How about another PC build?
That was the creepiest intro I've probably ever done.
It's time to build another gaming PC.
And this is me putting my money where my mouth is because I spent my own money
personally on all these components.
If I had a thousand dollars to spend, that's what all this cost roughly as of time of filming somewhere in mid-April.
This is what I would spend it on.
I think for a thousand bucks, you're going to be super happy with not only gaming performance of this,
but also the streaming capabilities and the content creation capabilities of this rig.
So in this video, we're going to assemble the system.
We're going to install Windows on it.
And then I'm going to give it a Doug score.
We're going to give it away.
That's right, my friends.
We're not going to use a Gleam link, by the way.
Don't freak out.
We're not using Gleam. I know a lot of you don't like that.
And we're not going to require 50 different things to submit 50 different entries.
We want something out of it, of course.
And all I ask that you do is subscribe.
If you get subscribed, that's a huge help to us.
Very much appreciated.
Otherwise, thank you for clicking the video.
Hopefully, you enjoy the build montage.
But first, we've got a little ad break.
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Let's kick things off right away then with part selection.
Now, this I feel like I have to justify some of the parts I chose because, again,
this was my own money and my own decision-making here.
It wasn't like I was just pulling stuff off the shelves.
The first thing, obviously, is the CPU.
And this is the Intel Core i5-12400F.
Now, this is not a super powerful CPU by any means,
but at $150, it's a heck of a value option.
It's still great for gaming.
It's not the fastest thing in the world, but it does have a very tame TDP,
which means you don't need a beefy cooler.
Pair this with an H-series chipset motherboard,
and you've got a heck of a platform at a very great price.
My approach to the motherboard was pretty simple.
I wanted to keep the cost down here as much as possible without cutting too many corners.
This does not have onboard Wi-Fi.
It's obviously not a Z-series chipset, but we're not going to be overclocking anyway.
And this being a DDR4 motherboard means we can keep our memory costs down.
So this is a Vulcan Z 16-gig kit of memory, and it's just 3200 MHz.
I think CL16, so, I mean, it's your run-of-the-mill DDR4.
Nothing super fancy here, and it doesn't need to be, in my opinion, in a $1,000 budget.
This is just a Gen 3 NVMe here.
Pretty much maxes out reads at around 3500 MB per second,
but it is a 1TB drive, which is going to be great for games.
Now, if I'm being perfectly honest with myself,
you could probably call into question my cooling choice here.
This is a low-profile cooler.
I've actually used it before in some smaller form-factor builds,
but obviously this being a mid-tower, it might not make a lot of sense on the surface.
I love Top Flow coolers. I love the price of this from ID Cooling.
I think it looks really good, and that's just not really much of a downside
when you're pairing up with a 12400F.
There's no need to stack a really expensive, beefy cooler on a chip with that kind of TDP,
so that's why I went this route.
As for the Eclipse P300 from Phanteks, there's not much more to say
other than the fact that I've used this many times, and I think that speaks for itself.
It's nice and compact as a mid-tower. It has great airflow and a pretty decent price.
It does look a little lonely over here. We need it out of the way for now.
For graphics, how about an RX 6750 XT, this one from XFX.
This is the Quick 319 version, and it is a phenomenal value card in the new market.
Even now, with the 4070 being released, it just doesn't seem all that appealing on paper
given the performance that you're getting.
But a card like this in the new market is pretty much unbeatable so far.
I haven't found another card other than maybe the 6650 XT for its price
that this competes with from a value perspective.
Everything else is just extra. You're paying extra for extra performance,
and I really don't like that.
Or you're paying the Nvidia tax, which, depending on who you ask,
that might be worth it or not.
But in this case here, I'm trying to maximize performance in that $1,000 budget,
and this thing, for around $400 or so, takes the cake.
And rounding things out then, how about a Cooler Master G700?
This is an 80-plus gold-certified 700-watt power supply, and it is non-modular.
It's the only negative that I can really think of, at least for this price.
You've got plenty of tinfoil hat wearers out there who will tell you that you need to buy
the best power supply possible for any rig, because what happens if you have a catastrophic failure?
I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 of my $1,000 budget on a PSU.
That's just not going to happen. I'm sorry. I trust Cooler Master.
I know they stand by their products, and this has a great warranty already baked in.
So, with that justification out of the way, let's get to building,
starting first, of course, with our platform, which is over there.
Man, I'm a sucker for a motherboard unboxing.
There's something about brand-new motherboards, and the smell.
I'm addicted to it. I'm a junkie, 100%.
Look at this beauty. And this is cheap.
I mean, one of the cheapest H670 motherboards you could find out there,
and it still looks really freaking good.
We're going to expose the socket first, pull back on this, there we go,
and we're going to gently drop in our 12400F.
Remember, no integrated graphics here, just keep that in mind.
Throw this back down, then we're going to throw the lever back down,
and we'll keep this, and there we go.
And here goes DIMM 1 and 2.
Pretty straightforward.
We're going to peel this plastic off the thermal pad underneath the little heat slab for our M.2.
Get the drive installed, and actually the slab itself is what mechanically fastens this drive to the board.
So we'll just set it down gently, and then use our Phillips screwdriver to tighten it back down.
Bit of a mess here now, that's because we're getting actually most of our components installed up front here.
This is not going to take long at all to build, primarily because we don't have RGB,
and because we're going with a simple air cooler.
We've got what looks like more than enough thermal paste on there now,
better to go a little more than a little soft, and now we can fasten down this back plate.
And if we're really careful, we can actually tighten this cooler down without removing the fan,
which I think is really cool.
Now it's time to bring it all together, starting first with the rear I.O. shield, which we cannot forget.
And here comes the platform, using the CPU cooler as a sort of handle.
We'll just slide on in, and sit something like that right there.
There we go.
It's a little finicky, but that looks good.
Now I'm cheating a little bit here.
I'll admit I'm replacing the stock fans with these RGB ones, adding an extra.
I can't remember if the P300A comes with one or two fans, but I wanted to add a little bit of RGB here,
just if anything to eliminate the inside a bit.
Probably just set it to default white, and of course the viewer who wins the rig can customize it how he or she desires.
But this will help increase airflow as well, thanks to that perforated front panel,
and make sure that our components stay nice and cool.
I really like the way that this build looks so far, especially with that top-flow cooler,
and we've got our basics wired up.
I think next what we're going to do is tackle probably the power supply.
It's a bit bright.
Sorry, let me fix that for you.
And then after the power supply, the only thing remaining is the graphics card, which is just a mess here.
There's the graphics card.
Oh, I love the fresh smell of a fresh power supply in the morning.
I know this looks an absolute mess right now, but I'd like to wait until our power supply is installed
before we officially cable manage.
We'll get this sort of kind of in there, something like that, and we'll tighten things down.
And all of our primary power cables have been connected.
Now we've got it looking pretty clean back here.
Obviously still need to power the graphics card when we get that installed.
And I must confess, I don't actually know if this card's even going to fit.
This is not the largest mid-tower, and I like that about the P300A,
but this may be pushing the limit.
I don't know. I've never built with this card before, so let's see.
I suspect it will fit, but you never really know.
I didn't check the dimensions of this beforehand, and that's because, well, I just simply overlooked it.
I'm excited to see this card, though.
Holy cow. Yeah, this is pretty big.
For a 6750 XT, which is no slouch, mind you, this is still a huge card from XFX.
We might actually be cutting this close.
I'm sure thermals on this are going to be excellent because the heatsink is just so big.
And, oh, look, we even get one more little place here to pull the plastic.
Oh, that's nice.
Oh, my. Can you say perfect fit or what?
You've got to kind of approach this at a slight angle, and then you can prop the card upright.
Wow, this card fits just perfectly in this case.
That is pretty awesome.
And thanks to this cheap sag bracket, we've got our card sitting nice and horizontal.
It was sagging a bit before.
These are super cheap, by the way.
They're effective. They get the job done.
I'll have it linked below if you're interested.
Okay, so here is the right side of the case.
You can see cable management's decent.
It's not my best work, but it's pretty easy to just shove cables in this front little channel here that the P300A offers.
And a few zip tie points. There we go.
Now, here's the other side.
Really digging the look of this rig.
Check this out.
That is the perfect size graphics card for this rig, assuming you are going with a front-mounted AIO, of course.
Can't believe I pulled that off. Totally, totally random.
We've got our two supplemental 8-pins connected to the card.
And, man, everything just cleaned up so nicely here.
For $1,000, this not only looks really good, I'm just a big fan of these compact builds, but it's also going to perform very, very well.
Anytime you pair a Core i5 in the modern Intel generation with something like a 6750 XT, you're going to get some really good performance in a lot of games.
A few moments later.
Hey, would you look at that? I fast-forwarded a bit.
I cheated off-camera. I just installed Windows. Very simple.
Get yourself a thumb drive like this and use the Windows Media Creation Tool.
Load it on here. We'll have a video in the description that will detail how to install Windows step by step.
And you can actually do it totally for free. You don't even need to activate Windows.
But you can use a sponsor like our key sponsor. You can get an OEM key for like $10 and activate Windows.
It'll get rid of the watermark and you can customize your wallpaper.
So, everything fired up without issue at all.
I did forget to connect the fan hub at the rear. That's just a SATA power cable.
Got that connected so the additional fans are spinning.
I've got them set to white LEDs here just for subtle lighting interior because it's mostly black components we're working with.
And I think it looks really freaking clean. What do you guys think?
I think my favorite thing about this build is the card.
I mean, without a doubt, I haven't worked with XFX in a very long time.
And we don't have really a business relationship with the brand, so we haven't been sending things in a good while.
But I'm really glad that I bought this.
I mean, it not only fits the case perfectly, but it looks really good.
It's got a very beefy cooler on it. I think it's got a dual BIOS solution as well.
There's a little switch up here you can swap between different modes.
And it runs extremely quiet. I mean, at idle, it's virtually silent.
I think it has a zero stop function.
So, I think looking back on this rig and my decision to buy the parts that I did,
I'm, again, really happy with the graphics card.
I have no issues at all with the Core i5.
I think that is just, it might seem like an underperformer in a $1000 budget.
But for a gaming rig, I'd rather spend more money on the graphics card than a better CPU.
You can still content create with this, like I said, and it's not the end of the world.
But that might be a point of criticism I could see some bringing up in the comments section.
The other thing is, well, the elephants in the room were combining an Intel processor with an AMD graphics card.
When maybe some folks are saying, well, you bought an Intel CPU, so why not buy an Intel graphics card?
Why not buy an A770, let's say?
Which, by the way, is a phenomenal value on paper.
My only issue with the card is, well, one, I haven't had any first-hand experience with the performance of those cards.
And I've heard stories about still some issues with optimization around not only the drivers,
but some of the games that run off of those cards.
So, I don't want to throw a card in the rig that I'm not totally certain about.
I know there's still some lingering issues with AMD drivers, especially the 6000 series cards,
and before that, the 5000 series was also plagued with issues.
But a lot of those have been worked out now, and you'll find that a lot of folks that are still running cards like these
really don't have issues anymore.
Maybe in the beginning, once the kinks get worked out and the drivers mature, AMD cards tend to actually do just fine.
So that's why I did what I did, and I think the 6750 XT is a heck of a card in even a $1000 budget.
So that brings us then to perhaps one of the most exciting portions of the video, the giveaway itself.
If you haven't already entered to win this system, the link is going to be near the top of this video's description.
You'll notice it's not a gleam link. We're not teaming up with companies.
Companies haven't partnered with us to build a rig like this to give away.
This is, again, out of our own budget, so a side effect of that is we get to run the giveaway ourselves.
And we're going to try to keep it as simple as possible.
We've done in the past, like I mentioned, the comment in the YouTube comment section to enter to win,
but we want to make sure that we're abiding by YouTube's terms.
And the terms for the giveaway are also in the link, by the way.
But we're going to be doing something just with our own site and requiring very little of you to actually enter.
So as long as you meet the eligibility requirements, then all we need from you is your name and your email.
That's it. The email we're going to use to communicate with you if you happen to win.
And we'll get your shipping address and we'll get this right over to you.
It doesn't matter where you live, as long as it's not somewhere like North Korea where we possibly can't ship the rig.
Anywhere else is pretty much fair game.
If you are too young, you can have a parent or guardian enter on your behalf and represent you there.
So, yeah, that's really it.
Again, the terms are going to be in the fine print in the giveaway link itself.
So be sure to check this out if you're curious.
But we're going to try to keep this as open as possible to anyone globally.
Yes, it's going to cost a lot of money to ship a rig like this out there, but we're totally willing to do it
just to help give back in a time like this where maybe it's a bit difficult to justify spending a thousand dollars on a rig.
Don't worry. That's why we're here. You have a good chance to win one.
And there'll be more like this soon, by the way.
We're going to be doing a lot of giveaways, I predict, in the coming months.
The last thing to do then is to package the rig up and get it ready for shipping.
We'll announce the winner in exactly one week, by the way, if you are curious.
Packing actually is going to involve this right here.
This is an Instapack and it's pretty cool. I'll show you how it works.
I'm going to move this case over just a bit and I'm going to unpack this.
It looks like a plastic bag, but it's got two little packs of liquid down here.
All I'm going to do is break one of these and then we're just going to do that right there.
And then we're going to set this in here.
I'll let it wrap around a bit.
Got to move quickly.
I'm going to put this left side panel back on.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, there we go.
Check out that pack. It just expands in there.
I love that.
And then we can tighten it down so that keeps everything in there secure,
including the graphics card during shipping.
And we'll make sure that we also ship it nice and tightly in a big box
so that it gets to its rightful owner without breaking along the way.
That at least is the idea.
I've seen very bad things happen during shipping, but we're going to try our best.
That about wraps it up for this one.
Best of luck to all of you who decide to enter this global giveaway for this thousand dollar rig.
I'm pretty proud of this one.
Again, I parted it out myself. This is just what I would do with the budget,
and I think it turned out quite nice.
We've got Windows loaded on, and it's ready to go.
So we're going to package it up and wait for the shipping label to be printed
in about a week's time as of time of publishing.
If you want to become more active here on the channel, we've got a public Discord server.
It's totally free to join. Check that out. Link below.
We have a Patreon if you want to support us that way.
And, yeah, the only thing I can ask is that you stick around for the next video.
We might have something like this coming up again very, very soon.
And a big thanks for learning with me.