Every year we do one of these holiday PC buyers guides, and oh my god, have I ever aged a lot.
That's okay
That's not the point. The point today is whether you're buying a new gaming PC for yourself or for somebody on your nice list
we've got suggested parts at three key price points under five hundred bucks around a thousand dollars and
approximately two thousand dollars, so let's get to it.
Zotac's ZBOX PCs are great for applications like productivity streaming and gaming
They feature seventh gen Intel Core processors, and they're super small check them out at the link below
So let's just dig right in with our budget-friendly
Just game build where if it doesn't improve your frames per second,
It doesn't make the cut. When we first saw current pricing we actually thought we were gonna be stuck with an Athlon X4 950
but using a
six-year-old CPU architecture today felt wrong, so we crunched some numbers and
miraculously managed to squeeze in a Ryzen 3 1200 with its stock cooler
This did necessitate dropping down to an ASRock A320M-DG5 socket AM4
motherboard which doesn't support overclocking,
But this is still a major performance improvement over any of the Athlon options.
On the subject of performance improvements,
We've got the same amount of RAM as last year, and for that matter, the same amount of RAM as our
2013 holiday buyer's guide due to the worldwide shortage of DRAM that's driving up pricing so
eight gigs of whatever ddr4
2400 or higher from a reputable vendor is
What you're gonna get and,
while upgradability isn't a major consideration for this build, (that rear I/O on the motherboard is a prime example)
We're going to use one stick instead of two to give us most of our performance today
With the ability to throw another one in down the line for dual-channel
For storage we've taken a page out of our 2015 guide and gone with a one terabyte Seagate FireCuda hybrid drive
For a balance of capacity, price, and performance and for our case
We've gone with a Thermaltake V2+
Which for the money gives us both a solid enough chassis and a power supply that while,
super cheap and only capable of about 300 watts continuous,
Probably won't instantly vaporize, thanks to its two-year warranty.
Though you will absolutely want to replace it if you upgrade your CPU or your graphics card later on.
Speaking of the graphics card, this year we're going with the MSI GeForce GTX 1050 ti 4 gig
Truthfully, it's a step down from what we'd like to use if we had a bit more to spend but a budget's a budget.
So overall then this year, we've got a much faster CPU for overall system performance and
Less framerate variance in gaming, but we're actually taking a significant hit on our GPU performance
Thanks to the renewed cryptocurrency mining craze
That's driving up pricing, and we couldn't really fit in an SSD as a result of the worldwide NAND flash shortage
Which sucks.
But we did end up with a pretty well-balanced machine here that can handle eSports titles and console quality 1080p gaming.
Our mid-range game now build creeps a little higher budget wise but picks up some significant upgrades including a Ryzen 5 1400
again paired with its stock Wraith stealth cooler. Not to be dissuaded by the
hilariously cheesy stock photo on MSI's website,
we then paired it with an MSI B350 PC mate motherboard
It's technically branded as a business board see look he's wearing a suit
but the quad Ram slots and VRM heatsinks for better upgradeability and
Cooling should give us solid real-world benefits for gaming as well
For RAM, We've got 16 gigs of dual-channel ddr4
2400 megahertz Ram
making this build more of a platform upgrade than a
Performance upgrade compared to last year's though
It should be noted that these sticks run at just 1.2 volts
Meaning that like the CPU itself you could overclock them a little if you choose
Giving you a bit of a bump over last year's model. For storage,
We contemplated going with a four terabyte 7200 rpm hard drive
rather than take a 30 percent capacity hit due to SSD prices but ended up opting for a
525 gig Crucial MX300 for better overall system performance
So hopefully if you're spending $1,000 on a system
You can then
Wait a month or two to save up for a hard drive or you've got an old one lying around that you can use for
bulk storage.
Our case this year is a Thermaltake versa H21 which, like last year's versa H25,
offers toolless access and installation, top ventilation holes, and
--unofficial--
Radiator support if you've got a dremel and a couple of hours on your hands
For power we chose a fully modular EVGA 550 watt B3 which should be plenty for everything. We've listed so far and
the GTX 1070 that we managed to stuff into this about
$1000 budget. Now the 1070 isn't a step forward from last year,
But it's not a step backwards either with its excellent 1080p or even 1440p performance.
Once Vega 56 availability improves a little bit, that would also be a viable option at this price point for team red members.
So then compared to last year we spent a few bucks more,
But we get into a fresh platform that promises solid upgradeability down the road. Now you could choose instead a core i5
7500 with a B250 board which might even give you better overall performance
But you'd be even further over budget
And it is less likely that you'd be able to slot in a new CPU for a performance increase a year or two from now
Let's get then to our high-end game on build. This sucker clocks in at roughly
$2,000 and is designed with gaming performance in mind, but also as a capable workstation so it sports a core i7
7800x 6 core CPU running on an Asus TUF X299 Mark 2 motherboard. This means that unlike
Last year's core i7
6800K build, we get to take advantage of both the updated cache setup and
AVX-512 support that was introduced with Skylake X for a nice little productivity boost and the higher clock speeds are just gravy
We've given it a 32 gig quad
Channel kit of g.skill ddr4 3200 memory for optimal performance and as for cooling
We really like the Noctua NH-U14S.
It's a quiet solution that will allow some light overclocking while being easier on the wallet than a high performance AIO liquid cooler
storage brings us to this year's first dual drive setup, a
525 gig crucial MX300 M.2 paired with a Seagate Barracuda
4 terabyte for bulk storage, and then all of this bolts into the corsair carbide clear 400C, a
Cleanly laid out case with an acrylic windowed side panel that can optionally handle liquid cooling later on
now although we were disappointed by its pricing compared to last year the
GTX 1080 still ends up being the obvious choice at this price point and it will comfortably handle high refresh rate 1080p or
60fps 1440p gaming and we will power this beast with a SeaSonic 80 plus gold 750 watt semi modular power supply
Easily more than enough for our needs
though at $2,000 should be about more than just needs and overall this build was a bit of a disappointment for us we get a
generational CPU performance boost over last year sure
but we're not getting nearly the capacity of SSD that we did then and
Frankly we were really hoping that by this time there would be a bonafide
competitor to the GTX 1080 driving down not just its pricing, but also the flagship 1080 Ti
I mean as it is, you could squeeze Nvidia's top-of-the-line into a high quality build for
$2000, but you would need to make a few compromises and either wait for better Coffee Lake availability
or settle for a quad-core
So maybe next year, we'll get a $2,000 system that's worth upgrading to from our 2016 model like,
can we, AMD and NVIDIA?
If we're really good?
I guess we'll see.
Anyway guys full disclosure time we do not get any kickbacks from manufacturers for our holiday buyers guides part selections
But we do receive a commission if you buy your stuff using the links below
So if you're shopping go check them out even if you aren't buying exactly the same thing
but if you're just using our lists as a starting point.
And however many systems you're buying whether it's one or or three or you're getting a MacBook and like a Linux workstation and a PC
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