Here it is, AMD’s Ryzen 3 lineup is finally out.
Howdy howdy guys, Ponchato here, and today we’ll be looking at one of the first Ryzen
3 1200 budget builds.
Nickname? Little Red.
This build is centered on the Ryzen 3 1200, AMD’s newest addition to the Ryzen CPU line.
This is a quad core processor running at a 3.1Ghz base clock and up to 3.4Ghz boost clock.
The 1200 features a 65-watt TDP with 2MB of L2 cache and 8MB of L3.
It comes with AMD’s excellent Wraith Stealth cooler, with a super quiet 92mm fan.
On top of that, this CPU is unlocked.
You can overclock it right out of the box.
But that’s not all.
The best part about the Ryzen 3 1200 is that it only costs $109.
Yup.
Just over $100 for an unlocked quad core.
Gnarly.
The graphics will be powered by an MSI GTX 1050 2GT OC.
It comes with 2GB of GDDR5, a dual fan cooler, and a factory overclock to 1404MHz base and
1518MHz boost.
Little Red’s motherboard will be an MSI B350M Gaming PRO microATX with the AM4 socket.
It comes with a single PCIe x16 slot, 2 PCIe x1 slots, one spot for an M.2 SSD (either
SATA or NVMe), and two DIMM slots that support memory up to DDR4-4000.
It also has 4 SATA jacks, gigabit LAN, and 3 fan headers.
Oh, and LEDs.
Red LEDs.
Oh baby.
Memory comes from Ballistix with their 2x4GB DDR4-2400 kit.
In keeping with the color scheme of Little Red, this memory comes with red heat spreaders.
Storage is provided by a Western Digital 500GB M.2 SSD.
Plenty of room for games, plenty of speed, and it’s just so itty bitty.
Little Red will be powered by a 500W Thermaltake PSU.
Their Smart Series power supplies are a budget-friendly lineup with sleeved cables, quiet 120mm fans,
80+ certification, and fairly limited number of cables, which makes cable management much
easier since they’re non-modular.
For the case I used a brand new release from Cooler Master: the MasterBox Lite 3.1.
It’s a microATX case with a dark mirrored front panel and tinted window for the side
panel.
On top of that, it comes with 3 replaceable front panel grills: white, black, and red.
Obviously, Little Red is getting the red set.
Since I started this build before Ryzen 3 was released, assembly didn’t start outside
the case.
First thing’s first, I put the motherboard standoffs in.
The nice thing about the MasterBox Lite 3.1 is that two of the standoffs are preinstalled
and come with a tiny lip to help hold your motherboard in place.
Once the motherboard was lined up with those two standoffs, the rest of the screws went
in easily.
Next I installed the SSD.
I put it in the slot and then…
Where’s the screw?
I looked through the motherboard box, the SSD box, I even looked through all the parts
from my last builds…
I could not find an SSD screw anywhere.
Turns out, it’s preinstalled in the slot so you don’t lose it.
Once I figured that out, I installed the SSD, screwed it down, and kept moving.
Next up was the memory.
The MSI B350M Gaming PRO only comes with two DIMM slots so there aren’t any special installation
instructions.
Line up the cutout in the DIMMs with the tab in the slots and push them in.
Easy breezy.
The GTX 1050 came next.
After taking out the expansion slot covers, I maneuvered the card into the case and…
it didn’t fit.
I hadn’t noticed that the x16 slot wasn’t in the first position – it’s one row down,
probably to allow a bit more room for large CPU coolers.
Smart.
After removing the correct slot cover, I put the graphics card in with no problems.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this would turn out to be a mistake.
More on that later in the video.
Next up I put in the Thermaltake power supply.
Probably because I had the case on its side, some of the screws were pretty difficult to
get in.
Thankfully the MasterBox Lite 3.1 comes with soft rubber pads under the power supply position,
so you have a couple millimeters of wiggle room.
Like installing the GPU, I would soon realize this too, was a mistake.
First though, I plugged in the rear exhaust fan.
Unfortunately the cable wasn’t long enough to wrap completely around the fan’s chassis,
so I had to use a twist tie to keep the excess wire controlled.
No biggie though.
Here begins a nearly 45 minute process of trying to manage the cables.
Now, take this opportunity to learn from my mistakes.
First, if your case has a removable hard drive cage: take it out.
It’s much easier to put it back in once the cables are tied, rather than trying to
work around it.
Mistake #2: I tried to put the front panel headers in last.
This is stupid.
Don’t do this.
Front panel headers are tiny, hard to line up, and in particular the LED and button headers
are pretty much impossible to plug in correctly unless you have a clear view of the motherboard
pins.
I ended up having to take out the graphics card because of those.
Oh yeah, then I got mad and broke the USB 3 header.
Whoops.
When trying to take it out, I pulled all the pins out of the top row, like, straight out
of the end of the cable.
The good news is I just jammed it backed on and nothing lit on fire when I booted the
computer so…
I guess that cable is just never getting unplugged now.
With the front panel headers all plugged in, I reinstalled the power supply.
Then, once I knew all the cables on the top side were more or less in place, I put the
graphics card back in.
After that, it was just a matter of getting all the cables on the back tied down or press
fit where they 1) wouldn’t be visible and 2) wouldn’t block the left side panel.
A really nice thing about the MasterBox Lite 3.1 case is it gives you quite a bit of room
next to the power supply to stick cables.
It doesn’t look super tidy, and you really can’t tie them down there, but if you have
a few SATA and peripheral cables to hide like I do here, it’s a nice little spot.
The last part of cable management was to clean up the front panel cables as much as possible.
I was mostly trying to keep them away from the motherboard tray cutouts, to keep them
hidden.
Pro tip: get Velcro straps that have a cutout so you can loop them through themselves.
You can tighten them down just like zip ties, and they can be adjusted later like twist
ties.
It’s the best of both worlds and it’s a much easier way of doing this.
I’ll drop a link where you can get those in the description below.
Unfortunately my camera stopped recording right before I put the side panel back on,
but rest assured, I got it back on without the use of vice grips or a hammer.
After attempting to tidy up all these cables, I have developed an extreme appreciation for
modular power supplies.
If you’re doing a budget build like this one though, the money saved with a non-modular
power supply is more important than the couple extra minutes you’ll have to spend routing
cables.
With the side panel on and the cables all in place, I think it came out pretty well.
I put the hard drive cage back in, which just takes a few screws, and the build was complete.
Well, almost.
I still had to wait for Ryzen 3 to be released.
After a terribly long wait, I finally got my Ryzen 3 1200.
After getting the 1200 and the Wraith Stealth cooler out of the box, it was finally time
to install the processor.
Fun fact, this is my first ever AMD build.
I built my first computer in 2006, and I have never actually touched an AMD processor.
The first thing you notice about AMD CPUs compared to Intel’s is that the pins for
AMD systems are on the processor rather than in the motherboard slot.
To me, Intel’s LGA sockets make a bit a more sense since they’re probably much harder
to damage, but I imagine there are some patents preventing AMD from using a similar design.
First I removed the plastic brackets and screws that help hold the back plate on.
They just unscrew and come right off.
The CPU came next.
There’s a little gold triangle on one of the corners of the Ryzen CPU which lines up
with a triangle on the socket.
Once it’s lined up, the chip just drops into place, and the retention clip is light
and easy to close.
With those out of the way, I moved onto the cooler.
The cooler comes with thermal paste pre-applied, so there’s no extra work there.
I should have rotated the cooler so that I could have the fan wire wrapped around the
base when it’s plugged in, but I wanted the AMD logo facing forward.
The sacrifices we make...
Anyway, there are 4 screws, one at each corner, to hold the heat sink down.
The issue I quickly discovered was that the retention plate on the back of the motherboard
isn’t really glued down, so you need to hold it from the back to get the screws started.
This is why you start builds outside of the case.
After getting that figured out, I was able to screw down the cooler with no issues.
With the CPU installed and the cooler in place, Little Red was finally ready to go.
Installing Windows 10 is, as always, a really straightforward process.
It’s especially fast now that I got a SanDisk Ultra Flair thumb drive which promises and
actually delivers 130MB/s reads.
I’ll add a link to get one of those in the description, it’s well worth it.
As usual I turned off all the telemetry options while installing.
I’ve had pretty consistent problems with telemetry apps in Windows 10 hogging the CPU,
hard drive, or network, so I would highly recommend you turn all these off.
With the options all settled I let the installer get to work and finish getting it all set
up.
And there it is, the Windows desktop.
I was especially relieved to see this because of that USB 3 header that I broke.
I was more than a little concerned that that would either cause problems or just outright
burn something.
Thankfully, no problems, and I could get it to work right away.
Now for all the component costs.
First up, the AMD Ryzen 3 1200 processor came in at $109.
The GTX 1050 from MSI was $110, and MSI’s B350M Gaming PRO motherboard was $80.
The 8GB of Ballistix memory was $60 and originally I was going to use a 1TB hard drive for $50.
Just for my purposes I went with the WD Blue 500GB SSD, which was $150.
That put it over budget, but that won’t affect gaming performance very much.
Thermaltake’s 500W Smart Series power supply was $40, and the Cooler Master MasterBox Lite
3.1 case was also $40.
That brings the build total to $489 with a 1TB hard drive, or $589 as I set it up here
with the SSD.
Links to all these components are in the description below.
Now a quick note on what videos are coming up next.
First up, as this video is being uploaded I’m already working on the benchmarks.
And, I’m expanding my benchmarking lineup to include CS:GO, Rocket League, and Overwatch
in addition to GTA V, Battlefield 1, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, and Just Cause 3.
I’m hoping to get them done and uploaded within the next day or two.
Once they’re up, I’ll link them in the description.
An even better way to get notified as soon as they’re ready is to subscribe and click
the bell icon to turn notifications on.
That way you’ll hear about it as soon as the video is published.
Second, the Ryzen 3 1200 can be overclocked, and I’m cautiously optimistic on stock cooling.
The Wraith Stealth’s 65W rating exactly matches the Ryzen 1200’s TDP, but Ryzen’s
stock coolers are pretty well known for their great performance.
Since the Ryzen 3 1200 has a maximum temperature of 95 degrees, I think the results will be
surprising.
I’ll be putting up the overclocking video and benchmarks of that soon.
Beyond that I have a few head to head videos planned, including a versus video against
the G4560, Intel’s budget king.
Stay tuned for those.
I’m stoked to start benchmarking this computer and I can’t wait to share the results with
you guys.
Plus, Little Red is just pretty.
Look at that.
So guys, if you liked this video hit the like button, if you want to see more hit subscribe,
and if you have any questions on this build, Ryzen 3, or any of the parts, let me know
in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, I hope I helped, and I’ll see you in the next video.