We all know that this is average, which makes this an average PC. It's actually
more than that. It's the most average PC made of only the most popular parts on
the Steam hardware survey. It's actually not the first time that we've done this
concept. It's been about 3 years, two GPU launches, and a Lionus beard shave
since the last time we were shocked to discover that the typical gamer's PC had
actually gotten worse. I have a feeling this year though it's going to be even
more interesting between Windows 10 reaching end of life, game developers
targeting higher minimum requirements, and an unprecedented market shift that
at first glance looks kind of interesting. But when you crunch the
numbers reveals a lot about what gamers are buying right now. So, let's take a
look at all these parts. Oh, and let's build the average PC and see if it's
enough for modern gaming. What is enough for our average games though is our
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Right away, we're off to a similar start. With six cores and a base clock
of 2.5 GHz, it aligns perfectly with the
information Valve makes publicly available on their survey. Which
actually brings me to my first little gripe with Valve survey. Guys, can you
please give us more indication of the generation of these CPUs? It would make
the hardware survey vastly more informative for its users and game
developers, which could know which six core CPU they're targeting. It's either
this one or some random Xeon chip from over a decade ago. The more likely
answer is it's actually AMD that's driving up these six core sales. But how
could that be when Intel is still out competing them? Well, this is actually
where the numbers get uh really interesting. See, Intel is still ahead
of the overall install base, but they've lost about 5% of their lead to AMD since
the last time we did this. On the surface, that looks pretty bad for team
blue. But if you break it down, it's
actually much worse. You see, the Steam hardware survey has been including PCs
that have been deployed for years, sometimes decades, which means that if
AMD is moving the needle in such a short period of time, they need to be out
selling Intel by substantially more than that 5%. And that seems to be the case
according to TechSpot at least who found that AMD was out selling Intel 3 to one
on Amazon. If you combine that with gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck
being almost exclusively AMD, you're getting a troubling trend on your hand
for Intel who will eventually lose their throne as the most average gaming CPU.
Very troubling indeed. Don't worry, that was actually empty. I slight to hand
you. Anyways, for parts that aren't covered on the Steam hardware survey,
such as the motherboard, we went to the top seller on Amazon. After sorting by
Intel and dismissing the are you sure prompt, we grabbed the Asus TU Z790 Plus
Wi-Fi. Compared to last time, boy are
people ever spending more on their motherboards. I mean, it's a better
board. It has more slots for expansion cards, more M.2 slots, more system
memory, not to mention more modern IO, including Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth. But
it's over $100 now. Jeez, people.
Speaking of more RAM slots, we're still only going to use two, but at least it gets an upgrade from DDR4 to DDR5.
Unfortunately, the most popular kit is this 5600 mega transfers uh, you know,
crucial stick. It's much slower than the DDR4 we actually used last time, and we
don't even get more capacity for our trouble. 32 gigs is climbing up the
ladder in the hardware survey, but 16 gigs is king for now. At least our
slowass RAM is only using two of those slots. The Thermalite Peerless Assassin
120SE is an amazing value. I don't even know if it's the top seller on Amazon
right now. I don't care. It's $35. You should buy it. Just installing the back
plate here. Works with AMD or Intel. In
our case, like we said, we're doing Intel. Moving on to storage. This is
actually another pain point for me, Valve. 1 TBTE plus. Okay. And making
matters worse is you guys don't even tell us what type of storage it is.
Sure, in most cases, the difference between a SATA and an MVME SSD is, you
know, almost non-existent today, but in the future, direct storage could be a
massive gamecher to help reduce load times. And if you don't share with game
developers what type of storage is being used on most gamers systems, they're
probably less inclined to utilize it. The one we're using today, which is
again the top seller on Amazon, has, holy cow, 10,000 plus people have bought
this in the last month. Well, it's a two TBTE 990 EVO Plus. We're going to put it
right in the top slot there. Oh, there we go. Now, we just need to
put our board in a case. But which one? You see, the Corsair 3500X is the top
seller, and it would be a very good choice. But what really caught my eye
was the Aqua 7 by Okinos. Have you ever
heard of Okinos? Neither have I. But
they were Amazon's top pick. And according to their website, which by the
way appears to be completely AI generated, from product descriptions to
customer testimonials and even their hours of operation, Okonos has been a
trusted name in the PC accessories industry, committed to delivering high
performance cooling solutions and innovative cable management. That's AI,
100% AI. At 90 bucks though, these two tempered
glass panels and the six included RGB fans are kind of hard to beat,
especially when Corsair wants anywhere between 20 and $40 for a single RGB fan.
Honestly, if you kind of like the Lean Lee O1 dynamic look, this honestly seems
pretty sick. Tons of intake for the ventilation for probably the power
supply at the bottom. And then it kind of has the bottom to top airflow design,
the wrapped glass look, and even your IO on the front here.
Feels very light though for a case. Actually have to see what building in it
is like.
Oh, it's actually got like an included fan hub as well.
Very nice. Oh man, once this glass is off though, I can really tell this thing
weighs absolutely nothing. This weighs like 2 lb.
All righty. Well, let's build in it. I didn't actually check the clearance if
this cooler is going to fit. Uh I really hope it does.
Oh boy. Oh yeah, it looks like it will. All righty. One thing I just got to as I
did my other screws, I'm getting ready to do these bottom three. These fans are
kind of in the way of reaching these bottom screws.
might be a little bit annoying. We'll see if we can actually get them in here.
Uh, you know what? You can probably make it
work, but it's something to be considerate about.
A bigger issue is this slot is now actually unusable if you decide to keep
these fans in. Getting those bottom headers plugged in is probably also
going to be a pain. We'll have to see here. We should wire
everything up though, I guess, first. So, let's get our power supply, which in
this case, we ended up with something that's probably a bit overkill for our
system. The Corsair RM1000X. I'm not complaining though. It's a
quality, fully modular unit that, according to our Labs teams, actually
exceeds its rated efficiency at low loads. Plus, it's got a lot of headroom
if you decide to install a beefier GPU.
Definitely not a lot of managing room back here. There's our PCIe power. I
guess we should install the GPU. Which brings us to the star of the show, the
RTX 3060.
Specifically, the 8 gig version. Okay, this is actually a lot better than
the last time we did a Steam Average PC cuz that GPU got a downgrade during the
great GPU shortage. Plus, that GPU did not have a lot of modern features
presented on these newer cards, specifically like DLSS resolution
upscaling or even ray tracing. It's not powerful enough that I would actually
turn ray tracing on, especially in demanding titles. But, it's still a very
competent GPU. You should just try to get the 12 GB version if you're
considering getting one of these today. This might be kind of a bowed out side
panel. There's not a ton of cable management room here. Sometimes you got
to give it the old.
Dang it. Oh yeah, she's a little bowed. Wow. It's
not a bad looking system. The white GPU is a little bit of an eyesore. I should
have gone with an all black GPU, but whatever. Let's fire it up. With the
average PC complete, we just have a few finishing touches. The only information
we have on monitors is actually the resolution. So, for our setup, we're
rocking the 1080p lifestyle. 1440p has
gained about 8% share since the last time we did this, but it is still miles
away from becoming the most common gaming resolution. One stat that I would
love to see in the future would be the refresh rate, cuz I have a feeling that
more and more users are actually switching to higher refresh rate displays now that you can get a 165 Hz
monitor for as little as a hundred bucks. But Valve doesn't include that
information yet. Valve,
let's turn the computer on. As for our final survey stat, we just need an
operating system. And it looks like 2025 is still the year of the Windows
desktop. But hey, at least it's Windows 11 now, thanks to Microsoft killing
Windows 10. Neat. Linux has actually
made a little bit of progress towards gaming domination. But if you were
expecting Tux to ride in like this, that 1% gain, most likely due to products
like the Steam Deck, is going to come as a disappointment. I know I said I wasn't
going to turn RTX on this card, but I kind of want to see how it handles Indiana Jones. All right. So, we're on
native 1080p, no upscaling, no frame gen, very minimal RTX settings, and
we're on medium to low, but in our intro
scene here, we're getting about 75
average FPS, and it's not dropping below
60 in our 1%. Man, at any point in this
game, if you just like pause and stand still, like everything looks fantastic.
again, especially since we're not doing any sort of DLSS upscaling or anything.
But now it's a 30 series card, so now you'd have access to it. We should try
something else, though. Let's try the new Doom. Just came out like last week
at at the time of filming. Doom Dark Ages. It's kind of averaged out at 50
average FPS, and that's my 1% lows. I mean, 60 is what I would call bare
minimum nowadays. But hey, you know what? We have access
to DLSS. I am going to turn it on just
because I want to do a sanity check. And I am immediately
at about 20 FPS higher, 70 average FPS,
65 in my 1% lows. But I want to see what
some other people think about the Steam average PC. I'll play games even if
they're not like, you know, 120. I'm I'm chilling if it's at 50. And this so far
looks really playable, at least to me. Is this like the hardest part in the
game to like run at the beginning with all the foliage? Yeah, it's very
physically demanding. Yeah. So, I mean, if this is the hardest part of the game, I'd imagine the rest of it I'd be more
than happy to play it like this. Probably runs better than my home PC.
It's chugging, right? Because the moment I think we're entering a more densely
populated area where like there's so much more light refracting off the
leaves and stuff like that, too. It fullon stopped for a bit. What is going
on? What? That was the ultimate ray tracing
experience. Yeah. So, you see like the environment
is pretty responsive, but yeah, I I go here and it's like, oh, all the rays.
God, is that you? Is this a playable experience? It is a playable experience,
especially a game like this. It's a bit of a more relaxed cinematic experience.
It looks pretty soft. It doesn't look bad, but it definitely looks low
resolution. And it might not help that this monitor is a really crappy old
monitor. As far as average computers go,
if this is what the average gamer has, not so bad. I can definitely tell some
of the settings are down. Like the shading of the foliage is pretty
unremarkable. But I also think we're in
this weird era of PC gaming where we're
so obsessed with fidelity and it's like it doesn't freaking matter. Just turn
that part of your brain off and just enjoy the art. Would you be happy with
this gaming experience? I would be fine with this gaming experience. If you're
playing it at these settings, uh, and you're unable to have fun, that's a you
problem, man. That's that is not the game's problem. Give us your experience
on Doom. I mean, it runs better than Indiana Jones, but it's that hard. I
mean, I think it's a good sign that I'm just like kind of locking in and just
like, oh, I'm just gaming. This is fun. No problems. You know, basically, if I
didn't have frame view in the top left, I'd just be happy, you know? Yeah. Hey,
this is feeling good. If I was like, "Hey, this is the PC you're going to
game with." I'd make Doom. I'd be like, "Okay, cool. I can play Doom on this." And then I would adjust my settings
accordingly. Um, I haven't hit any stuttering. Like, I'm not blaming any
missed shots on the hardware yet yet.
The performance is totally good. This is absolutely playable. Uh, Doom is a game
that I'd like to see above 100 frames, but I know that this one has mandatory
rate tracing stuff, so that's kind of unrealistic on a budget system. This is
an adequate experience. It looks pretty good. It plays well. The responsiveness
is good. It's certainly not getting the in the way of my fun. Is it uh a
perfectly optimized experience for me? Probably not. I'm going to adjust one
thing to settings. I'm not going to tell you what I'm adjusting. Oh, we're back.
The number is higher in the top left. Yes, I made a settings change to give
you more FPS. I want you to tell me, does it feel better, worse, the same?
How do you feel? Um, it definitely feels like smoother. Would you play with this
setting versus what you just played with? I'd probably play on this setting
just because so far all that I notice is that it's smoother and so I would
definitely just take those frames unless there's something else that I'm missing
out on. But right now it just it feels like a good experience. Oh, it does feel
a little little worse. Okay. Even though you have higher
FPS right now, it just feels chunk like
choppier a little bit. Like I'm looking at this wall with some particles. moment
I look at these enemies, I can tell there's a discernable difference here in
terms of how the screen how I'm perceiving the screen, right? So, yeah.
Yeah, it's a little too much. They uh I like upscaling, but this every raw piece
of data that they have is too low res that it even with like the the
sophisticated upscaling, it still looks very low detail. Is it nice to be above
100 frames? Sure. But it's I think this
is a little bit too much. Like even that uh animation on the screen, I can see
the the the resolution of the sprite or
whatever that was. I want you to guess the price in US. Uh
I could see it for not going any more than a grand. Um probably from the 800
$800 to $1,000 USD range.
700 US, maybe around two grand US. It's way
overpriced. Oh, way over. Yeah, you're playing high on the safe end cuz you
don't want to go under. It was $1,250. This This performs better than what I
have at home. And so for that price point and it's cheaper, so that's
amazing. It's $1250. Oh wow. To buy all
the parts right now, this config, this exact computer, it's a little bit on the
expensive side. Wow. With that GPU in it? Yes. 1250.
Are youing kidding me? That is a $200 plus dollar motherboard and they are
selling 10,000 of them a month on Amazon. People, if you're watching this
video, go watch some of our videos on how to build a budget system for $1250.
You could be having 4K gaming, man. You could you could have such a better
experience than this. This is totally adequate if you spent like $400 on a
used computer. Like that would be like that's pretty good. This is ridiculous.
This is I'm so upset that it costs this much money.
What a ripoff. Well, there it is. The 2025 average PC.
It's a reasonable budget, and I think most people would be okay with this
gaming experience, even in fairly demanding modern games. However, that
doesn't mean it's the best choice for your money. You could also check out
this parts list which we'll have linked below that includes double the RAM, a
better CPU, and a better GPU for about the same price. I think the biggest
takeaway this year is actually for Valve. The Steam hardware survey is an
amazing tool, but in its current form, it's not as useful as it could be. To
correctly guide game developers, it needs to provide more information on the
CPUs, give more details about user storage, and I think it could also stand
to be updated to tell us more about the displays that gamers are using. YouTube,
for instance, has seen a huge trend towards living room viewing. Is a
similar thing happening in PC gaming? Who the [ __ ] knows? What I do know,
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your day. If you guys enjoyed this video and are interested in grabbing any of
the parts we featured today, we're going to have them all linked below, but you
should also go back and see the last time we did this, which I think was in
Oh my god. 2022, 2021, just to see how
much it's changed.