Cheap vs. Expensive Gaming!?

just how much do you have to spend to build a good gaming PC $300 $600 $2,000 it's hard to know whether it's worth it to spring for that higher tier component without first-hand experience of how the extra cost is going to affect your gameplay so what is it like to game at every price point why don't you find out say what I did that I built pcs in like every price point there's like six of them like it over there there's lots of computers in here well okay then let's go check it out shall we but after this message from our sponsor glassware with glass where you can instantly see your current and past network activity detect malware and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device use offer code Linus to get 25% off glass wire at the link in the video description [Music] - I'd like to introduce you to a few friends of mine six to be exact you ready yeah alright then starting us off at three hundred nine dollars and five cents it's el cheapo you don't have to break the bank to break into gaming stepping it up to six hundred and twenty two dollars and six cents it's the athlead give the underdog a chance and they just might hit the buzzer beater coming in at one thousand twenty eight dollars and twenty-nine cents it's the mood ranger if this cowboy had a horse its name would be price to performance or Seabiscuit strolling along at one thousand five hundred and thirteen dollars and forty three cents it's the gentleman you deserve a rig that will treat you right and this one it's happy to oblige flying in at two thousand five hundred and five dollars and six cents it's the glow-up started from the bottom now we here that's the Royal we because we fancy and red lining it's six thousand eight hundred and six dollars and eight cents it's overkill budgets what are those okay now a few caveats before we jump right in obviously these six builds don't represent every price point that could possibly exist but what I think they do is give you a pretty good idea of the type of performance and overall experience that you can expect if you set your budget around these prices so each build includes a tower and a mouse keyboard and monitor because those are pretty important to the overall gaming experience so when I was spec'ing out these builds I posted in our forum for help and a ton of people gave me awesome feedback on components so thank you so much for members I love you I should also note that we did not overclock or do any tweaking on these builds I wanted as much of an out-of-the-box experience as possible also final caveat third gen Rison the rx 5700 series and the GeForce r-tx Super Series came out a couple of weeks after we prepared this video which is awesome because those were exciting launches that mean better profiles for gamers but also kind of lame because it means our builds are already somewhat out of date such as life though on the bleeding edge of technology the good news is that the general performance category of these budgeted builds hasn't changed that much so we'll still be able to track broad changes in the experience as we move from one to the other so without further ado linus i present el cheapo it's actually over there we got we gotta go over to it i love the paper mousepad this is actually exactly what i used to use as a budget gamer well i wanted to stick with a theme so this is basically the cheapest parts I could get on Amazon while still kind of making a PC that could run some games got it so this is running on an AMD Athlon 200 GE it's an APU 2 cores 4 threads Veiga graphics right no GPU this is basically recommended as like an APU you could use to play you know like decent MOBAs and stuff like League Wright and dota 2 and stuff yeah it's run an alright I mean not great but it is running at 90 fps it's just I mean leagues graphics don't look amazing at the best of times and this is particularly not amazing yeah it's not like a special oh I can't go behind that line but this is the tutorial they're just gonna cut a minute like wreck me you're gonna die dude okay what I'll see you uh so it's got a 120 gig SSD because that is actually cheaper than buying like the most cheap hard drive Wow it finally happened because yeah flash storage is so freakin cheap the case itself is a Rosewill r2 521 m with a power supply inside so that allowed us to save money what what why are you give me that face not in a way we generally recommend saving money money no but it's a cheap it's the cheapest cheap oh come on guys so the monitor is the acer SB 220 q and it's actually pretty impressive price it's not bad at all this is yes yeah ninety dollar monitor yeah it's great 75 Hertz refresh rate Wow 1080p with free sync 4 millisecond response time yeah that's fantastic so it's pretty amazing for the money I think the monitor stands out as a fantastic choice for a budget rig and compared to times in the past when the cheapest possible motherboard really had no upgrade options at least this has some upgrade options true you could throw in more RAM throw in a better CPU graphics card I definitely want a better power supply if you do that but at least there's like at least there's an upgrade path for it right keyboard and mouse not exceptional hmm amazonbasics now I'd probably still recommend used Hardware over a brand new $200 tower but maybe that won't be the case in our next price point speaking of which let's go Wow even just like opening windows and launching applications on this one just the snappiness this is a much faster machine things actually loading properly and yes time yeah well it's the athlete and so maybe that's why you love it so much okay for the athlete basically everything has changed okay we've upped the CPU power we have an actual GPU now so that's great all I can feel the difference 250 FPS compared to 60 and I'm at full 1080p the game looks great I'm glad you feel it Linus we've doubled the RAM we've doubled the storage we have an actual discrete power supply now so this is like an actual we're approaching a gaming experience like this feels pretty darn good it even looks better it's got dust filters on the fans the mouse is considerably better like it's just more comfortable and even though this is still a cheap keyboard and the build quality is nothing special a logitech cheap keyboard is still better than someone else's cheap keyboard from well my experience here very true this monitor though we don't change the monitor same monitor it holds up really well yeah it looks great and I was again I was surprised that a monitor can be this cheap and you know we can use it in the next highest build and it's just as good yeah yeah so this setup should get you 1080p you know depending on the game of course rocket League runs pretty well regardless but for like modern games 1080p medium settings yeah that's very respectable have you scored yet no so you know it doesn't matter what the hardware is for some people they just can't get it done so David on our staff has advised me that these are pretty close to like kind of the recommended settings for Rainbow six siege so we're gonna see if we can handle it at 1080p let's do it so this is actually running great we're looking at a hundred and thirty hundred and sixty frames per second now there's not a lot of action going on right there's a bad bad guy Jaqueline cool neat now he's dead now one thing that we would change about this machine if we were to do it again is that we'd go with a rise in 3rd gen equivalent sir instead of the one that we've got 3200 G but as you can see it's not like the machine isn't running just fine I mean this is a pretty darn good experience this bad guy I know as a mannequin dang it you were killed by a mannequin now this one looks a lot fancier it's the mid Ranger yep it's a bit fancier we upgraded the CPU and the GPU and the storage we got 480 gigabytes now dang m dot 2 m dot 2 Danny me dang and we've got a 6 core processor that's right and LED lighting got a lot of ventilation in the front one thing I'm sort of on the fence about is the monitor yeah it's bigger it's bigger it's 24 inches instead of 22 so you're getting a bit of benefit there in terms of like immersiveness yeah it's only 60 Hertz instead of 75 Hertz so that's kind of a bummer feels a little more sturdy though yeah then there's two HDMI IN ports right so you got your console on this side you got your PC on that side you can quickly switch between them so it's got more features right you're exchanging a little bit of refresh rate for versatility got it but you know the other ones could work on this build as well sure the last disadvantage of this monitor is that it uses a TN panel which means worse viewing angles and worse color fidelity but improves pixel response times the thing though is that this exercise is more about sort of the performance in the experience and you could of course choose a different monitor should you see fit right so once again there's a rise in 3rd gen upgrade that could make a ton of sense for us it's another 50 bucks to go 3rd gen and we could yield as much as a 25% improvement in performance but even where we're sitting right now like this is really darn good this is battlefield 5 running at the high preset 1080p and we're getting you know 65 75 frames per second this is very very playable we are beyond the refresh rate of our monitor here at least right and this the the name of the game for this build is price to performance so if you are looking to upgrade you have to kind of think about whether that extra performance that you get is worth the money you pay because this right now is sitting sitting pretty in price of performance land I think for most people is fair to say this is about all you really to get in a very satisfactory getting the experience you're gonna get in trouble for saying that guys so my I'm at ultra now right you're at Ultra because that is how the gentleman treats his date how does it feel to be the gentleman's date today this is a noticeably better gaming experience animations are smoother we're running at about eighty fps and we're at Ultra so the game looks pretty darn fancy and that high refresh rate monitor makes a big difference this is a full HD 144 Hertz monitor now and we have that because we've upgraded the GPU to it RTX twenty seventy five hundred bucks it's about a third of the total budget we stuck with the same CPU so the same things apply as in the last one well as long as it's not a bottleneck that's not necessarily a problem no we start with the same same storage and the same Ram we've got actual gaming peripherals now well I mean we had gaming peripherals before but these are a little fancier because we're getting into treat yourself territory now now one thing we haven't done yet is turn on ray tracing I have never actually experienced ray tracing firsthand is that shameful it's surprising alright well this is it this is ray tracing our frame rate is definitely lower there's more reflections on the gun and I think only about 60 frames per second then we had to drop the rest of the in-game details true and it's got nothing to do with the monitor because again 144 Hertz but the cool thing with this set up the gentlemen is that you can have that versatility you can get a million frames per second with this horse power or you can pump the settings up a bit and want to bid more of a cinematic experience the gentleman treats you right and the gentleman has some other creature comforts as well this is where water-cooling makes its first appearance and we've got a modular power supply which just makes your build look a little bit cleaner and it's a little bit easier to cable manage so the glow up so we got a I 7 9700 K for the CPU yep RTX 2080 for the GPU right getting up near the top tier we're getting up there super nope but it's pretty good it's the penultimate build same storage same Ram we added a hard drive for two you know extra storage all those games fully modular 750 watt power supply dual radiator water cooling mm-hmm more creature comforts on the motherboard yep and this is hilarious I actually didn't notice it until you mentioned it wireless wireless peripherals light speed from Logitech I mean they feel exactly the same it's wired yeah I just like didn't even think about it but we're definitely in the territory now where you're where you're like these are the creature comforts that you can afford when your budget is this high yeah I mean a lot of what we're doing doesn't really fundamentally change the gaming experience but the image looks a lot sharper yeah it's kind of funny you know like in doing this video I kind of found that like we're changing everything else but it really all remark revolves around the monitor mostly and then you just have to you just have to upgrade everything else to keep up that's true whether you're going higher refresh rate well now I need to pump more frames or whether you're going for a larger size well now you need more resolution in order to keep it looking sharp right then you get an upgrade so you can pump out them frames exactly it's not much use getting a fancy monitor and then buying an Athlon 200 GE you know so now there are some things because we're at this budget we have some room to maneuver so we're making choices we're making choices limited by the money we're spending life choices so this is a 1440p 165 Hertz monitor right we chose that instead of a 4k monitor even though you could play 4k at playable frame rates right with this build but I think that it's more it makes for a better experience overall if you can get a 1440p high refresh my rate monitor yep instead of playing at 4k at like okay framerate and we were able to afford g-sync because that means that even though we're not running at a super high frame rate right now we're only at about 60 frames per second 64 there the animation still feel relatively smooth I need to go hide for a little especially when you shoot your teammate yeah I didn't mean to do that he'll forgive me his widow will forgive me oh now the other thing of course the i7 9700 K rise and 3rd gen came out there's a lot of really good options there yeah but for this budget and because we're focusing in on gaming only you know that's what we got in there but obviously it would be a yeah if you're doing anything else yeah going rise in 3rd gen for the extra course would make a ton of sense no-brainer finally a build that is entirely unnecessary over this is amazing though is it this is absolutely fantastic I haven't actually played it so this is shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4k 145 frames per second complete ultra absolutely everything except motion blur cuz that's stupid and oh ow dang it don't do that please there we go like everything maxed yeah we've got we've got rage racing on we've got high dynamic range on just everything about it is freaking oh well oh you are getting on dead that's too bad doesn't make you a better gamer it just makes you have more fun so yeah as I said complete balls to the wall I 999 hundred K dual r-tx 20 ATT eyes got a terabyte nvme and two SSD and another two terabyte SSD and they're just for fun this machine is nuts like there's no doubt in my mind it's unnecessary nobody needs anything like this no you definitely don't in fact it's kind of offensive to me that I even built it I can't figure out how to get up there I want to go walk around in the jungle it looks so pretty yeah oh yeah you gotta get up there there we go that is some you're looking nice right there Wow I actually this is a real reaction I'm having right now I mean look how sharp it looks 4k ray-tracing not anti-aliasing on - this is nuts okay I can understand how you would spend this but you know we said that like it's really it's $7,000 I know it's seven Griffin like we said it was completely unnecessary but like now that I've experienced it I don't know you know maybe I should sell my card I mean we're basically sparing no expense here who got a triple fan radiator water-cooled eight core hyper threaded processor 32 gigs of RAM this is about as good a gaming experience as money can buy and it shows and it definitely is overkill you don't need 32 gigs of ram for gaming I just killed a bug with an arrow good for you and a fantastic shot because he's dead so the verdict here is pretty straightforward yes spending more money does get you sharper image quality more eye candy better peripherals you know no mouse cord drag and all that kind of stuff but you can also get a decent gaming experience at basically any price point as long as you set your expectations and choose your games yes appropriately so like battlefield 5 ultra settings $600 budget not likely but if you set your sights a little lower csgo overwatch narrative games or even last generation or two generations right yeah why not I mean that's one of the beautiful things about the PC is that the game library is quite literally tens of thousands of games deep spanning multiple generations chances are they're some game that can play on the hardware that you have and that's pretty awesome now if you guys want to know firsthand what it's like to game at these different price points one really cool thing is that we're actually taking all of these rigs the whole thing's to LTX and there are still some tickets left so at the time of filming try them out there and you can game on everything from a 300 dollar complete gaming setup all the way to a $7000 complete setup and figure out what's right for your budget and your preference I have a feeling some people are gonna walk away a little bit poorer from LTX having experienced this one particular I don't okay way to go Riley whoops whoopsies door peoples are so 1990s with ring you can see who's at your front door without even getting up there welcome kit includes their video doorbell to spotlight cam battery and a solar security sign the video doorbell too has a motion sensing camera with 1080p HD resolution and 160 degrees of vision it features two-way audio and it's either battery or 8 to 24 volt AC doorbell wiring powered the spotlight camera features 1080 HD video two-way talk LED lights and it's battery or solar powered and it also has a siren the audio is great because you can turn away unwelcome guests or you can tell them to come right in because you're feeling masochistic my personal favorite is telling the Amazon delivery driver not to run away after the second knock on the door and instead just wait wait a second I'm gonna be right there so get some peace of mind with the ring welcome kit it's compatible with iOS Android Mac and Windows and you can buy it today at the link below so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description also down there's our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and cool underwear like of this underwear you have to see the underwear yes yes underwear so yeah also our community forums down there you should totally join it take the corner

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 6,747,913

Rating: 4.9257612 out of 5

Keywords: LTX 2019, Gaming, Gaming PC, budget, best budget, how much to spend, how much, how much should I spend, on a gaming PC, most expensive, price to performance, cheapest, cheapest gaming PC, overkill, build, price

Id: 75L8Hrb49A4

Length: 21min 26sec (1286 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/RoBOticRebel108]

the monitor they used for the first 2 builds is actually pretty sick

i have the 24 inch variant and i love it

[u/InvincibleBird]

Please note that as Linus explained in the video these builds were put together before the July hardware launches which is why there are no 3rd generation Ryzen CPUs, RX 5700 (XT) graphics cards or RTX Super graphics cards.

[u/Nagorak]

Interesting experiment, although I disagree with some of the builds. In particular the monitor choice on the Mid-ranger was terrible. For $20 more you could get an AOC C24G1 144 Hz monitor, instead of that 24 inch Asus 60 Hz TN POS. The C24G1 has pretty good response time for a VA panel, and it's Freesync and 144 Hz. Really one of the best buys in an inexpensive monitor.

For that matter the monitor choices on everything besides the low end builds are suspect. You can get better monitors in those same price points, IMO. Seriously, was this sponsored by Asus or something?

And, yeah, the 2070 is a joke for ray tracing. I mean, even the 2080 Ti is barely sufficient, so everything further down just is hardly worth even talking about.

[u/ArtakhaPrime]

Not waiting to include this month's releases was an immensely silly move, this video is pretty much DOA