- You know, the script calls for me to say this isn't running very
well, but it's fine. We love building, benchmarking, and gaming on the kinds of showcase
one-percenter machines that most people can only ever dream of, but as much fun as that is, the vast majority of those rigs actually get torn down for
reuse in future videos, because even for us, daily
driving that kind of hardware, it's just not cost-effective or practical. It also kinda gives PC gaming a bad image as something that only
the elite can afford, when that couldn't be
farther from the truth. We've built competent
esports gaming machines at great prices and even for
under $100 on this channel, and you can too if you're
willing to make some compromises. Of course, the kinds of machines that
the average gamer is running are somewhere between potato
and dream battle station. How do we know this? Well, the monthly Steam hardware survey, which tells us exactly which PC gaming hardware
is the most popular. So with its help we built the most popular
gaming PC on the planet and we're gonna show you guys exactly how much it would
cost you to build it and what kind of
performance you can expect. And today's video is
brought to you by Corsair. The Corsair iCUE 5000X RGB
tempered glass smart case features their RapidRoute
cable management system, smart RGB out of the box, and more. Check it out at the link down below. (upbeat music) That's right, we've gone one: a quad-core Core i7 4770K. According to the Steam hardware survey, 42.94% of you are rocking
four-core processors, with 18.03% of you running
a hyperthreaded model like this one between 3.3
and 3.69 gigahertz, nice. It turns out then that as much as we all
love Ryzen right now, AMD couldn't possibly even manufacture enough of these things to put a dent in Intel's years of dominance, and as of January 2021, Team Blue still owns
72% of the install base. Now, that number is shifting, and fast. Intel is down almost 10% since December, but it's gonna take time. Since motherboard choice
shouldn't impact performance much, we grabbed a Z87I-Deluxe from Asus that was lying around on a shelf. This combo should put us in the top range of average CPU performance
according to the survey. It was important for us to find something with hyperthreading since just shy of 20% of
you apparently do have it. It's kind of amazing how long this chip has kept its relevance. And we actually checked out some reviews on Newegg and PCPartPicker
leading up to this video, and it's mostly super positive. Like, even as recently
as a couple of years ago. In the interest of strictly adhering to the specs in the Steam hardware survey, we're unfortunately gonna
be running this puppy at stock speed. But lots of users of this CPU report running it at 4.2, 4.3, or even 4.4 gigahertz for years at a time. That's not too shabby for a CPU that's older than our new
social media coordinator. Memory was a surprising one for me. The average gamer out there,
a whopping 43.85% of you, is running 16 gigs of system memory. Not bad! So we picked up two 8-gig sticks of good, old-fashioned DDR3 1866. This is actually a great
middle ground today. You can still squeeze by with 8 gigs, but most triple-A games are
recommending 16 gigs or more and a lot of other desktop applications can also benefit from more RAM. We're gonna go ahead and assume that you guys are running your
memory in dual-channel mode and install it that way. You are running in
dual-channel mode, right? Now, a few things the
survey doesn't mention include the case, power supply, cooler, and other peripherals, so we went with some Amazon bestsellers that I'm sure most of you will recognize. We've got the NZXT H510, a Hyper 212 EVO V2, and a Corsair CX550 power supply. All of them are tried-and-true classics and all of them should fit comfortably within most people's budgets. That is, unlike our solid-gold
Xbox controller. Ha ha! Get subscribed so you
don't miss those videos. That is, like, the
emptiest-looking computer. Now it's time for what you
guys all crave: the GPU. Thing is, as much as we may
all lust after ray tracing, you might surprised to learn that the top ray tracing-capable card was the RTX 2060 in fifth
place with only 3.6% share. Pretty much every current card, then, that is capable of delivering a smooth ray-traced gaming experience is conspicuously absent. The 3070 isn't even on the list and the 3080 maintains
a slim .6% market share. So it ended up being a pretty close race with the GTX 1060
leading the pack at 9.4%. Okay. Get outta here. (Linus grunts) We've gone with the 6-gig model since that's how much
VRAM 23.5% of you have, and with 66.7% of you
running 1080p displays, this should be more than good enough. All that remains is storage. On average you guys are running over one terabyte of storage. It didn't specify whether it's
solid state or mechanical, so we're putting an SSD in here just to make our benchmarking
run a little bit faster. And that's it. Ain't she a beauty? Looks to me like a lean,
mean Steam machine. Or at least an LTT Steam
game-playing machine, since that whole Steam Machine idea totally, unexpectedly, fizzled and died. Let's go ahead and fire her up. But what games should we play? How 'bout the top five
games on Steam? All right. So we got "CS:GO," "Dota 2,"
"PUBG," "Apex Legends," and "Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer"? Wait. Is that really "Garry's Mod" and "Half-Life 2:
Deathmatch" in fifth place? Did this thing take us back in time? To a time when there was no
LTT underwear on lttstore.com? Nope. They're definitely there. Go check 'em out at the link below. As it turns out, most
Source mods running on Steam contribute to this inflated number, including the "GTA V"
community with the FiveM mod. So "Team Fortress 2" in sixth place? Let's go with that. Who put this here? Whee! Okay, I'm gonna fight this guy. Honestly, it's running pretty darn well. We're at 80, 90 FPS,
dropping as low as 70, but this is totally an
acceptable gameplay experience. Now you might've noticed the, ah, details of the game are
lookin' a little basic. That's on purpose. That's
so that we get enough FPS. How have I not... Dang it. Aw, I'm knocked... I'm dead. I'm still a winner
'cause the game ran okay. And overall, the average Steam gamer
with a machine like this is having a pretty smooth experience. Only "Apex Legends" and
"PUBG" fell to 60-FPS lows, with most of these competitive titles here managing closer to 100 FPS with reasonably consistent frame times. Now, that's not to say that these games wouldn't benefit from a faster machine. We did a video back in 2019 demonstrating the competitive advantage of running at higher FPS, even if you don't have a
high-refresh rate monitor, since your eyes will get
more up-to-date information than your competitors'. And "CS:GO" was an example of a situation where that difference is quite noticeable. It's really at its best when you can crank out over 200, 300 FPS. The competency of our... Competence? Whatever. Of our Steam PC shouldn't
be that surprising though, I guess. Most of these games are actually
from around the same era. So to kick things up a notch
we're heading over to Twitch to see if we could use this thing to play along with our favorite streamers. We didn't plan on this part of the video, but it is an interesting point to make. Sometimes your CPU can
actually be a bottleneck when it comes to downloading
and installing games. But our 4770K is actually
keeping up pretty nicely with a 107-megabyte-per-second download of "CoD: Warzone" from Battle.net, so... Oh yeah, it's at 20, 30% CPU usage. Not bad. Really? They make you watch a cutscene. See, every other game
knows not to do this. Okay, here we go. Whee! Let's see if I can manage to stay alive slightly longer than last time. You know, the script calls for me to say this isn't running very
well, but it's fine. Definitely a little chuggier
and a little more tear-y than what we looked at before,
but actually looks not bad. Okay, that's a lot of tearing right there. When I was a kid I'd have been absolutely elated to have anything over 60 FPS regardless of whether I had to
smear Vaseline on the screen for that free anti-aliasing. As for the rest of our games, you know, being on older hardware really
isn't the end of the world. "Fortnite" was only a little rough when flying in on the Battle Bus, and even "GTA V" was able to
run at plenty of FPS by default and even looked pretty decent if we didn't mind losing a
little bit of frame rate. So there are a couple
of lessons here for us, with the biggest one being that all it takes to
join the PC master race is an interest in computers, and the gatekeepers who
fawn over brand-new hardware and put down anything less
than the latest and greatest can go suck an egg. Because unless you're trying to run brand-new triple-A games
on high or ultra settings, like "Cyberpunk," "The Medium,"
or "Microsoft Flight Sim," you can have a really
solid gaming experience with hardware like this. And the best part is that
with some savvy eBay-ing you can build a machine like this, or upgrade a non-gaming machine
that you get your hands on, for anywhere from 750 to $1,300. Or maybe even less if you're willing to get a little creative with a Dremel to fit things together. With that said, a lot of this hardware is
starting to show its age, and if you upgraded you'd
definitely appreciate the smoother animations and
additional image quality, especially in anything fast-paced. So there you have it,
ladies and gentlemen, the average Steam hardware survey PC. Are any of you guys out there running any of these components? Of course you are. Are you still happy with them, or are you ready for an upgrade? Let us know in the comments below. Do you need to create a beautiful website without the hassle? Check out Squarespace. Their all-in-one platform makes it easy to get up and running quickly. They have award-winning templates that you can use as starting points for a wide range of projects, and if you ever need additional help Squarespace also offers webinars, a full series of help guides, or you can even contact
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inventory and orders. So head to squarespace.com/LTT to get 10% off your first purchase. And if you liked this video and you're looking to
build something like it, check out the Dell office PC that I upgraded to run
"Valorant" a few months back. It's got some really
great tips in that video for optimizing OptiPlex gamer builds, as we like to call them.
This video is depressing honestly, if hardware prices keep at this rate PC gaming will be dead inside of 10 years.
For 1300$ you could buy a ps5 / xbox and a 4k display and then you could play the latest AAA games at 4k 60fps. Hell if you already have a 4k display go ahead and buy both consoles and have money left over for games and accessories.
The days of spending a few hundred dollars more than a console but getting a machine that crushes it are gone, now you can spend double the price of one for a machine that is much worse - why bother?
And I’m a bit disappointed that Linus didn’t point out the obvious that the reason those specs are the “average” specs today isn’t because that’s what people are building today but rather because it’s what people were building 6 years ago and nobody can afford to upgrade because the price of single pieces of hardware now exceed what would have been an entire budget back then.
Who put this here?