- Hey guys, this is Austin.
It's been a while, but I'm officially back
with a brand new gaming PC build.
Meet the Photon 4.0.
The last year has been a really, really rough one
for building a computer.
Thanks to cryptomining, it has been incredibly difficult
to get your hands on graphics cards,
especially the ones that most people wanna put
in game builds.
When you can find them, they're incredibly expensive.
More often than not, they're just going to be
completely out of stock.
Then, to make things even worse,
other components have also been driven up in price.
So high-end power supplies are really expensive right now,
and memory is especially bad, with a lot of prices going
for about double the price that they were last year.
Put all of this together, and it has been really difficult
to recommend any kind of new build.
Well, at least until now.
Thankfully, that changes today with the launch
of AMD's new Ryzen processors with Vega graphics.
No, this is not a sponsored video.
However, AMD did send out a little press kit
including both Ryzen 3 as well as Ryzen 5.
I mean, Ryzen 3 and Ryzen 5. (laughs)
The Ryzen 3 2200G is going to give you
four Ryzen CPU cores that can clock up to 3.7GHz,
as well as eight Vega GPU cores.
Very similar to the Ryzen mobile laptop
that I recently reviewed.
At only $100, this guy looks to be
a pretty good performance bargain,
especially considering that with those kind of specs,
some games are going to be playable even at 1080p.
However, for this build, we're going to be
going with the Ryzen 5 2400G.
This adds hyperthreading to the quad-core processor,
bringing the thread count up to eight,
and you're also going to be getting a clock speed
of nearly 4GHz.
Almost more importantly for gaming,
the Vega GPU cores have been bumped up
from 8 to 11 on this guy.
This does come with a heftier $170 price tag,
which, in context, makes Ryzen 3 look like
a pretty good deal.
However, because this build, we're going to go
a little bit higher-end, we decided to go
with the Ryzen 5 2400G.
For the rest of the build, we're using 16 gigabytes
of G.SKILL Flare X DDR4 memory.
With a super fast 3200MHz clock speed,
this is specifically meant to work with Ryzen,
and that extra power is going to be super helpful
if you have a Ryzen APU.
However, at a price on Amazon right now
of over $260, this is probably not the best idea
to pair with your $170 processor. (laughs)
Instead, I detuned this memory to run at 2666MHz
to simulate running a much more reasonable
$100 HyperX FURY X kit, which is going to have
eight gigs of RAM.
I will say, though, that if you're looking to pick up
a Ryzen with Vega chip, make sure that at the very least
you get some reasonably fast dual-channel memory.
Those graphics definitely need some memory to be fed.
At this point, it's hard not to notice
our slightly unusual case pick.
So this is the Thermaltake Core P1.
It's a little different than what we usually do here,
especially for budget builds.
With a solid piece of tempered glass up front,
it looks really nice.
Of course, it's not going to be the most practical system,
with the entire sides being open.
However, it does mean that you have
a lot of different mounting options,
including on the feet.
You can even put this on a wall.
Now, because we're using a Ryzen APU,
there's actually plenty of space here
because we're not installing the graphics card.
However, if you do wanna do that,
there is an included riser cable
where you can just drop it in.
So, for example, if you wanna upgrade later
down the road, you're set.
For the motherboard, we're using the MSI B350 Pro AC.
This actually isn't out yet, so I don't have
the final price, but it is a pretty loaded little board.
So in addition to full support for a Ryzen APU,
including overclocking, you're also getting RGB,
you have Intel Wi-Fi built in,
and there's also a full-size DisplayPort,
which means that, especially for a B350 board,
you're getting a lot of features.
Storage is being handled by a 500GB WD Blue SSD.
Now I've used these in a few previous builds,
and I like the price to reliability.
However, one of the nice things about this guy
is it is available in an M.2 form factor,
which, especially for a clean build like this,
means that we can actually stick it on the back
of the motherboard to make the cabling even nicer.
Even though the power supply, as you guys will see,
leaves a little bit to be desired.
For that power supply, we're using
a 500-watt EVGA Bronze unit.
There's nothing really wrong with it.
I've used a lot of these in builds.
They're gonna last a while, and they're fairly quiet.
However, it's not a modular supply,
which, even though it is a little bit cheaper,
means that your cabling is going to be
a little bit challenged in this guy.
Thankfully, though, especially on the back side
of this Thermaltake case, there's a fair bit of room
to be able to run some stuff.
Maybe not the cleanest thing in the world.
It'll work.
With a system like this, especially if you're going
with a Ryzen APU, a game that a lot of people
are probably going to want to play is CS:GO.
Now here, with high settings at 1080p, as I die,
we're getting a pretty respectable
50 to 60 frames per second.
One of the nice things is, because we are using
a FreeSync high refresh rate monitor,
if we do wanna turn the graphics settings down
to something like medium, we could, in theory,
take advantage of that full 120Hz refresh rate.
This is a bad idea.
How do I do this?
Moving over to Rocket League, another game that I think
a lot of people would play on a system like this,
we're getting high quality settings at 1080p
with a pretty solid framerate of between 40 to 50.
Just like CS:GO, if you do like
that higher framerate over...
Oh, come on.
Get it, get it, get it, get it, get it.
Yeah.
If you do wanna get that higher framerate,
all you need to do is just crank
the graphics settings down a little bit,
and you can easily get well over 60
in pretty much all of these games.
Oh, that was not good.
It's funny, I've done a lot of videos
on super budget systems lately.
It's nice to see what Rocket League looks like
when you actually crank the graphics up. (laughs)
I'm on low all the time, trying to get it to run
on $200 laptops.
Moving on, we have Grand Theft Auto V.
Now here, running on normal settings at 1080p,
we're between 40 to 50 frames per second.
Not the smoothest thing in the world, but GTA V,
even for an older game, does run reasonably well.
However, what I'm really curious about
is how Ryzen, especially with those Vega GPU cores,
are going to handle a more modern game.
When it comes to Middle-earth: Shadow of War,
we're dealing with a much more demanding game.
So here, at 720p on medium settings,
we're getting between 35 to 40 frames per second.
It's totally playable, but when you get into those
newer AAA titles, the graphics settings
are definitely gonna have to come down.
So, how does Ryzen with Vega stack up?
For the most part, pretty well.
You're getting a solid CPU, along with decent graphics.
If you're only doing lighter titles, it's totally fine,
but if you wanna get into more hardcore gaming,
at some point, you probably do wanna add
a graphics card to this guy.
With the Photon 4.0 itself,
there is a lot of room for expansion.
So you already have the really cool case,
but there's lots of room in here to add that liquid cooling,
to overclock your processor, add a graphics card,
more drives.
The sky's pretty much the limit.
Considering where the PC market is today,
I'm pretty happy with how the Photon 4.0 came out.
It's a unique-looking system that won't break the bank.
So as always, links to check out all the parts you guys need
to build this will be in the description.
Something else you might wanna check out
is my 2018 gaming PC tutorial, where I show how to build
everything here, although in a slightly different case.
So, feel free to go check that out over here,
and I will catch you guys in the next one.