**Holiday Buyer's Guide 2015 Edition**

This year's holiday buyer's guide is here to help you navigate the complex world of computer components and find the perfect system for your needs. As always, these recommendations are based on our experience with the latest and greatest hardware, but we also want to emphasize that there are no hard and fast rules - daily pricing fluctuations can affect the exact part that we would recommend.

**Upgrade Path**

If you're looking to upgrade a system from last year, we strongly recommend considering an upgrade if you're adding a lot of PCI Express storage or expansion cards along with the same SLI support solid build quality for overclocking and USB 3.1. The MSI X99 A2 is a great option for those who want a robust system that can handle multiple upgrades.

The motherboard has a strong reputation for overclocking, thanks to its ASMedia x99 chipset, which provides excellent support for DDR4 memory. The board also features two PCIe x16 slots, one PCI Express slot, and four USB 3.0 ports. For storage, the A2 comes with two SATA ports and an M.2 slot.

For RAM, thanks to falling prices, we were able to upgrade from a 32GB kit of DDR4 memory to a slightly faster 32GB kit of Vengeance LPX quad-channel DDR4. This should provide plenty of memory for most users, with the option to upgrade to 64GB down the road if needed.

**Case and Cooling**

We also took a look at our case strategy this year, opting for a smaller NZXT S340 case that still provides excellent airflow and cable management options. This was a trade-off we made in order to make room for the new cooling solution - an Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 fan cooler.

The Evga Supernova G2 850W fully modular power supply is another great component of our build, providing 100 watts more than last year's RMX series. This should provide plenty of headroom for overclocking and other high-power components.

**Storage**

For storage, we opted for a Samsung 850 Evo 1TB SSD, which provides fast read and write speeds. We also added a Western Digital 4TB hard drive to round out our storage needs.

One notable change from last year's build is the use of a 2.5-inch SSD instead of an M.2 slot. While this may seem like a minor difference, it will leave our two M.2 slots free for future NVMe upgrades.

**Video Card**

For video card, we opted for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080, which provides excellent performance for gaming and content creation.

Overall, our build should provide plenty of performance for most users, with the option to upgrade in the future if needed.

**Interesting Fact**

This is the first year that all three systems come out cheaper on Amazon than new. If you buy Windows 10 and have Prime for free shipping, be sure to check out our Prime Membership link below. Our affiliate code can also be used to earn a commission on any purchases made through these links.

**Fix-It Tool**

In addition to our system recommendations, we want to highlight the great Fix-It tool that's available on Amazon. This tool allows you to take apart and reassemble pretty much any device, which can save you money in the long run.

As a special offer, we've included a discount code for Fix-It Tool kits, which can be used to purchase this great tool at a discounted price. If you have a geek in your life who doesn't have a toolkit yet, this would make a fantastic gift.

We hope you found our holiday buyer's guide helpful in finding the perfect system for your needs. Remember to always check prices and availability before making a purchase, and don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhas it been a year already apparently so it's holiday PC buyer guide time again as usual we'll be targeting three different price points in US Dollars before operating system under $500 900 to 1,000 is and about $2,000 I'll be using pricing from Newegg us and amazon.com and I'll have a where to buy Link in the video description let's go gfuel is having a buy one get one free deal event this Black Friday on their 40 serving tubs check it out now at the link in the video description so first up is our decent quality 1080p gaming box we won't be sweating small stuff like upgradeability or future proofness for this one we've got 500 bucks to spend so if it doesn't make the FPS number go up it's out so there are 145 CPUs on newegg.com from $50 to $75 too bad that when you filter out the Dual cores you're left with a whopping one option at the price we paid last year the Athlon X4 845 non overclockable and slower than the 860k we chose last year that goes for $78 now I mean if I'm going to spend that much I might as well go with the no nope no there's nothing bloody hell is it a bad time to be a budget CPU buyer but at least I get amd's wraith stock cooler for my extra $8 right oh wait I don't that part number costs an extra $20 on top so 860k with a normal cooler and paying more for it it is anyway shopping for Ram is easy I opted for a single stick trading a little bit of performance for the option to upgrade to 16 gigs down the road and last year for the motherboard I went with a super basic MSI board for $47 cheap right this year Asus has a similar one for 40 bucks sold moving on to the case after 2 years of dominance The Cooler Master Elite 350 has finally been dethroned in my $500 system by Cooler Master the elite 342 drops compatibility with full ATX motherboards and you get a 400 watt instead of a 500 wat power supply but just save a few bucks and from Hardware secrets's review the included 400 watt unit made by fsp can actually deliver its rated output as long as you're not concerned with efficiency and I will definitely be using that $6 I saved to get a balling Out video card the rad RX 484 gig has double the frame buffer but more importantly is way faster than the GTX 962 gig that I recommended for this system last year and it costs only 20 bucks more for the cheapest variant I could find on New Egg with civilization 6 included to boot our storage is going to be a lot faster too scrolling past some of the very random cheap SSD options I mean Hyundai really reveals 240 gig products from a handful of reputable brands for as little as 65 bucks we can always add a hard drive for more storage later so I chose a SanDisk z410 so in summary we spent about $20 more than last year for the same CPU and RAM load out but we are deep into double digigit gains when it comes to GPU performance at 1080P and ditching the mechanical hard drive will make a huge difference to the day-to-day usability even if it means we might need a storage space upgrade in a little while for our next system at $11,000 future expandability features and usability Beyond gaming are much bigger considerations but instead of spending extra on chasing overclocking Headroom I'll be focused on the best outof the- boox performance I can get so we'll start with an Intel quadcore and this year for the same price we get a big upgrade to a Skylake cor I 5 64 400 that wait a minute this thing is only marginally faster than the core i54460 we used last time aha I get it the i56500 is The Sweet Spot this year much faster and only $15 more oh inel you devious little Scoundrels oh well at least for our lunch money we also get a faster DMI support for 64 gig of ddr4 RAM and some power savings speaking of ram the best deals I found while writing this were on a vexere or Corsair 2x8 gig kits of ddr4 I didn't stress about speed for the reasons I outlined in this video and I picked the Asus b150m a m.2 to install them on no USB 3.1 support but it's got four dim slots for Ram expansion and with all the SSD inovation moving forward on the m.2 slot I consider that a musthave for a storage upgrade down the road the EVGA B1 500 W power supply held its Crown this year it's even a few bucks cheaper and so is our case it was a toss up for me between the NZXT Source 210 and the thermal take Versa H25 both at 40 bucks but the Versa has free shipping with prime so that put it over the top storage got got a big shakeup at this price point this year ssds are cheaper so I got 750 gigs for what I paid for 500 gigs last year but I actually ditched the 4 tbte hard drive so you'll have to add one later if 750 gigs isn't enough for you bringing us finally to the video card the reason that I pinched every penny in ,000 build up until this point I managed to squeeze a GTX 1070 here making this rig a perfect match for a cheap 1440p or even ultrawide monitor off eBay or high-end VR Gaming and I even threw in a DVD drive just to show off bam so compared to last year's model we spent marginally less but we gained some CPU horsepower got a bigger SSD but sacrificed our hard drive and we added anywhere from 40 to 80% to our gaming performance depending on the game and resolution not too bad for a year later note that our Amazon buildout includes an oem CPU since even with a hyper T2 thrown in it's cheaper there and CPUs rarely fail anyway our last system assumes a buyer who is willing to pay more for Creature Comforts like sleeved cables RGB lighting overclocking and quiet operation it also assumes that a buyer who requires high performance outside of purely gaming applications let's say video editing or 3D modeling well it sure is easy to choose a CPU when you have $2,000 to spend isn't it actually no it kind of gets harder while I could drop $1,000 on an 8 core 6900k unless I am heavy into content creation and unlocked six core is going to do me just fine and that money would be better spent elsewhere so I'm going to go with the 6800k a slightly faster six core than last year here the 6850k would be strongly recommended as an upgrade if you're adding a lot of PCI Express storage or expansion cards along with the same SLI support solid build quality for overclocking and USB 3.1 the .2 slot LED lighting and type c port on the x99 A2 for an extra 15 bucks put it over the top versus the older board we chose last year then for Ram thanks to Falling prices we make up that 15 bucks and get a slightly faster 32 gig kit of Vengeance lpx quad Channel ddr4 than we did last year plenty for the time being with the option to upgrade to 64 gigs down the road for case and cooling I went for a slightly different strategy this year I downgraded my case to an NZXT s340 which is basically a small as you can get while still fitting my upgraded cooling a noctua NHD 14 compared to last year it won't be as roomy to work in but should yield a significant Improvement in CPU clock speeds for overclocking power comes courtesy of an EVGA Supernova G2 850 wat fully modular unit 80 plus gold 100 Watts more than last year's rmx series and a few bucks cheaper nice onto storage the only real difference is that instead of a Bargain Basement 1 TB SSD and a 4 TB hard drive we're getting a Samsung 850 Evo 1 TB SSD and a 4 TB hard drive I went with a 2 and 1/2 in SSD even though it's the same price as one that would go in an m.2 slot because in a tower case we don't really need the space savings and that'll leave my m.2 slots open for an nvme drive upgrade in the future right now that m.2 drive unless you want to pay a lot for it is going to be running over the SATA interface anyway also I checked a DVD drive in there boohoo this video card time last year I actually downgraded the 3D gaming performance of the $2,000 system to make room for that six core CPU double the memory and double the SSD storage compared to the 2014 edition this year I'll be able to keep all of those things with a faster CPU and SSD better Cooling and better IO and get better gaming performance thanks to the GTX 1080 all of this while staying about $80 is cheaper than the 2015 Edition which brings us then to the end of this year's holiday buyers guide remember as always these aren't hard and fast rules and daily pricing fluctuations especially on categories like Ram or video cards can affect the exact part that I would recommend a lot but if you follow these guidelines I'm sure you'll end up with a kickass system that you'll enjoy for years to come interesting fact this is the first year that all three systems come out cheaper on Amazon than newa if you buy Windows 10 and have Prime for free shipping so be sure to check out our Prime Membership link below and the links to where to buy using our affiliate code clicking through those links regardless of what you buy lets Amazon know that we helped you with your purchasing decision which gives us a commission I fix it they got a lot of talking points 19,000 free step-by-step repair guides lots of tools you can buy on their site lifetime warranty on the tools but I'm going to get off the script for a little bit here because I don't need to tell you guys I Fixit tool gets so great and they allow you to take apart and reassemble pretty much any device and I'm going to go what is it late November ah yes fullon holiday messaging got a geek in your life who doesn't have a toolkit yet bam perfect present I fix it tool kit you'll actually be giving them the gift of saving money and tinkering tinkering tinkering and tinkering with electronics what could possibly be better I know a discount so also you use our discount code so you can save a few bucks on your order and uh you can feel good they can feel good I'll feel good I fix it'll feel good everyone's feeling good that's a Christmas spirit or holiday spirit sorry so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video I kind of already said that but whatever it's down there also linked in the video description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally join now that you're done doing all that you're probably wondering H gee what should I watch next maybe check out our latest video over on channel super fun see you next time I keep vowing to do more of these buyer guides and I keep only doing them once a yearhas it been a year already apparently so it's holiday PC buyer guide time again as usual we'll be targeting three different price points in US Dollars before operating system under $500 900 to 1,000 is and about $2,000 I'll be using pricing from Newegg us and amazon.com and I'll have a where to buy Link in the video description let's go gfuel is having a buy one get one free deal event this Black Friday on their 40 serving tubs check it out now at the link in the video description so first up is our decent quality 1080p gaming box we won't be sweating small stuff like upgradeability or future proofness for this one we've got 500 bucks to spend so if it doesn't make the FPS number go up it's out so there are 145 CPUs on newegg.com from $50 to $75 too bad that when you filter out the Dual cores you're left with a whopping one option at the price we paid last year the Athlon X4 845 non overclockable and slower than the 860k we chose last year that goes for $78 now I mean if I'm going to spend that much I might as well go with the no nope no there's nothing bloody hell is it a bad time to be a budget CPU buyer but at least I get amd's wraith stock cooler for my extra $8 right oh wait I don't that part number costs an extra $20 on top so 860k with a normal cooler and paying more for it it is anyway shopping for Ram is easy I opted for a single stick trading a little bit of performance for the option to upgrade to 16 gigs down the road and last year for the motherboard I went with a super basic MSI board for $47 cheap right this year Asus has a similar one for 40 bucks sold moving on to the case after 2 years of dominance The Cooler Master Elite 350 has finally been dethroned in my $500 system by Cooler Master the elite 342 drops compatibility with full ATX motherboards and you get a 400 watt instead of a 500 wat power supply but just save a few bucks and from Hardware secrets's review the included 400 watt unit made by fsp can actually deliver its rated output as long as you're not concerned with efficiency and I will definitely be using that $6 I saved to get a balling Out video card the rad RX 484 gig has double the frame buffer but more importantly is way faster than the GTX 962 gig that I recommended for this system last year and it costs only 20 bucks more for the cheapest variant I could find on New Egg with civilization 6 included to boot our storage is going to be a lot faster too scrolling past some of the very random cheap SSD options I mean Hyundai really reveals 240 gig products from a handful of reputable brands for as little as 65 bucks we can always add a hard drive for more storage later so I chose a SanDisk z410 so in summary we spent about $20 more than last year for the same CPU and RAM load out but we are deep into double digigit gains when it comes to GPU performance at 1080P and ditching the mechanical hard drive will make a huge difference to the day-to-day usability even if it means we might need a storage space upgrade in a little while for our next system at $11,000 future expandability features and usability Beyond gaming are much bigger considerations but instead of spending extra on chasing overclocking Headroom I'll be focused on the best outof the- boox performance I can get so we'll start with an Intel quadcore and this year for the same price we get a big upgrade to a Skylake cor I 5 64 400 that wait a minute this thing is only marginally faster than the core i54460 we used last time aha I get it the i56500 is The Sweet Spot this year much faster and only $15 more oh inel you devious little Scoundrels oh well at least for our lunch money we also get a faster DMI support for 64 gig of ddr4 RAM and some power savings speaking of ram the best deals I found while writing this were on a vexere or Corsair 2x8 gig kits of ddr4 I didn't stress about speed for the reasons I outlined in this video and I picked the Asus b150m a m.2 to install them on no USB 3.1 support but it's got four dim slots for Ram expansion and with all the SSD inovation moving forward on the m.2 slot I consider that a musthave for a storage upgrade down the road the EVGA B1 500 W power supply held its Crown this year it's even a few bucks cheaper and so is our case it was a toss up for me between the NZXT Source 210 and the thermal take Versa H25 both at 40 bucks but the Versa has free shipping with prime so that put it over the top storage got got a big shakeup at this price point this year ssds are cheaper so I got 750 gigs for what I paid for 500 gigs last year but I actually ditched the 4 tbte hard drive so you'll have to add one later if 750 gigs isn't enough for you bringing us finally to the video card the reason that I pinched every penny in ,000 build up until this point I managed to squeeze a GTX 1070 here making this rig a perfect match for a cheap 1440p or even ultrawide monitor off eBay or high-end VR Gaming and I even threw in a DVD drive just to show off bam so compared to last year's model we spent marginally less but we gained some CPU horsepower got a bigger SSD but sacrificed our hard drive and we added anywhere from 40 to 80% to our gaming performance depending on the game and resolution not too bad for a year later note that our Amazon buildout includes an oem CPU since even with a hyper T2 thrown in it's cheaper there and CPUs rarely fail anyway our last system assumes a buyer who is willing to pay more for Creature Comforts like sleeved cables RGB lighting overclocking and quiet operation it also assumes that a buyer who requires high performance outside of purely gaming applications let's say video editing or 3D modeling well it sure is easy to choose a CPU when you have $2,000 to spend isn't it actually no it kind of gets harder while I could drop $1,000 on an 8 core 6900k unless I am heavy into content creation and unlocked six core is going to do me just fine and that money would be better spent elsewhere so I'm going to go with the 6800k a slightly faster six core than last year here the 6850k would be strongly recommended as an upgrade if you're adding a lot of PCI Express storage or expansion cards along with the same SLI support solid build quality for overclocking and USB 3.1 the .2 slot LED lighting and type c port on the x99 A2 for an extra 15 bucks put it over the top versus the older board we chose last year then for Ram thanks to Falling prices we make up that 15 bucks and get a slightly faster 32 gig kit of Vengeance lpx quad Channel ddr4 than we did last year plenty for the time being with the option to upgrade to 64 gigs down the road for case and cooling I went for a slightly different strategy this year I downgraded my case to an NZXT s340 which is basically a small as you can get while still fitting my upgraded cooling a noctua NHD 14 compared to last year it won't be as roomy to work in but should yield a significant Improvement in CPU clock speeds for overclocking power comes courtesy of an EVGA Supernova G2 850 wat fully modular unit 80 plus gold 100 Watts more than last year's rmx series and a few bucks cheaper nice onto storage the only real difference is that instead of a Bargain Basement 1 TB SSD and a 4 TB hard drive we're getting a Samsung 850 Evo 1 TB SSD and a 4 TB hard drive I went with a 2 and 1/2 in SSD even though it's the same price as one that would go in an m.2 slot because in a tower case we don't really need the space savings and that'll leave my m.2 slots open for an nvme drive upgrade in the future right now that m.2 drive unless you want to pay a lot for it is going to be running over the SATA interface anyway also I checked a DVD drive in there boohoo this video card time last year I actually downgraded the 3D gaming performance of the $2,000 system to make room for that six core CPU double the memory and double the SSD storage compared to the 2014 edition this year I'll be able to keep all of those things with a faster CPU and SSD better Cooling and better IO and get better gaming performance thanks to the GTX 1080 all of this while staying about $80 is cheaper than the 2015 Edition which brings us then to the end of this year's holiday buyers guide remember as always these aren't hard and fast rules and daily pricing fluctuations especially on categories like Ram or video cards can affect the exact part that I would recommend a lot but if you follow these guidelines I'm sure you'll end up with a kickass system that you'll enjoy for years to come interesting fact this is the first year that all three systems come out cheaper on Amazon than newa if you buy Windows 10 and have Prime for free shipping so be sure to check out our Prime Membership link below and the links to where to buy using our affiliate code clicking through those links regardless of what you buy lets Amazon know that we helped you with your purchasing decision which gives us a commission I fix it they got a lot of talking points 19,000 free step-by-step repair guides lots of tools you can buy on their site lifetime warranty on the tools but I'm going to get off the script for a little bit here because I don't need to tell you guys I Fixit tool gets so great and they allow you to take apart and reassemble pretty much any device and I'm going to go what is it late November ah yes fullon holiday messaging got a geek in your life who doesn't have a toolkit yet bam perfect present I fix it tool kit you'll actually be giving them the gift of saving money and tinkering tinkering tinkering and tinkering with electronics what could possibly be better I know a discount so also you use our discount code so you can save a few bucks on your order and uh you can feel good they can feel good I'll feel good I fix it'll feel good everyone's feeling good that's a Christmas spirit or holiday spirit sorry so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or check out the link to where to buy the stuff we featured at Amazon in the video I kind of already said that but whatever it's down there also linked in the video description is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community Forum which you should totally join now that you're done doing all that you're probably wondering H gee what should I watch next maybe check out our latest video over on channel super fun see you next time I keep vowing to do more of these buyer guides and I keep only doing them once a year\n"