How to Choose Parts for a Gaming PC

welcome my friends to this video about PC Building specifically if one desires to build a gaming PC how well whether you are but a learner or an enlightened Master of the PC gaming race first you must bust out that wallet and figure out your budget and then you must choose your parts this video is about these two foundational steps on the road to PC gaming Bliss and to guide you on that path we have a three level approach beginner intermediate and expert so follow along and let me know in the comments what level you see yourself at when it comes to picking the right parts for your build excellent so if you're going to build a PC you will need all the necessary parts and I usually list seven core components for a gaming PC and that's not including other setup items like a monitor keyboard and mouse for the desktop PC itself there's a CPU or processor memory the motherboard a graphics card storage which includes ssds and hard drives a case and a power supply so let us begin with level one a competent level one Builder will primarily focus on basic compatibility and staying within budget if you're a beginner you're most concerned about the basics will it work and can I afford it so here's the gaming PC I've been directing budget Builders towards for a few months now and things haven't changed too much since I talked about this in the past couple weeks so we're going to stick with this build although I have updated it slightly for this video we're looking at a total price for the core PC of around 900 so that is the budget that I'm recommending for entry-level Builders and yes you can absolutely build a gaming PC for less money than this but in my opinion there's not a whole lot of point in building a gaming PC and spending the extra money that you need to do in order to do that if you're going to be cutting costs so much that you're not actually getting better performance than say console gaming so as mentioned in that video I did a couple weeks back this is the PC component of a complete setup for around 1 250 that includes a monitor a keyboard and a mouse but I did break out a pie chart here so you can kind of see which percentage of the budget is going where most of it is going towards the graphics card about 45 percent in this case with only about 15 percent going to the CPU then we have the rest of our components taking up the remaining 40 percent or so since we're focusing on budget Builders here we've taken a few steps to cut costs one is that we're going with a previous generation CPU and the ryzen 5 5600 uses on amd's am4 platform they do have a new platform called am5 that launched at the end of 2022 and yes the new platform is faster but it's also more expensive by sticking with am4 we can save a good amount of money and we still have a good upgrade path if we wanted to upgrade the CPU down the line because one of the best CP used for gaming still right now even in light of the new platforms that have launched is the 5800x 3D which you can totally drop into this build so apart from the CPU which you should be able to find for 130 to 140 dollars right now you can get it for 130 with a promo code over on NewEgg you will of course need that am4 motherboard and I have a few listed in the description this is the least expensive one that I think is reasonable right now it's again down to 120 with a promo code for our memory kit I'm recommending a 16 gig configuration at bare minimum and this is one of the first things I would upgrade which we're going to talk about when we get to level two speaking of upgrades though here is a decent upgrade to that for 80 bucks you can go from 16 gigs to 32 and then of course there is that graphics card debate there's always a question when you're looking at PC components of should I spend just a little bit more to get a bit more performance and when I recommended the RTX 3060 12 gig on the Nvidia side or the RX 6700 XT on the AMD Radeon side which you can find both of for around 350 to 370 dollars right now a lot of people said you know what it's probably worth it to spend about 400 tradition dollars on a 30 60 ti so that's what I've included today this card is going to trade blows with the 6700 XT so if you are more interested in raw performance I'd say up towards that you can save a few bucks but since Nvidia tends to be the more popular choice right now even though their graphics cards can be on the pricier side I went with this one for today and case in point here's a 30 60 12 gig for about 360. here's another 30 60 12 gig for about 370 and then again over on the AMD side we have 6700 xt's which you can find for about 350 bucks right now of course since I'm recommending the upgrade to the 3060 TI Why Not upgrade from the 6700 XT the step up from there will be the 6750 XT which you can find for close to 400 dollars about 410 right now you do get a couple free games and this is going to give you maybe eight to ten percent more performance than the 6700 XT but like I said the question of upgrading a little bit for a little bit more performance is something that you can just keep doing with PC Building to stick within our budget which I forgot to update this is 8.91 with the 36 DTI included for 400 we're not going to go up too much further from there again the remaining parts for a case you should be able to find a reasonable full-featured full-size ATX case for around 70 dollars you're looking for one that has good airflow and that includes fans a case side panel window might be nice as well and something that you appreciate the Aesthetics of is also good to go with the focus 2 is a popular one in this range and it's currently back ordered but they should have more in stock soon you're going to need some storage and here's where you can find some really great deals on storage that's much faster than a typical SATA drive the Kingston nv2 is not the fastest nvme SSD it does not have a dedicated dram cache which people like to point out in the comments every time I recommend this drive that said it's only 51 dollars for one terabyte one and in terms of PC gaming performance this isn't going to affect your gaming performance at all it's a slight impact on load times is all rounding things out we need a power supply power supply prices have gone up a little bit just recently but here's a 700 watt model for about 75 dollars and that is the level one build all parts that are compatible all parts will give you a really solid gaming experience especially if you pair it with a nice gaming Monitor and again all parts that are sticking within a budget of around 900 for the core components of the system but let's move on up to level two the level 2 Builder will wisely consider the full setup surrounding the gaming PC and key upgrades that might be worth investing in it's not just about the PC itself if you want an excellent PC gaming experience allocate at least two to three hundred dollars of your budget for an entry-level gaming Monitor and it's nice to say that in 2023 that amount of money will get you a lot in terms of specs for a gaming monitor a 27 inch sized 2560 by 1440 resolution monitor with at least a 144 Hertz refresh rate as well as variable refresh rate support via freesync and or g-sync compatibility and that will mean smooth frame rates for you while gaming even if your GPU dips below 144 frames per second to match that 144 Hertz plus refresh rate I have a few good examples of those gaming monitors here and again this will seem familiar to any of you who watched my video just a couple weeks ago but here for only 210 dollars is an HP gaming monitor that matches all of those requirements 27 inch 2560 by 1440 it is the 2021 model but you really can't beat that price this one even has a better than 144 Hertz refresh rate up to 165 Hertz and it is AMD freesync premium certified for variable refresh rate which means it will also work with Nvidia graphics cards because any monitor that supports AMD freesync will also be g-sync compatible here's another good potential gaming monitor to 270 dollars and this one's actually been discounted down from 300 just recently it's 170 Hertz 1440p same resolution includes a KVM switch which can be convenient and again freesync premium support which means g-sync will work as well it is also an IPS panel I would say stick with an IPS or VA panel there are TN or Twisted pneumatic panels out there as well which can hit higher refresh rates like 240 hertz but if you want good color depths as well I'd say go with the IPS or VA then here was my third recommendation the this one had actually bounced up in price when I checked it last night but it's back down again to 247 dollars this one's from LG part of their Ultra gear lineup 144 Hertz refresh rate really good response time on this one as well as good color depth and again this one has Nvidia g-sync as well as AMD freesync premium support now just like with graphics cards and other components with a monitor you might look at something be almost decided on making a purchase and then be like well what if I spent just a few dollars more so just to show an example of that we have the gigabyte m34wq which is a 34 inch Ultra wide so it's actually more horizontal resolution 3440 instead of 2560 but the same vertical resolution of 1440 this one's only 420 dollars so you're looking about 150 to 180 dollar premium over those other monitors we looked at but the ultra wide experience is quite nice now other than considering the gaming monitor that you're using the resolution the refresh rate and making sure you have a graphics card that will be able to push good frame rates at that resolution the level 2 gamer will also look at that level 1 Gamers setup and be like what are some key upgrades I could make here to give myself a better experience without spending too much money my recommendation looking at the level one build is absolutely to upgrade the memory first of all go from 16 gigs to a 32 gig kit 16 gigs is functional for gaming right now but it is something that's starting to get a little bit more outdated of course you can always add more storage more storage for gaming if you especially have a massive steam library or something like that you can of course look at higher end graphics cards but bear in mind that as you go upwards in the graphics card stack Beyond something like a 6700 XT or an RTX 3060 you might also start to consider upgrading your CPU and again the best CPU for gaming that you can slot into this particular system will be the 5800 X 3D that one's currently selling for about 330 dollars so about a 200 premium over this one but the level 2 gamer might also consider things like an upgrade path and future compatibility support and for that reason amd's am4 platform might start to look a little bit less appealing because it is a dead end platform there aren't going to be future CPUs launched for it am5 should have support through 2025 so investing in that platform might give you longer legs in terms of finding upgrades down the line so I went from our build one setup just shy of 900 to our build 2 setup and we are adding a pretty good amount of money about 400 in terms of price but we're upgrading several things first we're going with the ryzen 770 700x CPU that is an 8 core CPU instead of a six core and it's also the Next Generation versus the 5000 series so it's going to give you better performance both in gaming as well as in productivity tasks these x-series CPUs don't ship with coolers though so a level 2 Builder will probably opt for a decent quality air cooler yes liquid cooling is nice but it also introduces potential points of failure and it doesn't improve your performance that much versus a solid air cooler so around 40 to 50 dollars for an air cooler and for that I've chosen the Deep cool ak-500 for our graphics card I've stuck with the 3060 TI to keep the budget somewhat more reasonable although with the 7700 which is one of the top CPUs for gaming right now you could easily upgrade this to a 3070 a 3080 or Beyond just keep an eye on your power supply if you're upgrading your graphics card a GPU will typically have a recommended power supply at minimum and you want to make sure you have at least that for whatever GPU you're planning to upgrade to we've also increased our memory capacity by going with a 32 gig kit here but we're also paying more because it's ddr5 memory instead of ddr4 fortunately ddr5 prices have dropped a lot but still 138 dollars is more than you would pay for a comparable ddr4 kit motherboards on the new platform are also quite expensive even for just sort of a basic functionality one the gigabyte b650 Oris Elite meets those requirements but it still costs 230. beyond that the rest of the components you can stick with pretty much the same ones although again consider upgrading your PSU if you want to upgrade your graphics card too that brings our total to 1 314 dollars and that's not including your monitor your keyboard and mouse or other components that you might need so full setup with this build is probably going to get more towards the 1700 range so if you really are trying to stick to a budget I'd say opt for the level one build and maybe do a few of those key upgrades that I recommended along the way by the way I also dropped all My Level 2 build Hardware into PC part picker which is a website where you can choose parts and find retailers to buy them from with the 7700x the ak-500 the gigabyte v650 auris Elites g-skill flare X5 memory kit and this is another nice thing to go for the newer memory kits that are designed specifically for am5 will have Expo settings which are actually much better to use with the AMD ryzen 7000 series CPUs then memory that ships with Intel XMP settings there are a few prices in here that aren't quite accurate like the Kingston nv2 can be found for 51 dollars but the stock is sort of shaky which is why they're offering it from Newegg which is selling it for quite a bit more than that but we still have that 400 graphics card that 70-ish dollar case and again this power supply should be available for about 10 bucks cheaper but we're still in the 1300 to 1400 range total and then we get to level three and for level 3 we have to kind of split the Gap here because for one for level three let's just face it you're gonna need more money the level three components tend to cost a lot more because we're looking at higher end components that have more performance we're also looking at a lot of extras aesthetic features the level 3 builder will look at really high-end nice RGB filled builds like I have done here on my channel and they'll be like that's what I want and if you have the money for something like that because we're looking at probably four to five thousand dollars plus for the core components of the system then absolutely you should go for it there is a class of level three Builders who might opt to not actually build and just spend their exorbitant amounts of money on a pre-built from a quality pre-built manufacturer like say origin PC or main gear but if you want that premium PC gaming experience if you want that build that looks like a half PC half art project slash RGB Inferno and of course if you have the money to afford it and the patience to go through the build process which a lot of people like doing because it also gives you the confidence to perhaps go in and perform maintenance or repairs on that build in the future then you fall into that category of the level 3 builder but here it's beyond just compatibility and potential upgrades we're looking for a complete system that matches aesthetically and in particular when it comes to the aesthetic icing on the cake for PC building which is RGB lighting making sure you have an RGB lighting setup that is configurable without having crazy amounts of software installed is a good thing to think about from the beginning for the level 3 builder here's the build I've come up with it is around five to six thousand dollars although again the prices can vary somewhat after giving AMD a lot of love in this video so far so I've gone with an Intel build here with the 13900k yes there is now a 13900 KS which you can buy for 100 to 150 dollars more than this so even with this really high-end build there are ways you could still spend more money if you wanted to that set a 3900k is in the top three in terms of gaming CPUs right now so it's totally a good solution and yes if you were leaning towards an AMD build on am5 the CPU you'd probably want to opt for here is the 7950x3d but that doesn't launch until February 28th so who knows perhaps I will do a slight variation of this build when I actually go through is building a few of these systems which I intend to do over the course of this month with some new how to build tutorials but if you look at this list you might notice a few more than the core 7 or so components that I originally chose our CPU needs a cooler of course because the K skus and the excuse from Intel and AMD don't come with coolers these days and if you want both Peak Performance as well as Peak cost going with an all-in-one liquid cooler is a good choice but those can get pricey 200 to 300 and part of the reason this one is more pricey is because it has an LCD panel on the pump block do you need that does it improve your performance no it doesn't it's aesthetic but it is something that people are apparently willing to pay you know close to 300 for likewise our motherboard is an Asus Rog strix motherboard that costs 500 you could easily get away with a still very high-end motherboard for one to two hundred dollars cheaper than this but will it have our all the RGB elements that you want will it sync up nicely with the graphics card you've chosen which is also Asus will it work together with like the Corsair IQ software where Asus and Corsair have worked pretty closely together to make sure that their RGB lights on their components can be controlled by the other company's software and of course does it have again the functional things like really good power delivery for overclocking as well as tons of expansion m.2 slots and nice ease of use features like surface mounted power and reset buttons or a debug LED so those are the selling points and the reason someone might spend 500 bucks on a motherboard would I do that personally probably not I'd probably like I said recommend people get like a 300ish dollar motherboard but sometimes it's fun to pretend like we have unlimited money speaking of unlimited money we have a 64 gig memory kit ddr560 200 in this case it's going to cost about 440 for both of those I added more storage we have a really nice WD black sn850x which is a PCI gen 4x4 nvme SSD one of the fastest Gen 4 drives that are out there as well as two crucial P3 gen 3 drives which are still very fast in and of themselves so you get six terabytes of nvme SSD storage I'm again trying to stick to an ecosystem that I know Works in terms of lighting control so I've got the Corsair all in one liquid cooler Corsair Dominator memory and we've also got Corsair iq7000x RGB case and what the heck might as well go with the Corsair HX 1200 Platinum rated 1200 watt power supply this is another place where a level 3 builder might add some more components to the AIO that we chose has three fans included this case has three fans in the front and one in the rear but it's got space for three more so you could add some more Corsair fans here again that would cost you probably seventy two hundred dollars depending on the fans that you went with and the case is out of stock on NewEgg but it's available at the course here in Amazon lastly I wanted to mention this graphics card the RTX 4090 is pretty much the best graphics card that you can get right now for a PC gaming system and they should cost well I mean they should cost like 16 to 1700 because that's what the MSRP is Asus wants like a thousand dollars for these but they're currently out of stock in a lot of places so Amazon Marketplace seller is selling it for 600 markup I wouldn't recommend buying it there but that is why the total price here is a bit more than it should be you could actually get this set up for a little bit under 5K if you shopped around to make sure you were getting good prices it didn't pay the third party Marketplace markup so just to run the full gamut with my pie charts here's the pie chart for that high-end build again around five thousand dollars five thousand fifty one hundred and a big chunk of that is that graphics card around 45 to 50 percent but again note here that we're paying a lot of extra money for stuff that is not necessarily going to get us better performance in a lot of cases we're paying for RGB compatibility we're paying for components that fit within a certain family of products where you might have Alternatives that could give you equal performance in terms of gaming but might not match quite as well or might have the RGB lighting control that you're looking for if you want my professional opinion I would Point most people towards something between that level one build and the level two build right now it's still a pretty big jump up in price with not a whole lot of difference in performance to go with the new platform like am5 and to upgrade your memory to ddr5 and everything that goes along with that and there still is a lot of performance available on the am4 platform especially when you consider the potential upgrade to the 5800x 3D but part of the reason I wanted to lay out my monthly build series for this month which this video is part of is to provide a little bit of a contrast in terms of both the build experience the costs as well as the ultimate performance you get out of going with something that it sticks to a budget closer to a thousand dollars versus going all out and spending three four five thousand dollars or more as I mentioned earlier in the video I will be doing two builds this month or throughout the course of February and possibly early March I'm gonna build that budget system with a tutorial for beginners and then I'm going to build the high-end system to provide a contrast to all the extra steps you need to go through especially to connect up all the RGB lighting and hopefully that series that I have in the works as well as this video will help you make a wise decision in terms of what you want to invest your money in if you want to get into PC gaming in 2023 but that's all I have for today thank you guys so much for watching this video closing things to say hit the like button if you enjoyed this video for sure check out my store pulsehardware.net where you can buy Shirts Mugs pint glasses and more we have a sale going on on hoodies right now and of course subscribe to my YouTube channel because I have more videos coming out really soon including a new set of tutorials for how to build a gaming PC thanks again for watching guys and we'll see you in the next one foreign

Channel: Paul's Hardware

Views: 78,172

Keywords: computer, PC, PC gaming, personal computer, computer hardware, paulshardware, gaming pc parts list, choosing parts for a gaming pc, how to choose pc parts, picking pc parts, cpu, motherboard, case, psu, processor, power supply, memory, ram, ddr4, ddr5, graphics card, gpu, video card, ssd, hdd, hard drive, storage, m.2, nvme, ryzen, amd, intel, beginner, intermediate, expert

Id: ej1LrR-EtCE

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023