Build the Perfect Gaming PC – Holiday Buyer’s Guide 2017
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,747 words · ~8 min read
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every year we do one of these holiday pc buyers guides and
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oh my god if i ever aged a lot
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that's okay that's not the point the point today is whether you're buying a
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new gaming pc for yourself or for somebody on your uh nice list we've got
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suggested parts at three key price points under 500 bucks around a thousand
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dollars and approximately two thousand dollars so let's get to it
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zotac zbox pcs are great for applications like productivity streaming
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and gaming they feature 7th gen Intel core processors and they're super small
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check them out at the link below so let's just dig right in with our
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budget friendly just game build where if
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it doesn't improve your frames per second it doesn't make the cut
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when we first saw current pricing we actually thought we were going to be
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stuck with an athlon x4 950 but using a
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six year old CPU architecture today felt
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wrong so we crunched some numbers and miraculously managed to squeeze in a
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ryzen 3 1200 with its stock cooler
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this did necessitate dropping down to an asrock a320m dg5 socket am4 motherboard
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which doesn't support overclocking but this is still a major performance
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improvement over any of the athlon options on the subject of performance
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improvements we've got the same amount of RAM as last
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year and for that matter the same amount of RAM as our 2013 holiday buyers guide
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due to the worldwide shortage of dram
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that's driving up pricing so eight gigs of whatever ddr4 2400 or
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higher from a reputable vendor is what you're gonna get
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and while upgradability isn't a major consideration for this build
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that rear i o on the motherboard is a prime example we're going to use one
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stick instead of two to give us most of our performance today with the ability
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to throw another one in down the line for dual channel
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for storage we've taken a page out of our 2015 guide and gone with a one
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terabyte seagate fire cuda hybrid drive
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for a balance of capacity price and performance and for our case we've gone
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with a thermaltake v2 plus which for the money gives us both a solid enough
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chassis and a power supply that while
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super cheap and only capable of about 300 watts continuous probably won't
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instantly vaporize thanks to its two-year warranty though you will
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absolutely want to replace it if you upgrade your CPU or your graphics card
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later on speaking of the graphics card this year
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we're going with the MSI GeForce gtx 1050 ti 4 gig
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truthfully it's a step down from what we'd like to
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use if we had a bit more to spend but
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a budget's a budget so overall then this year we got a much
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faster CPU for overall system performance and less frame rate variance
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in gaming but we're actually taking a significant hit on our GPU performance
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thanks to the renewed cryptocurrency mining craze that's driving up pricing
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and we couldn't really fit in an SSD as a result of the world wide manned flash
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shortage which sucks but we did end up with a pretty well
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balanced machine here that can handle esports titles and console quality 1080p
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gaming our mid-range game now build creeps a
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little higher budget-wise but picks up some significant upgrades including a
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ryzen 5 1400 again paired with its stock
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wraith stealth cooler not to be dissuaded by the hilariously
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cheesy stock photo on MSI's website we then paired it with an MSI b350 pc mate
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motherboard it's technically branded as a business board see look he's wearing a
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suit but the quad RAM slots and vrm heatsinks
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for better upgradeability and cooling should give us solid real world benefits
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for gaming as well for RAM we've got 16 gigs of dual
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channel ddr4 2400 megahertz RAM
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making this build more of a platform upgrade than a performance upgrade
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compared to last year's though it should be noted that these sticks run at just
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1.2 volts meaning that like the CPU itself you could overclock them a little
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if you choose giving you a bit of a bump over last year's model
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for storage we contemplated going with a four terabyte 7200 RPM hard drive
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rather than take a 30 capacity hit due
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to SSD prices but ended up opting for a 525 gig
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crucial mx 300 for better overall system performance
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so hopefully if you're spending a thousand dollars on a system you can
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then wait a month or two to save up for a hard drive or you've got an old one
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lying around that you can use for bulk storage our case this year is a thermaltake
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versa h21 which like last year's versa
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h25 offers tool-less access and installation top ventilation holes and
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unofficial radiator support if you've got a dremel
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and a couple of hours on your hands for power we chose a fully modular evga
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550 watt b3 which should be plenty for everything we've listed so far and the
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gtx 1070 that we managed to stuff into
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this about a thousand dollars budget now the 1070 isn't a step forward from
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last year but it's not a step backwards either with its excellent 1080p or even
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1440p performance once vega 56 availability improves a
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little bit that would also be a viable option at this price point for team red
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members so then compared to last year we spent a
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few bucks more but we get into a fresh platform that promises solid
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upgradability down the road now you could choose instead a core i5 7500 with
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a b250 board which might even give you better overall performance but
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you'd be even further over budget and it is less likely that you'd be able to
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slot in a new CPU for a performance increase a year or two from now
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let's get them to our high-end game on build
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this sucker clocks in at roughly two thousand dollars and is designed with
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gaming performance in mind but also as a capable workstation so it
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sports a core i7 7800x six core CPU
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running on an ASUS tough x299 mark ii motherboard this means that unlike last
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year's core i7 6800k build we get to
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take advantage of both the updated cache setup and avx-512 support that was
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introduced with skylake x for a nice little productivity boost and the higher
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clock speeds are just gravy we've given it a 32 gig quad channel kit
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of g skill ddr4 3200 memory for optimal
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performance and as for cooling we really like the Noctua nhu14s
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it's a quiet solution that will allow some light overclocking while being
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easier on the wallet than a high performance aio liquid cooler
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storage brings us to this year's first dual drive setup a 525 gig crucial mx300
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m.2 paired with a seagate barracuda 4 terabyte for bulk storage and then all
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of this bolts into the Corsair carbide clear 400c a cleanly laid out case with
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an acrylic windowed side panel that can optionally handle liquid cooling later
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on now although we were disappointed by its
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pricing compared to last year the gtx 1080 still ends up being the obvious
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choice at this price point and it will comfortably handle high refresh rate
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1080p or 60fps 1440p gaming and we will
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power this beast with a c sonic 80 plus gold 750 watt semi-modular power supply
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easily more than enough for our needs though at two thousand dollars
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should be about more than just needs and overall this build was a bit of a
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disappointment for us we get a generational CPU performance boost over
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last year sure but we're not getting nearly the capacity of
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SSD that we did then and frankly we were
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really hoping that by this time there would be a bonafide competitor to the
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gtx 1080 driving down not just its pricing but also the flagship 1080 ti
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i mean as it is you could squeeze NVIDIA's top of the line into a high
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quality build for two thousand dollars but
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you would need to make a few compromises and either wait for better coffee lake
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availability or settle for a quad core
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so maybe next year we'll get a 2 000 system that's worth upgrading to from
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our 2016 model like can we AMD and
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NVIDIA if we're really good
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i guess we'll see anyway guys full disclosure time we do
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not get any kickbacks from manufacturers for our holiday buyers guides part
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selections but we do receive a commission if you buy your stuff using
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the links below so if you're shopping go check them out even if you aren't buying
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exactly the same thing but if you're just using our lists as a starting point
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and however many systems you're buying whether it's one or
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three or you're getting a macbook and like a Linux workstation and a pc
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synergy would be a great thing to add synergy is a software download that
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solves the problem of having two keyboards and two mice once and for all
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you can share a single set of peripherals between two or more computers even cross platform Windows
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Linux and mac so you'll no longer get confused you just move the mouse across
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seamlessly you start typing boom it works and features include things like
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clipboard sharing dragging and dropping files between the computers the ability
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to set up hotkeys and more so try it out
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with our link in the video description to get your 50 off synergy today
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so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but it was awesome get subscribed hit that like
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button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured in the video description i guess i already said that
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also linked in the description is our merch torch has cool shorts like this one in our community forum which you
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should totally join