It’s tough to beat this $1200 Gaming PC

advising people on what PC parts to buy is kind of my job so welcome and thanks for joining me today as I get down to business it would be PC Gamer approaches me holding roughly twelve hundred dollars Cold Hard Cash do I beat them up and take their money well I think about it but I decide to play the long game and lure them into my competence first by providing them with this Tastefully manicured PC build today's video is brought to you by the Corsair Xenia on Flex OLED gaming monitor which can bend from completely flat up to 800 R curvature but there's a lot more to this display which features an ultra wide 45 inch 3440x1440 panel with a 240 hertz refresh rate and .03 millisecond grade degree response time the spec list also includes Nvidia g-sync compatibility AMD freesync premium certification Auto HDR with up to 1000 nit brightness 99 DCI P3 color gamut coverage a sophisticated burn-in prevention system and an integrated stand with a range of connectivity click the sponsor Link in the video description for more on the Corsair Xenia on Flex a few notes before I get started February was a bit of a rebuilding month for me so I didn't get quite as far along with the projects that I had planned that said I have lots planned in March several builds as well as that how to build a PC Series so make sure to subscribe to my channel if you're not already so you can get informed when those videos go live also this monthly series is about recommending PC parts for people who might be building so I'm going over a parts list today if you'd like to see me actually build a system or guide you through one with a tutorial check out The Beginner's Guide playlist which is also linked in the description along with all the components that I'm talking about today but here's my parts list it's about twelve hundred dollars if you'd like a tldr that's pretty much it and again this is all Linked In The Video subscription why am I just doing one system today sometimes I recommend two builds or three builds but since last month I did sort of a entry level build and a high-end build today I'm sort of sticking right in the middle kind of in The Sweet Spot and I'm also going to address the downside of PC building right now which is the graphics card pricing is still pretty bad and especially if you're looking for something in the sweet spot right in the middle your options are somewhat limited over on the CPU side of things we actually have have maybe too many options and companies like AMD and Intel keep launching better CPUs for gaming such as the 7950x3d CPU that I reviewed last week however this cost 700 and if there has been one constant in all the CPU content that I've done in the past few months it's that people keep saying you know what I sure am glad I bought that 5800 X 3D when I did and that's because when it comes to bang for your buck especially if you're focusing on gaming performance with your PC build the 5800 X 3D at about 300 to 330 dollars is really tough to beat it can hang out and perform alongside the likes of the 12900k and 13900k from Intel which are much more expensive as well as CPUs from amd's am5 lineup going from the 7700x all the way up to the 7950x and 7950x3d it's not necessarily going to be faster than those but it hangs with them and it really begs the question why spend all that extra money on the latest and greatest platform if you can get something that gives you 90 to 90 percent of that performance for way less cash or should I say more cash since this has 3D V cache technology I I've been making a lot of cash jokes lately so let's go down our list but not this list here where everything is just laid out for you with a grand total but this list here which has a total that's a lot less money because I've left the GPU out of it for now also I'm featuring a pie chart because pie charts are just awesome where you can see a breakdown of what percentage of the total amount is spent on which component now please note that a base price of about 800 without a graphics card is a step up from the budget systems that I've been recommending for am4 in the past month or two the core components for those systems without a graphics card are going to cost maybe five to six hundred dollars and then you can drop into GPU for about three hundred dollars giving yourself a nice balance system for about nine hundred dollars but the mo for this build was different because we're going with the 5800 X 3D this CPU can handle really high-end gpus without sacrificing much performance so because of that I veered a little bit more towards again that mid-range price and the total today of 1200-ish dollars so first I'm going to run down the component choices available in here with a few alternatives for you and and then I will focus on gpus and GPU pricing where I've also made a chart here sort of listing them for you so you can take a quick look right now but I'll get into more detail on this in just a moment the 5800x 3D price can fluctuate somewhat look for a price between 300 kind of on the low end that's about the cheapest I've seen it to around 330 bucks is a price that you can usually find it pretty easily 322 dollars is what it's selling for right now directly on Amazon but do note that the 5800x 3D does not ship with a CPU Cooler so you can't rely on a stock cooler like you can with say the budget 5600 for example I have paired it with the thermal rate silver sole 135 34. this one's all black and is also a quite nice cooler for a motherboard the great thing about buying am4 is that they're a much cheaper motherboard options you're probably going to spend around 200 for a motherboard for am5 or to get a decent LGA 1700 board but for about 140 to 150 bucks there are quite a few options for the am4 platform do note that this platform is end of life there are no new CPUs launching for it so beyond the 5800 X 3D you have of the 5950x 3D maybe that has more cores but the 5800x 3D is really the best gaming CPU on this platform but the trade-off is saving so you've got the Asus Prime b550 plus right here for 140 msi's b550-a Pro I've chosen these boards because it includes some higher end features like a USB 3.2 Gen 2 front panel connector and they all have good enough power delivery for even the higher end ryzen 5000 series CPUs then here's the board that I'm actually planning to build with which is the gigabyte b550 gaming xv2 this one's also 150 dollar board sold out on neweg right now but you can't find it on a few other retailers for memory you can get by with a 16 gig kit however I think this would be cutting yourself a little bit short for this caliber of build I'd say spend another 30 to 35 dollars and get yourself a 32 gig kit here's a g-sco rip jobs 5 kit That's rated for 3600 speed and it is cast latency 18. you can get some very Speedy 3600 speed ddr4 kits that are CL 16 but you have to spend about 20 dollars more on that so it's not quite worth the premium in my personal opinion for a gaming system for a case again you can get by with about a 7 70 case however my intent is to actually build in the NZXT h510 flow matte white but apart from this being a reasonably priced case with good airflow part of the reason I got it was it has that USB 3.2 Gen 2 type c Port up front but cases are very flexible and as long as you're getting a full-size ATX case that can fit the components that has clearance enough for the cooler and that appeals to you with whatever design aesthetic it's going with you can totally swap out the case in this build you will need some storage the really nice thing about PC components right now is the nvme storage prices for one terabyte drives are down to about fifty dollars for a decent starter one I recommended the Kingston nv2 quite a few times we've also got the team group mp33 down here for about a dollar less but pick your poison and then there's a power supply I've opted for a 750 watt power supply because the graphics cards I'm potentially pairing with this build are a little bit higher end fortunately a 750 watt power supply should be able to handle any of the graphics cards I'm showing you guys today but PSU prices are a little bit higher than they have been historically so you're going to need to spend about 70 to 80 dollars for a 750 watt 80 plus bronze unit this one is partially modular which is nice and it has all flat black cables another power supply option the silver Stone essential et750-b about 80 for this one it is not partially modular but it has again all flat black ribbon style cables which I find nice for cable management as well as looks and Silverstone of course is one of those reputable power supply companies that makes power supplies that don't suck incidentally I was picking up components for the actual build and I scooped up a Cooler Master watt 750 watt unit for about the same price about 75 dollars that was a couple weeks ago and the price is not the same anymore but I have linked it in the description as well so that covers all the components again except for the graphics card and we're coming in at just shot of 800 so far here are the current lowest prices for each of these gpus that you can actually just buy as of the beginning of March 2023 over on the Nvidia side on the left and the AMD Radeon side on the right if you're looking around the 350 dollar price range you can get an RTX 3060 12 gig on the AMD side and you can get on rx6700 XT 12 gig over on the AMD side note that all of the AMD cards as compared by price to the Nvidia Alternatives have notably better performance in terms of raw frame rates versus Nvidia Nvidia has a bit of a price premium for their cards they built up that reputation over a long period of time so I don't blame anyone who wants to go with an Nvidia graphics card just note that unless you're taking advantage of the Nvidia specific features like dlss or unless you're playing a game that specifically favors in video graphics cards you're probably going to be better off going with an AMD Radeon card simply because you're going to get anywhere from five to twenty percent more frames out of that card again depending on the settings you're playing with and what game you're playing with but ballpark so okay the 6700 XT for 360 dollars actually a very nice price for that card down in this range they also have the 6750 XT 12 gig for only about 50 bucks more at 410 and that one's going up against the RTX 3060 TI 8 gig and incidentally this is probably the Nvidia card that I would recommend right now for about 420ish dollars these are down to 400 bucks last month prices crept up just a little bit which kind of sucks but this is still kind of the bang for your buck option on the Nvidia side or the 3078 gig the price on this one has been trickling down very very slowly and you should note that the MSRP for the 3078 gig is 500 the 540 bucks for a reasonably built adding board partner model isn't too bad beyond that you have the 3070 TI 8 gig which is about 630 bucks right now again pretty steep but not too much more than the MSRP and then you have the 4070 TI 12 gig and that's the next generation of cards those are currently going for about 800 bucks at the cheapest but I found one for 820 that you could actually add to cart on the AMD side once you get past the 6700 XD and 6750 XT things escalate fairly quickly for 485 you got the 6800 16 gig for 560. you got the 6800 XT 16 gig for 650 you got the 6900 XT 16 gig just 50 bucks more for 6950 XD 16 gig or then again if you go up to the 800 range you get to the current generation Parts the stuff that just launched in the past few months and there you have a 7900 xt20 gig for 800 so if we just drop in the RTX 3060 TI 8 gig there for 420 dollars you can see our total which is what I sort of started off with at about 1 210 but like I said just about any of these graphics cards can be dropped into the system and even for the higher end ones you wouldn't even necessarily need to change the power supply so if you go team red you can get yourself a little bit more raw performance in terms of frame rates and even drop the price by 10 bucks a 6816 gig brings the price up to 12.75 if we went for an RTX 3078 gig for 540 our price becomes one thousand three hundred and thirty dollars and we're spending about 40 percent of this price on the GPU so I'm not going to plug in each and every one of these numbers but you're typically going to see about a 100 price difference between the different tiers of gpus so when it's less than that like going from the 3070 to the 3070 TI for example it might seem a little bit more tantalizing and it climbs and climbs until you get up to something like the 4070 TI 12 gig where now you're spending more than half of the budget for the system them on just the graphics card but again the nice thing about this build with the 5800x 3D is you have that kind of base price of around 800 for the components without the GPU and then you can decide how much you have left over for that key component of dropping the graphics card into the system as well but there you have it guys for anyone who is not going to be spending two thousand dollars plus on a new gaming PC right now this is absolutely what I would recommend them in terms of bang for the buck and a price sits around the 1200 to maybe fourteen hundred dollars range depending on what graphics card you go with again all the parts I talked about today are linked in the video subscription so be sure to check that out while you're down there you can hit the Thumbs Up Button if you enjoyed this video you can subscribe to my channel if you'd like to see more videos like this coming at you really soon thanks again for watching guys and we'll see you in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: Paul's Hardware

Views: 259,249

Keywords: computer, PC, PC gaming, personal computer, computer hardware, paulshardware, how to build a gaming pc, building a gaming pc in 2023, 2023, 2560x1440, gaming monitor, best gaming monitor, budget gaming, budget pc gaming, full pc gaming setup, mouse, keyboard, monitor, pc gaming starter pack, 5800X3D, 5800X3D Build, 5800x3d bang for the buck, bang for the buck gaming pc, am4, RTX 3060, rtx 3060 Ti, rtx 3070, rtx 3070 ti, rx 6700 xt, rx 6800, rx 6800 xt, $1200 gaming pc

Id: 7jwBtyFEgi0

Length: 11min 48sec (708 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 08 2023