Getting all of your tech tips from one source means that you might miss crucial details,
but watching four videos at once is just so inconvenient.
So, hear me out then. How about we smash four amazing tech tubers into just one video
and they compete to build the best thousand dollar gaming PC. It's a generous budget,
but not so large that they can just spend carelessly. So, to help, we've sourced this pile
of secondhand parts that we're going to price according to what's typical on
marketplaces like Facebook, eBay, and Java. The online marketplace for new news PC stuff
who sponsored this video along with C-Sonic, who also pitched in to help us bring together our four
amazing contestants. Let's meet them. I'm Danny from Nirner Budget, and I make content about
PC builds, steel, hunting, and sometimes land parties. My name is Tito. I have the YouTube
channel Machinautra Productions, and I modify retro video game consoles. Hi, I'm Joyce from
TechJoyce, and I make technology and car content. Hi, I'm Zach from ZTT, and I make a ton of PC
building content, kind of similar to what we're going to do today. Where did you get those in?
For those that don't know, it's Zach's Tech Turf, where Turf stands for
Tutorials, Unboxings, Reviews, and Fun, but I don't say that on camera. It'd be a lot to say each
time. What do you think is going to give you your edge today? I think maybe my lack of knowledge
of PCs, maybe. How do you think it's going to give you an edge? I have no idea. Most of my content
revolves around looking for used deals, so this was right up my alley, but I try to maximize the
performance any time I do a PC build, so I have a lot of practice with that, I'd say. Aesthetics,
for sure. You know, there's one competitor that I'm worried about that's going to beat me in terms
of price to performance. It's Danny. Hopefully there's points given out on the aesthetic realm,
which that's what I'm going for. I think I'm the youngest out of all the contestants,
so my hands will be faster, and I'll probably think a little faster than them,
so hopefully my age will give me a bit of an edge. What is the CPU that you picked?
I picked the Ryzen 5 7600. Initially, I went after this Ryzen 5 9600X, listed for $185. I
offered $10 less and got declined. This ended up working out, though, because I later came across
this Ryzen 5 7600 for $125, which works out to be a way better deal. With the money saved,
I then set my sights on a little bit more expensive graphics cards around $500. The best card I could
find was this RX6950XT. It was a AMD Ryzen 7900X. I mostly made all my decisions based off price
because I really don't know too much about PC building. I picked the Ryzen 5 7600X. It was the
best deal that I could find on Java at that specific moment in time. I actually found this
RX7800XT for $450, and that's actually a really good price. I picked the Ryzen 5 7600X3D. Yeah,
that one was just a really good deal. I decided to go with an NVIDIA graphics card because I'm
hoping for the benchmarking it involves ray tracing. Please Linus. Now it's time to pick
the rest of your computer. We've got a large stock pile of parts, but if there's something else that
tickles your fancy, Games Master David will see what you can do and try to get you a fair price.
You are allowed to go over your $1,000 budget. However, you're going to be evaluated based
on your performance in three demanding games. And for every $10 you go over, it will cost you
1% of your total score. So be frugal. To keep things balanced, we're going to be doing a snake
draft starting with Danny, which was decided by random chance off camera and also because
don't tell the others, but we just plain like them better. Go. Okay. Can I get the Game Master's
help? Anything that's got red? I just need color. A little something up my sleeve here.
It is red. Yeah. Can I get this? It'd be 95. Best I can do is 90. 90. 90 it is. I only have like
$50 left. So I'm going to go really cheap. We are adding aesthetics to the rubric. Correct.
I don't think so. It's the entire strategy. Wow. That's unfortunate.
Someone might actually do it. I didn't think it was going to be possible. I mean, I wouldn't be nerd on a budget if I didn't stick to the budget. Five bucks. Five bucks. I like it.
Question for you. What are we doing about power supply? I'm so glad you asked in a totally
unscripted way. Everyone is getting, oh my God, David. Okay, you're good. You're good. A Focus
GX850 from our sponsor, C-Sonic. It's a member of their multi award-winning platform with proven
reliability and performance. They're ATX 3.1 and PCIe 5.1 compliant, which means they're ready for
all the latest graphics cards. It's OptiSync technology enhances internal cooling efficiency,
meaning it's 135 millimeter fan can run ultra quietly for longer, all while minimizing the
amount of space it takes up. It's 80 plus gold certified, meaning it's highly efficient and it
comes with a 10 year warranty. You can check out C-Sonic and the rest of the parts we're using
at the link in the video description. Now let's build these PCs. Before we do that though, where
did they land in terms of pricing? Danny, $9.99. Wow. Okay. Nerd on a budget. Joyce, $10.34. Oh,
wait, wait, wait. $10.40. Zach, $10.41. And Tito, $10.53. Everyone did pretty darn good.
A lot better than I expected. Really close. Wow, nice case. Does it have a side panel? It does not,
but that's so I could fit the cooler. Wicked smart. How are you feeling about your choices?
I think I went a little bit over budget, but I'm still very confident because I think my CPU is
the best out of all four of them. Very nice. Any regrets? I think the GPU. Do you regret just
standing here and chit-chatting while the timer's running? Oh, what? I'm supposed to get started
now? Yeah, what are you waiting for? How about you, Danny? Any regrets? I'm pretty happy with it. I
think I got a pretty beefy graphics card and a decent CPU to pair with it. So, it's just some of
the other parts might be jank, but that's just when you go use sometimes, you know? We have a
red alert here, David. There's no I.O. shield in here. Oh, god. Oh, my god. Given how much of our
grading is going to be aesthetics, that's going to really hold you back. 100% what I was thinking.
Thank you. Here's my deal. Okay. We will offer you a 2x multiplier on your aesthetic score.
I will gladly take 3x. 4x. Final offer. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.
How are things going over here? Any regrets on your build? Maybe the case? Is this an intentional
vibe? That was kind of a late-breaking decision where I'm just going to kind of go with a really
messy setup and that's going to be part of the vibe. Oh, I like it. You have only one stick of RAM.
I do. Yes. Better than none. If we were an actual team, I probably would have helped you with that,
but I'd like maybe I'll just let them cook. Or like let them be cooked. I don't like your SSD,
though. Well, that was strategic. I did not want to waste money on anything. Performance impacting.
So, you'd rather that whoever ends up with this system, which by the way, people are going to
end up with. Yes. Have a crappy SSD and lose their data down the road. Correct. Like my stock cooler
here? Dude, I approve of the stock cooler. My tech ick was people who spend a bunch of money
on a fancy cooler when they haven't already min-maxed the rest of their hardware.
That's true. Am I distracting you? A little bit, but it's okay. It's missing one standoff. The
bottom right one. Nerd on a budget with attention to detail. Keep an eye on this one. There's a
reason he's our favorite. I didn't mean what I said over there. You're doing great too. Thank you.
Wait, I've never done this before. I've only built like like six, seven PCs. I'm deciding if I should
try to give you hints or not, but since we're competing and you wanted to race. I don't need
hints. Don't worry. Gabe, you're good. I know exactly what I'm doing right now. No, that does not seem
right. Okay, I'm not going to ask for help because I feel like that makes me lose automatically.
There's nothing wrong with getting help. No, I have to do this alone. Okay, I'm definitely the
least qualified out of the three contestants. Yeah, so I picked this cooler because well,
it looked really big. So and I have apparently one of the, I guess better CPUs out of the lot.
So probably need a lot of cooling power. The case is small, but it's missing the door. So that gives
me plenty of room to use this. The reason for my cooler is I was definitely thinking about aesthetics.
Okay. I guess the Riz 400. The Riz. Is that, is that what we're going with? I am also not above
using the CPU cooler manual. Do you ever use these? Not on this. It's showing me exactly
which hardware to use and whatnot. I like it. Yeah, I respect it. You know what? I like his style
so much that I'm going to increase his aesthetics points multiplier to 5x. No, no, no, we were at
five. Were we? Yeah, I think we're up to seven. I am retarded. Actually, I have thermal paste now.
How do you know what I brought you isn't better? I want to go with these because this looks fancy.
Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Oh, I've been being dismissed. I see. I think
there's something to the whole passive aggressive generation, you know, with the whole like COVID
lockdown and the lack of social skills. It's like they can't tell things like they're standing too
close. They're making people uncomfortable. How are you doing? Good. I think I'm making good progress.
I'm just putting all the motherboard screws in, which is like one of the more time consuming
Yeah. Parts of it? I think I'm good with that now. Unflappable. See, this is why he's our favorite.
You can't say that. What the hell is that supposed to be? Usually it turns out fine,
but I think I got a little nervous because he's right beside me. I don't want to put any pressure
on you guys, but you are way behind Danny. Am I helping with the pressure? Nope. Linus, I would
like to run something by you here. This is a sponsored component. Yep. Very top of the line.
There's one problem for my build with it. It's only black cables. I brought some cable extensions.
I got red, but I'm going to plug these into these. How much did these cost? $0. Should I trust him?
I'm going to believe him that these were $0. And for being such an amazing deal hunter, I'm going
to reward him by increasing his aesthetics multiplier to 6x. We were just at 7. How are
you already almost done? What are people doing? Modern computers? Everything just goes on the
motherboard? Yeah, that's great. I just mean we're going to have to rely on some of the other folks
to do our extras for Floatplane. LMG.GG slash Floatplane. Danny, do you think you could beat
Linus in a build off? I honestly don't know how quickly Linus can build a PC. I usually don't
try to speed through PC builds. I just kind of go at a leisurely pace. If this is your leisurely
pace, I think you'd kick my ass. You just need a quality ratcheting screwdriver. Wow, you've made
a lot of progress. So nothing fits, like nothing's long enough to reach the bottom of that. Yeah,
so what you need is like a little stand underneath. You better believe it. Okay, now I gotta take
everything out then. Can I just leave it like this? Because look, I got one, two, three, four,
five, six. Six screws already. And that's a lot of screws. That's, you know, that is a lot of screws.
So I'm good. I'm good here then. I'm making sure I get your approval. I'm not the judge. They're
the judge. Do I have your approval? You may not be familiar with this concept, but we are not live
right now. Oh, the audience. I'll tell you in the camera, man. Okay. Oh, the audience gave a thumbs
up. So I think we're good. Did everybody go radion? Wow, it's almost like that's the way to go when
you're trying to build on a budget. Speaking of GPUs, all of our contestants picked up their GPUs
on Java. Java makes it easy to list and sell full builds or parts with buyer and seller protection,
lower fees, and a community that's actively searching for gaming PCs. And this is all,
without getting hit with, is this still available, messages a thousand freaking times. The only thing
I don't love about it is this rear fan. That is specifically why I purchased three fans for the
competition to make sure that they're all black. The aesthetics is the last thing on my checklist
here. I'm just trying to figure out the wiring and making sure that everything works. I do know
that they were talking at some point about selling these on Java. If we get points for that, then
an aesthetic build could potentially help me out. That is true. It might actually matter at some point.
We have our beautiful C-Sonic power supply here. I was sure to put the fan facing downward. So I
chose a 3080 because I was looking on the website and all the 4070s were like $600. So I went one
generation behind and this one is like basically the same performance for like a hundred bucks cheaper.
Wait, these are not like screwed in. Do I have to rip them out? Do I need help again?
Those are breakaways. Okay, thank you. Pretend to cut that part out when you say that. Oh,
these are breakaways. So basically I don't have to unscrew anything. I'm wondering if I should
help Joyce with something right now? No. Okay, she doesn't want to help. I'm independent and smart.
How many PCs have you built? Over a hundred and under a thousand. So somewhere between there.
That's insane. Over a hundred? It's like 10 a year. You look so young though because your skin's really
good. Why did you use the lower slot on your... What? On your... She doesn't want to help. She doesn't
want to help. Oh my god. I didn't even realize. She said she didn't want to help. Bro, this whole
video is just embarrassing. Like you're going to be like, wow, you guys noticed and didn't tell me?
That's fucked up. That's fucked up. That's fucked up. Especially you. You probably knew the whole
time. Yeah, come on, Glenn. Come on. First try. Professional. We're trying to find something
to close the side panel with. Oh, brilliant. Oh, we have one. Yes. Yes. Wow. Two. Celebrating.
Was that a boot? Are they done? That's really crooked. Really? I mean, wow. Thanks. That's a
computer. Yeah, I did it all first try and I didn't get any help. I don't think your motherboard
is all the way down. No, no, no, no. Don't show that. Okay, just to set the record straight,
I've never claimed to be a PC professional.
Why didn't you screw them in all the way? I did. I thought I did. Oh, no. Okay, wait. Cut all of
this out. Give me the screw. Wait, guys. I don't know what he's doing right now. He's trying to
touch my build. So, see, all I did was turn it a few more rotations and you can see now the
motherboard doesn't shift around like that. Right. Do you need me to check anything else? No, no, no,
no. You sure? Yes. You can. Thank you. Now I feel like I need to check everyone's homework. Can I
just? Yeah, you can take a look at it. Oh, yeah. Look at that. All the screws are in even. Oh, wow.
I got nice little cable management in here and everything. Quality. Now it just comes down to
performance. What is this situation here? Oh, is that it? It goes in. Yeah, I just forgot the
screw in all the way, I think. I found problems with everyone else's build, so it feels unfair if
I don't find something here. Feel free. You'll find something. Oh, a classic rookie error.
Error. Missed the I.O. Shield. That is not an error. This was not supplied, sir. I mean,
when you buy a secondhand motherboard, that's the first thing you got to check. Yeah, I mistakenly
trusted the seller. That's why you got to shop on Java. Yeah. See, I would never put a motherboard
without an I.O. Shield into my inventory, but that's what you guys do. See, that's kind of an
error, but this is actually an error. Just don't make it worse, man. No, I'm helping. I'm helping.
Let's see. I fixed it. Thank you for the tech tip. Yeah, that's my turf. I'm also going to pretend
that I don't have to push down hard on this to keep the cable bulge down. Here's how we're looking.
This is my GPU, and the reason I chose it was it was the most expensive one I could afford
within my budget. Pencils down in five, four, three, two, one. Done. I'm done. Okay, moment of truth.
Here we go. We're good. Okay, it's even plugged in. What? Damn, you guys sent me off. Yeah, it's
plugged in. Okay, cut off. Take out the first cut. Just remove it all. Delete all the footage.
Hopefully, I did the I.O. right. Oh, okay. Got an LED. Right out of the gate, I got to say immediately,
I want to give you bonus points for leaving the $22 sticker on your case. As you can see,
aesthetics was maybe kind of lower on the priority list. Yeah, and even cooling. You got like half
of your fans in here. That's right. One of them's not spinning. I didn't actually catch your specs.
I was so distracted by how ugly it is. So maybe it's like going to be a sleeper underdog. That's
what I'm hoping. Victor. It was the first computer to work. Of course, no one cares what the tower
looks like. If the monitor looks great. Oh, that's already a good sign. And most impressively,
this isn't even running at low settings. This is 1440p ultra no ray tracing. It's actually
Zach's machine that's making all the noises bothering me right now. It's going to be hard to
beat. Or is it? If there were points for aesthetics, which there aren't, this would have lots of points.
And it's also quiet. I don't agree that it's quiet. Oh, that is, yeah. Okay. All right. Let's
take a quick test drive. Shall we? Oh, this is bad news for Tito because even though there's no
points for aesthetics, there are points for the game looking better. If only Zach had tuned it.
What'd you press? I pressed the sabotage Zach button for stealing the similar abbreviations
to my channel. Next up is the one, the only tech choice who surely will blame her brother for
whatever problems we find with her machine. I'm scared. You're going to say something crazy.
Something crazy like, Hey, you should probably put all the screws in.
That was not my fault. The screwdriver you gave me was faulty.
Go ahead. Show me. Well, I threw it out. No, no, I threw it out because it was faulty.
All right. Well, why don't we take a look at your computer and see if anything else is faulty.
You're going to be blown away. Your side panel is upside down. The AMD logo on your cooler is
upside down too. What's up with that? Why do you find problems with everything? Just play the game
and you'll see. I mean, all you have to do is beat a low performing PC with no side panel and one
that crashes. Can you commentate on this area right here? Yeah, this area right here is looking pretty
damn good. Not going to lie. It says like 75 FPS and you're 1% low. It's hard to believe.
Now that we're in here, dude, it's even worse. It kind of smells. It smells like burning. We got
one exhaust fan. No intakes. I really don't know how long this is going to last. Tech choice,
builder of temporary computers, which brings us finally to this. You know what? I can't find
that much to criticize. It's a little on the louder side, but like, is that really that big of a
problem? And even if the performance isn't the best, right? Like, look at this shirt. Look how he
wears that. I like these glasses too. Just, you know, of course it's all going to come down to
performance, which once again, wow, really good. I want to take a moment to recognize that for
a thousand dollars, every single one of these systems is delivering an outstanding experience
in what is still an extremely demanding game at 1440p ultimate quality. Some are a little more
outstanding than the others and I think this might be one of them. I don't want to criticize
because you're my favorite. I don't love that your CPU is running at 95 degrees. What? Ready? Three,
two, one, benchmark. Oh my God. I'm absolutely cooked. Oh, it crashed again. Who configured this?
Who configured it? I mean, you picked all the parts. We just watched you do it. Yeah, but you
know, the parts were working when I showed up here. Do you want to just come out and say it?
You can say it. I can say it? Yes. You're a poor sport.
In all seriousness, there could be an issue with some of the hardware that we provided to Zach. I
was just ribbing him before, so we're going to do a quick reseat of his GPU and in the meantime,
we're grabbing another kit of memory just in case this one's a little bit on the flaky side.
Why is this six gigafansters per second? Okay. Well, you kind of lucked out. Oh, wow. You just
got a performance boost. Whoops. That was not my intention, but I don't have time to go change it
again. I just fixed your computer. This feels great already. I can tell. Okay. Here we go. Let's
see how it goes. Massive upset in first place for performance in cyberpunk. Zach, with the
come from behind victory, he went from zero to 95 in second place for raw performance.
We've got Danny. The nerd on a budget stayed within his budget. Zach, not so much. Neither did Joyce
for that matter, so she's basically out of the running for first place, but could still end up
with a podium finish because, yeah, that's really not that close, but there's still more benchmarking
to go. Let's give him a bonus. Let's give him a nice guy bonus. 10 FPS. I still am like blown away
at how good these machines are. Well, most of them. All of them. Come on. Kind of tempted to
change Zach's memory speed back to 5600. I'm going to change it back to 5600 for the rest.
How much lower do you think it's going to be, Linus? I would say two FPS. That could be the
difference. I was thinking two to three FPS combined with your 4% over budget penalty.
Times 11 aesthetic bonus. Right. I think we're still good. Your aesthetic bonus is zero though,
so because there are no points for aesthetics. I was not told this. Never came up. The fact that
it's so close is why I really feel that we need to double check. Oh my god. How'd it go up?
Time for our second game. I'm rooting for you. Hold tab. Ready, three, two, one, go.
Wow. You're getting kind of like the Canucks. Kind of hard to root for. Whoa. We could have an upset
here. The nerd on a budget is on a roll with a score of 145 with Zach's tech turf with 130.
Joyce coming in at 122. And once again, Tito was there. 93. That's really good. And it is really
good. Our budget was limited to a thousand US dollars. And unlike a game console, which sure
could also run Returnal, as long as it's a PlayStation, these machines can do anything you
could possibly want them to do. Video editing, browsing the internet. The hell else is it that
people do with computers these days? Now it's time for the big shocker finish, because see,
I was piling on my Pal Tito before, but he actually has the best performing CPU out of the bunch.
And this is interesting. Our last benchmark, kind of CPU dependent. Everyone, go ahead and press
the check mark. Yeah, I'm rooting for you. Yeah, what? It's already less than 10. Oh gosh.
While we wait for this last benchmark to run, I want to get everyone to sign their machine,
because if you guys were paying attention earlier, you will know this. All of these
are going to be for sale from jawo.gg. Choose wisely. Now for the results. Coming in first,
nerd on a budget. Unfortunately, Joyce's X3D chip just didn't cut the mustard here.
Zach is in the 300 FPS range as well. Tito was there. Even a 10 FPS bonus wasn't enough, man.
I tried. I really tried. And now it's time for me and David to try and do math.
Aesthetic score equals zero. Yeah. Times 11. There you go. Yep, that's added.
And did you give Tito his 10 extra bonus FPS on everything? We have come up with the final scores.
In fourth place, and looking very fine and kind, doing it is Tito with a score of 228.
Out of a possible 300. Out of a possible 300. That's good. That's good. That is really good.
After correcting for a slight budgeting overshoot, Joyce comes in third with 259 points
out of a possible 300. And I think it is actually worth noting here just how close our three podium
finishers were, which is to say that if you weren't comparing them side by side in benchmark tests,
you would be more than happy with any of them. It's just that you would be ever so slightly
happier with Zach's Tech Turf. He managed to score of 271. And that's in spite of the fact
that his 11 ex-Aesthetics multiplier was multiplied by zero. That was the whole strategy, Linus.
Which leaves with 297 points out of a possible 300 points, the nerd on a budget, Danny,
undisputed intercontinental champion of building a computer for exactly,
one thousand dollars. Give it a little bit, you know, some personality. He's just a black box.
How are you feeling at the end of this day? It honestly went how I thought it would.
Nerd on a budget. I mean, he knows how to maximize his budget. I'm a little disappointed with how I
did. I definitely did not choose the right GPU. So for next time, I would go with the Radeon card.
Kind of expected those results. Maybe I should just stick with modding retro consoles, but had a
whole lot of fun. How do you think you did? Pretty happy with the build. I like the way
it turned out aesthetically. Wish the aesthetics would have mattered a little bit more than they did.
Audience, if the aesthetics mattered to you, comment down below. Let them know. They do.
I probably get a little bit nicer of a case. You know, get a little bit better aesthetics and
maybe one that has a side panel too. How does it feel to be the champion? It feels pretty good.
What do you think was your key to victory? Throwing a big chunk of money at the graphics card.
That helped. Other than your own build, what was your favorite one today? I like Zax. It looks the nicest for sure. People would pick a slightly worse performing PC with
like twice the aesthetics, right? So 11 times. 11 times. Thanks, Java. And Csonic. And Csonic
for making this possible and massive shout out to you guys for coming all the way up here.
If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe go check out the time we challenged our writers to configure
$1000 builds. There was a bit of extra challenge in that one in that they weren't allowed to use
the internet to look at any pricing whatsoever. They were just going in blind.