WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.800 In an unprecedented move from Sony, the PS5 family just got the biggest price increase 00:00:05.800 --> 00:00:11.440 that a console has ever seen. Yet another blow against affordable gaming. 00:00:11.440 --> 00:00:16.760 But I think we can help. First, by shining a spotlight on the healthy market 00:00:16.760 --> 00:00:21.520 for secondhand PS5s. There are tens of millions of these consoles out there now. 00:00:21.520 --> 00:00:24.640 And because of that, there are deals to be had. 00:00:24.640 --> 00:00:27.680 Also, I believe that despite Sony's move, 00:00:27.760 --> 00:00:31.040 that may remain true throughout the rest of this console generation. 00:00:31.040 --> 00:00:36.560 More on that later though, because second, there are hundreds of millions of PCs out there. 00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:41.000 And with a little bit of scrapyard spirit, I think that even in the current climate, 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:45.040 we can beat the performance of the PS5 at its new price. 00:00:45.040 --> 00:00:49.840 But there will be some obstacles. And the first is of course, RAM. 00:00:49.840 --> 00:00:54.360 While I do believe that the worst may be behind us, memory pricing remains high 00:00:54.360 --> 00:01:00.040 thanks to the insatiable needs of AI data centers. But what a lot of folks might not realize 00:01:00.040 --> 00:01:05.600 is that not all RAM has been affected equally. DDR4 is very much still in play, 00:01:05.600 --> 00:01:12.280 especially less desirable kits. And CPUs as recently as just one platform ago 00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:18.440 can still support it. Which is why we're starting our build with an Intel Core i5-12400F. 00:01:18.440 --> 00:01:23.520 Just $83 for this little feller. And like the rest of the deals that we're going to highlight, 00:01:23.520 --> 00:01:28.640 getting one for this price shouldn't be a major challenge anywhere with a healthy marketplace community. 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:34.840 This seems to be mainly for two reasons. One is that Intel has lost a lot of their sex appeal 00:01:34.840 --> 00:01:39.520 for gamers over the last five years, which has lowered demand on the secondary market 00:01:39.520 --> 00:01:44.520 for their chips. And the second is that in spite of the lower sex appeal, 00:01:44.520 --> 00:01:48.800 Intel quietly still kind of dominates the CPU market by volume. 00:01:48.800 --> 00:01:51.800 So there are a lot of these things out there 00:01:51.800 --> 00:01:57.200 with suppressed demand. Okay, yeah, it has two fewer cores than an AMD price equivalent 00:01:57.200 --> 00:02:02.280 or even the PS5 for that matter, but the 1200F more modern architecture 00:02:02.280 --> 00:02:07.280 and maximum turbo speed of 4.4 gigahertz should more than even out the score. 00:02:07.280 --> 00:02:13.600 With that said, nothing in life is free and a little bit of that sweet, sweet savings gets offset 00:02:13.600 --> 00:02:19.680 by the generally higher price for Intel motherboards is what I would say if we were buying a new motherboard, 00:02:19.680 --> 00:02:23.800 but we're not. And while we're at it, I got another tech tip for you. 00:02:23.800 --> 00:02:28.280 Over the last few generations, budget chips at motherboards have quietly gone from, 00:02:28.280 --> 00:02:32.400 no, God, no, no, God, no. 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:36.240 All the way to, oh, yeah, those are kind of okay compromises. 00:02:36.240 --> 00:02:40.040 Like on this ASUS Prime H610M MATX motherboard, 00:02:40.040 --> 00:02:46.100 it can be found for less than $50. And not only does it support our 12th gen CPU, 00:02:46.100 --> 00:02:51.440 it can even take a 14th gen upgrade down the line. Also, while it wasn't the case for a while, 00:02:51.440 --> 00:02:54.680 Intel's low-end chipsets even support XMP now, 00:02:54.680 --> 00:02:58.060 so you can get the most out of non-JDEC memory kits. 00:02:58.060 --> 00:03:01.280 Like this 3,200 megatransfer per second 16 gig kit 00:03:01.280 --> 00:03:05.160 of Corsair Vendance LPX that we got for about $60. 00:03:05.160 --> 00:03:10.160 Now, that speed, not actually ideal for peak performance, 00:03:10.160 --> 00:03:13.880 but the huge jump in price for 3,600 megatransfer per second 00:03:13.880 --> 00:03:20.640 made this decision a pretty easy one. Just like it was easy to finally tell you about our sponsor. 00:03:20.640 --> 00:03:24.540 Aside from RAM, the other tough one right now is SSD prices. 00:03:24.540 --> 00:03:30.080 And unfortunately, looking at kind of the timing of the RAM apocalypse and potential recovery, 00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:37.100 this one might take a bit longer to settle down. We had to pay about $100 for a one terabyte DRAM 00:03:37.100 --> 00:03:40.960 cashless model that, in my opinion, isn't worth more than about 50. 00:03:40.960 --> 00:03:44.600 Thankfully, we did find some outlier deals for quite a bit less than what we paid, 00:03:44.600 --> 00:03:47.760 so if you're patient, there are still bargains to be had. 00:03:47.760 --> 00:03:52.520 And worst case scenario, guys, storage is one of the easiest things to upgrade 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:58.640 or expand down the road, thanks to, again, entry-level motherboards not being total dog-do anymore. 00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:02.760 Look at that, 2M.2 slots. It is worth noting we could have saved a buck, 00:04:02.760 --> 00:04:06.760 either by buying a SATA SSD or a smaller SSD 00:04:06.760 --> 00:04:10.800 along with a larger hard drive. And if I was configuring the system for a friend, 00:04:10.800 --> 00:04:16.160 I would actually strongly consider that route. But if we're comparing to the PlayStation 5, 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:22.960 a shortcut like that feels kind of unfair. What does feel fair is paying less than $10 for a case. 00:04:22.960 --> 00:04:26.280 Okay, sure. It's a little battle-worn, and sure, 00:04:26.280 --> 00:04:32.300 it's a thermal take with a few missing parts. But when the comparison is the PS5, honestly, 00:04:32.300 --> 00:04:36.200 I think the Versa 17 comes out looking pretty good. Oh, sorry, Sony. 00:04:36.200 --> 00:04:40.520 And we pinched our pennies equally hard for our cooler, 00:04:40.520 --> 00:04:46.200 though you might not have to. The 12400F does technically include one in the box. 00:04:46.200 --> 00:04:50.640 It's just that most of the ones that we saw secondhand didn't have the box anymore. 00:04:50.640 --> 00:04:53.920 The good news, though, is these can be had for around five bucks. 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:57.800 And for not many more buckaroos, you can get a 500-watt power supply 00:04:57.800 --> 00:05:02.680 like this thermal take smart 500. It's not an amazing power supply, 00:05:02.680 --> 00:05:08.440 but it should get the job done at least until it's time to build your PS6 killer for GTA6. 00:05:08.440 --> 00:05:12.040 It's coming out this year. Yeah, sure. Let's get these installed. 00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:13.400 Let's go. 00:05:30.400 --> 00:05:36.360 We interrupt this chill montage to bring you one of the potential pitfalls of buying secondhand hardware. 00:05:36.360 --> 00:05:39.920 It appears that the housing around the USB 3 header 00:05:39.920 --> 00:05:44.460 on our motherboard is done, The good news is the pins are all in there 00:05:44.460 --> 00:05:47.900 and they're all straight and we would be able to tell 00:05:47.900 --> 00:05:52.920 which way this goes on without the key because one of these holes is supposed to be blocked 00:05:52.920 --> 00:05:58.300 except whoever had this before must have plugged it in the backwards 00:05:58.300 --> 00:06:02.540 and they pierced the one that's supposed to be empty so I'm actually not sure. 00:06:02.540 --> 00:06:06.580 Here's a tech tip, don't do that. Thanks David, that's helpful. 00:06:06.580 --> 00:06:10.300 With all that done, it's time for the cherry on top, the GPU. 00:06:10.300 --> 00:06:16.580 Now, this was a tough one to lock in because my initial thought was Intel B580 and we're done. 00:06:16.580 --> 00:06:21.460 But after crunching the numbers and looking at the very sparse availability 00:06:21.460 --> 00:06:25.420 of used Intel GPUs, I realized we could do better. 00:06:25.420 --> 00:06:29.620 We don't have to do better. To match a PS5, all we need is something 00:06:29.620 --> 00:06:35.820 in the neighborhood of an AMD 6600 XT but as it turns out, GPUs are one area 00:06:35.820 --> 00:06:39.140 where pricing has been on the mend for a little while now 00:06:39.140 --> 00:06:45.700 and we can do better. NVIDIA's 3000 series now sits in kind of a sweet spot. 00:06:45.700 --> 00:06:49.900 It's new enough to still support most of Team Green's most appealing features 00:06:49.900 --> 00:06:55.180 but old enough that most AI bros just plain aren't that interested in them, which is good for us 00:06:55.180 --> 00:06:58.940 because the RTX 3070 is a whole lot of gaming goodness 00:06:58.940 --> 00:07:01.980 for just 215 US dollars. 00:07:01.980 --> 00:07:07.700 With that in mind then, what is our total damage, David? $544, which actually leaves us enough budget 00:07:07.700 --> 00:07:11.740 that we could get a GameSir Cyclone 2 that's brand new which is one of my favorite controllers 00:07:11.740 --> 00:07:15.260 or a used DualSense, which feels a little more appropriate 00:07:15.260 --> 00:07:19.140 considering we're going against a PS5. Let's game. Let's do. 00:07:19.140 --> 00:07:22.420 I'd never press the power button but hey, 00:07:22.420 --> 00:07:25.420 that's what I love about sometimes budget power supplies 00:07:25.420 --> 00:07:30.420 and motherboard is they just kind of, you pride power to them and they're like, I'm going. 00:07:30.420 --> 00:07:34.380 You know what, I'm gonna go big picture too for the more console like experience. 00:07:35.860 --> 00:07:40.740 Okay, here we go. Dude, this looks freaking awesome. Yeah, I mean, both look really, really good. 00:07:40.740 --> 00:07:45.780 Go to war right now, it's a really nice looking game. Okay, I want to start kind of poking at fur. 00:07:45.780 --> 00:07:50.820 You know what, my fur is better. Yep, DLSS baby. Ooh, this is some yucky flickering back here. 00:07:50.820 --> 00:07:54.020 Interesting. And that's probably one of the most distracting 00:07:54.020 --> 00:07:59.300 visual artifacts to me. Yep. Don't know exactly what it is but your HDR 00:07:59.300 --> 00:08:03.780 is a little more HDRE. It's because I get to configure it every time I display, 00:08:03.780 --> 00:08:08.060 I connect to a new display, it gives me a little wizard and then I configure it and then I get the most 00:08:08.060 --> 00:08:13.300 out of my display. Yeah, and to be clear, I can do that 00:08:13.300 --> 00:08:17.780 but I was not at any stage prompted to do it. So let's get out of this cutscene 00:08:17.780 --> 00:08:21.700 and then I'm gonna configure it and see if I can close that gap a little bit. 00:08:21.700 --> 00:08:25.620 Just the way it's reflecting off of the metal on his shoulders. 00:08:25.620 --> 00:08:28.660 Yeah, that looks way more washed out than mine. Yep. 00:08:28.660 --> 00:08:32.380 Slightly, oh, you're having some flickering in the background too, it's gone now. 00:08:32.380 --> 00:08:35.380 I think that's the wind. No, there was like a light. 00:08:35.380 --> 00:08:39.580 I caught something there. Yeah, that. So there's a weird, I think, LOD thing 00:08:39.580 --> 00:08:44.220 where we're pushing the VRAM so hard, we got eight gigs of VRAM, we're at 7.49, 00:08:44.220 --> 00:08:49.100 that there's a certain distance that it has trouble with the textures. 00:08:49.100 --> 00:08:52.300 So we could probably switch one of our settings 00:08:52.300 --> 00:08:56.340 but that's PC gaming for you, you gotta do a little bit of tweak and get the most out of it. 00:08:56.340 --> 00:08:59.860 Ultra screen calibration, let's go. Let's go. 00:08:59.860 --> 00:09:03.500 Enable HDR, oh, I don't even have it on. Get it on. Well, there's the problem. 00:09:03.500 --> 00:09:06.700 Now I've got HDR on, this should be better. That still looks way better. 00:09:06.700 --> 00:09:10.420 Yeah. Yeah, no question. Windows HDR, man, I figure it out. 00:09:10.420 --> 00:09:13.780 HDR display calibration, here we go. Get, I have to download it. 00:09:13.780 --> 00:09:18.740 Oh. It's not as good still, it's quite a bit better. 00:09:18.740 --> 00:09:23.420 Yeah. My performance is dropping a little bit more in these more complex environments. 00:09:23.420 --> 00:09:27.540 You're still pretty much above 60 other than a few drops. 00:09:27.540 --> 00:09:31.940 Yep. And with VRR, it's like, this would be acceptable game performance for me. 00:09:31.940 --> 00:09:35.140 Absolutely, no question. Let's try another game. 00:09:35.140 --> 00:09:37.500 With the Returnal. Yeah, let's do Returnal. 00:09:38.380 --> 00:09:41.820 Does this game support HDR? Yep. On PC? 00:09:41.820 --> 00:09:46.020 Oh, I don't know. I think it does, but we'll have to double check. That's something to watch out for, 00:09:46.020 --> 00:09:49.860 is even if the HDR experience is perfect on PC, 00:09:49.860 --> 00:09:54.460 not all games that support HDR on a console necessarily support it on PC. 00:09:54.460 --> 00:09:57.580 Wow, yours looks so much better, holy crap. 00:09:57.660 --> 00:10:02.580 Whoa, holy schnike. 00:10:02.580 --> 00:10:06.820 Yeah, this is not close, brother. Not close, smack down, holy crap. 00:10:06.820 --> 00:10:09.820 Are you running at a 60 or a 30 FPS? This is a 60 at 61. 00:10:09.820 --> 00:10:13.540 At 60? Yeah. Cause I'm definitely falling well below 60. 00:10:13.540 --> 00:10:18.820 Graphics, okay, so. Oh man, I'm still at quality for deal assess too. 00:10:18.820 --> 00:10:23.180 Yeah. I bet you'll still be sharper than this. I'm getting really big FPS dips though. 00:10:23.180 --> 00:10:26.660 Look at that stutter. Huh. Hold on a second here. 00:10:27.660 --> 00:10:33.620 So I'm down to medium now. And I definitely am still sharper. 00:10:33.620 --> 00:10:37.900 Yeah. But it doesn't look like super better anymore, 00:10:37.900 --> 00:10:41.380 in my opinion. But now I'm actually in more complex environments 00:10:41.380 --> 00:10:45.020 and still maintaining like a solid, very playable FPS. 00:10:45.020 --> 00:10:48.620 Even then it isn't 60 though. Nope, you're dropping down to around 40. 00:10:48.620 --> 00:10:52.460 Yeah. My HDR looks really good. Yeah, I think your HDR actually looks better 00:10:52.460 --> 00:10:55.740 than mine right now. With that said, you wouldn't normally be sitting this close. 00:10:55.780 --> 00:10:59.100 No, if I was all the way back there, I think this would, 00:10:59.100 --> 00:11:03.900 none of this would be an issue. But that's the point of pixel peeping is to get in here and really judge it. 00:11:03.900 --> 00:11:07.260 Okay. Let's do our next one. Let's do it. Let's start the game at the same time. 00:11:07.260 --> 00:11:10.820 Yeah. Death Stranding? Death Stranding. Three, two, one. 00:11:10.820 --> 00:11:15.060 Oh, crap. That's okay. I'm like a fraction of a second behind. 00:11:15.060 --> 00:11:18.540 You're going to end up probably 30 seconds behind me. Yes. 00:11:18.540 --> 00:11:19.380 Oh. 00:11:26.740 --> 00:11:31.300 I mean. It wasn't that. What? That was really close. 00:11:31.300 --> 00:11:34.900 My performance is not. Let's dial you in a little bit. 00:11:34.900 --> 00:11:39.660 Can you pan a bit? I mean, that's not 60 FPS either. 00:11:39.660 --> 00:11:42.940 I'm going to go medium. I'm going to turn off motion blur. 00:11:42.940 --> 00:11:47.340 I cannot turn off motion blur because this is a console game and that's just not a thing. 00:11:47.340 --> 00:11:48.540 Are we on full speed pan? 00:11:50.540 --> 00:11:54.140 I think I'm above you now. Yeah. Yeah. 00:11:54.140 --> 00:11:59.420 I'm going to turn off motion blur to kind of mask it. Yeah. But I at medium, I'm now above 60 FPS 00:11:59.420 --> 00:12:03.660 even in my medium. Once again, notice to be sharper on the PS5. You know what though? Hold on a second. 00:12:03.660 --> 00:12:06.740 I think I like the way the PS5 is handling 00:12:06.740 --> 00:12:09.820 a level of detail better. Oh. Look at this. 00:12:11.220 --> 00:12:14.820 Oh yeah. Huh. So very near. 00:12:14.820 --> 00:12:18.420 I think I'm on par. Yeah. In the distance. 00:12:18.420 --> 00:12:21.940 I think I've had to cut too much. 00:12:21.940 --> 00:12:25.380 Oh. Let me have a look. That's something I can tune though. 00:12:25.380 --> 00:12:29.100 Okay. Here. Can we just go to the top of here? Right where you are. I want to see the terrain quality again. 00:12:29.100 --> 00:12:32.580 Can you turn back this way? Yeah. Okay. We're close now. We're close. 00:12:32.580 --> 00:12:36.260 I think I'm basically on par now. Okay. What about our main character? Oh, mine's better. 00:12:36.260 --> 00:12:39.840 Oh, substantially. Look at that hair. Yeah. Okay. 00:12:39.840 --> 00:12:41.420 Would you say that we've killed the PS5? 00:12:43.540 --> 00:12:47.380 At the new price, I think there's an argument to be made that we did. 00:12:47.380 --> 00:12:51.820 We got equal or in some cases even more performance for less. 00:12:51.820 --> 00:12:55.700 But Mark Serney would surely point out again 00:12:55.700 --> 00:12:59.700 that second hand hardware is a pretty big advantage. 00:12:59.700 --> 00:13:04.940 And as we pointed out earlier, second hand PS5s and even brand new PS5s 00:13:04.940 --> 00:13:08.340 are not selling at that new retail price, 00:13:08.340 --> 00:13:12.260 which kind of raises an interesting question. Is this a real price increase? 00:13:12.260 --> 00:13:17.100 I think it's hard to know until we've done a full year cycle, but I could imagine that they're raising the price 00:13:17.100 --> 00:13:20.780 so that they can do big discounts and get people to rush out and buy PS5s 00:13:20.780 --> 00:13:24.740 for games when they want them to. But it might also be something else. 00:13:24.740 --> 00:13:28.180 My theory too is that they could be testing the market, 00:13:28.180 --> 00:13:32.900 doing what you're talking about, going, okay, here's our MSRP, but here's our discount for the holiday. 00:13:32.900 --> 00:13:37.700 And then using that to take the temperature of the market to maybe establish what will be 00:13:37.700 --> 00:13:41.380 the non-discounted new MSRP of the PS6. 00:13:41.380 --> 00:13:46.900 That way, no one will be talking about it during the launch that the price went up 00:13:46.900 --> 00:13:50.220 and then they can continue to sell PS5s at a normal price. 00:13:50.260 --> 00:13:53.420 Are they playing 4D chess? It's hard to know. 00:13:53.420 --> 00:13:58.780 I think part of the challenge is they don't really know either because they've probably booked the fab time 00:13:58.780 --> 00:14:03.980 for the PS5 or PS6's SOC. So they need to get it at a certain time, 00:14:03.980 --> 00:14:07.340 but they don't want to get it at that time anymore because the RAM is so expensive, 00:14:07.340 --> 00:14:11.500 the SSDs are so expensive. So I don't think they're sure what they're gonna do. 00:14:11.500 --> 00:14:15.180 All right, changing gears. Do you think we could have gone DDR5? 00:14:15.180 --> 00:14:19.300 If we kept mostly the same system, but just changed the motherboard to one that does DDR5 00:14:19.300 --> 00:14:22.820 and the RAM to DDR5, it adds about 150 bucks. 00:14:22.820 --> 00:14:26.500 That's too much. It breaks the budget. You could downgrade your CPU, 00:14:26.500 --> 00:14:31.900 but then it's just a different system. It's not as good. I think this is the better option right now. 00:14:31.900 --> 00:14:38.100 Right now is the keyword because DDR5 has maybe started to start to come down. 00:14:39.420 --> 00:14:43.540 So maybe in another six months, 12 months, we'll be having a totally different conversation, 00:14:43.540 --> 00:14:46.740 but for now, this is pretty good. What about some of the other aspects 00:14:46.740 --> 00:14:51.020 of PC versus PlayStation 5? I know that this is sort of a passionate 00:14:51.020 --> 00:14:55.260 conversation topic for you, but people often talk about how game pricing 00:14:55.260 --> 00:14:58.420 is so much better on PC thanks to Steam Summer Sales, 00:14:58.420 --> 00:15:02.260 but you often bring up a cable. When was the last time that you paid full MSRP 00:15:02.260 --> 00:15:06.400 for a game on the PlayStation Store? Yeah, there's pretty similar sales 00:15:06.400 --> 00:15:10.260 for pretty similar games on PlayStation. I think there's kind of a threshold 00:15:10.260 --> 00:15:15.300 that we've kind of figured out to go for the sales, to get those games that are three to four years old sold. 00:15:15.300 --> 00:15:18.340 I do worry right now about the Sony ecosystem 00:15:18.340 --> 00:15:21.580 because they had on their investor call, they know that they're gonna have trouble 00:15:21.580 --> 00:15:25.380 getting more audience, so they're gonna try and extract more out of their current audience. 00:15:25.380 --> 00:15:29.380 So what does that mean? Higher game prices, new hardware, I don't know, 00:15:29.380 --> 00:15:32.780 but I don't like that. Locking exclusives back down again? 00:15:32.780 --> 00:15:37.220 That's a big thing too, is it was a really nice couple of years that it was almost a sure bet 00:15:37.220 --> 00:15:40.980 that Sony games were gonna come on PC, but they've said that they don't wanna do that 00:15:40.980 --> 00:15:46.220 because they know that that's how they sell more PS5 hardware is they make exclusives. 00:15:46.220 --> 00:15:49.820 Or they make great value hardware, even at the new price. 00:15:49.820 --> 00:15:53.660 I hate to say this, it's still really competitive. 00:15:53.660 --> 00:15:56.700 And if you're willing to buy used or open box, 00:15:56.700 --> 00:16:00.540 you can get really good deals. I literally bought a PS5, the 30th anniversary one 00:16:00.540 --> 00:16:05.540 for $380 US, so it's a special edition open box 00:16:05.820 --> 00:16:11.420 and it's still out there, you just gotta look. Or not, I mean, there's a lot of good news here today 00:16:11.420 --> 00:16:17.300 and I'm glad to report that building a sweet budget PC rig is still possible if you channel a little bit 00:16:17.300 --> 00:16:22.140 of your inner scrapyard warrior. Even if that means you won't have the latest 00:16:22.140 --> 00:16:26.820 and greatest and flashiest features, this system is a great reminder that there are tens 00:16:26.820 --> 00:16:31.580 of thousands of games out there that we can enjoy without buying into the latest hype. 00:16:31.580 --> 00:16:34.620 And a good reminder that games were good 00:16:34.620 --> 00:16:38.300 before generationally locked optimization and they will be after as well. 00:16:38.300 --> 00:16:41.980 Personally, I'm really looking forward to Alabaster John from Radical Fish. 00:16:41.980 --> 00:16:45.900 I'm really excited about the new Castlevania game. Yeah, I don't think we're gonna need anything more 00:16:45.900 --> 00:16:49.220 than this PC or a secondhand PlayStation 5 00:16:49.220 --> 00:16:52.780 in order to enjoy those. Exactly right. You know what else I'm looking forward to? What's that? 00:16:52.780 --> 00:16:55.940 Telling these fine folks about our sponsor. If you guys enjoyed this video, 00:16:55.940 --> 00:16:58.980 you might like other videos where we build PCs for a fixed budget. 00:16:58.980 --> 00:17:04.900 Why not check out our recent $1,000 build? Sadly, it's not as much performance as we should be getting. 00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:08.260 Thank you, Sam Altman, but it's still not a bad little rig.