Can you Build a 4K Gaming PC for Under $1000?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,388 words · ~6 min read
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it's build log time again but this one's going to be a little bit different
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instead of trying to put a computer under liquid or in space or anything
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like that we're actually going to be building something a little more down to
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earth it's only around 1,000 bucks for a gaming rig and you might kind of go okay
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well L this what could be interesting about this and I'll tell you this is
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actually based on a challenge that was issued to me by the folks over at AMD
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who kind of went 4K displays are becoming a lot more affordable right now
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but the perception among Gamers is that you can't really Drive games at that
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resolution and to a degree that is correct in the latest tripa titles
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running at Ultra res you're going to need like multiple of the highest end
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graphics cards in order to get a playable enjoyable experience but they
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also continued what about the titles that people are actually playing all the
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time your free- toplay games like League of Legends or Team Fortress 2 or your
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more mainstream or Esports e titles like CS goo or Starcraft 2 What could you
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build an affordable computer that can run those games at 4K now that the price
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of really nice displays like this Acer I've got right here are coming way way
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down all the time well let's find out shall
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we going back to my purchase of a vew Sonic P95 f+b I've believed that a
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display can last you through several of these bad boys if you choose one of
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sufficient quality for your needs now and in the future my old Dell 245 fpw
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actually got retired from use by my wife only a couple months ago when she saw
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LG's 29 ultrawide so the component
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choices for this rig were a little different than normal we didn't
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overbuild the PC in an attempt to run every game at 4K but we also didn't want
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to build the most budget Cheapo gaming rig ever either it was meant to be a
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reasonable bang for thee Buck sweet spot so around $900 to $1,000 gaming and
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multi-purpose AMD based PC with some upgradeability and with the ultimate
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plan of passing it along and replacing it with a new Sweet Spot rig when the
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time is right a strategy that can actually yield much better value for the
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money in the long run versus trying to spend you know twice as much on a
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machine in the first place in an attempt to get it to last twice as long not to
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mention that this way you end up with two machines so you can repurpose your
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old rig for a friend or family member or server or whatever else down the line so
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at the heart of the rig is an fx 6350 6 core CPU although a 6300 is also a great
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choice if you don't mind doing a little bit of overclocking we could have stuck
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with the eight core that AMD accidentally put in the motherboard that
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they sent us but given how many threads modern games support and the growing
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support for lower CPU overhead apis like nle and direct X12 I don't feel like
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spending a bunch more on a CPU is a great investment for a sweep spot PC
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Today thr away the okay I don't know the
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words to that song our motherboard is an MSI 970 gaming board it looks nice if
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that matters to you it's reasonably well built it includes support for 2-way
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Crossfire if you wanted to add another graphics card in the future although it
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should be noted that sweet spot rigs usually live their lives with a single
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graphics card and it's got a solid IO layout with four usb3 ports we kitted it
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out with eight gigs of the heaviest memory that we've ever seen now I'm just
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kidding it wasn't heavy but we had to justify needing two people to build one
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computer somehow we used an AMD branded
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kit but any dual Channel DDR3 would work just fine if you're a heavy multitasker
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you might opt for 16 gigs right off the bat but RAM upgrades are one of those
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things that's easy and inexpensive to do later on down the road when and if you
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need more that's where all my print jobs went I mean what's a print job I
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couldn't
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our Drive power supply and case choices aren't terribly important for gaming
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performance but I'll let you know what we used anyway we went with a 240 gig
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Kingston SSD that we had lying around the office although you could pick any
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value SSD for your boot Drive these days a 2 TB WD green for mass storage and for
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large games and programs a cic 400 wat 80 plus bronze power supply and an NZXT
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s340 case for its solid air flow clean looks and great price price which leads
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us to the last key component for any gaming rig the graphics card we chose
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the radon R9 285 because at under 250
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bucks with some available for as little as like 200 and change on promo it stays
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within that FPS per dollar sweet spot
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that usually exists between about $120 to $280 and it also has at least we were
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hoping when we spec this thing enough horsepower for the games that we're
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going to be running on this rig with graphic settings turned up even at 4K so
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here's the finished build and with it done it's time to Benchmark all the
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games for me and by me I mean Luke and
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by all the games I mean we took anything that had over 10,000 viewers on Twitch
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TV so like the mainstream and competitive stuff added in a couple
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choices of our own fired it up at 4k on an acerb 326 HK a gorgeous IPS monitor
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and cranked the details to see how they would run and actually the results
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surprised me a little bit a cross our test Suite of dirt showdown Starcraft 2
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Team Fortress 2 Counter-Strike Global Offensive League of Legends Dota 2 and
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wow only World of Warcraft likely thanks
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to its recent graphical update with Warlords of dror needed the details
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turned down at all in order to spit out not just playable but actually very
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enjoyable frame rates at a massive 3840
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by 2160 resolution now this won't be the
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case across the board we didn't make a magical computer here if you're going to
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grab the latest AAA OMG photo realism
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titles from a series like Assassin's Creed Battlefield crisis or the like
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then you'll need to run at a lower resolution and deal with the
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interpolation that comes along with that unless you want to step up to some
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seriously more powerful Hardware but not everyone is interested in that and I was
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still I don't know what the right word is so I'll say amused when I realized
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that the most most popular games that gamers are really spending the bulk of
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their time on these days just aren't that demanding and there's no reason
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that a reasonable modern gaming rig can't run them cranked on a 4k monitor
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today so thanks AMD for sponsoring this
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fun little build log and experiment thanks to you guys for watching like
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