What a Mid-Range Gaming PC Costs in 2024
When building your PC, it's essential to have a reputable brand that you can trust. You'll also need to consider the power supply and ensure it meets the recommended wattage for your graphics card. Most modern GPUs require at least 50-100 watts of power. A 700-watt unit is more than enough and has an efficiency rating of 80 plus bronze, which is a solid choice.
The author of this article has reviewed two power supplies: the EVGA 650 GS, 80+ Gold 650W (800W Fully Modular) and the EVGA SuperNOVA 850 GA, 80+ Gold 850W. The former has a slightly better thermal take test but both have a similar design and are partially modular.
The article also mentions that it's essential to check the power connectors used by your graphics card with the power supply you've chosen. Some newer power supplies use an ATX 3.0 connector, which is different from the older 12V 2-pin connector used in most GPUs. However, this can be easily addressed with a simple adapter.
The author has also provided recommendations for mid-range builds that fall within the $1,250 to $1,350 price range. They suggest considering reputable brands and taking into account the power supply requirements of your graphics card.
In addition to providing building recommendations, the article includes two closing announcements. Firstly, the author will be starting a new series called "Build Fix" in March, where they will review parts lists submitted by viewers and provide recommendations for upgrades and modifications. The author also mentions that they have a follow-up video planned for Joe's build from December.
Finally, the article invites viewers to subscribe to their channel, like this video, and check out their store at paulshardware.net for high-quality merchandise that helps support their content creation efforts.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome everyone, now that we are well into 2024, the dust has settled on the beginning of the year launches, I thought I'd do an assessment of the PC Building landscape and give you guys some recommendations for how to build a PC. we're going to start from the basics we're going to talk about budgeting and what you should buy and what my recommendations are because that's the question I get all the time -- what kind of PC should I build, Paul? we're going to talk about that today.excellent today's video is brought to you by the Paul's Hardware store on PaulsHardware.net the only official source for Paul's Hardware merchandise tantalizing t-shirts brilliant beer sets high quality hoodies and more all featuring The Classic thumb screw for tasteful and refined viewers or the 8bit thumb screw for tasteful and refined viewers who hate curves new designs are added sporadically and at random so head over to Paulshardware.net and get some of that sweet sweet merch right now or not right now after you watch the video. either way. let's start from the basics what are the parts of a PC I consider there to be seven main parts in that's that's if you're including the CPU and CPU Cooler together because they often come as a package although you can buy them separately you also have memory your motherboard your graphics card your case your storage and your power supply this is the way I group the parts starting with the core components up on top your CPU your memory and your motherboard also the CPU Cooler that's because all these need to be compatible your CPU needs to match your motherboard socket your memory type needs to also be supported by the memory and the CPU and your CPU Cooler of course if you're buying an aftermarket one should also be compatible with these other parts the second group is just the video card by itself because the video card is often one of the most expensive parts of the build and also one of the parts that most impacts your gaming performance it's also by itself because generally speaking it's going to be compatible with just about any modern uh CPU and motherboard that you might purchase whether you're going with AMD or Intel and then the third group down here is the remaining parts your case your storage and your power supply because these generally can be purchase separately these are going to more impact your cooling or potentially how fast your applications load up if you're talking about your storage drive and especially if you're just starting out and you're concerned about compatibility just remember ATX if you get an ATX size motherboard and you get an ATX size case and an ATX compatible power supply then generally speaking everything else should fit together of course one of the biggest concerns with building your own PC is how much it's going to cost and while you can save some money by building it yourself and using components that are suited to your needs while also looking for the best bang for the buck in terms of pricing the budget that you're going to want to set aside or have in mind is probably going to be one of these three ranges I now consider a budget PC to be in the $600 to $1,000 range to save some cash in a budget system you might be checking out used parts looking at resources like Craigslist eBay third-party auction sites of course your mileage may vary in terms of what used parts are available to you and you should always make sure that you can test the component that you're buying if you are buying used to make sure that they function before you make a purchase another good choice for Budget builds is going with Hardware that's maybe just slightly older than what is current generation and for that I would recommend amd's am4 platform which is still very viable and has even had some recent Launches on it such as the AMD ryzen 5700x3d which is a really solid gaming CPU for around $250 that said today I'm going to be recommending an am5 system because when I recommend PC builds to people I generally consider that you might want to upgrade your system somewhere down the line and am5 has a better upgrade path than am4 right now because am4 is technically end of life although AMD has still launched a few more CPUs for it this year I would generally Point people towards the mid-range in terms of getting a very powerful computer that is going to be forward compatible it's going to have a lot of flexibility in terms of expansion it's also where you're not going to have to make as many sacrifices in terms of performance in order to still get yourself a very powerful gaming PC then beyond that we have the high-end I would consider that to to be anything above $1,500 here is where the two core components of your system the CPU and the graphics card are going to start to ramp up in price pretty quickly CPUs will go from 300 to 500 to 700 or $800 for the top end ones and then graphics cards can quickly go from 600 to 800, 1,000 and even above that if you want to look at the fastest graphics card currently available which is the RTX 4090 which currently starts at about $1,800 fortunately though for the mid-range buyers there are better graphics card options on the market now than there were just a few months ago thanks to amd's Radeon RX 7800 XT which has come down in price just a little bit and then of course for NVIDIA lovers we have the RTX 470 super which has a $600 MSRP not many deals on this one yet but it is a much better bang for the buck at 600 bucks than what has been available from Nvidia previously so for mid-range Builders who are spending between $1,000 and $1,500 on their system I'd recommend budgeting about $400 to $550 for your core components CPU memory motherboard and possibly CPU Cooler about $480 to $600 for your video card and that pretty much covers the 7800 XT at about $500 right now and the RTX 470 super which is going for $600 right now AMD often has really good deals on the previous generation RX 6800 XT even for NVIDIA you can find like RTX 3080s uh for relatively less money than they have cost previously but if you want the latest in terms of per performance feature support as well as efficiency than going with the latest generation of graphics card is going to be a better bet the only other thing I mentioned for video cards for the mid-range Builders is if you do want to claw your way up about 100 bucks more at about 700 bucks you can start to find the AMD radiant RX 7900 XT which is a really big boost in performance is going to well outperform uh the 470 super and even the 470 TI super while having more memory at 20 gigs but that's pretty much the case with just about all PC parts you might say well you'll be okay with that but for a little bit more money you could get a bit more performance the remaining parts can often be found for about $150 to $300 of course that's the other Beauty about building your own PC is you have lots of selection out there so you might decide oh I can get away with a 1 tbte nvme SSD for now or maybe you have uh other ssds that you can bring over from an old system so you're okay on storage little things like that are great ways to save money on the overall price of your build but with all that said here is the actual build that I would recommend to a mid-range Builder right now it's going to come in at about $1,350 with an RTX 470 that's 600 bucks you could shave about $100 off of this right off the bat by going with the RX 7800 XT versus the RTX 470 you can see the remaining parts listed here we're going with a stock cooler to save a few bucks we're going with a solid mid-range case right now that's on sale so it's a great bang for the buck SSD prices have gone up a bit that's uh probably one of the more disappointing factors of building a PC now compared to a few months ago at the end of 2023 let's run down each of the parts the ryzen 57600 is your CPU that is a 6 core 12-thread processor AMD also has a 7600 X which is going to perform a little bit faster than this one but the 7600 X does not include The Wraith stealth cooler so not only are you're going to be spending about $230 for that CPU you're also going to need to add probably another $30 to $40 to get yourself a CPU Cooler as well especially with the promo code right now the $ 7600 being about $210 is a really solid choice and likewise on the M 5 platform you have good upgrade options whether you're talking about their 8 core 12 core or 16 core CPUs or going with something like the 7800x 3D which has 3D vcash which is basically one of the fastest CPUs for gaming that you can get right now and we're expecting rise in 9,000 CPUs to launch for this platform later this year so you'll have the potential to upgrade there too one of the first upgrades I would make to this mid-range build is an aftermarket CPU Cooler thankfully thermal rights Phantom spirit is a really really good performer it's available with or without RGB lighting depending on whether or not RGB lighting is your thing and it's only about $36 so consider that as an add-on upgrade and if you do go with an aftermarket cooler ride out of the gate then you might also consider a CPU like the 7600 X that doesn't include the stock cooler for our graphics card we're going to go with a $600 RTX 470 super because I don't want to spend too much more for an overbuilt version of this card the prices can ramp up pretty quickly check out my RTX 4080 super revieww if you want to see my bench marks for this card or at least for the founders Edition version of this card it's a really good performer and it's really good in terms of efficiency for 600 bucks and there were a few $600 models available The isus Duel there's also a Zotac model and a gigabyte model that are all readily available for that price of course if you want to save a little bit of money and you don't care quite as much about uh nvidia's software suite or rate tracing performance you can save a little bit more than $100 by going with the Radeon RX 7800 XT this does have a 16 GB vram buffer which is an upgrade from the 12 gigs on the 4070 super and this again is an all-around good performer good bang for the buck for just shy of $500 right now you can get this Sapphire model which has a nice two fan cooler as well let's finish out the core components uh for our motherboard I've chosen MSI Pro b650 DP Wi-Fi motherboard this is nice cuz it has Wi-Fi built in uh which is cool it's also a solidly built motherboard with decent uh Power delivery so if you want to dabble in overclocking you've got that it's also got a nice feature set in terms of connectivity like such as that USB type-c front panel connector and generally a nice clean all black look now there are b650 chipset motherboards that you can find for 10 20 even $30 cheaper than this those tend to be Micro ATX which is a little bit smaller which is totally fine just get a Micro ATX case as well but I found in terms of overall quality and performance uh for the b650 motherboards around the10 to $190 price is where you're going to get a good overall quality motherboard it's not going to sacrifice too much on build quality overclocking or other features like additional m.2 slots gigabyte also has a b650 gaming xax for $190 this one is going to get you triple m.2 slots versus the two available on that MSI model so depending on how many m.2 slots you want both of those are solid choices rounding out the core components we have memory you're going to want ddr5 memory for this platform I'm recommending a 32 gig kit uh that's two 16 gig sticks this is another one of those sort of Base standards that I think uh we need to upgrade versus previous years 16 gigs or 2x 8 gig kit was uh perfectly adequate for a lot of ddr4 builds but if you're going for ddr5 I recommend a 32 GB total kit I recommend 6,000 megga transfers or faster speed and with those in mind just go for the lowest uh latency possible CL 36 is totally solid for this one so in my opinion it's worth the added $5 or $10 over some of the other budget uh ddr5 kits that are out there also since this is G skills flare X5 line it's going to have uh AMD Expo settings for the memory which will allow you to plug in the settings in your motherboard's ufi to get the memory running at the proper speed very easily and quickly finally we have the rest of the components and here is where you have a lot of flexibility and a lot of choices available to you for a case you're going to want an ATX case if you have a full-size ATX motherboard and you can find so many good case options in the 60 to 90 price range this one just happens to be on sale right now it's back order but it's going to be back in stock in just a couple days this is the fantex eclipse p400a just a really nice overall case and the cool thing here is that it includes three RGB fans in the front so you're going to have lots of air flow right out of the gate some budget cases will only ship with a single fan and you need to add some more in order to get proper air flow but this one was originally 90 bucks down to $70 there's even a $20 mail in rebate that I didn't include in My overall price the only thing I might look for on a different case is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 front panel connector the type-c connector this case does not have that that so that's a feature that you might want to look for if you're going to swap out to a different case but this at least gives you a good starting out point for what you might expect to pay for storage uh nvme ssds man they were coming so far down in price and you could find two terab models even fast ones for like 70 or $80 a couple months ago they have come up in price this is one of the best deals right now for a 2 TB drive it is a gen 3 drive but it is still going to be three or four times faster than a SATA SSD and this one comes from mushin so it's a solid brand there are some uh less expensive nvme ssds that are from brands that are a little bit more sketchy and you know if this is going to be where you're installing your operating system and have important files you want to make sure you get at least a reputable B brand that you can trust finally you're going to need a power supply I have a thermal T smart bm3 7 150 watt here look at the graphics card that you're buying or the graphics card that you want to buy and look at the recommended power supply wattage for that graphics card and get to that or maybe 50 or 100 Watts more than that for most gpus out there right now a 700 50 wat unit is just fine and efficiency rating is good it's not the end all be all for power supplies but 80 plus bronze is solid so for $70 this power supply has a nice combination of features including partial modularity and look 12 VH power this is actually ATX 3.0 so that's using the previous 12 VH power connector which has on occasion had issues with some graphics cards but if you make sure those power plugs are plugged in all the way on the power supply and on the graphics card itself you should be just fine and that would allow you to potenti take advantage of some deals on some of these ATX 3.0 units that some of the power supply manufacturers are trying to clear out because they're moving over to ATX 3.1 which is 12v 2x6 which is physically the same connector but it operates a little bit differently with the sense pins point being if you don't trust that at all just use the adapter and use your standard uh uh PCI Express Graphics connectors or you know just go with a different power supply here's a thermal take uh tough power this one's just a little bit better in terms of efficiency 80 plus gold rated still partially modular and it costs about $10 more so there you have it guys my personal assessment of the current state of the PC Building Market here in early 2024 and my recommendations for a solid 12250 to $1,350 mid-range build for anyone who is looking to build a system ASAP I have two closing announcements for this video first is that in March I'm going to be starting my new series which is called build fix I would like to look at your parts lists so if you have PC parts list that you're working on a build that you're aspiring towards or something that you're Gathering components for I'd like you to leave those down in the video's description down below a PC part picker list is just fine for that too I'm going to choose a few of those builds I'm going to go over them at the beginning of March in my new build fix series and give you guys recommendations for what you have chosen that I think is a good choice as well as my recommendations for parts you might swap out or get a little bit better bang for the buck CPU that's what it's all about is getting the most performance for your money also fear not for anyone who's been wondering about Joe's build that we did in December I have a follow up on that coming at at you real soon and I'm also going to be doing a new build of the month for February which is actually going to be a new system I'm building for my sister so if you guys are not subscribed to my channel already hit the Subscribe button hit the thumbs up button on this video too if you enjoyed it check out the video's description for links to the parts I have shared with you guys today and of course check out my store at paulshardware.net where you can buy high quality merchandise to help support my channel and get yourself some high quality merch thanks again for watching this video you guys and we'll see you in the next one.\n"