolation 1080p Ultra Custom PC Build Review

This is a hand selected custom PC component build that will answer your question of, what PC should I buy next to play Alien: Isolation on. One that has the right gaming hardware to enjoy a great Alien: Isolation experience. In doing this we keep in mind our need to deliver the game reliably on ultra graphics settings, along with a 1080p monitor resolution. These hardware items found in our build will continue to have their prices checked and components will be swapped in and out as we feel better hardware for our build is released.

We will be looking across a range of things to help evaluate this best gamer build. We will be looking across the range of best value for money components based on today’s prices. Something that can influence our peripheral selection is that the game is found in the Adventure, Stealth genres, and this can sometimes sway some of the requirements of hardware we choose. Something else to consider is that Alien: Isolation would have been built on PC hardware from 2014 and shortly before this period. All interesting points for sure, but what we are really after is that we want to select components that best fit this game type but will also be today’s best value for money hardware of good enough quality to meet the game’s needs.

Best 1080p Price to Performance Alien: Isolation PC Hardware Component List

Choosing A Graphics Card For Our 1080p Alien: Isolation PC Build

Our key objective when putting together our next gaming PC is always going to be finding a great price point for the most performance we can. Today’s build we start by looking for the right graphics card, at the right price, that can run Alien: Isolation at 1080p ultra graphics. Looking through todays available cards and comparing their hardware performance has lead us to cherry pick the Radeon RX 550X 4GB today for this game. It is capable of returning strong frame rates at our desired ultra 1080p. Todays price is $99.88 which is why we have identified it as a competitive performance to price ratio compared to other hardware in the marketplace today. Over the last few weeks we have noticed it increase its price by $99.88, proving that additional savings can be found you will just need to shop around.

Our PC build has 4GB of onboard card memory to act as an image data store between the GPU and CPU. At this resolution the game will need at least 2GB of VRAM from our PC build. So with the selected Radeon RX 550X 4GB we have met that graphical requirement.

Selecting The Right Alien: Isolation 1080p Motherboard and CPU

To accompany the graphics option we have put a compatible motherboard into the build. The MSI B360M PRO-VD Intel mATX LAG1151 motherboard in turn enables us to add the Core i3-8100 4-Core 3.6GHz processor that has the LGA 1151 socket. This CPU is a great fit for Alien: Isolation and balances nicely with the Radeon RX 550X 4GB, to help reach the right frame rates at this resolution. We have of course chosen this CPU today because of its price to performance credentials where it is currently priced at $119.97. The cheapest price we spotted this cpu for is $109.99, which was on 13th Dec 2019.

With the feature rich MSI B360M PRO-VD Intel mATX LAG1151 priced competitively at $49.46 it is certainly in todays Alien: Isolation build for a good reason. To offer motherboard pricing insight we spotted this being sold for a low price of $32.99, which was recorded at 28th Dec 2019.

How To Choose The Best RAM For Alien: Isolation At The Right Price

To make sure we meet the Alien: Isolation system requirements and to help us achieve the required FPS for Ultra at 1080p we have chosen the Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1x8GB) DDR4 2666MHz, which is todays best priced system memory. It is priced at $32.99 and compliments the CPU and GPU nicely. Lowest RAM prices were recorded for this Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (1x8GB) DDR4 2666MHz when we saw it priced at $29.49, on 2nd Feb 2020.

PC Performance Review at 1080p Ultra Settings on Alien: Isolation

Running a PC build with these hardware components for Alien: Isolation we expect to see about a 88 FPS average, with a few low frame rates in some of the more intense scenes. You could up the quality of game graphics to Ultra, which will see the FPS drop to 63 at 1080p.

At some point you might want to increase your screen size from 1080p to 1440p. Alien: Isolation running with this hardware on the larger screen resolution would return 48 FPS at Ultra graphics setting or possibly up to an average of 67 FPS on High settings.

How this build performs for other popular games

To buy this Alien: Isolation PC we will still want it to do ok when running other popular games. So to give us an idea about our builds performance lets see how it deals these 3 popular games at 1080p. Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord will be expecting a Ultra FPS of 29 and a High setting FPS of 41 frames. Doom Eternal expects Ultra FPS around 16 which will improve to 22 FPS for High settings. Valorant is expected to be around 200+ FPS for Ultra settings and improves to a 200+ FPS on High settings.

An Alternative Alien: Isolation Graphics Card Option for 1080p

Not everyone is a fan of team AMD, so if you are after a GPU from the other side then perhaps take a look at our suggested Nvidia card, the GeForce GTX 1660 Super Asus Phoenix 6GB. It is placed at 117% better performance difference and certainly capable of delivering up Alien: Isolation frames on a par with our primary GPU selection. We have also selected it based on its price today, which finds it at $229.99.