Building a $700 Gaming PC - Step By Step!

it is time to change things up just a bit we've uh  put together a few fairly expensive builds in q4   2020. figured we'd throw together a fairly  affordable budget system that's going to   pack a heck of a punch you can see just at first  glance here this would be a pretty sweet 1080p   and like 1440p gamer and it's gonna cost well  under a thousand dollars if you play your cards   right and buy used let's get started so to  start things off we've got an amd horizon 5   2600 these are going for around 100 bucks  maybe a bit more than that i know the markets   especially elsewhere like i'm talking elsewhere  not the united states but other countries can   be pretty screwed up but uh if you can find one  of these for about 120 bucks including the stock   wraith cooler which is going to save us some  money on the on the cooling side of things   then buy it if you're in the market for a budget  system the ryzen 5 2600 six cores 12 threads   pretty decent boost clocks gonna be xmp friendly  so most kits of ram should work with this natively   and best of all you get to pair it with a fairly  cheap b450 motherboard this is a tough gaming b450   plus not the cheapest you could buy you could buy  like a pc mate b 350 and update the bios that'd   be even cheaper but uh this has nice subtle yellow  accents and uh that's going to look nice with our   kit of ram oloy warhawk ddr4 modules we reviewed  these specifically in this video somewhere up   here if you want to check those out but uh yeah  they look cool ish maybe in the right build and   you have yellow accents and they're fairly cheap  about 50 bucks for a 16 gig kit cast latency 16   3 000 megahertz we confirm these will overclock  at 3200 megahertz all right now the used graphics   card gtx 1080. these are going for around 300  bucks still if you can get lucky find one for   about 250 to 260 that i think is a more fair price  when seen in light of the new nvidia offerings   from ampere which have kind of pushed all of the  previous graphics card prices down a bit now of   course again the markets are kind of screwed up  right now but even if you can find one of these   for about 260 to 280 and it's a decent aib this  one's kind of just a reference board but uh still   it is worth considering in this price range a 1080  is still a great card in late 2020 early 2021. now   for storage we've got the one terabyte team group  nvme ssd we don't need anything gen four speed   because this motherboard the cpu don't support  gen 4 uh pci express so sticking with gen 3's good   not only from like this performance level you know  nvme drives are among the fastest drives out there   but also we don't need to spend extra we don't  we don't feel uh inclined to spend any more for   a pci gen 4 drive because we're not going to see  gen 4 speeds so that's why one terabyte will do   one terabyte a great starting point nvme drives  nowadays are super cheap probably want to buy   this new just because yeah i don't know what's  been on some of these used drives on ebay and   the last two components the power supply first off  this is a 600 watt evga it's just an 80 plus white   it's not like 80 plus gold or bronze even but it  is good enough for a lot of the budget entry-level   systems out there you can buy these used although  i recommend buying new just because the price like   the the price difference between the used and new  uh power supplies out there usually aren't too   great and you don't know what kinds of loads the  use power supplies on the market have experienced   so i recommend just buying new you can find 5 600  watts from evga and the like for about 50 bucks   or so last we've got the case fractal design  mesh if i see what more do i need to say about   this this was actually new on newegg recently  for about 59 60 bucks somewhere in that range   which is incredible for a case of this good i mean  if you're in the market for one mid tower you kind   of gotta buy it and there is one more thing to  consider especially in a budget build that's   an operating system windows 10 pro licenses from  our sponsor vip std can be purchased for under 20   use our discount code gsl and you can get it for  around 15 bucks it makes absolutely no sense to   spend 100 or more us dollars on a retail key  in a six seven eight hundred dollar build   just doesn't make any sense so check out our  sponsor link below where you can get that   windows 10 pro key for again dirt cheap it's an  oem key it'll lock to the hardware specifically   with which it's activated uh but i don't know  many people swapping out motherboards every   other week and worst case just buy another  one for another 15 bucks not a huge deal so   we're going to show you how to install the  operating system at the end of the video but   for now i'm going to show you how to assemble all  the stuff into a fully functional build already i   was really hoping that this board was the one  in this box i try to keep these organized but   i've got a few and sometimes i like to share  boxes so i think for yep if i recall for these   wraith coolers we need to remove these brackets  screwdriver time let's get these out of here all   right so we want to keep the back plates nice that  these am4 boards come in the back plate because a   lot of coolers use this you don't need to install  a backplate like a lot of the uh intel systems out   there i think lga 2011 is an exception but uh  this here is our ryzen 5 2600 now this has seen   um quite it's it's it's experienced right it's  been in several systems to date i think this i've   chip i don't know i've had this for maybe like  two or three years now but uh fairly simple to   install here you're gonna pull back on this lever  and then we're going to align this little golden   triangle here there's a tiny little triangle next  to the socket we're just going to drop the cpu in   like so it'll really only situate itself one way  in here and then we're going to pull back down   on the retention lever until it clips in all right  now i'm not sure if this cooler has been used   before it has because there's no stock thermal  paste on there not to worry we've got some thermal   compound somewhere in here okay so i've actually  got the spreading tool i've already on here this   might be a bit too much for this cpu but i'm  going to go ahead and manually spread this   just so we're sure that thermal  paste is everywhere it needs to be   the answer to that is pretty much the entire  ihs because the ihs is soaking up all of   the heat generated by the die underneath  and we're just going to apply the cooler   like so make sure that those threads are aligned  and here comes the cringy part you got to push   a little uh a little hard on this cooler  here to get these threads to catch   some of these coolers yeah like this one  here it's just making a god-awful sound bit and that one's good so look folks at the end  of the day this is not going to be the best cooler   for your cpu of choice but it's an affordable  option and it's one that actually works pretty   darn good considering how small it is so if you're  a baller on a budget using the stock amd cooler   and zen zen plus zen two chips is going to be fine  okay just chill and we're gonna connect the fan   cable to the header labeled cpu fan piece of  cake some motherboards won't uh won't boot past   the bios load screen unless you have a fan  connected to that first header you can of   course bypass that in the bios but a lot of people  freak out when they see that so i always try to   throw it into the cpu fan header if possible all  right so we're good there now we need to install   a ram it's pretty straightforward so the board  itself actually denotes how if you want to show   them what this looks like here it's going to  look a bit different from border board some   boards won't even have this you have to look in  the manual but you see where slots a2 and b2 are   starred there's little asterisks behind them so  that's this slot and this slot they're actually   slightly lighter shade of black there  we're just going to align the notch on the dim with the notch in the slot push down  until you hear clicks on both sides of each slot   boom there you go you have to push a little hard  here some people freak out they think oh i'm going   to break my board i'm going to break my ram but  uh they're pretty tight tolerances here that's why   people tend to freak out a bit you're okay so i  mean like the colors sort of kind of match i think   this is about as close as we're gonna get with  these uh gold accidents on this oil ram and these   kind of oranges well i don't know maybe like it's  a yellow what color is that kyle yellow or orange   all right it's like it's like a weird in between  but i mean it's not bad from a few feet away it'll   look like they they kind of kind of kind of sort  of work maybe when it comes to m.2 installation   there could be one key or two keys this is  an nvme drive mostly is gonna be one key   you can see it pretty much lines up verbatim  that slot there push it all the way in   like so and then we're gonna pull it back use that  small little screw there let's see this one here   to lock it in place this part is a lot easier  with a magnetic screwdriver i've seen on forms   there's some crap floating around that  like magnetic screwdrivers are bad for   your system you could like destroy something  i mean these magnets are super weak you would   need a very strong magnet to screw up anything  on those boards so don't be afraid to use one   it will keep those screws especially the small  screws for the nvme drives from kind of falling   around and getting stuck in places they shouldn't  all right next up we need to mate the motherboard   to the chassis again in this case it's our mesh if  i see here slight tinted glass looks pretty darn   good we're going to lay the case down right side  down i should say and we're going to install our   rear i o shield first assuming one is not already  pre-installed at the back of our motherboard if   one is not pre-installed you'll have a bunch of  gaps in here that's when you know to look in your   motherboards box for that i o shield so this is  what this board's particular rear i shield looks   like just a kind of a chrome shiny piece of thin  metal and the way to know how to orient this right   you're going to see these three holes could be six  holes depending on what kind of audio solution you   have on your motherboard that's how you know  which way to orient this so you're going to   insert it from the inside be careful these things  don't look like much but they are freaking sharp   they'll slice a finger off in the right setting  and that's kind of an over exaggeration but you   know what i mean they're going to clip it on  all four corners that's how you know this thing   is in there now once it's in there grab your  motherboard by the cooler if you have an ai oh   and you haven't installed that yet maybe you can  grab it by the edges but the cooler is a surefire   way assuming you've installed it correctly we're  going to pick up the motherboard swing it into   the case there's going to be a central standoff i  like to reference this this one actually has one   that you don't even need to thread through  so it'll kind of poke through the board   and that's how we know that our  motherboard is where it should be   the other holes here the the threads align the  holes on the board and we can also check the back   and see that all of our ports align with the rear  io shield we just installed looking good now we   need to screw it down and get these last few  screws in here let's see got one up here kyle i   fully expect you'll get this shot yeah he's  like he's panicking a bit folks panicking   a bit all right so we're good we can flip  the case upright and uh admire our work so   far how does it look kyle looking pretty good  solid at this point i like to do a bit of the   cable managing the wiring especially these small  wires like the front i o wires these are very   small and things can get a bit cluttered once we  install our power supply so uh yeah that's why i   take care of these first just keeps these  out of the way and we've got a few holes   under the basement here this is where we're  going to thread some of these cables through   i apologize this is more or less the most  boring aspect of pc building the freaking wiring like ow so hd audio is typically going to come all  the way over here toward the rear of the case now   this right here is the usb 3 header that on this  board is at the bottom and connect this cable   to this fan header here okay so both fans are  connected we're gonna stick with the two stock   fans good enough we have one intake fan more  or less directed at the graphics card but again   the air will kind of find its way out of the  other crevices in this case and there's a lot   of filtration too in the mesh 5c which is fine  and we have one exhaust fan these are both 120s   the exhaust fan i get rid of a lot of the  heat generated by both the graphics card   and the cpu all right now the 600 watt power  supply has been through a lot i've used this   particular unit multiple times but uh it's  nothing pretty right but at the end of the day   you shouldn't really prioritize aesthetics over  performance in a budget build especially a build   that's gonna cost between six and eight hundred  bucks we're gonna slide them in through the rear   make sure they all come through a few  stragglers might be a bit messy at first   try to get them to come out here through  the back side slide the power supply in   just these two thumb screws we're gonna lock  things in place we've got eight pin eps some   power supplies will just have this split between  two four pins typically be labeled cpu or eps   we connect that into this eight pin header at the  top left of the motherboard north of the socket   but there we go all right that's installed yeah  you've got the kind of ugly ketchup and mustard   cables but you know what again in this price  range not a huge deal it's going to pack a heck   of a punch for the price now you see we've got a  cluster of sata and molex connectors here we don't   have any external drives we don't have any rgb led  strips any rgb fans any of that so we don't need   to connect any of these to anything in the system  and that's one of the advantages of having just   an nvme drive it's powered directly by the main  board so we're going to tuck these in we're going   to install the graphics card and we'll pretty  much be done with the hardware side of this build now you want to remove the rear pci slot covers  and the the two thumb screws that correspond to   those that line up with this uppermost 16 lane  pcie slot that's where we're going to install   our graphics card now we do have one extra slot  above that but in this case like the motherboard   doesn't have a slot that high the graphics card  here again our gtx 1080 oh wait that says 1070.   whoops you know what we're just gonna roll  with it 1070 is still plenty for this build   obviously the 1080 would be better but this  actually keeps costs down a bit more and   a 1070 is going to be fairly quiet under load  not going to get fairly loud and this is a   beautiful car i mean this is basically the exact  same board everything as the 1080 counterpart   actually the same gpu as well just some cores in  there have been deactivated they don't they don't   pass the mark and that's just what you get with  binning now we're going to slide this in see that   uppermost 16 lane slot pull back on this little  retention arm here for that 16 lane slot and   there we go clipper in now this power  supply is a daisy chained pair of eight pins   for pci supplemental power we just need one  it's okay to leave the other disconnected   we're going to connect this slide it all  the way and make sure it's all the way there   connected to the card we'll just kind of tuck  this extra eight pin underneath again no problem   leaving this disconnected and at this point all  we're doing is cable managing fairly subjective   how much or how little of this you want to do the  meshify c makes it fairly easy so if you the back   of your mesh if i see doesn't look very good  and you have like you know you're only using   like one storage drive no leds or anything like  that uh you're just being a bit lazy my friend   i hate to say it because it's super easy to keep  things looking at least somewhat organized here   that's literally all it takes now this  unfortunately this usb 3.0 header or the cable is   a little too short and the placement of the header  on the board just makes it to where we have no   choice but to stretch the cable across here and we  could use a zip tie to keep this eight pin cable   tucked away a bit better but there you go i mean  very minimal effort and things look pretty darn   good again for a budget system with uh yeah pretty  mediocre cables and the way you know that you've   properly cable managed unless your case just  has awful clearance behind the motherboard tray   how easy this right side panel slides on look at  that folks i could have done this with one hand   it's just piece of cake slides in and out no  problem secure it with these captive thumb screws   and there we are folks oh that sounded awful  swing this build back around yeah it looks a   bit dumb with this extra eight pin hanging here  but again aesthetics aside this is gonna pack   a punch even though we kind of demoted ourselves  unintentionally to a 1070. this is still a build   that will crush 1080p most games out there except  for maybe a few of the very modern titles this   might not be uh the best cyberpunk build out there  in the 1080p resolution but again for the price   it's gonna go a long way now since we talked about  the 1080 on the used market we should also talk   a bit about the 1070 which is actually in this  build you can get these on ebay 1070s not 1080s   for about 200 bucks today now a year or two ago  i would have said that was a great deal that's a   great bargain problem is there's a lot of new  stuff out there now competing with it the 1660   ti the 1660 super pretty much trades blows with  a 1070 new for a little over 200 so you shouldn't   pay more than 200 for a 1070 in 2020 or 2021.  that's my take on it in fact i think that the the   optimum price like something that's not going to  be you know a rip-off for either the seller or the   buyer is going to be around 160 to at the most  180 bucks 200 is like the tip of the iceberg if   you have a premium aib like an asus strix card now  we're gonna install the left side panel here this   is just a tempered glass uh panel and we've got  four thumb screws to hold it all together what do   you think kyle doesn't look too bad pretty  clean i need to break down the prices here   actually haven't done that we're going to see  what we could build this for right now on ebay   we're going to include shipping and  the like i'm thinking somewhere around seven day like 800 tops but if you had to pay  more than 800 for this system right now i'd say   you could probably do just as good if not better  new and at that point i mean new you get the   the full warranty you get peace of mind as  well so we're going to fire this thing up   and then run a few tests then we'll go on to  ebay and just kind of be like our sanity check   make sure that we're not overpaying for this i  know ebay is pretty whack right now but just in   my head i have an ideal price for this we'll see  if that actually holds true or not all right so   we're gonna ensure that this is switched to the  on position this is the power supply at the rear   and if we wired things up correctly we push this  power button things should turn on good so far   we've got our little uh portable monitor there  wired up so we should get a post momentarily can be pretty embarrassing if it doesn't  there we go there we go that's a post folks   now at this point you need an operating system  most of you will choose windows and we just   released a video detailing step by step how  to install windows 10 on your latest machine   all you need is a thumb drive like this an  internet connection and potentially another system   although if you already have the  boot tool created you don't need to   recreate it for each subsequent install you  can take this drive from system to system and   install windows every single time without  issues so i invite you guys to check out   this video here if you are new to the windows  installation process again i'm not going to   detail it in this video just because it doesn't  make sense to go through the exact same thing i   just talked about in a dedicated video so check  that one out it's also going to be linked below   but from there once you boot it into windows the  next thing you want to do is activate windows now   at this point nothing stopping you from going  to newegg or amazon and buying a retail key   for 100 bucks 120 bucks even 200 it can get  fairly expensive but as i said earlier this   in my eyes makes no sense to spend one-fifth  one-sixth or one-seventh of your total budget   or allocate one-seventh of that total budget to  the operating system that you could otherwise use   for free microsoft lets you use windows 10 for  free without activating at all you just have to   deal with a watermark you sometimes can't change  your background your wallpaper and there are a few   other very niche things usually that you won't  have access to with an unactivated copy and this   is why i promote the use of oem keys it doesn't  make any sense to spend that much on a retail   key when at the end of the day all you're really  doing is removing that watermark 15 bucks using   offer code gsl will get you an oem pro key for  windows 10 from our sponsor vip scd key from there   it's pretty straightforward just stop into system  settings click on the update and security button   scroll down to the activation tab and enter your  windows 10 pro key here and voila it's literally   that simple and no watermark and as we said in  our previous build video i use a time spy to more   or less kind of gauge where the system stacks up  against other submitted results this obviously is   not like it's it's not testament okay it's not the  only benchmark you could run to show how powerful   a system is in fact in some scenarios this system  will be better than those that beat us in time spy   uh but for this particular synthetic benchmark  we scored six thousand and sixty-five it's better   than forty three percent of all submitted results  now you're greg you're thinking well that's less   than that's less than half like that's below the  middle of the the scores that are submitted that's   not really that great well when you consider  the price it's not too bad and check this out   we actually reviewed this laptop just recently  uh this is the jesus zephyrus m15 which you can   check out reviewed up in this card here this has a  1660 ti in it which is about as good as a gtx 1070   and an intel core i7 10 750h okay so that six  core 12 thread cpu it's actually pretty close   to this thing the ryzen 5 2600 granted this  is on the mobile side going to be a bit more   thermally limited but the scores are very similar  i believe this laptop placed almost identically   actually scored almost exactly the same score  as well this costs thirteen hundred dollars this   costs a lot less benefit of going with a mid  tower some instead of something like this which   is obviously portable you're paying a bit more for  that portability but in terms of performance this   is a much better value on the used market and the  last thing to do then is price everything out in   the build kind of ballpark what it would cost you  if you were patient and use sites like ebay for   at least the major components so i went through  i found some previously sold listings we actually   sold today most of these uh like for example  this ryzen 5 2600 saying that's in there   uh sold for 125 bucks plus 10 shipping i  didn't include shipping uh probably have   like a 30 40 buffer all in for those components  uh the case we bought straight from newegg new   because it was so cheap to begin with there's a  nine dollar shipping charge there that would be   the most expensive thing everything else can be  pretty cheap so 125 bucks for the ryzen 5 2600   and then i found a b450f rog strix motherboard  sold for 89 and included free shipping   it says please read and see photo for actual  condition but it actually according to the   seller works there were a few decent boards like  this selling for under a hundred dollars which   i'm kind of surprised by most motherboards tend  to be uh listed fairly close to msrp even used   uh the ebga gtx 1070 sc that we used in our build  this is pretty much the same one except i don't   think this one comes with a back plate it sold  for 170 bucks and then a 12 shipping charge there   so pretty good and we already mentioned the mesh  ic but it is still being sold by newegg directly   469.99 which i think is a really great price for  a mid tower like this it has excellent airflow   great cable management the storage drive we  went with that team group mp33 one terabyte nvme   uh the reads and writes there about 1800  megabytes per second and 1500 megabytes per   second respectively a 90 price tag for this kind  of drive though it's a really good value uh for   especially a budget build if you want to avoid  hard drives and i would try to avoid hard drives   at least for the operating system sure a sata ssd  will be fine but you're going to get three times   and sometimes in this case up to four times uh  faster reads and writes than a comparable sata   in uh sata m.2 or sata two and a half inch drive  so uh consider this one it's also linked below and   then lastly the ebj 500 watt 80 plus white power  supply 500 watts is enough for this system just   it's okay trust me i've done this it was a long  time 500 watts just gives you plenty of lead way   there the 2600 is going to sip on power the 1070  is a very efficient pasco counterpart uh 500 watts   is just right in that sweet spot there and you're  only going to pay about 49 bucks for it so under   50 for a solid power supply that i've used many  many times haven't had a single issue with any   of them yet and the fans actually run fairly quiet  even while that power supply is being uh stressed   a bit so yeah that's pretty much it oh the oloy  kit i forgot about ola kit i don't have it up here   but i did include it in the total price breakdown  you can get those on newegg for in the mid 50s   i've noticed they went up a bit in price since  we made our video about them but a 16 gig kit   cl 16 3 000 megahertz which is pretty good for zen  plus gonna run you about 52 bucks and that brings   the total price for the system to just under 700  when you when you factor in shipping uh so without   shipping about 660 bucks shouldn't pay more than  about 40 dollars all in for these components when   they're shipped so about 700 total that ain't  bad that also includes the windows 10 pro oem   key for 15 bucks by the way i'm not forgetting the  activation key so i think for 700 this is a pretty   sweet system i've linked all the parts including  some of our ebay affiliate links down below if   you want to try your look at some bids maybe find  some decent buy it now options a lot of people are   saying greg why are you building systems like  this when there are perfectly fine perfectly   suited ampere and rd and a2 cards out there well  first off those are different budgets entirely   and be very difficult to justify a four or five  hundred dollar graphics card in a 700 system   and for two just because you can afford something  doesn't mean someone else can afford the same we   all live differently we all live within our own  means we spend money on different things and some   people are perfectly fine buying a value-based  system like this and look one of the great   things about a system like this not many people  talk about this is the resale value a bit like   buying a used car a car that's already depreciated  especially if it's a reliable car these pcs for   the most part will last four years yes even the  used ones you can get a lot of your money back   once you turn this thing around and resell it a  year or two later i mean think about it this has   already taken a huge depreciation hit because of  ampere because of zen three and what's funny is   those things you can't even really buy them right  now in some countries you can but they're marked   up to jesus like you know two three times msrp  and in countries like the us you just you don't   even you don't even have access to them unless  you want to again buy from a scalper on ebay or   maybe you're one of the very few who is lucky and  finds one in stock for a split second on newegg   but um look there there's plenty of value to be  found in this price range here in 700 especially   if you buy used at least some of the components i  mean look not all the components in here are used   some of them were purchased new uh but blending  them together you know new and used hardware   making them work building a balanced  system like this for especially 1080p   which is still a sweet spot for a vast majority  of gamers out there according to steam surveys   there's nothing wrong with that we shouldn't train  people for trying to maximize value maximize the   potential that their dollar has so uh yeah i hope  you guys have liked this one hope you enjoyed the   build process and stay tuned for something a  bit different coming up here in a few weeks   it's gonna be probably right after christmas  but i'm really excited it's a big project   and uh yeah i'm in for it all right give this  video a thumbs up that was cool click the   subscribe button and i'll catch you next time  my name is greg thanks for building with me

Channel: Greg Salazar

Views: 135,941

Keywords: finance, credit, college, MBA graduate, Engineering Degree, apple, gaming pc, pc gaming, how to build a pc, gaming pc build, $700 gaming pc, pc build, ryzen 5 2600, budget gaming pc, cheap pc gaming, best gaming pc, build pc gaming, $700 PC, $700, $700 gaming pc 2020, $700 gaming pc 2021, geforce gtx 1660, gtx 1070, used graphics card, ebay gaming pc, used gaming pc, new and used pc, how to build a pc step by step, how to build a pc for beginners, how to build a pc 2020

Id: RKRtV2etVq4

Length: 27min 47sec (1667 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 25 2020