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This is the $69 gaming PC, and it's great.

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Except for one small problem. It keeps turning all of my favorite new AAA games

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into what I call slideshow simulator.

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Which got me wondering, what would happen if we added just a little bit more budget?

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Could we play any game on the market with legitimately good performance?

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To find out, I personally signed a big, beautiful budget increase of $200,

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allowing us to upgrade our hot dog to a hot damn.

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I'm talking games like Doom the Dark Ages, Dragon's Dogma 2, and Cyberpunk at 1080p 60 FPS.

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And I picked up another set of parts to show that if we start our $269 built-in scratch,

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we can do even better. Wow, this is actually much higher end than I expected.

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Is this a 2080 Super?

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I know. Can you believe that? That's almost as unbelievable as this 360 pop shove

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Willie Grind, segue to our sponsor.

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All things considered, our latest $69 gaming PC

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is a fantastic little machine. But it was built with compromise at its core.

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Like these dangerously rough cutouts.

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Wow. These two precarious power supplies,

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not to mention the low power CPU that was meant more for crunching spreadsheets than games.

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That's a good place for us to start by asking what is the best CPU

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that we can put into this motherboard without swapping any of our other components?

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And the answer is the Core i7 3770K.

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But when we found this Core i5 3570 non-K

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for just five Canadian dollars, that was a deal we couldn't refuse.

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Even if it does mean we'll lose a few FPS versus its big brother.

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Now, if you're looking at that deal thinking, oh, is this another David build

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where he just flexes his deal hunting skills on us mere mortals?

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The answer is no. For budgeting purposes, I made him use prices

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that were actually readily available across a combination of Marketplace and eBay.

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So this CPU counts against him for $15.

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But even so, we have lots of budget left for other upgrades,

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like this four by four gig kit of memory from Corsair for about $10.

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We're not only doubling our capacity here, but it's faster than our old mini greenies too,

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at least in theory. I do have some doubts about this HP motherboard

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actually supporting the stuff at full speed.

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Next, we're gonna improve our storage situation with an upgrade to a Hitachi one terabyte hard drive

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for $10. What are all the great things I can say about this drive?

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Well, it has one terabyte of storage, which is enough that we won't need

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to constantly redownload our games, and it saves us the $30 to $40

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that we would spend on a larger SSD. With all of those positives out of the way,

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let me make this clear. For anything but a game drive, I don't really recommend random old used hard drives,

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but for an application like this where reliability doesn't matter, it's totally valid.

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Now, for obvious reasons, we played around with the idea of replacing the case

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from our original $69 PC, but we realized that that would have cascading consequences.

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For one thing, our motherboard might not fit in the new chassis,

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and for another, we would need a new power supply that is actually enough for the entire system

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because we'd have nowhere to mount our second power supply.

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So instead, we opted to go all in

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and invest our remaining budget in our GPU.

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With about $166 left, our options are somewhat limited,

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but if we sell the old RX 570

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for the price we originally paid, which shouldn't be a challenge, we got a great deal,

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all of a sudden, we have over $200 to play with.

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With that kind of dash in our pocket, it was tempting then to go for the legendary GTX 1080 Ti,

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which can be had for less than $150 these days.

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But we're starting to see games that require feature support

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that that card simply doesn't have, which pushes us to newer cards

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that have hardware ray tracing support, like an AMD 6700 or a GeForce 2070 Super.

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Now it is worth noting, if you get really lucky, you might be able to get something better.

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We found a handful of 2080s, we've even 2080 supers for just around $200 US,

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and looking at the sold listings on eBay, that's not an unrealistic target

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if you're willing to play the game in order to play games.

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But that was a little bit outside of the easy to obtain range that I had for David,

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so we're gonna go with the 2070 Super for our build.

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Sorry, David, this is a little tricky, so while we're getting everything aligned,

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let's talk about the importance of casting a wide net for parts that fit your budget,

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and then pulling the trigger when you see the right deal.

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You've gotta have some idea what you're aiming for, set up your keyword notifications,

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then pounce. And if you're not sure where to start

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on what kind of hardware is gonna work for you, we really like the Toms hardware,

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CPU and GPU hierarchy charts. Oh, and another really good resource

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is those super helpful head-to-head benchmark videos that you can find on YouTube.

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Shout out to the creators of those. All right.

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Yay. Let's fire it up.

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Is what I would say, if it wasn't for the big question we need to answer,

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would we have just been better off building a $269 gaming PC in the first place

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rather than building a $69 gaming PC and upgrading it?

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Short answer, maybe. Our higher initial budget makes it easier

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for us to target someone's old custom PC rather than being stuck with a dusty workstation.

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Ideally then, we can find something with a newer CPU.

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In general, it's worth noting that you're still better off trying to buy things in a bundle versus individual parts.

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You'll save on delivery time and cost. And ideally, you'll be able to test the bundle together

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before you actually hand over the cash, like you've seen us do during Scrapyard Wars.

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For stability testing, we like using stress tests like OCCT and Furmark.

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And for monitoring temperatures, hardware info is a great choice.

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With that said, when I'm buying budget parts in particular,

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I'm usually okay with the seller just sending me a video

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of them running a stress test as long as they have a decent rating.

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But I'll leave that up to your judgment. We picked up a few different bundles,

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each with their own strengths and weaknesses. But the one we liked best was built around

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one of our favorite target CPUs for builds like this, the Intel Core i5-8400.

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This chip could trade blows with the previous generation's flagship

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thanks to its six cores that boost to up to four gigahertz.

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And because it was so popular, there are tons of people trying to get rid of them,

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meaning that deals on these chips are plentiful. This H310 motherboard that it came with

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offers us a decent upgrade path. And the whole platform is new enough

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that it shouldn't have any significant obstacles to running Windows 11.

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Included with our bundle for a hundred US dollars, we got 16 gigs of team group RAM

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at 2666 mega transfers per second, a decent mid-sized case, and an optical drive.

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But none of that is enough to test out these parts to make sure we didn't get scammed.

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So we also picked up this C-Sonic X650W power supply

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for around $30. Now buying a used power supply is a roll of the dice

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on the best of days, especially a modular one.

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Make sure you get all the cables, they are not interchangeable.

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So if you must buy a used power supply, you might want to look to eBay.

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Between a visible seller rating, not to mention more robust fire protection,

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the online auction house might be our preferred source for used power supplies.

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Let's get this one installed.

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Next up, we need some decent storage. We actually got offered a free 128 gig SSD

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when we picked up our core system. Just goes to show you, it's always worth being a good polite buyer

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because occasionally you might get some freebie stone in. But that's just gravy because our motherboard is new enough

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that we can aim for an NVMe SSD instead, like this 500 gig Kingston NV2

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that we got for just under $20. Now to be clear, if you're in a hurry,

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you might have to settle for a SATA drive for this budget. But deals like this one are definitely out there.

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And I gotta say, this computer is a lot more modern than I expected so far.

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Let's stress test it. OCCT is a great tool for stress testing computers

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and they've even got these helpful little tooltips throughout the UI that will help you configure it

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to stress the correct components for what you're trying to validate.

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Shout out to their team, by the way, they're working on a new LTT themed skin.

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So stay tuned for that. It's coming whenever it comes.

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Look at her go. It's also not a bad idea to run Crystal Disk Info

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to check out the power on hours and see if there are any smart errors on your SSD.

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Assuming nothing's defective, we should be able to run stress tests like this indefinitely.

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It's not like we're overclocking or anything. On that subject, choosing parts that can overclock

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is not a bad choice for stretching out the life of budget parts.

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But the flip side is that if it doesn't support overclocking,

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it means it's never been overclocked. So you know that it hasn't been pushed to its limits.

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Hey, we passed. Now that we trust our core system then,

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it's time to plan our next move. We could move up in the RAM world,

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but it's gonna be hard to find a noticeable bump in performance for a low price.

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So I think we're gonna skip that. We already have a pretty good case

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and a functioning cooler. I mean, I wouldn't blame you for upgrading that,

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but personally, I wouldn't bother until I've sorted out everything else.

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This time around, because we were trying to build a system that would provide a more balanced experience,

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not to mention an easier upgrade path, we actually have a little less money to invest in our GPU,

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which means we're probably gonna end up with a 2060

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or a 2060 Super for around $160.

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Oh, even at that price, it kind of breaks our budget, putting us around $300.

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But David pointed out that he was able to find these cards for more like $125 to $130 with a little bit of patience.

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And if you're able to be really patient, we even saw a couple of 2070 class cards in this range.

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So happy hunting. Something, something transparent screwdriver,

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lttstore.com, let's go. Look at this thing. I've actually been waiting so long for this stage.

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Look at it go. It's like an LTT screwdriver, but clearer.

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Question now is which of our systems gives us a better overall gaming experience?

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Right out of the gate. Yours is really loud. Yes.

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Kind of unpleasant. Also, the shader caching on his.

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Took at least half an hour. At least, that was brutal.

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Yeah, you're doing a little bit better. Your men's are higher than my average.

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It goes to show you the most powerful GPU

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is not always the correct answer. I wasn't expecting such a huge disparity.

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Then again, I mean, that's what? Third gen and this is an eighth gen.

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It's a huge, huge difference. That's a big difference in CPU performance.

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Still, this is not an especially pretty game, but there's no denying it's demanding

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and it's running way better on the from the ground up to $69 gaming PC.

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That being said, this computer is still mostly playable.

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Like you're not having a great time and you're having frame drops to sub 10 once in a while,

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but you could get through this game probably. Yeah.

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So if our goal was to build a PC that can run any modern game,

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Dragon's Dogma 2 isn't gonna stop us. Let's try the next one.

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I'm really feeling my hard drive right now.

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You just finished a game, reloaded into a game

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and are playing before I even loaded my first one. Yeah, it's pretty brutal, dude.

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Disconnected, no. Oh, we're on the same game.

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No way. Yeah, but uh. Oh, nice.

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Okay, let's go. Oh, that's you, hey.

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Dang it. I wouldn't have won. This is not great.

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I'm above 60 on my 1% lows, but it feels quite choppy.

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How is yours feeling? Mine feels great. Why wasn't that?

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I have no excuses.

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Oh boy. Oh, I screen peeked. I was waiting for you to pop around that corner.

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You piece of crap. But I didn't get you. Oh no.

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How dare you? God, I'm not. Ah, mother lover.

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I gotta say, my minimums are 84,

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but it doesn't feel quite that smooth actually. Really?

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Oh, I got him. Oh, you did get me. It's over. You're the better CS player.

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Here, try this.

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Oh my God, that's so much better. Yeah, yours is definitely worse,

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but it's not as worse or as it should be.

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I think if we fandangled the settings a bit, we would get a better experience on both of them.

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Yeah. I just wanted sort of to set a benchmark. You can absolutely play esports games on either of them.

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100%. But that's a way better experience because we have a way better CPU.

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All right, what else we got? How you doing over there? It would be so nice for the menu to load.

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Oh yeah, this is what happens. Oh.

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Oh, that's rough. So if our goal is to be able to play any AAA game,

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we're basically stuck with the ground up build

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where we choose a more modern platform. And you could choose a more modern office PC,

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but from my experience, the more recent stuff is still kind of deployed slash still has an obvious value.

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So you're not able to get as good a deal on it as you are compared to the really obsolete office PCs.

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This is the office PC I found that's similar to that one. It's got an 8,500 in it.

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And it was about $110. Okay.

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So pretty good value. And we could have like modified it, made it work. But it's also really similar in price

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to the custom one we got. So it doesn't set itself apart in terms of value.

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And we're stuck with this proprietary power supply and really limiting case.

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So when you're looking at new enough stuff, it probably does make more sense to go for a custom PC.

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100%. Yep. Okay, she's demanding.

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We might need a little bit of DLSS out there. Medium was also probably an error.

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Oh yeah, it's too low. Maybe some DLSS. Okay, yeah.

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Fast paced game like this, you are not going to want to play at dips down to 15 FPS.

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Let's try just low first or do you want to have DLSS on? Let's try low first.

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Because 1% lows are pretty damn low. Yeah, this is not great.

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It could deal with this. I could play the game though. Yeah, it looks like it doesn't feel as choppy as it,

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the frame times are saying. What is it about id and just being able to make games

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that look incredible and run pretty damn incredible?

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Just for me, can you try DLSS? Oh, absolutely. I think with quality, that's all we're going to need.

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That is a playable experience. Very.

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Looks a little softer obviously, but very playable, not just a little.

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And say what you want about DLSS and fake frames and all that.

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I would rather play like this than like I was before at native. 100%.

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It's pretty incredible what you can get for 269 bucks though, I got to say.

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Unbelievable. This is freaking awesome.

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Say what you will about the state of the new PC market.

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It is a great time to build a sub $500 PC

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if you're willing to use used parts. There are solid deals out there,

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both on mostly built computers that have not that old platforms

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and on three generation old cards that as you can see, still hold up pretty darn well.

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As far as narrowing down your choices, personally, I would avoid pre-RTX NVIDIA

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and pre-5000 series AMD if you're interested in running modern games

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since we're expecting to see more and more titles that require an up-to-date feature set.

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Most Intel cards should be fine, but we've noticed that it's hard to find them

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at a good price and that could be a combination of the lack of widespread adoption

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and also the fact that Arc is riding a new wave of popularity.

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Maybe it's a bit of both. But you know what else is riding a new wave of popularity?

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These segues to our sponsor.

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If you guys enjoyed this video and you like budget builds, you should definitely check out

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how we built the $69 gaming PC that we started with in this video.

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It was quite the hands-on project.