welcome back to PC Builder I'm Jason 2024 continues to be an amazing time to build a gaming PC as PC parts continue their historic low prices but if you're a new or even a returning PC Builder it can be so easy to make critical mistakes so today we're going to cover all the critical PC parts for the best PC build in 2024 and how they all connect together to start your journey on how to build a gaming PC in 2024 if you get value out of this video please do give it a like as it really helps out and of course subscribe click that Bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content with that let's jump into it now the most important part for the best gaming PC build 2024 is the GPU which stands for graphics Processing Unit sometimes called the graphics card or video card the GPU plugs into the motherboard and you use the outputs on the back of the card not the motherboard to get the video signals graphics cards are primarily made by AMD and Nvidia however Intel launched its own GPU lineup in 2022 I'm happy to say that right now mainstream gpus from both AMD and Nvidia are excellent for gaming or streaming gameplay to a service like twitch or YouTube Intel gpus are rapidly improving but sometimes like driver support for brand new games and they can be a little finicky so I only recommend them if you feel comfortable troubleshooting for specific GPU recommendations for your specific budget see our monthly GPU market update video series where we review the best gpus to buy right now at every budget level and I'll leave a link to that in the video description now your GPU choice and the types of games that you play will determine what monitor resolution that you can use and how many frames per second called FPS that you can get now there's more on that in our best gaming monitor 2024 guide so I'll leave a link to that down in the video description as well the currently relevant gpus which can be purchased brand new include nvidia's newest gpus in their RTX 4000 series lineup and some previous generation Nvidia RTX 3000 Series gpus that are still available on the AMD side their newest GPU lineup is the Ron RX 7000 series gpus as well as their very good value last generation Radeon RX 6000 series Intel currently offers three relevant models in its a series and we believe that their next generation battlemage gpus are either going to launch sometime at the end of 2024 or early 2025 but all these companies also make gpus that you should avoid based primarily on the amount of video RAM that they have video RAM also called vram for short is the amount of memory that's specifically on the GPU itself and it's different than the system Ram now unlike your system Ram where you can just put more in the only way to increase vram is to buy a brand new graphics card with more vram we covered this a lot more in our best GPU for gaming 2024 video but in a nutshell we recommend at least 16 GB of vram for those looking to play at 4K and 12 GB of vram for those looking to play at 1440p or 1080p with no compromises 8 GB gpus can be okay if you play titles with lower Graphics quality but they're mostly budget options that may not age as well as you'd like and we do not recommend anyone buy a GPU with less than 8 GB of vram in 2024 for professional level production users who do video editing blender animation CAD or similar type of work then generally Nvidia gpus are better supported in some of these professional suites though AMD is catching up as is Intel now let's jump into the central processing unit or CPU now there's two major CPU makers AMD and Intel they make a variety of CPUs but we're just going to focus on consumer desktop CPUs today the CPU connects into the motherboard and is the brain of the computer but the CPU itself has more than one brain it can use at a time called a core now most modern processors are at least four cores and currently come in six 8 10 12 all the way up to 24 cores the more cores the more the CPU can do at once though some tasks like gaming only need between four and eight cores depending on the game and how powerful the CPU is most AMD and Intel CPUs have cores that can do up to two tasks at the same time something we call multi-threading so when I say that the AMD ryzen 57600 has six cores and 12 threads that means it has six cores that can each do roughly two things at the same time note that with Intel's 12th 13th and 14 generation CPUs they've introduced a big little design with big cores that they call Performance cores which can multi-thread and smaller cores which they call efficiency cores that are single-threaded so the Intel i5 14600 K has six performance cores that can each multi-thread and eight efficiency cores that are single-threaded for a total of 14 cores and 20 threads the most currently relevant AMD CPUs are the ryzen 7,000 series CPUs and 5000 series CPUs for Intel the most recent CPUs include the 14th 13th and 12th generation CPUs currently the fastest gaming CP CPU is the ryzon 7800 x3d which contains extra onboard memory called cache stacked vertically on the CPU hence the 3D in the name AMD ryzen CPUs are unlocked meaning you can overclock them if you choose to on an X or B series motherboard and you can also overclock the memory with them on any motherboard Intel CPUs labeled with a Canon name can be overclocked but only on a compatible Z series motherboard more on that later but none of the other Intel CPUs can be overclocked however the memory can overclocked on a z or B series motherboard now some CPUs they come with integrated Graphics like all the Intel CPUs that do not have an F in the name and the AMD CPUs that either have a g in their name like the ryzen 5600 G or the ryzen 7000 series CPUs integrated Graphics means that you can get a video signal without a dedicated graphics card now while this sounds good there's really no gaming benefit to integrated graphics and even the most powerful integrated Graphics is significantly weaker than any of the gpus we pre previously mentioned for video editors there's some small benefit to getting an Intel CPU with integrated Graphics as Intel's Quicks sync technology will help export video faster in a program like Adobe Premiere Pro but it's a relatively small boost and I wouldn't spend a lot of extra money on it now quick note AMD has just introduced their ryzen 8000 series G lineup of apus these are CPUs with very powerful integrated Graphics but again not as powerful as any of the graphics chards we looked at and they aren't as good as CPUs as the rise in 7,000 series CPUs that's one reason that we don't recommend them in new gaming PC builds so what's the right CPU and GPU combo for you well the great news is we've got a whole video dedicated to this topic based on every budget level so check that out after this one to get started picking out the best CPU GPU combo for you now when building a gaming PC we want to get the fastest GPU that we can afford now typically this is around half of our overall budget then just get a CPU that's not going to bottleneck our GPU for systems focus on professional or Creator production work that can take advantage of a lot more CPU power we're going to want to scale our CPU up just a bit more but it will vary depending on the programs that you're using so check the recommended specs for them let's talk about motherboards cuz this is one area I see people overspend on all the time now the motherboard it's a thing that all the components plug into and allows them to work together now while motherboards are made by manufacturers like Asus azrock gigabyte and MSI they're also made using what's called a chipset that is specific to AMD or Intel so you can't use an AMD CPU with an Intel chipset motherboard and each CPU will only work with a specific chipset for ryzing 7000 series CPUs you want an AMD 600 series motherboard in the x670 b650 OR a620 series for ryzen 5000 series CPUs you generally want an AMD 500 series motherboard like a b550 x570 or a520 chipset motherboard for Intel 12th 13th and 14 14 generation CPUs with a K in their name which again means they're overclockable you'll likely want a z690 or z790 motherboard as it will allow you to use the overclocking feature for locked Intel CPUs the ones without a K in their name you generally want to use a cheaper b660 or b760 motherboard though you can use z690 and z790 motherboards as well if you find a good deal it can be really confusing because both AMD and Intel use similar naming schemes for their motherboard chipsets so make sure to check compatibility before you buy your motherboard we have buying guid for both the best ryzen motherboard and the best Intel motherboard on the channel and I'll leave those link down in the video description in our how to build a PC playlist motherboards come in different sizes with the most common being the full size or ATX motherboards a half-size version called a microatx or matx and an even smaller version with a single pcie slot called an ITX motherboard there's also a slightly wider than normal board called an extended ATX or eatx now on the back of the motherboard there will be USB ports of varying speeds audio output for the onboard sound wired and wireless networking and display outputs if you're not using a dedicated GPU motherboards also have two or four slots for Ram SATA connections for SATA storage drives at least one slot for m.2 storage drives and connections for the system fans RGB and front PC case USB and audio ports the motherboard has an onboard operating system called bios which is going to allow you to change the way that the motherboard the memory or other components run now one of the important motherboard features is the power delivery on the motherboard called the vrms a little half square around the CPU which will often have a heat sink to avoid overheating under heavy use now you need to pay close attention to these if you're using an 8 core CPU or greater there are also pcie Express slots now the top one is for your graphics card and it's a buy 16 slot that refers to the number of pcie lanes and also the length of the connector and they vary in size depending on how much bandwidth they have including by 8 by4 and by one slots note that smaller adding cards can be used in those larger slots with no problem pcie Lanes can go different speeds and the current fastest ones are PCI Gen 4 and Gen 5 while having internal pcie Gen 5 Lanes is great because it means you can connect more total devices I don't recommend spending extra on your motherboard to get one capable of using a pcie Gen 5 GPU which doesn't even exist yet or pcie Gen 5 ssds especially for gaming where that speed just doesn't make any difference let's talk onboard audio now all modern motherboards come with it but you aren't always using it if you plug in an analog audio device with a connector that looks like this into the motherboard or a front panel of the PC case you're definitely using the motherboard audio processing if you use a connection like HDMI or USB then you're going to use a digital signal to transfer the audio processing to to a secondary device like a stereo receiver the quality of the onboard audio can usually be tracked by looking at the audio codec audio codecs in the 800 series so the alc 897 for instance or entry level and they're fine to get going if you want better audio then look for audio codecs like the alc 1200 or higher if using a higher end audio codec make sure to plug in your analog headphones into the front of the PC case to take advantage of the special features to improve headphone performance Ram also called memory is what the system uses to temporarily store information it's using right now now for Ram there's a couple of important things that you need to know how much RAM do you need how fast is the RAM and whether or not you need to get ddr4 or ddr5 Ram as we're still in transition between the too note that we have a whole video on the best RAM for gaming which goes over all the available CPUs and recommend specific RAM for each of them as well explaining how Ram works so check that out in our how to build a PC playlist in the video description now Ram comes into sticks that are called dims and they're generally bought in kits of either two or four sticks you generally want to use RAM sticks in pairs so avoid a single stick or three sticks and we never recommend mixing and matching different kits and different speeds current Ram comes in either ddr4 or ddr5 and the number at the end just notes the generation ryzen 5000 series CPUs only use ddr4 Ram while ryzen 7,000 series CPUs only use ddr5 Ram Now intel 12th 13th and 14th generation CPUs can use either of these but not both at the same time that choice is locked in when you buy the motherboard and the board specs will say whether it's a ddr4 or ddr5 motherboard most common memory speeds for ddr4 are between 3200 and 3600 and for ddr5 kits from 5600 to 6,000 all the way up past 8,000 though faster RAM does not always give better performance and most CPUs have a sweet spot for Ram speed in order to achieve these speeds most Ram comes with an auto over clocking profile like XMP or Expo which you will need to enable in the Bios in order to get it to run at its full rated speed Ram also has a cast latency abbreviated CL or C with a number now common cast latencies for ddr4 or cl4 16 and cl1 18 for ddr5 they range from cl28 to CL 40 there's a lot to talk about for the best Ram speeds for each of the CPUs so definitely check out that best RAM for gaming video Linked In the video description so how much RAM do you need well it depends on what you're doing a general rule of thumb is at least 16 gab for gaming streaming gameplay to a service like twitch or amateure video editing for professional level streaming or production workloads I would recommend a minimum of 32 GB but if you're designing a system for professional applications of course check the recommended system specs for your applications because you might need even more RAM note that most ddr5 kits available on the DIY PC market are a minimum of 32 GB for some reason so that that's plenty for most users and of course Ram can come with RGB which is just a lot of fun ssds have seen massive changes over the past two years as cost for solid state storage has fallen to the point that I would no longer consider spinning hard dis drives for any role in my PC build even for bulk data storage also the older SATA ssds that connected via cable have completely been replaced by nvme ssds that use the m.2 connector on your motherboard and are significantly faster so for the PC builds 2024 we are focusing exclusively on m.2 mvme ssds and we can currently find storage for around $60 for one terabyte though that price it's going up and expected to rise in 2024 I usually recommend at least 500 GB of storage but one tab drives have become the mainstream given how big applications and games have gotten and I see many builds with two terab drives which is the minimum I would recommend to professional workstation users envme ssds come in a variety of speeds called PC P Generations which we abbreviate as gen for the vast majority of consumers pcie gen 3 drives are actually faster than you need but Gen 4 drives are also very cheap the newest Gen 5 drives They Don't Really offer consumers any benefit and they're super expensive and some CPUs and motherboards we discussed won't even run them at their full rated speed so my advice is just skip them do note that pcie is backwards compatible so you can always plug in a pcie gen 3 drive into a mother board with a pcie Gen 4 or even Gen 5 connector and it's going to run just at the slower rated speed which is still really fast alternatively if you plug in a Gen 5 drive into a motherboard that only supports gen 3 drives it will run but only at the Gen 3 speed we have a best SSD video that goes into more detail if you want a deeper dive well let's talk about CPU coolers because they have become increasingly important in 2024 as CPU makers they look to push their chips as fast as possible eating more power and thus producing more heat now now basically if your CPU overheats it's going to throttle your performance and that's bad generally the more cores a CPU has or the more power it requires and I'm looking at you I94 iron K the more cooling it's going to require now you can do that with an air cooler or an all-in-one liquid cooler also called an aiio or with a custombuilt liquid Loop cooler now if this is your first PC build or your first in a while I recommend skipping a custom Loop cooler and going straight for either an air cooler or an all-in-one liquid cooler note that some ryzen and Intel CPUs come with included box coolers now ryzen included coolers are usually sufficient though I often recommend upgrading to at least a budget Tower air cooler the same goes for 12 gen Intel included box coolers they're okay to get you going but it's always worthwhile to upgrade for anything above an I3 for 13th and 14th gen Intel CPUs other than the I3 due to the increasing number of ecores on the CPU the stock coolers they're not great for the CPUs at the I5 13400 or 14400 level or above and I'd recommend an aftermarket cooler we have more cooling guides on our how to build a PC playlist and we recommend specific coolers for each CPU in our build guide list so check those out in the video description there are a number of important factors in getting the right PC case number one is good airf flow now we don't want to thermally throttle our CPU or our GPU so it's important to bring in cool air from the outside and vent out the hot air from the inside for this mesh front or side panels are best and while we can't buy additional fans and we often need to PC cases usually come with at least a couple included fans in the 120 mm and 140 mm size though there are some cases with much larger 160 mm and even 200 mm fans note that the larger the fan the slower it needs to spin to bring in the same amount of air flow and the quieter it can be though some fans are noisier than others even when spinning at the same speed how many fans do you need well I recommend at least two to three intake fans as well as at least one exhaust in high-end builds with more heat I definitely recommend increasing this air flow slightly biasing our fans to intake also allows us to create positive pressure in the PC case and that allows us to control the amount of dust getting into the case number two is making sure that you buy the right size case for your motherboard like motherboards cases come in different sizes ATX cases will fit ATX Siz and smaller motherboards well microatx cases they're not going to fit a fullsize ATX motherboard and many small form factor cases will only fit ITX motherboards if you're not sure check the PC case spe before buying it to make sure it's going to fit your motherboard third let's talk Aesthetics and front panel connections most cases come with a glass side panel to show off your build and the front panel your case will include USB ports and an audio jack if it has a front panel USB type-c connector you're going to want to ensure that your motherboard comes with the right header for it some cases come with RGB lighting effects or strips but most RGB Li Li in today is on the fans coolers RAM and motherboards themselves the power supply unit or PSU for short supplies power to your PC build however choosing the right PSU it's complicated but don't worry we've got a whole video that explains how to size evaluate and buy the best PSU including our how to build a PC series psus come in two main sizes ATX which is the most common and sfx which is for small form factor cases make sure to choose a PSU that fits your case psus come in different wattages they also have different efficiency ratings called 80 plus ratings in either white bronze gold or platinum but these 80 plus ratings they don't necessarily indicate the unit's quality instead we look at a rating system put together by knowledgeable community members called the PSU cultist tier list sounds weird I know but it's super helpful for a gaming PC build with a dedicated GPU we recommend using a PSU rated at least C tier or better on the PSU cultist list as the perform performance and cost of your CPU and GPU go up we suggest moving up to the B and then a tiers you can think of this like buying car insurance the more expensive your car is the more insurance coverage you want even though you're paying more money for that insurance again check out our full PSU buying guide linked below before making your purchase now let's briefly talk about your monitor especially for gaming or video editing PCS it's critical to get the right monitor for your GPU the main resolutions they're still 1080p 1440 p and 4K but the mainstream gaming it's moved on from 1080p to squarely 1440p except for some Esports Pros who want the highest FPS for competitive Shooters refresh rates for monitors are commonly 144 to 180 Herz which you can think of as a maximum FPS a monitor can do at its resolution as long as your GPU can keep up but higher refresh rate 240 Herz gaming monitors are now available even at 4K and 360 her refresh rates are available at 1440p for for PC Gamers you typically want to use the display port connection to ensure that your GPU can transfer over the maximum fps to your monitor while utilizing the variable refresh rate technology on the monitor this prevents screen tearing we have a lot more in our best gaming monitor 2024 video so check that out Linked In the video description now aside from the essential components there's miscellaneous Parts like fan and RGB controllers Wi-Fi add-in cards USB adapters and video capture cards that can improve your computer's functionality for those Building Systems with lots of fans and or RGB lighting a fan or RGB controller or even a combo controller can be useful if you're motherboard lacks Wi-Fi a pcie addin card or USB adapter can provide Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity note that some Wi-Fi adapters don't include Bluetooth there are also other components like Thunderbolt support keyboards and mice let us know down in the comments if you have specific requests for future coverage so how much does a PC build cost and where should you allocate your budget for each part for 2024 gaming PC builds using only brand new parts you can range from just over $500 for a budget gaming PC all the way up to $33,000 or even higher for the highest performance CPU and GPU build focusing primarily on FPS performance and using current US pricing and availability for 1080p budget gaming I'd recommend looking to spend around $550 maybe $600 for 1440p gaming at 80 FPS you're looking at around $700 to $900 for 100 plus FPS in most titles at 1440p you're looking at spending between $900 and $1,500 and for very high FPS at 4K I Look to spend between $1,500 and $22,000 with the highest performance builds using an RTX 490 currently an $1,800 GPU by itself jumping up into $3,000 and higher territory I've linked a lot of the PC parts that we've talked about today down in the video description so you can check out pricing and availability in your region and don't forget to like the video if you got value at it as it really helps out and of course subscribe and click that Bell icon that way you get notified when we release cool content speaking of cool content click on this video right here for our best CPU and GPU combo 2024 video to get our recommendations on the best CPU and GPU combo for your budget click click click
