- Today we are here at our sponsor, Micro Center,
with a simple challenge.
I'm going to be building the cheapest gaming PC I can.
This is essentially going to be
a follow up to our last Boson.
And the thing is we couldn't really do this
video a year or two ago.
So let's take a look at what they've actually got.
If I'm trying to build the absolute cheapest gaming PC,
I don't think I have a budget for a graphics card.
So they do have the Ryzen 5 8600G.
So that is one of the brand new 8000 series APUs.
It has a lot going for it.
So it's six CPU cores, pretty decent RDNA graphics built in.
Believe this also has Ryzen AI on board as well.
And they have good specs, right?
Like we're talking about very solid integrated graphics,
which as long as I pair it
with some fast DDR5, should be enough
for even like mainstream titles like Fortnite, CS2,
that kind stuff, at pretty decent frame rates.
I think I'm gonna do this.
I'm going to do the Ryzen 5 8600G.
Normally what I would say is the only downside
of going with a Ryzen 8000 series chip
is that it does require an AM5 motherboard
and DDR5 RAM, which if we were doing this video a year ago,
would've been quite expensive.
But thankfully, the budget options
have become much, much more prevalent.
Ohh
wait, they have A620 boards?
Yo, this is actually only an $80 motherboard.
So the only problem with an A620 board
is it's gonna be super, super basic.
So if you pop it open, I mean it is,
there's not a whole lot going on here.
And because it's A620, it means that it's not going to have
really any support for overclocking,
which I would like to do.
But that's fine.
We could spend another 30 bucks
to get a nicer motherboard.
I think I would rather save that money
and put that toward getting more RAM.
16 gig kit for $55.
That's exactly what we need.
It's cheap, but it is gonna give us dual channel memory.
It is gonna be reasonably quick
and importantly, 55 bucks for RAM.
That's pretty cheap.
Like that's, especially for DDR5.
So now I need to choose an SSD.
So there's a 256 here for $28.
I probably should do that.
Technically, that will work for this system.
But a 256 gig SSD today, I mean that's like one copy
of Fortnite and our drive's almost full.
So there is the TN 450 from Inland,
which is $40 for a 500 gig.
And importantly it's PCI Gen 4, not Gen 3,
so it's significantly faster.
This is why it's really difficult
to do like ultra budget systems
because the difference between going from 28 and $40
is a doubling of the capacity
and essentially a doubling of the speed.
Yeah, actually over a doubling of the speed.
And I am gonna spend the extra $12.
Let me see what we've got for power supplies
'cause there's lots of great ones,
and I need to find the cheapest.
So there's a 650 watt bronze for $50.
If I was being reasonable, I would buy that.
But I could spend $40
on this guy.
So this is a PowerSpec
This is a 80 Plus White, which is fine.
So if I was going to give you some advice,
I would spend $10 more and get a 150 extra watts of capacity
and an 80 Plus Bronze rating.
That's an easy $10 upcharge.
But I don't need it for this system.
If I wanted some more overhead for the future,
that would be great, but honestly,
even a lower end graphics card
will run on a 500 watt power supply.
And especially given how basic our system is,
that is gonna be more than enough
'cause this thing all together,
it's probably gonna be only be pulling
like maybe a hundred watts,
could do a little bit of overclocking.
It is gonna be such a power sipping little baby PC
that I think I can save my money
and spend the $40 on the power supply.
Now of course for this gaming PC build,
I will be using a copy of Windows.
I transferred it from another computer.
I already had a copy of Windows
that I saved for a rainy day.
Ahh ha.
Shh!
So when it comes to building a gaming PC,
the case is where you can customize as much as possible.
You have RGB, you have wood, you have the colors,
you have everything you can possibly ask for.
So I really have two ultra budget choices.
There's this ThermaltakeN V100, which is a $45 case.
The advantage here is it's a full size ATX,
which would give us more flexibility for the future,
but I can save even more money
by going with the Cooler Master Master Box Q300L,
which normally does come with some mesh.
And I will tell you I have built with this case in the past.
It is incredibly cheap at $40 brand new.
But while it has literally zero frills whatsoever,
it does have at least a window.
It's plastic, but it's a window,
and it will look okay.
With this case, let me actually tally up my total,
but I think I have successfully built something under $500.
This is a $475 gaming PC?
You know what, I'm gonna lock this in.
475 bucks.
This is about the cheapest real gaming PC
that I can build at Micro Center.
So let's bring this back to the office,
put it together, and see exactly how good
the cheapest gaming PC I can build in 2024 actually is.
It looks like we've got a very small amount
of components on the table.
Well, you'd be correct.
At less than $500, you don't get a lot,
but also you don't need a lot.
So I mean I'll be real,
while we've done a full PC tutorial quite recently,
you could build this thing in like no time.
Like I feel like I could do this in like 10 minutes.
- [Alex] What?
I don't know, I think I'm gonna
have to fact check you on that.
- It'll take me three minutes
to get the case out of the box.
But other than that, I mean it's so simple.
(Austin laughs)
I don't know how fast I've ever built a PC before.
I don't know if I've ever done it in actually 10 minutes.
I think I've got everything.
I have my game plan.
I'm gonna try not to knock anything off the table.
Ready, set, go.
Okay, gonna open the box real quick.
This is honestly gonna be the slowest part
'cause it takes me forever to open these things.
All right, so what's gonna really help me here
is that this case is very lightweight.
Damnit. (crew laughs)
Okay, you know, I'm just gonna flip that upside down.
- [Alex] Yeah, I don't know
why you didn't start with that.
- You know what,
I thought it was light enough that I could do it.
Too many screws, too many screws, too many screws.
Okay, all right, all right.
Okay, so I'm gonna open up the case
as much as possible 'cause I'm gonna need that access later.
These are thumb screws, but they're too tight for me to get,
so I'm gonna loosen them all up.
So next, I'll cut the box on the power supply.
Cut the CPU.
This is really hard to open.
Just gonna slice the box open
and hopefully I can get in there.
- [Joanna] My God.
- Okay, SSD is out.
Ouch, that hurt.
These pop out, these pop out.
Cool, all right, sweet.
So I'm gonna open the back, which, ah, more screws!
No, no, no!
I'm unscrewing two things at a time.
Okay, let's go.
All right, power supply first.
We'll have to put power supply in.
It's a non modular supply.
I needed the screws in that.
I'm gonna have to go get it in a second.
So power supply goes down here.
So we're just gonna do this.
It's a real nice case and be, oh no, it's got the bracket!
I forgot it has a bracket in this one, no!
Oh, that's gonna slow me down a lot.
Wait, oh, I gotta take off, ah!
This is, ah, it takes me actually a couple minutes
'cause there's like two pieces of this bracket.
- [Joanna] Three minutes.
- Three?
- [Joanna] Yeah.
- What?
No, it's not.
No, it's not true.
- [Joanna] You know, you said it would
take you three minutes to open the box.
- I did actually say that.
- [Joanna] So you're doing pretty good.
- Okay, so with this case, it's a really nice little case,
but the power supply mounting is weird.
So I have to actually take out the bracket,
attach the bracket to the power supply
wherever I put the screws,
and then put it all back together.
Which direction does this go on?
Ahh, ahh.
Oh, I don't, which way did I put it?
I think I put it this way, right?
How many screws do we need for the power supply?
I think one's fine, maybe two.
I could do this with the power supply.
It doesn't take so long with the stupid bracket.
Okay, power supply's ready to go in.
Okay, just gonna put screw in on the back.
I got a ratcheting screwdriver,
but it takes too long to switch between modes,
so, okay, nevermind.
I should definitely been switching through the modes faster.
All right, what's my time right now?
- [Joanna] Five minutes.
- Is it really five minutes?
- [Joanna] Yeah.
- Okay, well I've got the power supply in.
Okay, that's fine.
All right, so let's get this out of the way
and go straight for our motherboard.
So motherboard should be really easy.
Close this up.
I/O shield is in here, damnit.
I/O shield's kinda slow me down.
Don't do whatever it is that I'm doing right now.
I'm hurt, fault screws hit the ground.
That's okay.
Okay, so open up AM5 socket, pop that open.
- [Joanna] Yeah, just throw that CPU.
- Toss the CPU in as hard as you can.
It's totally fine.
Make sure we're lined up.
Boom, all right, closed.
Boom, okay, memory, let's go.
I'll put CPU cooler in a second.
There's only two DIMM slots
and I'm gonna have to take a minute
to figure out where these go.
Open, open, open, open.
Where am I at?
Where am I at timewise?
- [Joanna] You are at six minutes.
- Okay, so RAM is installed, cool.
I'm gonna put cooler in while I'm here.
Throw in the SSD.
I think the SSD needs a screw, doesn't it?
Oh it doesn't.
Excellent, okay, Gigabyte
used my little, a little dude-r on it.
Oh, I gotta take off the thing, damnit okay.
Here's the thing though.
I don't have a graphics card.
I don't have a hard drive.
So actually this is, this is pretty fast.
Done with that, done with that, all right.
AMD logo up.
1, 2, 3, 4.
Got it, let's go.
Now this is the part I can't really rush
'cause I have to do this evenly.
It will literally just not even work
if I don't do it evenly.
- [Joanna] Did you put any thermal paste in that?
- Yep, there's thermal paste on the bottom.
- [Joanna] I don't believe you.
- I didn't actually physically look at it,
but it's always on there.
I'm just gonna trust it's on there.
AMD wouldn't have forgotten to do that, right?
All right, there, we're in.
Okay, put the CPU fan on.
Definitely more screws just went flying.
It's fine.
Put the CPU fan in now.
Okay, SSD, open.
Slide it in.
Pull this out of of the way.
Open it, my dude.
Open it, okay.
Focus, focus, focus, focus, focus.
I'm losing some valuable time right now.
Boom, okay, SSD's installed.
Let's put this in the case.
I might do this.
There's standoffs, there's standoffs,
yes, there's standoffs inside.
Excellent, okay, cool, let's go.
I/O shield, shh.
All right, I/O shield in.
Come on, one, two, go, go.
I should trust that my standoffs, oh god,
this is not looking promising right now.
Where are screws?
All right, how many screws do I need for my motherboard?
I'm gonna say three.
That doesn't look right.
I'll try it.
Oh, and that is not even gonna match up, is it?
Oh is it?
That does go in, okay.
Two screws, two screws all I need for the motherboard.
Don't try this at home.
That's very dangerous.
Okay, cool, motherboard is installed
from power and we're good to go.
I just need it.
How many?
- [Joanna] 30, less than 30?
- 30?
That's not enough seconds!
- [Joanna] 3, 2, 1.
That does not look like.
- Ah, well here.
Here's the thing though.
Yeah, I'm just gonna keep going.
I'm gonna keep going because I'm literally basically done.
Front panel, I'll jump it, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's just go.
Come on, I'm actually gonna have this basically booted now.
Pretty much, right?
There's a DisplayPort on this board, thankfully.
Power, power, power.
Where did I put power?
I'm actually, I'm gonna have this thing booted though.
Look, look, I'm pretty much there.
Okay, and then I just need to jump it and it's good.
On, okay, what did I forget?
I don't know.
Probably a lot of things.
Come on, come on.
- [Joanna] I don't see anything.
- Come on, yeah, just give a second.
Okay, AM5 just takes a second.
Come on, this can't count against me.
Do you look at this computer
and see anything other than a glorious success?
That was a joke.
- [Joanna] This is what success looks like guys.
- This is, yeah, this is what success looks like.
I guess, today we learned I can't build a PC in 10 minutes
as much as I think I can.
Let me take this back apart,
figure out what I forgot,
and then I'll be right back.
So I have gotten to the bottom of the problem
and it wasn't my fault.
This is on BIOS number one.
What version of the BIOS am I supposed to be on?
- [Alex] You're supposed to be
on at least version 20.
We are currently on 22.
- It's almost like a new Ryzen processor
needs a slightly newer BIOS,
which if I'm doing my math correctly,
means that if this was running the correct BIOS
out of the box, I would've been finished in 11 minutes?
- [Alex] I mean that's still not 10 minutes.
- So right now I'm running a Ryzen 7 7700,
which is an older processor inside of here.
Yes, I have cleaned it up, but that was a problem, right?
It was an unsupported CPU with this version of the BIOS.
Maybe I can't claim an actual victory,
but I can certainly claim a spiritual one.
I almost did it.
(upbeat music)
Let's see how well Fortnite runs,
which I'll be honest, I say this every time.
Fortnite, a fairly good game to test
because it's relatively, well, it's not relatively,
it's very good looking,
and it can be quite demanding, but it's also very scalable.
So let me give this a try.
We are running at 1440p, but heavily upscaled
and mostly medium settings.
So let's see what we've got here, shall we?
Wow I'm actually kind of surprised.
We're not dipping below 30 FPS at all here.
And we're right now running on a mix of medium settings
and technically 1440p,
but I'm upscaling from something
a little bit closer to 1080p.
One of the problems I'm having here,
my frame rate is decent,
but you can't really tell on camera too much.
I'm getting real frame time variances,
so it was like very stuttery.
All right, let's hop down one more time on low settings
and see what we can actually get here.
This is a very playable experience.
We're getting pretty close to 60 FPS,
but importantly, decent settings.
Let's see what we can get out of Forza.
Let's open up settings and see what we've got here.
So first of all, we're running 1080p.
I'm gonna run at 1440.
Frame rate 240, VSync off.
40 frames per sec, 36, 41 FPS.
Hmm, that's actually bad.
(Austin laughs)
It looks 720p-ish?
I know they're doing some upscaling, but yikes.
You know what?
I'm actually gonna give Forza a fail in the 475 system.
It's playable, but just barely.
Inside of CS2, let's see what we got here.
Now this will be fine.
Now you know what, we're just gonna go
with these standard stock settings,
which is pretty much all a mixture of medium
and high at 1440p.
Okay, let me play for a second.
We're getting 60-ish.
And mind you, we are playing at 1440p.
So that is gonna throw things off a little bit.
Odds are if you're spending $475 on your system,
you're probably playing at 1080p.
If we wanted more FPS,
we could certainly just turn the resolution down,
which is probably what you should do regardless.
But not bad, not bad.
Ha, look at me!
Both this and Forza kind of show
that there is certainly some compromise
when it comes to this Ryzen 5 8600G.
It's a solid entry level option.
But
what if we had an upgrade
and instead of purchasing a Ryzen 5 8600G,
you can instead get a Ryzen 7 8700G,
which would deliver more CPU performance
and a significantly better GPU
from your hundred dollars extra?
Bet you didn't see that one coming, did you?
Now, if you're considering upgrading to the Ryzen 7 8700G,
you will be getting some additional features
for your hundred dollars extra.
First and foremost, you're going from six cores
to eight cores, but these are actually all Zen 4.
On the Ryzen 5, it's actually a mix of Zen 4
and Zen 4C cores, which are slightly less performance.
So that's a small but noticeable difference.
And this Ryzen 7
also has significantly beefier graphics.
However, with all these APUs,
it's one thing to look at the theoretical specs on paper.
It's another to see the actual difference.
So let's play some games and see if it's worth spending
an extra hundred bucks, ow, on your Ryzen 7.
Let's start out with some Fortnite.
Yep, 1440, unlimited, yada yada, yada yada.
Okay, so we are all in the exact same settings in Fortnite,
so we're looking at 50 FPS while we drop, which is fine.
I'll say that I am actually getting better performance here.
So it looks like we went
from in the 60-ish FPS range before
to close to like 70 to 80.
Fortnite, we've got ourselves an extra 10 to 15 FPS.
Let's see if Forza's any smoother.
All fine.
Okay, so same settings.
Let's see if we can get some better performance here.
Yes, this is better.
So while the frame rate is not massively improved,
so we're hovering in the high fifties, low sixties,
the important thing is I'm not really seeing those stutters
that I was getting on the Ryzen 5,
which that was the real killer.
Now I'm still running at fairly low settings, right?
This is not the best that Forza has ever looked
and that was a little bit of a stutter right there.
But I can even tell you
that this is a much more playable experience.
On the Ryzen 5, it was stuttering like absolute crazy.
All right, let's try CS2.
See what we've got.
Yes, so everything is set to medium settings here.
All right, in CS2.
Now previously we were getting about 60 FPS.
Here, well you know what?
That looks about right.
We're in this 70 to 80 range, it looks like.
That is a noticeably smoother experience.
But I will also say that while it is noticeably smoother,
considering we spent another hundred dollars,
we are not getting like the world's biggest difference, oh.
There we go.
Okay, well this is actually a kind of tough call
because yes, I'm getting proper performance,
obviously having spent another a hundred dollars,
more CPU, more GPU.
The difference though is not massive.
And this also applies when you look at the benchmarks,
like the difference on paper
between these two chips is quite strong.
The difference in the actual scores
and the actual frame rates I'm getting,
it's like 20% better, maybe?
If you want a more long-term option,
spending a hundred dollars on this is good
'cause it still has all the advantages
that we had previously.
We have DDR5, we have AM5.
Like this is certainly a system that you can upgrade
and sort of improve down the line,
but considering it's an extra hundred dollars,
I'm not seeing an extra hundred dollars in value
going from the Ryzen 5 to the Ryzen 7.
Yes, this is better for sure,
but I actually think that our original $475 configuration
is actually the better version of the system
and you're better off saving some money
and maybe a year down the line,
throwing a graphics card in this bad boy
and keeping that Ryzen 5
because at $475, it's still a very usable
system out of the box.
But to get some better performance,
spend that 150 or $200, add a graphics card
and you will have a huge leap.
And in the meantime you'll still have
a very competent system for the time being.
Of course, thank you very much to Micro Center
for sponsoring this video.
If you'd like to check out any of the components
that I used, those links would be in the description.
And of course Micro Center
is a home of many other even finer PC components.
If you wanna build something better,
including there's a brand new store opening
in Charlotte, North Carolina very soon.
So make sure to go check that out,
the link in the description.
You can sign up right now and get yourself
a free 128 gig flash drive when the store opens.
So, excuse me, I'm going to put the Ryzen 5 back
in the system 'cause I think I got it right the first time.