Why most pre-builts suck
# The Hidden Costs of Pre-Built Desktops: Why DIY Offers Better Value
## Introduction: The Cost of Convenience
In the world of personal computing, it’s a well-known fact that buying a pre-built desktop is often more expensive than building your own PC. This is because system integrators (SI) who sell pre-built systems must make a profit, and they achieve this by cutting corners wherever possible. While pre-built systems may appear appealing due to their convenience and perceived ease of use, the reality is that these systems often come with significant trade-offs in terms of performance, quality, and future-proofing.
In today’s video, we’ll take an in-depth look at how system integrators cut corners and why these practices can negatively impact the end-user experience. We’ll compare a budget 1440p gaming PC built from scratch to a pre-built desktop of similar price, examining the components, performance, and overall value.
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## The CPU: Power and Performance
For our DIY build, we chose the **Verizon Ryzen 5 1600 AF** processor. This is an excellent choice for a mid-range gaming PC, offering six cores, twelve threads, and impressive overclocking capabilities. It’s paired with the Wraith Spire cooler, which provides reliable cooling for this high-performance chip.
In contrast, the pre-built system we’re comparing it to uses a **Ryzen 5 1600** processor without the AF suffix. This indicates that it’s likely a first-generation Ryzen 5 1600 based on a 14-nanometer process, which is slower than the newer 7nm Zen+ architecture of the Ryzen 5 1600 AF. In terms of gaming performance, this means the pre-built system is already at a disadvantage, potentially being 10-15% slower right out of the box.
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## The Motherboard: A Foundation for Success
For our DIY build, we selected the **Gigabyte B550 DS3H Micro ATX motherboard**, which costs $73. This motherboard is highly regarded for its features in this price range, including a robust 8-pin EPS power connector, four DIMM slots for expandability, and an M.2 slot for NVMe storage. These are all critical factors that ensure long-term upgrades and better compatibility with future components.
The pre-built system, on the other hand, uses a motherboard based on the **A320 chipset**. This is a budget-friendly but severely limited platform, lacking overclocking support, only two DIMM slots, and no PCIe 4.0 capabilities. While it’s functional for basic tasks, it falls short in terms of expandability and future-proofing, which are key benefits of our DIY build.
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## RAM: The Difference in Speed and Capacity
Our DIY system features **16GB of G.Skill RipJaws V DDR4 3600MHz RAM**. This is a high-speed dual-channel kit that provides excellent performance for gaming and multitasking. The faster speed ensures better responsiveness and smoother gameplay, which are essential for a 1440p gaming setup.
The pre-built system, however, only comes with **8GB of DDR4 3000MHz RAM**. While it’s technically faster than some budget RAM kits, the capacity is half of what our DIY build offers. This not only limits multitasking capabilities but also forces users to upgrade sooner, adding to long-term costs.
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## Storage: Capacity and Performance
For storage, we opted for a **Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200rpm HDD** and a **WD Green 240GB SATA 3 SSD**. This combination provides ample space for games, media, and applications while ensuring fast load times thanks to the SSD.
The pre-built system offers only a single **500GB SSD**, which is double the capacity of our DIY build’s SSD but significantly less in terms of total storage. While this might seem like a win on paper, it forces users to invest in additional storage down the line, negating any short-term savings.
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## GPU: Graphics Performance Matters
Our DIY system features the **EVGA RTX 2060 SC Gaming** graphics card, one of the cheapest yet most capable options for 1440p gaming. This card delivers smooth performance in modern games, averaging between 60-80 FPS depending on settings.
In contrast, the pre-built system uses a **GTX 1660**, which is significantly less powerful. While it can handle 1080p gaming comfortably, it struggles at 1440p unless running lightweight titles. This highlights a major disparity in performance between the two systems, even though they are priced similarly.
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## Case and Cooling: airflow and aesthetics
For our build, we chose the **Thermaltake H18**, a budget-friendly case with excellent airflow and space for future upgrades. It’s compact yet functional, and its design ensures that our RTX 2060 stays cool under load.
The pre-built system comes in a poorly ventilated case with limited airflow, which could lead to thermal throttling over time. This is a common issue with pre-built systems, as corners are cut not just in components but also in the physical build of the chassis itself.
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## Power Supply: Efficiency and Reliability
Our DIY system uses a **Sea Sonic PRIME GX-500**, an 80 Plus Bronze certified power supply. This ensures reliable and efficient power delivery to all our components, with minimal energy loss and noise.
The pre-built system’s power supply is less clear, but it’s likely a low-quality unit that doesn’t meet the same standards as ours. This could lead to inefficiencies and potential long-term reliability issues.
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## Windows Licensing: Hidden Costs
Finally, we should consider the cost of Windows. Our DIY build includes a **Windows 10 Home license**, which is necessary for full functionality. The pre-built system also includes Windows, but users may not realize they’re paying a premium for it.
By comparison, building your own PC allows you to save money by installing Windows from a USB drive and using it without activation for extended periods if needed.
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## Conclusion: DIY Delivers More Value
When we compare the two systems side-by-side, it’s clear that our DIY build offers significantly better performance, future-proofing, and value. While both systems cost roughly $720, the DIY PC is 25-35% faster in terms of CPU and GPU performance alone.
The pre-built system’s reliance on budget components like a slower CPU, limited RAM, and poor storage options means it will struggle to keep up even with basic gaming tasks over time. On the other hand, our DIY build provides long-term scalability, better performance, and more reliable components that won’t fail you down the line.
If you’re considering building your own PC, the benefits are clear: better performance, future-proofing, and value for your money. While pre-built systems may seem convenient, they often fall short when you look at the bigger picture.
Thank you for watching! If you found this article useful, please like, subscribe, and share it with others. Stay safe and keep gaming on!
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso it's widely known in the PC space that buying a prebuilt desktop is typically more expensive on average than building one yourself that's because the system integrator or si who sells the pre-built has to make a profit which the vast majority of them accomplish in two major ways buying parts in bulk and using really cheap parts where possible to increase their profit margins pre-built typically use a reliable CPU and graphics card because the only three companies in the world who make them are massive reputable brands but for just about every other PC part out there there's a multitude of different vendors some of which manufacture their parts with higher standards than others so you could stumble across a pre-built online that has a decent looking CPU and graphics card at its core but the other components in the build could be and often are below average quality that's the focus of today's video where exactly RSI is cutting corners and how do their penny-pinching practices affect the end user this video is brought to you by the asrock X 299 Creator supporting Intel Core x-series processors the X 299 Creator offers a robust thirteen phase power design quad channel memory support and loads of connectivity for your every need best-in-class components and build quality ensure maximum longevity and reliability no matter your line of work click on the link below to learn more for comparison I put together my own parts list for a budget 1440p gaming PC that came out to 720 dollars so let's see how that compares to a pre-built desktop of the same price in terms of performance features and quality diving right in my awesome and totally perfect list is to the left and you'll see the loli pre-built scum on the right no I'm kidding partially so my CPU of choice for this roughly $700 build is a Verizon 5 1600 AF and if you guys have seen any of my recent videos this comes as no surprise I keep recommending this processor because it's essentially arisin 5 2612 nanometer processor not 40 nanometer like the original Rison 5 1600 but its $85 6 cores 12 threads overclocking freedom all that good stuff comes included with the Wraith spire cooler this chip is the bays maze and it just packs in a tremendous amount of value I can't recommend it enough verses the CPU on our sky Tech shadow gaming computer PC desktop that comes in at 730 dollars so pretty much the same price as ours gurus arisin 516 hundred this is also six cores and twelve threads but it does not appear to be the AF model it's not listed anywhere here just says risin five sixteen hundred no matter where you look so I'm assuming that that that's what it is it's first gen risin 14 nanometer which is gonna be maybe 10 to 15 percent slower in terms of gaming performance compared to the horizon 5 2600 which again is what the risin 5 1600 AF is so right out of the gate we're already seeing less performance with the pre-built than we are our own system and the motherboard I went with for our DIY build is the gigabyte be for 50 m DS 3 H micro ATX AM for motherboard it's $73 this is a basic be a basic board a big basic board is what that means but there are some likeable qualities about this board for the price for instance we do have an m2 slot not a lot of boards of this price range actually feature that on a m4 some of them do but not all of them we also get four dimm slots as opposed to two so we can always expand our memory down the line if we want to and we have an 8 pin EPS power connector for our CPU a lot of similar boards will only have a 4 pin connector which is perfectly fine for risin 5 1600 AF but if we were to upgrade our CPU down the line to a chip with higher TDP or more cores or anything like that then we would be limiting the amount of power we're able to send that thirst to your CPU with this configuration we have a bit more Headroom to work with as opposed to our sky Tech shadow system which doesn't really say what motherboard this is but whatever is in here is definitely on the budget side of things because if you look at the rear i/o I mean it looks just as basic as ours I think ours is a little bit better actually there's also no video outs here whereas you get dual link DVI and HDMI on this board it's not a huge deal because we're using a discreet graphics card for both systems it could come in handy if you ever wanted to repurpose the board for like a home theater PC and sometimes the video outs on the board are just nice to have for basic troubleshooting assuming that you have a processor with integrated graphics additionally even though we don't know the exact model number of the motherboard we do know from the description that it's on the a320 chipset which is bottom of the barrel its bottom of the barrel for a m4 the main bummer here is that there's typically no overclocking support on a 320 so you won't be able to squeeze any more performance out of your CPU you're pretty much cat that it's out of the box performance the fact that it's an a320 board also tells us there's a higher chance of it having only two DIMM slots a 4 pin power connector for your CPU and potentially no MDOT 2 these are all really great features to have and ones that I would shoot for even if you're on a super tight budget and they're obviously features that we really can't confirm and deny if this pre-built motherboard even has them that's actually another really important thing to note about pre builds you don't always 100% know what you're getting until it's too late for memory I went with the tried-and-true g.skill ripjaws 5 this is a 16 gigabyte dual channel kit so we get two dipsticks eight gigs each at ddr4 3600 speed that's great rise and processors are very happy with that higher frequency what do we get with our sky tech shadow eight eight gigabytes holy moly that's only eight gigabytes here so half the capacity does it say speeds ddr4 3000 so not only are you getting half the capacity for the same price but we're yet again giving up some precious in-game performance because of the slower memory speeds but eight gigs I mean they're gonna be some games that eat most of that up with very little left over for other applications whether it be discord or web browsers I mean that's one of the great things about PC gaming is being able to multitask but you can't do that if you're running low on system memory which this system is already at a severe disadvantage for that so not good not good so my storage setup consists of two drives we have a Seagate Barracuda 2 terabyte 7200 rpm drive for 55 bucks and a WD green 240 gig SATA 3 SSD it's not a super fancy set up but it's gonna get the job done we can install our operating system and other frequently used applications on our SSD with plenty of headroom left over and the 2 terabyte drive can be for all of our games you know mass media and things like that whereas on our skyshadow pre-built we have a 500 gig SSD and that's it so they actually have us beat here in terms of how much solid-state storage they have they've doubled our capacity there but we've more than quadrupled their overall capacity which means we have a lot more space for games and other things like you're gonna have to you're gonna buy this pre-built and then a month later if that you're gonna have to buy another drive and swap it in so then that factors into the cost and now you're talking maybe an $800 build or whatever depending on what you get whereas this is gonna last us a really long time over here and circling back to what I said earlier we also have no real way to tell what kind of SSD this is apart from it you know most likely being say 2 rf3 there's no way they're sticking nvme or anything like that in here it doesn't say anything about a model name there's no pictures of it so we don't know we don't know if it's like just some super dirt cheap obscure Chinese knockoff brand you've never heard of that could very well be fine you we have to consider that - it might be a perfectly fine quality drive but it might also not be so this is one of those things where you just don't know what you're buying what you're spending your money on whereas here you know exactly what you're getting you can read reviews on the exact parts on every component that you're choosing as opposed to leaving all that decision-making up to an SI now this is where things get really interesting and take a turn for the worst if you're the pre-built desktop in this example my GPU for for our build was the EVGA r-tx 2060 SC gaming it's got a single fan so you know obviously you'd prefer to but it's $2.99 this was one of the cheapest if not the cheapest r-tx 2060 on the market right now it's not a super but this card is still more than capable to handle you know sixty plus FPS 1440p gaming I would even go so far as to say it averages anywhere between 60 and 80 FPS which is a really nice sweet spot for a entry-level 1440p machine on the flip side we have a gtx 1660 not super not TI just a 1660 so now we're operating in completely different leagues here perfectly adequate and super smooth 1440p gaming over here and decent 1080p gaming in this corner this is not gonna be able to handle 1440p at all unless it's like you know some indie game or eSports and things like that of course if I'm taking an educated guess based on what I can remember from my testing the RT X 2060 is roughly twenty to thirty percent faster on average than the GTX 1660 and I think that's being pretty conservative what this means is that right out of the box on day one your DIY PC will be significantly faster than a pre built for the same price and you won't feel the need to replace it so soon I feel like the gtx 1660 in a year you're gonna want an upgrade you're gonna want to push more pixels you're gonna want to hire a fresh ray this is very very much an entry-level card versus something that's very capable and mid-range for my case I went with a thermal take versa h18 this is a micro ATX Tower which matches the form factor of our motherboard and I really like this case it's $50 if you're on a budget then one of the few things that should really matter about a case that you're choosing is air flow and this one has pretty decent air flow from the looks of it I mean the entire front panel is we mesh and then the interior layout doesn't look bad for a for a budget case at this caliber like $50 like you're getting tempered glass side panel power supply shroud cutouts in all the right places it looks like there's a bit of room even behind the motherboard tray one downer here is that you only get one included fan so that's maybe something you have to factor in down the line maybe throw in like a 5 or $10 fan at the front just to give a stronger path of airflow but you know you're not stuff in a 20 atti in here it's it's an RT X 2060 which is a very power efficient card along with the 65 watt TDP chip they're not gonna get super hot and with a well ventilated case like this sometimes a single 120 millimeter fan is sufficient when you're just starting out now over here we have this thing third we'll take versa and 2100 it's the thermal take case that's funny and 21 let me let me look that up not available so we have no idea what this case costs let me check Amazon really quick 103 okay this is obviously not right that can't be right since we can't be sure what the actual MSRP is let's take a closer look at this guy at first I thought this blue area was mash and I was like okay that's good good air flow and stuff but upon closer inspection it's not it's a translucent panel designed for gamer the glossy front top panels deliver stylish images no I hate how they're passing this off as a feature yo Dawg we heard you like thermal throttling so we closed off your front panel so your fans choke and your components overheat you're welcome what don't don't tell me this is the only ventilation area at the front panel that's ridiculous what is is this part of the ventilation or is this just more terrible design I mean I don't want to comment too much on aesthetics and stuff because it's all subjective but during that's open look that side panel window this is case from 2003 at the very least I will say this I will say this it does have one leg up on the H 18 in terms of fans it's got - it looks like it's got maybe two 120 s the front and then one more at the rear definitely so you know maybe that offsets the terrible what looks to be terribly closed off and choked off airflow at the front but who knows without proper testing gamers next is bad ceiling gamers axis hot diggety friggin damn take a shot of the inside here this is just the Amazon product page of the case itself but you can see it's it's a pretty standard kind of typical layout you definitely tell it's an older case because not only does it have a dated aesthetic on the outside but it's got a couple five and a quarter inch bays which are not quite as common anymore with modern cases it's got those typical two and a half inch three and a half inch trays at the bottom I mean it looks like a fairly decent interior actually it doesn't look bad it's just the airflow situation that's really not selling it for me and again we're not dropping super hot running components in here but we might someday we might want to upgrade our GPU to something that's blazing fast like a 20 80 or 20 80 TI that is gonna need adequate airflow coming from the chassis primarily and I have my doubts my reservations that this case is gonna be able to deliver that again it just seems that we're getting more performance and longevity with the parts that we choose ourselves last but not least for our power supply I chose to see Sonic s12 3 this is a 500 watt unit 80 plus bronze certified see sonic makes great power supplies if you look up trusted reviews on them you'll find the vast majority of them have very high marks and are super reliable whereas over here we have doesn't say exactly once again but powered by an 80 plus certified 500 watt power supply so it is 500 watt same wattage but probably less efficiency because this doesn't say 80 plus bronze it just says 80 Plus which is a few percentage points of efficiency below 80 plus bronze and we also have no idea who manufactures this power supply or if it's gonna explode in our system six months down the line the last thing we'll note here is that to the pre-built script with a copy of Windows so we have Windows 10 home 64 bit here whereas we don't have an operating system here however you can create a bootable USB drive install Windows on your desktop and pretty much use it to 99 percent of its functionality for free yes you'll have a little watermark in the corner of your screen and no you won't be able to do stupid things like hide your taskbar but for the most part if you're trying to save money you can go a really long time if not forever without activating windows so just to recap here we have two systems that are identical in price but one is probably I would say even 25 to 35 percent faster when you consider the CPU and GPU that we have compared to this one the pairing is just on another level so we're gonna be able to take advantage of higher fresh rates higher frame rates more smoothness in-game higher resolution better graphical settings all that jazz with with this set up so you're really gaining a lot without having to spend a dime more than what you would on this preview we've got 16 gigs of ram that's gonna last us a long time plenty of storage and the case is gonna be able to accommodate liquid aoe's in the future longer graphics cards hotter running components that require better airflow whereas over here some of the corners of this si has cut are so drastic that I would feel like I'd already have upgraded on day one now I know a lot of you guys are probably thinking it would have been really cool to see the inside of the system so we could make better comparisons so I've actually pulled up another pre-built system that's a little bit more expensive it's about 20% more expensive at 870 dollars but I'm bringing this up because you can actually see the inside so it should give us a slightly better idea of what we could have expected to find inside of that 730 dollar pre-built this is a different si this is a BS and we're looking at their mage II gaming desktop so right off the bat we've got an Intel Core i5 9400 app so we've got Intel here Core i5 90 400 F is actually not a bad CPU if you're just talking about gaming like it does have better single-threaded performance than the rise in v 1600 AF or the rise in v 2600 so it beats us there then again this is 20% more expensive than our DIY system geforce r-tx 2060 so we're even there let's see if we can tell which model this is the zotac that looks to be as otech card so good brand so tech makes great product so that's good we also have 16 gigs of memory now yay yay but does it say what the speed is it doesn't say 16 gigs ddr4 no mention of speed enhance that's that's as much as it goes okay so it looks like I really can't tell but based on the way the RAM looks zero heat spreaders so this is definitely like value oriented budget Ram I'm gonna guess 3000 I'm gonna guess it's roughly the same speed as the last prebuilt so 3000 megahertz which means that with our DIY system we're actually offsetting a bit of the FPS we're losing from our CPU with faster memory speeds still sticking with a 500 gigabyte SSD and no mechanical drive is just the 500 gigs so prepare to spend another 50 bucks on more storage here unfortunately there's still no picture or model name of the SSD we just know the capacity and that said it's most likely gonna be say 2 F 3 6 gigabit per second two and a half inch drive that I would imagine is installed probably underneath the power supply shroud right about here what kind of mother more do we have here does not say it's definitely not gonna be like Z 390 or something so here we can see that it's an as rock board but it's definitely on the low end of things once again they've cut corners with the motherboard if I had to take a wild guess I would say this is like an h3 10 motherboard which means it's got it definitely doesn't have any overclocking support fewer HS i/o lanes Intel obtained memory support things like that and oh I think we only have there's only two DIMM slots on this board to DIMM slots do we at least have an 8-pin so we get an 8 pin power connector for CPU but only 2 DIMM slots so you're you're pretty much capped here unless you swap out the kit entirely your captain 16 gigs you can't just drop in an identical kit and upgrade to 32 gigs down the line so that's a bummer and look at this Intel stock cooler now that the AMD rates have been out like these just look so sad I'm actually really surprised Intel hasn't refreshed their stock coolers because they are ugly first of all but more importantly they're noisy they're really noisy under load and they're just not great performers certainly not offering the same level of value that the AMD Wraith coolers are this case actually looks a lot better than the previous pre-built because I think we've got a full mesh front panel here plus we have three fans of the front and one at the back so this is out of the box this is gonna have better air flow most likely than the chassis I picked out for our DIY system and it's a pretty attractive case you know it's very clean minimalistic I really don't mind it you know the RGB is not super obnoxious I guess depending on who you ask and the internal layout looks fairly similar it looks like you can even mount some SSDs over here so not too terrible actually unfortunately I can't say the same thing about the power supply what what is that now I'm not I'm not gonna knock it you don't knock it till you try it but it looks like it's a 500 watt unit a X 500 XT maybe I could look at uh-oh oh god it's a raid max it's a raid max power supply Oh No okay so that's a raid Max unit this is a $33 power supply is it even 80 plus it is not no mention of it which is not great even the $700 prebuilt have an 80 plus unit pre built SAR just so unpredictable what else is under this PSU shroud hopefully a fire extinguisher last thing I have to point out here just because ketchup and mustard cables not uh not the prettiest you know look at this oh oh so in the end I would say the system is probably a little bit faster than ours just because it does have the faster gaming CPU we close the gap a little bit with our faster memory but probably not quite enough to make it even so I would say this is probably on average 8 to 12 maybe 15% faster but then again we're spending 20% more and you're stuck with much lower quality components like a very inefficient our supply and a super low-end motherboard and I think that brings up an important takeaway here too is that even if you scaled up and got like a nice pre-built and like spent good money on a pre bit like let's take a look at this guy right here this one's eleven hundred dollars roughly eleven hundred dollars it's got the RGB front panel it's got all that temper it's it's a nice pre-built right $1,000 is a lot to spend on a gaming PC but you still have to deal with the system integrators corner-cutting which means that even if the CPU and the GPU are bumping you're gonna have things like look at the stock cooler why didn't they just use a wraith cooler that comes included with the risin 530 600 they used this old ancient piece of garbage that is so noisy it's it's unbearable last time I use one of these I ripped my ears off and then had to sew them back on don't ask me how one one stick of memory like that again with the cheap motherboard and God knows what power supply but you guys get the idea even if you're buying a nice prevail and this is just for like the majority of sis and pre-built there are some pre bolts out there that are actually good some of the ones that we've talked about on this channel and featured NZXT makes awesome pre builds because they actually use components that like similar components to the ones we're using here they don't go out and cheap out on garbage power supplies and motherboards that are gonna cost you later so there there are exceptions to the rule but in general no matter what price tier that you go for even if you get a nice pre-built like this one or quote unquote nice you know expensive whatever you're still gonna be stuck with all the crappy decisions that some of these sis have made for you and if you're a fan of the channel you already know how I feel about this which is build your own PC if you can you know I understand that there are some scenarios or certain lifestyles or whatever disabilities whatever that prevent people from being able to build a system but if you can then compared to buying a pre-built a DIY PC is going to give you more performance per dollar it's gonna give you better quality components that last a longer time it's gonna give you a better upgrade path and more bells and whistles that haven't been stripped down completely by a system integrators so many many reasons to to go that route I hope you guys found this video useful if you did toss a like smash that like button for the algorithm it helps a lot and subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet a lot of people who watch these videos I've been looking at the metrics more closely lately like half of you are not even subscribed so what the hell are you doing subscribe if you want if you made it to this point the video because I do stuff like this all the time check out big weight attack our merchandise store of course thank you guys so much probably all the support there regardless of what you buy all the money goes straight back through the channel so we can continue developing awesome content like this once again thank you guys so much for watching stay safe out there it's an absolute madhouse right now so everyone keep calm and game on that's a stupid thing to say at the end of the video or anytime but thank you guys so much you can have a good what I'm gonna get out of here I'll see you in the next one byeso it's widely known in the PC space that buying a prebuilt desktop is typically more expensive on average than building one yourself that's because the system integrator or si who sells the pre-built has to make a profit which the vast majority of them accomplish in two major ways buying parts in bulk and using really cheap parts where possible to increase their profit margins pre-built typically use a reliable CPU and graphics card because the only three companies in the world who make them are massive reputable brands but for just about every other PC part out there there's a multitude of different vendors some of which manufacture their parts with higher standards than others so you could stumble across a pre-built online that has a decent looking CPU and graphics card at its core but the other components in the build could be and often are below average quality that's the focus of today's video where exactly RSI is cutting corners and how do their penny-pinching practices affect the end user this video is brought to you by the asrock X 299 Creator supporting Intel Core x-series processors the X 299 Creator offers a robust thirteen phase power design quad channel memory support and loads of connectivity for your every need best-in-class components and build quality ensure maximum longevity and reliability no matter your line of work click on the link below to learn more for comparison I put together my own parts list for a budget 1440p gaming PC that came out to 720 dollars so let's see how that compares to a pre-built desktop of the same price in terms of performance features and quality diving right in my awesome and totally perfect list is to the left and you'll see the loli pre-built scum on the right no I'm kidding partially so my CPU of choice for this roughly $700 build is a Verizon 5 1600 AF and if you guys have seen any of my recent videos this comes as no surprise I keep recommending this processor because it's essentially arisin 5 2612 nanometer processor not 40 nanometer like the original Rison 5 1600 but its $85 6 cores 12 threads overclocking freedom all that good stuff comes included with the Wraith spire cooler this chip is the bays maze and it just packs in a tremendous amount of value I can't recommend it enough verses the CPU on our sky Tech shadow gaming computer PC desktop that comes in at 730 dollars so pretty much the same price as ours gurus arisin 516 hundred this is also six cores and twelve threads but it does not appear to be the AF model it's not listed anywhere here just says risin five sixteen hundred no matter where you look so I'm assuming that that that's what it is it's first gen risin 14 nanometer which is gonna be maybe 10 to 15 percent slower in terms of gaming performance compared to the horizon 5 2600 which again is what the risin 5 1600 AF is so right out of the gate we're already seeing less performance with the pre-built than we are our own system and the motherboard I went with for our DIY build is the gigabyte be for 50 m DS 3 H micro ATX AM for motherboard it's $73 this is a basic be a basic board a big basic board is what that means but there are some likeable qualities about this board for the price for instance we do have an m2 slot not a lot of boards of this price range actually feature that on a m4 some of them do but not all of them we also get four dimm slots as opposed to two so we can always expand our memory down the line if we want to and we have an 8 pin EPS power connector for our CPU a lot of similar boards will only have a 4 pin connector which is perfectly fine for risin 5 1600 AF but if we were to upgrade our CPU down the line to a chip with higher TDP or more cores or anything like that then we would be limiting the amount of power we're able to send that thirst to your CPU with this configuration we have a bit more Headroom to work with as opposed to our sky Tech shadow system which doesn't really say what motherboard this is but whatever is in here is definitely on the budget side of things because if you look at the rear i/o I mean it looks just as basic as ours I think ours is a little bit better actually there's also no video outs here whereas you get dual link DVI and HDMI on this board it's not a huge deal because we're using a discreet graphics card for both systems it could come in handy if you ever wanted to repurpose the board for like a home theater PC and sometimes the video outs on the board are just nice to have for basic troubleshooting assuming that you have a processor with integrated graphics additionally even though we don't know the exact model number of the motherboard we do know from the description that it's on the a320 chipset which is bottom of the barrel its bottom of the barrel for a m4 the main bummer here is that there's typically no overclocking support on a 320 so you won't be able to squeeze any more performance out of your CPU you're pretty much cat that it's out of the box performance the fact that it's an a320 board also tells us there's a higher chance of it having only two DIMM slots a 4 pin power connector for your CPU and potentially no MDOT 2 these are all really great features to have and ones that I would shoot for even if you're on a super tight budget and they're obviously features that we really can't confirm and deny if this pre-built motherboard even has them that's actually another really important thing to note about pre builds you don't always 100% know what you're getting until it's too late for memory I went with the tried-and-true g.skill ripjaws 5 this is a 16 gigabyte dual channel kit so we get two dipsticks eight gigs each at ddr4 3600 speed that's great rise and processors are very happy with that higher frequency what do we get with our sky tech shadow eight eight gigabytes holy moly that's only eight gigabytes here so half the capacity does it say speeds ddr4 3000 so not only are you getting half the capacity for the same price but we're yet again giving up some precious in-game performance because of the slower memory speeds but eight gigs I mean they're gonna be some games that eat most of that up with very little left over for other applications whether it be discord or web browsers I mean that's one of the great things about PC gaming is being able to multitask but you can't do that if you're running low on system memory which this system is already at a severe disadvantage for that so not good not good so my storage setup consists of two drives we have a Seagate Barracuda 2 terabyte 7200 rpm drive for 55 bucks and a WD green 240 gig SATA 3 SSD it's not a super fancy set up but it's gonna get the job done we can install our operating system and other frequently used applications on our SSD with plenty of headroom left over and the 2 terabyte drive can be for all of our games you know mass media and things like that whereas on our skyshadow pre-built we have a 500 gig SSD and that's it so they actually have us beat here in terms of how much solid-state storage they have they've doubled our capacity there but we've more than quadrupled their overall capacity which means we have a lot more space for games and other things like you're gonna have to you're gonna buy this pre-built and then a month later if that you're gonna have to buy another drive and swap it in so then that factors into the cost and now you're talking maybe an $800 build or whatever depending on what you get whereas this is gonna last us a really long time over here and circling back to what I said earlier we also have no real way to tell what kind of SSD this is apart from it you know most likely being say 2 rf3 there's no way they're sticking nvme or anything like that in here it doesn't say anything about a model name there's no pictures of it so we don't know we don't know if it's like just some super dirt cheap obscure Chinese knockoff brand you've never heard of that could very well be fine you we have to consider that - it might be a perfectly fine quality drive but it might also not be so this is one of those things where you just don't know what you're buying what you're spending your money on whereas here you know exactly what you're getting you can read reviews on the exact parts on every component that you're choosing as opposed to leaving all that decision-making up to an SI now this is where things get really interesting and take a turn for the worst if you're the pre-built desktop in this example my GPU for for our build was the EVGA r-tx 2060 SC gaming it's got a single fan so you know obviously you'd prefer to but it's $2.99 this was one of the cheapest if not the cheapest r-tx 2060 on the market right now it's not a super but this card is still more than capable to handle you know sixty plus FPS 1440p gaming I would even go so far as to say it averages anywhere between 60 and 80 FPS which is a really nice sweet spot for a entry-level 1440p machine on the flip side we have a gtx 1660 not super not TI just a 1660 so now we're operating in completely different leagues here perfectly adequate and super smooth 1440p gaming over here and decent 1080p gaming in this corner this is not gonna be able to handle 1440p at all unless it's like you know some indie game or eSports and things like that of course if I'm taking an educated guess based on what I can remember from my testing the RT X 2060 is roughly twenty to thirty percent faster on average than the GTX 1660 and I think that's being pretty conservative what this means is that right out of the box on day one your DIY PC will be significantly faster than a pre built for the same price and you won't feel the need to replace it so soon I feel like the gtx 1660 in a year you're gonna want an upgrade you're gonna want to push more pixels you're gonna want to hire a fresh ray this is very very much an entry-level card versus something that's very capable and mid-range for my case I went with a thermal take versa h18 this is a micro ATX Tower which matches the form factor of our motherboard and I really like this case it's $50 if you're on a budget then one of the few things that should really matter about a case that you're choosing is air flow and this one has pretty decent air flow from the looks of it I mean the entire front panel is we mesh and then the interior layout doesn't look bad for a for a budget case at this caliber like $50 like you're getting tempered glass side panel power supply shroud cutouts in all the right places it looks like there's a bit of room even behind the motherboard tray one downer here is that you only get one included fan so that's maybe something you have to factor in down the line maybe throw in like a 5 or $10 fan at the front just to give a stronger path of airflow but you know you're not stuff in a 20 atti in here it's it's an RT X 2060 which is a very power efficient card along with the 65 watt TDP chip they're not gonna get super hot and with a well ventilated case like this sometimes a single 120 millimeter fan is sufficient when you're just starting out now over here we have this thing third we'll take versa and 2100 it's the thermal take case that's funny and 21 let me let me look that up not available so we have no idea what this case costs let me check Amazon really quick 103 okay this is obviously not right that can't be right since we can't be sure what the actual MSRP is let's take a closer look at this guy at first I thought this blue area was mash and I was like okay that's good good air flow and stuff but upon closer inspection it's not it's a translucent panel designed for gamer the glossy front top panels deliver stylish images no I hate how they're passing this off as a feature yo Dawg we heard you like thermal throttling so we closed off your front panel so your fans choke and your components overheat you're welcome what don't don't tell me this is the only ventilation area at the front panel that's ridiculous what is is this part of the ventilation or is this just more terrible design I mean I don't want to comment too much on aesthetics and stuff because it's all subjective but during that's open look that side panel window this is case from 2003 at the very least I will say this I will say this it does have one leg up on the H 18 in terms of fans it's got - it looks like it's got maybe two 120 s the front and then one more at the rear definitely so you know maybe that offsets the terrible what looks to be terribly closed off and choked off airflow at the front but who knows without proper testing gamers next is bad ceiling gamers axis hot diggety friggin damn take a shot of the inside here this is just the Amazon product page of the case itself but you can see it's it's a pretty standard kind of typical layout you definitely tell it's an older case because not only does it have a dated aesthetic on the outside but it's got a couple five and a quarter inch bays which are not quite as common anymore with modern cases it's got those typical two and a half inch three and a half inch trays at the bottom I mean it looks like a fairly decent interior actually it doesn't look bad it's just the airflow situation that's really not selling it for me and again we're not dropping super hot running components in here but we might someday we might want to upgrade our GPU to something that's blazing fast like a 20 80 or 20 80 TI that is gonna need adequate airflow coming from the chassis primarily and I have my doubts my reservations that this case is gonna be able to deliver that again it just seems that we're getting more performance and longevity with the parts that we choose ourselves last but not least for our power supply I chose to see Sonic s12 3 this is a 500 watt unit 80 plus bronze certified see sonic makes great power supplies if you look up trusted reviews on them you'll find the vast majority of them have very high marks and are super reliable whereas over here we have doesn't say exactly once again but powered by an 80 plus certified 500 watt power supply so it is 500 watt same wattage but probably less efficiency because this doesn't say 80 plus bronze it just says 80 Plus which is a few percentage points of efficiency below 80 plus bronze and we also have no idea who manufactures this power supply or if it's gonna explode in our system six months down the line the last thing we'll note here is that to the pre-built script with a copy of Windows so we have Windows 10 home 64 bit here whereas we don't have an operating system here however you can create a bootable USB drive install Windows on your desktop and pretty much use it to 99 percent of its functionality for free yes you'll have a little watermark in the corner of your screen and no you won't be able to do stupid things like hide your taskbar but for the most part if you're trying to save money you can go a really long time if not forever without activating windows so just to recap here we have two systems that are identical in price but one is probably I would say even 25 to 35 percent faster when you consider the CPU and GPU that we have compared to this one the pairing is just on another level so we're gonna be able to take advantage of higher fresh rates higher frame rates more smoothness in-game higher resolution better graphical settings all that jazz with with this set up so you're really gaining a lot without having to spend a dime more than what you would on this preview we've got 16 gigs of ram that's gonna last us a long time plenty of storage and the case is gonna be able to accommodate liquid aoe's in the future longer graphics cards hotter running components that require better airflow whereas over here some of the corners of this si has cut are so drastic that I would feel like I'd already have upgraded on day one now I know a lot of you guys are probably thinking it would have been really cool to see the inside of the system so we could make better comparisons so I've actually pulled up another pre-built system that's a little bit more expensive it's about 20% more expensive at 870 dollars but I'm bringing this up because you can actually see the inside so it should give us a slightly better idea of what we could have expected to find inside of that 730 dollar pre-built this is a different si this is a BS and we're looking at their mage II gaming desktop so right off the bat we've got an Intel Core i5 9400 app so we've got Intel here Core i5 90 400 F is actually not a bad CPU if you're just talking about gaming like it does have better single-threaded performance than the rise in v 1600 AF or the rise in v 2600 so it beats us there then again this is 20% more expensive than our DIY system geforce r-tx 2060 so we're even there let's see if we can tell which model this is the zotac that looks to be as otech card so good brand so tech makes great product so that's good we also have 16 gigs of memory now yay yay but does it say what the speed is it doesn't say 16 gigs ddr4 no mention of speed enhance that's that's as much as it goes okay so it looks like I really can't tell but based on the way the RAM looks zero heat spreaders so this is definitely like value oriented budget Ram I'm gonna guess 3000 I'm gonna guess it's roughly the same speed as the last prebuilt so 3000 megahertz which means that with our DIY system we're actually offsetting a bit of the FPS we're losing from our CPU with faster memory speeds still sticking with a 500 gigabyte SSD and no mechanical drive is just the 500 gigs so prepare to spend another 50 bucks on more storage here unfortunately there's still no picture or model name of the SSD we just know the capacity and that said it's most likely gonna be say 2 F 3 6 gigabit per second two and a half inch drive that I would imagine is installed probably underneath the power supply shroud right about here what kind of mother more do we have here does not say it's definitely not gonna be like Z 390 or something so here we can see that it's an as rock board but it's definitely on the low end of things once again they've cut corners with the motherboard if I had to take a wild guess I would say this is like an h3 10 motherboard which means it's got it definitely doesn't have any overclocking support fewer HS i/o lanes Intel obtained memory support things like that and oh I think we only have there's only two DIMM slots on this board to DIMM slots do we at least have an 8-pin so we get an 8 pin power connector for CPU but only 2 DIMM slots so you're you're pretty much capped here unless you swap out the kit entirely your captain 16 gigs you can't just drop in an identical kit and upgrade to 32 gigs down the line so that's a bummer and look at this Intel stock cooler now that the AMD rates have been out like these just look so sad I'm actually really surprised Intel hasn't refreshed their stock coolers because they are ugly first of all but more importantly they're noisy they're really noisy under load and they're just not great performers certainly not offering the same level of value that the AMD Wraith coolers are this case actually looks a lot better than the previous pre-built because I think we've got a full mesh front panel here plus we have three fans of the front and one at the back so this is out of the box this is gonna have better air flow most likely than the chassis I picked out for our DIY system and it's a pretty attractive case you know it's very clean minimalistic I really don't mind it you know the RGB is not super obnoxious I guess depending on who you ask and the internal layout looks fairly similar it looks like you can even mount some SSDs over here so not too terrible actually unfortunately I can't say the same thing about the power supply what what is that now I'm not I'm not gonna knock it you don't knock it till you try it but it looks like it's a 500 watt unit a X 500 XT maybe I could look at uh-oh oh god it's a raid max it's a raid max power supply Oh No okay so that's a raid Max unit this is a $33 power supply is it even 80 plus it is not no mention of it which is not great even the $700 prebuilt have an 80 plus unit pre built SAR just so unpredictable what else is under this PSU shroud hopefully a fire extinguisher last thing I have to point out here just because ketchup and mustard cables not uh not the prettiest you know look at this oh oh so in the end I would say the system is probably a little bit faster than ours just because it does have the faster gaming CPU we close the gap a little bit with our faster memory but probably not quite enough to make it even so I would say this is probably on average 8 to 12 maybe 15% faster but then again we're spending 20% more and you're stuck with much lower quality components like a very inefficient our supply and a super low-end motherboard and I think that brings up an important takeaway here too is that even if you scaled up and got like a nice pre-built and like spent good money on a pre bit like let's take a look at this guy right here this one's eleven hundred dollars roughly eleven hundred dollars it's got the RGB front panel it's got all that temper it's it's a nice pre-built right $1,000 is a lot to spend on a gaming PC but you still have to deal with the system integrators corner-cutting which means that even if the CPU and the GPU are bumping you're gonna have things like look at the stock cooler why didn't they just use a wraith cooler that comes included with the risin 530 600 they used this old ancient piece of garbage that is so noisy it's it's unbearable last time I use one of these I ripped my ears off and then had to sew them back on don't ask me how one one stick of memory like that again with the cheap motherboard and God knows what power supply but you guys get the idea even if you're buying a nice prevail and this is just for like the majority of sis and pre-built there are some pre bolts out there that are actually good some of the ones that we've talked about on this channel and featured NZXT makes awesome pre builds because they actually use components that like similar components to the ones we're using here they don't go out and cheap out on garbage power supplies and motherboards that are gonna cost you later so there there are exceptions to the rule but in general no matter what price tier that you go for even if you get a nice pre-built like this one or quote unquote nice you know expensive whatever you're still gonna be stuck with all the crappy decisions that some of these sis have made for you and if you're a fan of the channel you already know how I feel about this which is build your own PC if you can you know I understand that there are some scenarios or certain lifestyles or whatever disabilities whatever that prevent people from being able to build a system but if you can then compared to buying a pre-built a DIY PC is going to give you more performance per dollar it's gonna give you better quality components that last a longer time it's gonna give you a better upgrade path and more bells and whistles that haven't been stripped down completely by a system integrators so many many reasons to to go that route I hope you guys found this video useful if you did toss a like smash that like button for the algorithm it helps a lot and subscribe to the channel if you haven't yet a lot of people who watch these videos I've been looking at the metrics more closely lately like half of you are not even subscribed so what the hell are you doing subscribe if you want if you made it to this point the video because I do stuff like this all the time check out big weight attack our merchandise store of course thank you guys so much probably all the support there regardless of what you buy all the money goes straight back through the channel so we can continue developing awesome content like this once again thank you guys so much for watching stay safe out there it's an absolute madhouse right now so everyone keep calm and game on that's a stupid thing to say at the end of the video or anytime but thank you guys so much you can have a good what I'm gonna get out of here I'll see you in the next one bye\n"