Build the Perfect Gaming PC - Holiday Buyer's Guide 2016
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
2,120 words · ~10 min read
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has it been a year already apparently so it's holiday PC
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buyer guide time again as usual we'll be
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targeting three different price points in US Dollars before operating system
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under $500 900 to 1,000 is and about
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$2,000 I'll be using pricing from Newegg us and amazon.com and I'll have a where
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to buy Link in the video description let's go
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gfuel is having a buy one get one free deal event this Black Friday on their 40
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serving tubs check it out now at the link in the video
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description so first up is our decent
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quality 1080p gaming box we won't be
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sweating small stuff like upgradeability
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or future proofness for this one we've got 500 bucks to spend so if it doesn't
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make the FPS number go up it's out so
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there are 145 CPUs on newegg.com from $50 to
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$75 too bad that when you filter out the Dual cores you're left with a whopping
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one option at the price we paid last year the Athlon X4
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845 non overclockable and slower than
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the 860k we chose last year that goes
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for $78 now I mean if I'm going to spend
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that much I might as well go with the no
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nope no there's nothing bloody hell is it a bad time to be a budget CPU buyer
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but at least I get AMD's wraith stock cooler for my extra $8 right oh wait I
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don't that part number costs an extra $20 on top so 860k with a normal cooler
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and paying more for it it is anyway
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shopping for RAM is easy I opted for a single stick trading a little bit of
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performance for the option to upgrade to 16 gigs down the road and last year for
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the motherboard I went with a super basic MSI board for $47 cheap right this
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year ASUS has a similar one for 40 bucks
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sold moving on to the case after 2 years
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of dominance The Cooler Master Elite 350
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has finally been dethroned in my $500
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system by Cooler Master the elite
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342 drops compatibility with full ATX
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motherboards and you get a 400 watt instead of a 500 wat power supply but
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just save a few bucks and from Hardware secrets's review the included 400 watt
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unit made by fsp can actually deliver its rated output as long as you're not
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concerned with efficiency and I will definitely be
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using that $6 I saved to get a balling
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Out video card the rad RX 484 gig has
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double the frame buffer but more importantly is way faster than the GTX
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962 gig that I recommended for this system last year and it costs only 20
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bucks more for the cheapest variant I could find on New Egg with civilization
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6 included to boot our storage is going to be a lot faster too scrolling past
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some of the very random cheap SSD options I mean Hyundai really reveals
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240 gig products from a handful of reputable brands for as little as 65
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bucks we can always add a hard drive for more storage later so I chose a SanDisk
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z410 so in summary we spent about $20
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more than last year for the same CPU and
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RAM load out but we are deep into double
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digigit gains when it comes to GPU performance at 1080P and ditching the
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mechanical hard drive will make a huge difference to the day-to-day usability
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even if it means we might need a storage space upgrade in a little while for our
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next system at $11,000 future
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expandability features and usability
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Beyond gaming are much bigger considerations but instead of spending
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extra on chasing overclocking Headroom I'll be focused on the best outof the-
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boox performance I can get so we'll start with an Intel quadcore and this
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year for the same price we get a big upgrade to a Skylake cor I 5 64 400 that
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wait a minute this thing is only
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marginally faster than the core i54460
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we used last time aha I get it the
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i56500 is The Sweet Spot this year much
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faster and only $15 more oh inel you
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devious little Scoundrels oh well at
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least for our lunch money we also get a faster DMI support for 64 gig of ddr4
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RAM and some power savings speaking of
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RAM the best deals I found while writing this were on a vexere or Corsair 2x8 gig
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kits of ddr4 I didn't stress about speed
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for the reasons I outlined in this video and I picked the ASUS b150m a m.2 to
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install them on no USB 3.1 support but
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it's got four dim slots for RAM expansion and with all the SSD inovation
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moving forward on the m.2 slot I
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consider that a musthave for a storage upgrade down the road the EVGA B1 500 W
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power supply held its Crown this year it's even a few bucks cheaper and so is
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our case it was a toss up for me between the NZXT Source 210 and the thermal take
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Versa H25 both at 40 bucks but the Versa
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has free shipping with prime so that put it over the top storage got got a big
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shakeup at this price point this year ssds are cheaper so I got 750 gigs for
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what I paid for 500 gigs last year but I
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actually ditched the 4 tbte hard drive
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so you'll have to add one later if 750
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gigs isn't enough for you bringing us finally to the video card the reason
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that I pinched every penny in ,000 build
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up until this point I managed to squeeze a GTX 1070 here making this rig a
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perfect match for a cheap 1440p or even
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ultrawide monitor off eBay or high-end
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VR Gaming and I even threw in a DVD drive just to show off bam so compared
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to last year's model we spent marginally less but we gained some CPU horsepower
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got a bigger SSD but sacrificed our hard drive and we added anywhere from 40 to
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80% to our gaming performance depending on the game and resolution not too bad
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for a year later note that our Amazon
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buildout includes an oem CPU since even with a hyper T2 thrown in it's cheaper
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there and CPUs rarely fail anyway our
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last system assumes a buyer who is willing to pay more for Creature
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Comforts like sleeved cables RGB lighting overclocking and quiet
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operation it also assumes that a buyer who requires high performance outside of
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purely gaming applications let's say video editing or 3D modeling well it
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sure is easy to choose a CPU when you have $2,000 to spend isn't it actually
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no it kind of gets harder while I could
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drop $1,000 on an 8 core 6900k unless I am heavy into content
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creation and unlocked six core is going to do me just fine and that money would
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be better spent elsewhere so I'm going to go with the
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6800k a slightly faster six core than
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last year here the 6850k would be strongly recommended as
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an upgrade if you're adding a lot of PCI Express storage or expansion cards along
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with the same SLI support solid build quality for overclocking and USB 3.1 the
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.2 slot LED lighting and type c port on
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the x99 A2 for an extra 15 bucks put it
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over the top versus the older board we chose last year then for RAM thanks to
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Falling prices we make up that 15 bucks and get a slightly faster 32 gig kit of
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Vengeance lpx quad Channel ddr4 than we did last year plenty for the time being
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with the option to upgrade to 64 gigs down the road for case and cooling I
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went for a slightly different strategy this year I downgraded my case to an
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NZXT s340 which is basically a small as
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you can get while still fitting my upgraded cooling a Noctua NHD 14
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compared to last year it won't be as roomy to work in but should yield a
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significant Improvement in CPU clock speeds for
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overclocking power comes courtesy of an EVGA Supernova G2 850 wat fully modular
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unit 80 plus gold 100 Watts more than last year's rmx series and a few bucks
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cheaper nice onto storage the only real
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difference is that instead of a Bargain Basement 1 TB SSD and a 4 TB hard drive
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we're getting a Samsung 850 Evo 1 TB SSD
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and a 4 TB hard drive I went with a 2 and 1/2 in SSD even though it's the same
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price as one that would go in an m.2 slot because in a tower case we don't
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really need the space savings and that'll leave my m.2 slots open for an
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NVMe drive upgrade in the future right
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now that m.2 drive unless you want to pay a lot for it is going to be running
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over the SATA interface anyway also I checked a DVD drive in there boohoo this
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video card time last year I actually
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downgraded the 3D gaming performance of the $2,000 system to make room for that
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six core CPU double the memory and double the SSD storage compared to the
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2014 edition this year I'll be able to
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keep all of those things with a faster CPU and SSD better Cooling and better IO
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and get better gaming performance thanks to the GTX 1080 all of this while
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staying about $80 is cheaper than the 2015 Edition which brings us then to the
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end of this year's holiday buyers guide remember as always these aren't hard and
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fast rules and daily pricing fluctuations especially on categories
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like RAM or video cards can affect the exact part that I would recommend a lot
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but if you follow these guidelines I'm sure you'll end up with a kickass system
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that you'll enjoy for years to come interesting fact this is the first year
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that all three systems come out cheaper on Amazon than newa if you buy Windows
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10 and have Prime for free shipping so
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be sure to check out our Prime Membership link below and the links to
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where to buy using our affiliate code clicking through those links regardless
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of what you buy lets Amazon know that we helped you with your purchasing decision
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which gives us a commission I fix it they got a lot of
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talking points 19,000 free step-by-step repair guides lots of tools you can buy
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on their site lifetime warranty on the tools but I'm going to get off the
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script for a little bit here because I don't need to tell you guys I Fixit tool
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gets so great and they allow you to take apart and reassemble pretty much any
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device and I'm going to go what is it late November ah yes fullon holiday
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messaging got a geek in your life who doesn't have a toolkit yet bam perfect
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present I fix it tool kit you'll actually be giving them the gift of
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saving money and tinkering tinkering tinkering and tinkering with electronics
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what could possibly be better I know a discount so also you use our discount
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code so you can save a few bucks on your order and uh you can feel good they can
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feel good I'll feel good I fix it'll feel good everyone's feeling good that's
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a Christmas spirit or holiday spirit
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sorry so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do
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but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link
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to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video I kind of already said that but whatever it's down there
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also linked in the video description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community Forum
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which you should totally join now that you're done doing all that you're probably wondering H gee what should I
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watch next maybe check out our latest video over on Channel Super Fun see you
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next time I keep vowing to do more of these
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buyer guides and I keep only doing them once a year