$2000 Gaming PC Build (1440p destroyer)

so what does a 2 000 gaming PC look like in 2023 what parts would you use how hard would it be to build and most importantly what kind of performance can you expect well that's exactly what we're going to be doing today now a bit of a plot twist this build is for a friend and he actually chose most of the parts that we're going to be using and I did have a bit of a peek he did make some pretty good choices but yeah let's take a look two thousand bucks let's see how far that gets you okay all right so every PC build starts with the CPU and I think for a budget of two thousand dollars U.S the Thirteen six hundred K would be my first choice despite being just an i5 you've actually got 14 cores packed into this thing which is pretty nuts six of those being performance cores which can boost up to 5.1 gigahertz in my own testing I found this to perform pretty consistently at the top of the charts when it comes to gaming performance even right up there with the I9 you could realistically pair this even with a 4090 and that would make perfect sense my friend's current build believe it or not actually has a 4th Gen I5 so this is going to be a Monumental upgrade now the really cool thing about the 13600k is that it's compatible with both the ddr4 or ddr5 memory which means that more affordable memory and motherboards they are an option here which is exactly what we've gone with so for the motherboard we really don't need anything more than msi's z690 Tomahawk for a gaming build it has pretty much everything we need plenty of high-speed USB ports Wi-Fi 6 2.5 gigabit Lan as well as bios flashback you also have four m.2 slots here and the board entirely passively cooled so there's no small fans for the VR Ram or the chipset so let's go ahead and get that CPU installed most of you have seen this process before but yeah very careful installation make sure the orientation of the CPU is exactly as shown here and that it's fully seated and then you can go ahead and lock it in with the socket and latch [Music] at this point we can go ahead and install some of the mounting hardware for our CPU Cooler and for this build we have overspent a little bit and we've gone with the NZXT Kraken z53 RGB honestly this is a really nice looking cooler but you are mostly paying for the looks and the customization in terms of cooling there are much more affordable 240 mil coolers on the market which will perform pretty much identically I'll leave those options listed down below for those curious but yeah for the 13600k a 240mm liquid cooler would be a great choice something kind of weird though this cooler does not actually come with the mounting bracket that we need for this motherboard that would be LGA 1700 so you will need to purchase that separately for about 10 bucks otherwise the installation is pretty straightforward you've got a mounting bracket that goes behind the motherboard some standoffs and that's pretty much all we need to do for now now for the ram as mentioned we are sticking to ddr4 here and just to clarify I'm not against the ddr5 just expect to spend a bit of extra money for that especially when it comes to the motherboard ddr4 boards are more affordable a lot more options and to be honest the most mainstream ddr4 memory kits like this one are actually faster than entry-level ddr5 so 32 gigabyte kit here clocked in at 3600 megahertz cl18 this kit comes in at barely 90 and yeah it's pretty much perfect for what we're building so as usual installing these in the second and fourth slot on the motherboard unlock those latches line them up and applying even pressure you should hear that always satisfying click locking those Ram dimms into place the last thing that we need to do for the motherboard here is install our m.2 Drive where my Frontier has gone with a single two terabytes thick more specifically a P3 plus from crucial the read and write speeds here won't blow you away but for a gaming build it's pretty damn good value for two terabytes of storage this is actually double the amount of storage that he currently has and he's actually coming from a mechanical hard drive as well so this is going to be a night and day difference for him in terms of noise levels game load times boot speeds basically everything aside from the massive CPU and GPU grades that he's getting here this might be one of the most noticeable upgrades for this entire build so we're going to install that into the primary drive slot at the top but yeah you've also got another three slots on hand for expanding things down the road and there we go motherboard is all prepped and ready to be installed inside the case shaping up to be a pretty nice build now my friend wanted to stick to a mid tower build which is completely fine he wanted something that was still relatively compact with a lot of airflow and so here we've gone with the new NZXT H5 flow which I'm actually pretty excited to check out I built in the previous version of this case many many times before including some pretty crazy custom Loops so let's check out what this new version has to offer the biggest improvements are that the top panel is now completely ventilated and you can now install a 240mm radiator up there which is pretty cool kind of brings it in line with the other mid Towers on the market and we can also see that there's a pre-installed angled fan that sits below the GPU the idea here is to inject cool air at a more suitable angle for the graphics card rather than just rely on the front intake fans which move air that needs to turn 90 degrees and are sometimes impeded by a radiator that you might have installed at the front anyway the power supply shroud is also completely blocked off now and oddly so are the PCI expansion brackets which is something I have actually never seen before I'm guessing they've done this probably to better control the direction and control of airflow within the case now behind the rear panel you'll find this sneaky little cardboard box this contains all of the screws that you'll need and for the moment we only need these ones here to install our motherboard there's no need to install an i o Shield here since our motherboard has one pre-installed and so we can just go ahead angle it in make sure it's lined up correctly with the standoffs and then go ahead and screw it in a word of warning as well these motherboard screws are actually pretty easy to cross thread so just be mindful of that when you're installing the board it shouldn't be any resistance when screwing it in so just take your time and make sure everything is lined up 100 up next we have the CPU Cooler probably the highlight of this build in terms of visuals this liquid cooler has both RGB fans and an l display on the palm block now we could install this at the top of the H5 flow that's one of the cool things about this model but I think that way we'd end up drawing in a lot of heat from the GPU so instead for this build let's go ahead and mount it at the front of the case that way the CPU won't be affected by the GPU when that starts heating up and the GPU will still be getting some fresh air from that fan at the bottom and the AIO which realistically shouldn't be getting too warm under gaming loads now the H5 flow has this removable bracket so we can just take that out and that's where we'll be installing our radiator and fans but it's a good idea to connect some of the RGB wiring beforehand so we have one cable here that Bridges the two fans together and another one that connects to the pump lock looks kind of messy but that's RGB wiring in a nutshell should look something like this then just go ahead and install those two fans with the long screws that are included thank you [Music] next up is the pump lock and you've got a few options here in terms of mounting and which way the tubes will be facing if you're concerned about air getting caught and trapped inside the pump I'd recommend installing it how I have here with the tubes towards the top this way any air inside the pump will rise to the highest point and find its way out even at low pump speeds last thing for the CPU Cooler is to connect the wiring which will go to our Fan's power connector and USB port now my friend actually didn't pick up any additional case fans which is a bit of a shame but it just so happens that I have a bunch of nzxt's RGB fans laying around from previous builds which I kind of need to use and these are actually compatible with the RGB cooler that we've installed we don't need any additional lighting controller or Hub to get these up and running you can actually link up to five of these fans on a single RGB Channel which is exactly what we'll be doing so fan installation is just like any other fan and in terms of the RGB wiring you'll basically just need to connect the in and out points of each fan with the provided cables linking them and changing them all together as you can see it came get incredibly messy and jumbled up so definitely take your time try and manage things as you go with zip ties and you should be able to get it all eventually hooked up with no problem at all for those wondering front two fans here are plugged into the CPU pump lock and the remaining four fans are plugged into the system fan headers and CPU fan headers on the motherboard the second last component that we'll be installing is our power supply my friend here went with the rm850x from Corsa based off of pricing 850 Watts 80 plus gold rating plenty for the components that we'll be working with you'll want to plug in the cables before getting this installed into the case to make life a lot easier we'll need the massive 24-pin motherboard cable the two eight pin cables for the CPU two more eight pin cables for the GPU and a solder cable to power our CPU Cooler after those are all plugged in you can slide in the power supply unit and then screw it in with the provided screws and from there it's just plugging everything in and cable management I think the H5 flow is pretty good in that regard every cable has its own dedicated Channel and there are plenty of little zip tie points to bundle everything up and keep things nice and tidy and of course the last component that we'll be installing is the GPU and here my friend is going with the RTX 4070 TI this specific card is the gigabyte Eagle which is typically one of those cards which you can actually find at MSRP or at least a very close to in this case about 800 us now although I didn't release a full review of the 4070 TI when it came out I did get most of my testing done with it and yeah it is not as impressive as the 4080 or the 4090 but to be honest I don't think it's a terrible GPU I found it to be 22 faster on average compared to a 3080 which means that the price to Performance is better and you know that's compared to a 3080 added 700 MSRP so it's not a terrible GPU you know sure the 4090 and 4080 are more impressive even after considering that they're more expensive which is kind of odd but some people just don't need that kind of performance or want to spend that much on a GPU now amd's RX 7900 XT is also kind of an option here it's 100 more expensive though for a few more frames on average but the biggest difference that I found between these two gpus is actually the power consumption the Nvidia GPU is a lot lighter on the power compared to the 7900 XT and so that's why I think with the budget that we're working with the 470 TI is the best option now despite being pretty lean on the power we do still get a relatively massive cooler design three fans two and a half slots and about half of the back plate is cut out to help assist with airflow even more but despite how big it is and having a radiator mounted at the front it's a pretty comfortable fit foreign [Music] just plug it in with the included 12 pin adapter that you'll find within the Box make sure to check that it's fully seated as that can be a problem and there we go at this point the build is complete [Music] so I haven't mentioned this yet but my friend is actually upgrading from a GTX 1070. so safe to say that's a massive jump in performance and although it's not the most Juiced up 40 series GPU in the lineup the combined performance and power draw of the 4070 TI is pretty impressive a high refresh rate 1440p monitor would be an ideal pair here as you can see you can hit pretty comfortable frame routes in really any game while playing it high to ultra settings the 4070 TI has a TDP of 285 watts and I could basically only get it to pull that much while stress testing in firm Mark and still it sat below 70 degrees C with a room ambient of 24. so max GPU attempts in the 60s that's pretty damn good in do maternal 1440p with everything cranked to Max including Ray tracing about 270 275 Watts here while in the mid 60s then control at 4K with dlss under 250 watts and then in Esports titles even at 1440p you'll see below 200 Watts now that sounds pretty expected Behavior but it's actually the biggest advantage over the similarly priced 7900 XT from AMD that GPU seems to pull a lot more power in these lighter scenarios for some reason I'll also mention if you are interested in picking up a 1440p 240Hz or even 360 Hertz monitor for Esports games like OverWatch 2 or valorum for example 13600k and 4070 TI would be a pretty solid setup we're not quite hitting that 600 FPS cap here but you'll definitely be saturating that 360 Hertz refresh rate no problem now the front two fans are plugged directly into the NZXT cooler and so we're controlling those with ndxt software but the other four fans in the system are running on software called fan control thanks again to you guys for recommending this I've been using it for the last few builds that I've done and it's been really damn good since this is a gaming build all of these fans start ramping up based off of GPU temperature and that's not something thing that you can do within the motherboard's BIOS also I did swap the included bottom fan to something with actual pwm control and solid airflow in this case the Arctic p12 I've also set that fan up to be completely inactive until the GPU hits 50 degrees and at that point it starts feeding it some fresh air the only other thing left to discuss I guess is the customization I mean you will be spending extra on this stuff but for some of you hey maybe that's half the enjoyment of owning a new pc so all five RGB fans here are linked up to the Kraken cooler no problems there at all and the lighting options are virtually unlimited the LCD display on the pump lock though is definitely the Highlight again I don't usually include this in build guides because it is pretty expensive and most of the time does eat into the GPU budget but there really isn't anything like this on the market so this is going to be a massive upgrade for my friend you know 4th gen i5 and a 1070 to this it's a night and day difference in terms of performance and realistically this should serve him another five years at least So at around the two thousand dollar Mark I think it's a pretty damn good build if you want to build something that's super mainstream super straightforward just has like ample calling and you're not going to have any problems with it at all so definitely consider this as a template and I'll have all the parts listed Down Below in the description if you want to build something similar yeah that's pretty much it as always a huge thanks for watching and I'll see you all in the next one

Channel: Optimum Tech

Views: 809,640

Keywords: $2000 Gaming PC, best $2000 gaming pc build, intel 13600k, optimum tech, RTX 4070 Ti, 4070 Ti 1440p, how to build a gaming pc, overwatch 2, valorant, apex

Id: 8dsZgjeCr4E

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 14 2023