- Hey guys, this is Austin and this is
the cheapest gaming PC we've ever built at just under $300.
Let's put this thing together
and see how it actually performs.
And huge shout out to LastPass for sponsoring this video.
If you guys have watched the channel for a while,
you know that I've been using LastPass for years
since way before they ever actually sponsored a video.
Now, LastPass really is the single spot that
you can keep all of your passwords not only safe but also
secure so you just don't have to worry about them anymore.
With LastPass you never need to write down, remember,
or reset another password.
They're all kept safe and secure in the LastPass vault.
And the best part is, is that it would generate a unique
and secure password for every single site you visit.
Which is especially helpful if you're one of those people
who uses the same password for every single site you use.
John.
- [Ken] What?
- LastPass will auto-fill your passwords
across your computer as well as your phone, where it works
not only on websites but also inside of apps.
On top of that, LastPass has some great
two factor authentication options.
Including support for the YubiKey, which is what I use
on my personal account.
If you're not already using LastPass to keep your
passwords and logins safe and secure, definitely be sure
to go check it out in the link in the description.
And of course, huge shout out to LastPass
for sponsoring this video.
Now let's go build a PC.
If you remember the very first $300 Bose one we did,
it was taking advantage of an AMD Athlon processor
so it's only fitting that this new version has
a much much newer version.
The Athlon 200GE.
Unlike older Athlons, this is taking advantage
of the newer Ryzen architecture.
So inside we have two Zen cores,
which are clocked at 3.2 gigahertz.
They do support hyper threading.
As well as important though, we also have
AMD Vega graphics built in.
Mind you, its Vega three so it's about the smallest version
of Vega you can get but this is a big step up
over those earlier Athlon's and actually should give us
enough performance for gaming.
I hope so.
It's a $55 processor so...
Backing it up, we have eight gigabytes
of Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM.
Now what's important about this is that any time you're
using something with integrated graphics such as
the Athlon 200GE you want to give it as much
memory bandwidth as possible, which is why we're going
with dual channel memory.
And while eight gigs isn't a ton, especially for
such a cheap system that's less than $300,
it should be just fine.
Everything is going inside the Gigabyte A320M-S2H.
Now this is a very cheap motherboard but importantly,
because we are based on the newer Ryzen chipset,
we actually have a lot of the higher end features.
So not only will this support our Athlon processor
but you could go all the way up to something like
a Ryzen 72700X if you ever wanted to upgrade,
although that might be a slightly ambitious
upgrade but we do have support for DDR4
and importantly an M.2 SSD.
That's important because we're using a
128 gigabyte 88 into SSD.
Now first of all an SSD is always faster than
a standard mechanical hard drive.
One of the nice things about budget builds is that
this is actually cheaper than a full hard drive.
And with only 128 gigs of capacity,
it's not going to be great but definitely should
be enough to install a few games and get us up and running.
Again, this computer's all about getting us ready
to go right now with plenty of upgrade potential later.
Like buying a hard drive, or more memory,
or a graphics card, or a better processor.
All these things are possible at some point.
But not today.
When you build a budget computer, there are a lot of ways
you can cut corners and save a little bit of money.
One area you shouldn't cut corners on is
with the power supply.
So this is a 450 watt EVGA 80 plus bronze unit.
Now the 80 plus is important.
Yes you could save probably like 15, 20 bucks
by getting a cheap Diablo tech power supply.
And it would work for like 15 minutes if you building
a backpack PC but for something that's actually going
to last you a few years, and importantly give you a little
bit of upgrade capacity in the future, going with something
that's a little bit high quality is definitely worth
the few extra dollars that it costs.
So what I liked about this case case is, like I was saying,
it actually has some features, which is not always a given
when you spend a very very small amount of money on a case.
So with this guy we do get an 80 millimeter exhaust fan.
And it also has a full USB 3.0 port.
A single one but you know, USB three is nice
on a very very cheap case.
Look at this.
We even have a little dust filter on the bottom,
which is actually not super important because
the power supply is on the top but OK I'll take that.
I like just how ridiculously light weight this case is.
So we do have our USB 3.0 port on the side.
You also do have a pair of USB twos on the front.
And once we get the motherboard in,
we'll have a few more around the back.
I'm guessing that would open up our optical drive
if we had one but in true cheap PC fashion,
instead of an optical drive, that's where we're gonna
stuff all our extra cables that we don't need.
So I've actually built a system in this case before,
and it is a little bit tight but it's not too bad.
One of the nice things is that it is a full micro ATX case.
Which means you're going to save a little bit of room
on your desk or underneath your desk
or where ever you wanna put it.
The main issue here is that there's basically no room
around back for cable management but for a system like this
especially concerning how basic it is,
I think we'll be just fine.
Now I'm not doing a full PC build tutorial in this video.
If you guys wanna check that out we do one every year
and I'll link in the description as well as on a card.
But the system itself actually should be pretty
easy to put together.
One of the nice things about this is because it is so cheap
there are very few components.
It's not really that difficult to work inside the case.
Basically what I'm saying is that if this is
the very first time you've ever built a computer
it is hard to go wrong with something like this.
It as about as simple as it gets.
I'm actually kind of excited to
see just how well this performs.
So we did take a look at the Ryzen three
and the Ryzen five chips with integrated graphics
a little bit earlier this year
and they were impressive but they're also
like, double the price of this.
Mind you, this is like, half the CPU cores
and less than half the GPU but considering we can build
this entire system for less than $300,
I really just wanna see, how good is it really?
Also wow that is some incredibly well applied thermal paste.
You see that?
Look how perfect it is.
I feel bad about ruining it.
Squash.
Because RAM is so expensive these days, the eight gigs
of RAM is actually the most expensive part of this build.
Now you could get away with four.
Especially if you're not really trying to do
all that much gaming, you'd be just fine.
But considering that I actually wanna have enough RAM to
you know, open up a couple tabs in Chrome
and also play a game of Fortnite.
I feel like eight gigs is a worthy investment.
And the nice thing about this board is that even though
it's not really super simple to upgrade,
since you only have two dim slots, you could, in theory,
bump this up to 16 gigs later once RAM prices eventually,
you know, come back down to earth.
So if we screw our SSD into place,
we're actually almost done.
This is a very simple build.
All that's left now is to put the motherboard
inside the case, get everything wired up,
and we can actually see how well
our awesome $300 system performs.
Or how not awesome it performs.
A little bit of cable management, installing Windows,
and a couple of software updates later,
let's see how the actual system performs.
The spiritual successor to Boson.
So to start out with we have the good old classic Cinebench.
Now this is not an incredibly powerful system,
with only a dual core Ryzen based CPU,
as well as those Vega three graphics,
but, well I have to benchmark things cause that's what I do.
And not too bad, so we've got 122 in single core
and 355 on the multi core.
Now the only issue with these Athlon chips,
I mean I guess there's a couple, is there is really no
over clocking capability, unlike the Ryzen chips.
But because this is a full desktop processor, we look like
we're pretty much running at 3.2 gigahertz across the board.
1322, so definitely not setting the world on fire.
But again this is better than the equivalent
Intel integrated graphics.
Getting into a real game we have CS:GO.
Now on medium settings at 1080p we've got
somewhere between 50 to 60 fps.
If we wanna go a little bit higher,
we turn the settings down.
But this is pretty playable.
Just stay still.
Stay still, I'll get you.
(button clicking)
Damn, alright.
Wow we all died together.
(laughter) So Fortnite does run.
It's at 720p medium settings but we do get
a pretty respectable 35 frames per second.
I would love to show you Overwatch but for some reason
when I actually try to open the game,
even though it's running here,
it just turns off the monitor.
Like legitimately just turns the whole thing off.
I can Alt tab back in and Windows pops right up.
Nothing is crashing just the monitor doesn't like Overwatch.
Yeah there we go.
Hamster (mumbles) wins again.
So Overwatch is actually kinda playable.
Now mind you we are running it on low settings
and its at 75% scale at 1080p, which is I think roughly
1600 by 900-ish if my math is right.
But yes, totally playable.
We're getting about 40 frames per second or so.
Next up we have Call of Duty Black Ops 4.
A game which should not be able to run on this system.
But I'm going to try anyway.
Yup yup yup yup.
(mumbles) or whatever.
Yeah yeah yeah that's fine.
Low low low low low off off off off off off low low off off
off off off off off off.
Perfect, that sound exactly like what we need right now.
(chuckle) Based on the 12 frames per second loading screen,
I don't have high hopes right now.
I don't think it's gonna work.
The problem with Black Ops is,
it actually just needs too much RAM.
So in addition to having CPU memory we also have
to keep in mind the graphics is sharing
that same eight gigs of RAM.
So when you combine all together,
Black Ops is just not being cooperative.
So I guess it's reasonable since that it very specifically
told me in the beginning that it was not gonna work.
But I wanted to try it anyway.
So that, my friends, is the cheapest gaming PC we've built
in a very very long time.
As always, links to check out all this stuff will be
in the description.