4 years ago, we went to the local Best
Buy and bought whatever gaming PC the rep recommended in our price point. We
were expecting disappointment, but ended up pleasantly surprised by how
competitive their offering was. But it's a new decade, and there's been plenty of
time for them to bung things up since then. So, we decided to take another
swing at it and see what your hard-earned dollars can get you from the
folks over at Best Buy. iixits mahi
driver kit includes their quarterinch aluminum screwdriver handle with a
magnetic bit socket nurled grip and swivel top and 48 driver bits. Check it
out at the link below.
Now, to keep our test somewhat controlled and in the spirit of our last
attempt, we needed to send someone with limited gaming PC knowledge and who
wouldn't be immediately recognized. So, we enlisted special agent Janice to
crack the case. Buy the case. A PC case that is with a
with there's a PC. Anyways, you get the point. Her mission was simple. Buy a
system for her imaginary little brother with a budget of around $1,000. And in
case she runs into a very inexperienced Best Buy staffer, to make sure the
system has a graphics card at the very least. You might recall that last time
around without Ivon's quick thinking, we would have been left with a gaming PC
that didn't have a graphics card, which isn't much use to anyone. Upon arrival
to our local Best Buy's computer section, Special Agent Janice was pretty
much immediately helped by a pretty knowledgeable staff member. He walked
her through, in layman's terms, the performance benefits of having an SSD
over a standard hard drive and mentioned that her little brother might actually
prefer an i7 over an i5, but that it wouldn't necessarily make a huge
difference just for gaming. The sales associate also made sure to clarify any
gaming PC he would try to sell her had a GPU and was in stock. Very important.
Overall, the experience was actually really solid and a huge step up from
last time where we actually had to go to three different stores just to buy the
system the first store recommended and reserved for us. GG, Best Buy. But your
mileage may vary. So, what did we end up with? I'll be honest, when I first saw
the box, my first thought was, "Oh no,
we ended up with an Optiplex." But after cracking it open, things started to look
up. I present to you the Dell G55090
gaming desktop, which we spent a cool $929
on before tax. Might I say, she sure is
a be. Just like this shirt from ltdstore.com.
Jokes aside, what really matters is what's inside in life and in PCs. In the
configuration we bought, the G5 features an Intel Core i5 9400 6core processor
clocked at a cool 2.9 GHz with a turbo of 4.1. It's paired with a single stick
of 8 GB 2666 MHz DDR4, meaning you're
running in single channel mode, but at least the proprietary AF H370 Dell
motherboard in this system has four slots, so that's an easy enough upgrade
if your budget allows. The rest of the board is pretty lackluster with no video
outputs despite our CPU being equipped with integrated graphics. On the back
are four USB 3.1 and two USB 2.0 ports,
gigabit Ethernet, and your standard audio jacks. Up front is a pretty
similar story. Back inside, we find a total of three PCIe slots, an integrated
Aquantia AC Wi-Fi card, precisely enough
SATA ports to fill this specific case, and a single M.2 slot. I also noticed
the board doesn't have a 24 pin ATX power connector. They instead opted for
a proprietary six pin connection with SATA power coming from a header on the
board. So, good luck upgrading the power supply without also getting an entirely
new case and motherboard. Thanks for the unnecessary engineering, Dell. Now,
let's get back to that M.2 slot for a sec because in it is one of the cutest
little NVMe drives I've ever seen. This
little nugget is a DRAMless 512 GB
Toshiba TLC NVMe SSD. Normally, we
recommend against DRAMless SSDs as both performance and write endurance or the
longevity of the drive can be a lot worse without a cache. You can check out
this tech wiki for more info on that. However, as Lionus mentioned in a recent
video, this SSD makes use of a cool technique called host memory buffer, or
HMBB for short, allowing it to ask the computer's processor if some of the
regular system memory can be used as a cache instead, which for general
consumer use does help mitigate these issues. As for the graphics card, our
configuration comes equipped with an OEM single fan NVIDIA GTX 1660. So, nothing
special there except you do at least get the new Turing Envank encoding chip on
this card. So, this rig should actually be pretty solid for streaming.
Bafflingly though, the case is limited to a single 80mm exhaust fan for
cooling. I mean, does a bigger punch out really cost that much more, guys? And
unsurprisingly, it's fitted with a basement tier 360 W Dell power supply.
So, as for performance, it actually seems like it should be okay. We've got
six decently clocked Intel cores, a modern NVIDIA GPU, and a pretty solid
SSD. I would have liked to see 16 gigs of dual channel RAM in 2020, and this
tier of power supply wouldn't be acceptable in a custom rig. But this is
a Dell pre-built, and you get what you pay for, or do you? To find out, we
fired up Amazon to see if we could build the same thing for less money. Specking
everything as close as we could while still including Windows 10 Home Edition,
a crappy keyboard and mouse, AC Wi-Fi, and the labor to have someone like
MicroEnter build it for you. Wow. It turns out you would end up spending
nearly $100 more than Best Buy's price for the G5. Now, you do end up with some
creature comforts, like easier upgradability thanks to non-proprietary
parts, a better power supply, and more SATA connections, but it's still pretty
dang hard to be competitive with OEMs on pre-built systems due to the cost
benefit they have thanks to bulk part ordering, as well as the vastly
discounted Windows pricing Microsoft offers them. But we don't have to play
by their rules, do we? Just like a Mac is often a good deal if you compare it
to exactly the same hardware, but a bad deal if you get a bit more creative. We
think we can beat this DIY style kung
fu. Let's assume you're an avid LT viewer. You can build a machine for
yourself, and you don't need to add another crappy keyboard and mouse to the
pile. Now that we have the flexibility to choose whatever parts we want, a
Ryzen 3600 is a lot better value with a
lower price tag and performance that should be slightly better in virtually
every workload thanks to its six extra threads, better IPC, and higher boost
clock. It pairs nicely to an ASRock B450
motherboard. And with the money you save building it yourself, 16 gigs of 3200
MHz DDR4 fits wonderfully into the budget along with an 80 plus bronze 450
W power supply. Then for the cream cheese icing on top, we can spend just
$80 more than you would on the GTX 1660
and jump up to a full fat 2060 KO from AVGA, which should give us vastly better
performance. But does it?
Yes, of course it does. Computers aren't magic, and assuming no egregious
configuration errors, they behave more or less as the sum of their parts. So,
at 1080p medium settings using DirectX12
in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, frame rates get a big old bump, nearly 34%
higher than our Best Buy special. Both GTA 5 and CS:GO show even more
impressive gains with 43 and 44% higher
frame rates, respectively. Rendering in Blender, while not as huge of an
improvement, was still very noticeable with the BMW Blender test finishing 25%
faster. And in the seven-zip compression benchmark, the 3600 absolutely wipes the
floor with the more expensive i5 9400
from our pre-built thanks to the six extra threads. So, conclusion time. If
you're in the market for a pre-built, honestly, Best Buy has proven again to
not actually be a terrible choice. You may still be able to find a slightly
better deal from one of the system integrators out there who don't have the
same retail overhead as Best Buy. But before you do, make sure you check out
our Secret Shopper series if you want to see an in-depth investigation on the
entire purchasing experience of a bunch of major SI. Oh, and get subscribed so
you don't miss out on future videos like the very different unlimited budget
gaming PC. Sounds pretty cool, huh?
This video is brought to you by drop.com. The Massdrop and Sennheiser PC
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was fun. See you later, I guess.