Building Your Own Budget-Friendly Gaming Computer: A Comprehensive Guide

As someone who has been there and done that, I can attest to the fact that building your own computer can be a cost-effective way to get the performance you need without breaking the bank. When it comes to budget-friendly options, every penny counts, and making some sacrifices is necessary to achieve a balance between performance and affordability.

One of the most significant costs associated with building a gaming PC is the motherboard. While there are many excellent options available in the market, not all of them come with Wi-Fi or USB ports that can support modern peripherals. In this build, I opted for a $250 motherboard that comes with an SD card reader and three USB ports. This was a necessary compromise to keep costs down, but it's essential to note that some motherboards may sacrifice features like Wi-Fi or USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports to save money.

When it comes to storage, I chose the Samsung 850 Evo SSD, which is an excellent drive for its price. However, this particular build does not benefit from using a faster SSD, as the bottleneck in this machine is the processor and graphics card. While the 850 Evo is an outstanding performer, it's overkill for this specific build.

To demonstrate Wi-Fi capabilities, I included a $9 USB Wi-Fi adapter that plugs into one of the available ports. This solution is simple and effective, but if you need faster speeds, there are more expensive alternatives available.

DVD burners are another feature that was considered in this build. Since I don't use them anymore, I installed a DVD burner solely for demonstration purposes. If you're looking to save money, consider purchasing one on sale, as they do occasionally go on sale. The included drive is shipping without additional costs, and it may be cheaper elsewhere.

In the end, the choices made in this build are designed to balance performance with affordability. By making some compromises on features like Wi-Fi or USB ports, I was able to keep costs down while still achieving excellent performance for a $1,000 budget. If you're considering building your own gaming PC, here's what I'd recommend:

* Motherboard: Opt for a motherboard that comes with an SD card reader and three USB ports. This may sacrifice some features like Wi-Fi or USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports to save money.

* Storage: Consider the Samsung 850 Evo SSD if you have a larger budget, but for this build, it's not necessary.

* Wi-Fi: If you need faster speeds, consider purchasing an alternative Wi-Fi adapter that supports Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 standards. A $9 USB Wi-Fi adapter can be a cost-effective solution.

Ultimately, the choice is yours. Do you want to prioritize features like Wi-Fi or USB ports, or do you want to save money by compromising on those? With this guide, I hope you'll make an informed decision and get the performance you need without breaking the bank.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello and welcome to Tech deals computer review time on this custombuilt $350 gaming PC I've previously filmed the build of this computer taking a collection of Parts turning it into a computer Link in the description below as well as Windows performance review and game videos check those out the purpose of this video is to help you understand what components I put in here and more importantly why if you're thinking of building your own machine but you're trying to decide between this part or that part or understanding what's important and what's not I'm going to go through all the parts in this computer step by step and show you alternate options to consider and why you might want to consider them the idea is to stimulate your thinking process behind building your machine because you don't have to build this just the way I did or just the way anyone does when you buy a pre-built machine you have to take them as they come they might offer two or three models you pick one and you're happy with it with a custom machine the sky the limit you can do anything you want within a budget so for $350 these are the components I picked out but there are some changes you can make and let me show you what they are first of all I have each of the product pages pulled up on Amazon along with alternatives to talk about the different items the processor that I chose in this computer is the Intel Pentium g4400 two core two thread 3.3 GHz processor for $57 it's a great entry level chip and frankly for a $350 budget you'll be hardpressed to do any better than that but if you have any wiggle room in the budget let's say you go 350 is great but I could do 400 I'm okay to spend a little more what do I get well the other chip you should consider is this one the Intel Core i36100 it is more expensive it does raise the price from 350 to 4 what do you get for that great question it's still a two core chip but it is four threads so it will execute four things at once or at least Windows thinks it will even though it really only has two um actual calculators built in two execution units built in it takes four processes at once and orders them to be more efficient in programs that will use extra course such as games multitasking uh photo and video editing it can be much faster than the penum g4400 how much let me show you I have got a website called user Benchmark loaded and I've got the two processor side by side if you've never been to the site by all means check it out userbenchmark.com a great reference for comparing different components and parts now on um your left hand side you'll see the g4400 and on your right hand side you'll see the i36100 if I scroll down it gives an overall score difference of 32% meaning the i36100 is 32% faster than the g4400 now if you do some quick math and go wait a minute 50 7 to 117 is um 32% doesn't seem like you get performance for your dollar in applications programs that don't use more than two cores you are completely correct let me scroll down and show you because a single number doesn't often tell the story if I scroll down let's go to average user bench now this site takes results from lots of different computers in fact there are over 3,000 in different benchmarks compiled together to create an aggregate so this is a wide range of averages here average user bench the very first line which you might or might not be able to read says single core mixed meaning this is what uh the performance is when something is just using one of the processing cores the i36100 is only 10% faster big deal that's a terrible value don't buy it for that but what about multicore if you're doing quad core if you have something that will use all four of the three sprads on the I3 processor look at the middle line it's 50% faster the 32 37 the um excuse me the um the 32% average up here is combining the 10% and the 50% together should you get an i36100 it depends on what you're doing with the computer it could be 10% faster or 50% faster it totally depends on what you're doing if you run one program at a time if you open one web browser and one or two tabs at a time if you just open up simple games if you play Minecraft and League of Legends and Counter-Strike Global Offensive if you just run Microsoft Office and browse Facebook the g4400 is plenty you don't need any more than that want to play more advanced stuff want to play Grand Theft Auto 5 want to be able to open 12 browser tabs at once you want to be able to do more stuff get the i36100 it's worth the extra 50 or so dollars to upgrade to that chip all right so that's processor so we've got the g4400 which is in here and then you have your other choice which is the i36100 next component motherboard the big circuit board that goes into your computer I have an isus motherboard in here which is actually not the one that's on the screen and the reason is is because they make a ton of different models and the version that I put in here is actually out of stock at the moment I don't recommend you buy it anyway I buy I own it because I bought it three months ago and I've had it for a while the motherboard at this level of computer doesn't really matter they're all about the same it isn't going to make any real difference they're also all about the same price between $50 and $60 the chipset on the motherboard is exactly the same between all the boards it's the h110 Intel chipset and since Intel makes the chipset that drives the motherboard they're all basically the same now the motherboard that's on the screen is $57 and it is from isus and this is what's called a ddr4 or double dat rate 4 motherboard and the reason is and this is important Skylake the sixth generation of Intel chips which is what the uh chip in here is can use either three or four it cannot use both at the same time and you have to make that choice when you buy the motherboard so don't make the mistake of buying a ddr4 motherboard and then buying DDR3 RAM or the reverse buying a DDR3 motherboard with ddr4 ram the slots are physically different you cannot interchange them but you can pick which one you want when you buy the motherboard now at the time I bought this motherboard which is a DDR3 motherboard and at the time I did my original unboxing and review of Skylake DDR3 costs less that's no longer the case I'm filming this in July of 2016 that's no longer true if you're buying everything new by the ddr4 version at this point it is a little faster it isn't going to make much difference but it's faster by the ddr4 now so this motherboard is the isus h110 m-k the m-k is just asus's model it doesn't matter it's a fairly simple basic motherboard it looks almost exactly the same as the one that's in here except the two memory slots are just ddr4 instead of DDR3 now I've gotten a lot of questions people people saying why isus why not gigabyte why not MSI they're fine isus is my preferred brand I like their bios I like their instruction manuals I like the package they provide I've used them for years I own more than a dozen different isus motherboards I'm very happy with them that's a personal bias it is not a knock against the other brands they're fine and to show you that let me show you a slightly less expensive option from gigabyte the h110 m-a motherboard it is $7 less if it bothers you buy that one is there any difference no not really they're both basically the same they have the same basic ports they both have two memory slots they both have a graphics card slot they both have a sound chip they both have gigabit Ethernet they're pretty similar would I pay the $7 extra for the isus yes I would I have no problem paying the extra $7 just because I trust a Zeus I've had so much experience with him and it's a comfort factor there's nothing wrong with the gigabyte either I own one of the gigabytes I've done an unboxing of it so that's the motherboard moving on to the graphics card this is an interesting conversation now this computer has a Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti graphics card it's about a $100 graphics card okay the one that's in there is 109 there are other models you can buy for 100 this is 109 today this is a great graphics card for a couple of reasons first of all it will play most current games at full HD or 1080p at medium or higher detail at 60 frames a second average performance not every game it won't do Witcher 3 for example um there are a few it will struggle with but for $100 it's not a bad deal the other nice thing about this card is it's currently the fastest graphics card generally that you can buy that doesn't require what's called a six pin PCI Express power connector when I installed this card if you watched the build video I talked about this I mentioned this and I showed you an adapter between the two Molex power connectors in here and a six pin connector in case you want to get a better video card so there is that option if you want something better but this is a good card but what if you don't like that most current game limitations what if you want it to be all current games or at least more current games or maybe you want to play instead of medium detail you want to play at high detail okay let me show you an option now this is the 750 Ti let me show you the 950 why the 950 well if you look at the price on the screen don't buy it for $150 it's no longer worth $150 I wouldn't recommend it at that price however these are starting to become available on the used market for Less here on Amazon somebody is selling one for $10 that is only $10 or $15 with shipping more than the GTX 750 Ti now granted this is used and the other one's new and I understand that but I will put a link in the description below to the list of the full page of gtx950 cards and in fact I'll go ahead and show you gtx950 and here's why graphics card S I want you to look at this list and I want you to look at the new and used prices because if we come down this list the new prices are all still too high in my opinion but there's several of these down at $ 1220 to $125 that you can get why should you consider a 950 this is why userbenchmark.com again I've got the 750 Ti on your left and I've got the 9 50 on the right if I scroll these down the 950 is 53% faster that is a fairly Hefty performance improvement over the 750 Ti if you can swing a few extra dollars get a 950 now the 950 is going to require that six pin PCI Express power adapter if you buy one used make sure the seller who provides it includes one in fact this is not a bad deal this is the single fan version of the 750 Ti $117 and that's actually from Amazon's warehouse deals that's probably one that a customer bought and returned will it have the six pin adapter in it who knows Amazon's not very good about checking on accessories the nice part is free returns if it arrives without the adapter Amazon will take it back full refund free return shipping they won't give you any hassles that comes directly from Amazon that's probably an open box $17 and that will easily fit in here and you can use the two pin Molex to one pin six pin adapter with that in this power supply it will work just fine don't worry about it what about going higher than this if you do then you're on the wrong processor I wouldn't put anything more than about a 950 with the Intel g4400 that's in here you're getting two mismatched some people are bound to say what about amd's new rx480 or what about the new GTX 1060 yes they're great cards but not for this machine wrong wrong computer you wouldn't pair a Pentium g4400 with those cards you can but you shouldn't so graphics cards 120 or less get a 950 all day long Now flip side if you find a 750 Ti used in the $80 range that's fine too I'm comparing new to use so I I understand that anyway enough of that let me close those is there one of these oh there is one used at 87 would I buy one for 87 n maybe maybe not that's not bad depends on how much you want to save $10 or $20 case moving on to case this is the case that is sitting in front of you right here I've actually had this case for about three months I would not buy it again personally and here's why because oops wrong one that exists that is the replacement for this what's the difference $5 and usb3 ports this case only has if I can do it without looking those are USB 2 ports in the front now of course the motherboard has usb3 ports on the back but there's no usb3 ports on the front I bought this 3 months ago this I don't think was available at the time so what can I say now I like to have usb3 ports the other thing is this is black gloss and picks up every fingerprint on Earth and that doesn't look like I don't have one of those but that doesn't look like black black loss it is $5 more $45 for this case $50 for that one um they both come with power supplies let me pull this image up you can see the power supply it came with the power supply included this one same power supply they're both 400 watts they're both from r as well they're both basically the same size case but this one for $5 more has USB 3 ports in it now can you buy a separate case and separate power supply sure but you're starting to push the price budget one of the reasons I picked this is because 450 400 wat power supplies are about $25 and that made the case $20 and you'd be hardpressed to get a just an empty shell for $20 so it makes it a reasonable choice for this level of computer it's fine fine I wouldn't build a fancy computer in this but for 350 it's fine so consider consider your options um Amazon still has this one available and if you like the black glossy plastic knock yourself out if you don't there you go so those are the cases I just want to show you the comparison and the choices between the cases memory when if you watched my build video you saw me install two 4 GB memory modules for a total of eight that used up both memory slots so there's no room for expansion I don't care I'm not going to put more than 8 gigabytes in here anyway why did I not go with a single 8 gbyte memory stick because I already had the two 4 gbyte memory kit sitting on my shelf if you came to me in real life not on YouTube if you came to me and you said hey man what should I do should I get two 4 GB sticks or 18 I would say get 18 and here here's why if you buy one eight you can always buy a second eight and upgrade it to 16 GB in the future but if you buy two fours you can't do that you've got to take them both out and do something else with them to replace them with two eights there is a small performance difference between two fours and 18 two fours is faster not by much two to 3% at most maybe nothing unless the program you're running is RAM limited most games General web browsing isn't going to be any different between one stick or two buy the single stick in fact this one is made by crucial which is owned by Micron which is I think the largest memory company on Earth this is $33 with free shipping and it's a single 8 GB ddr4 memory stick I don't have anything else to recommend you can certainly get the two uh if you want 16 gigs by all means you know byy two but 16 gigs is a bit overkill for this processor so there's the memory storage I mentioned this when I was building it uh in the build video I installed a Toshiba ocz 240 GB solid state drive in here why I'd never done it before I picked it up on a daily deal and I wanted to see how the performance was how is it now that I've messed around with I've already filmed by the way the windows performance review and the and some of the game videos this is not my first video post build so I've had experience with this now how is this drive it's fine is it the fastest drive in the world no is it good enough yes is it substantially better or worse than the other cheap options no now the price on this drive today shows at $63 and this is something I'll mention about Amazon when you're browsing Amazon be aware if you look down here it says sold by yyy trade and fulfilled by Amazon if you buy this right now Amazon will ship it to you it will arrive in an Amazon box with the smile on the side of it and a packing slip and Amazon tape on it and as far as you're concerned it came from Amazon but it didn't it came from the warehouse but a company called yyy trade sold it to you they shipped it into Amazon's warehouse and Amazon shipped it to you now Amazon does sell this and if you come over to the right hand side of the screen you will see other sellers on Amazon and this one says sold by amazon.com and it also says temporarily out of stock you can order it and they'll deliver it when it's available you'll also see it's less expensive at $55 um if you need it right away obviously you don't want to order it and then wait weeks for something to show up you could certainly pay the $62 current asking price but let me show you another option ad data adata Premiere uh SP 550 solid state drive I've included this in my solid state Roundup I own one of these These are fine it's about the same performance give or take you will never notice any difference in what you'll use it for this one is $59 would I buy this for 59 over the other one at 62 yes would I buy this drive at 55 if it was in stock over the a data at 58 yes there's no real difference from your point of view in this type of computer between these drives even if I put them into two identical machines side by side and had you play with them I don't think most people myself included could tell which was which they it's not there isn't that much difference between these drives there is benchmarks will show a difference you'll never see it so by whichever one cheapest now you can of course go bigger and smaller in size for example it's $109 for a$ 480 it's $38 for a 120 I don't recommend the 120 anymore for $20 it's not worth losing half of your space I guess if you are completely money crunched and you're trying to save every last penny I appreciate that I've been there um I've lived on mac and cheese and baln sandwiches before uh so you know it is what it is but essentially it's $20 more to double your space get the 240 um likewise well actually that one that 120 doesn't save anything at all are there other brands now some people say well what's the best SSD I could buy well it doesn't matter for this machine the best SSD on the market at the moment is the 850 Evo for $91 is this drive faster than the one in here yes can I tell the difference having used a lot of different ssds yes I can could you tell the difference if you use them maybe a day apart and didn't use them a lot no and this is a waste of money for this computer for a $1,000 computer buy the 850 Evo all day long I firmly believe that for a 500 or less don't waste your money buy the cheap one the 850 Evo from Samsung is an awesome Drive its performance is excellent but it's a waste of money in this machine so those are solid state drives moving on this computer does not come with Wi-Fi and somebody is bound to say wait a minute those motherboards you showed me don't come with Wi-Fi is there a model that has Wi-Fi n probably who cares a lot of times the motherboard manufacturers charge a lot of extra money to put a Wi-Fi chip on the motherboard I've previously done an unboxing and overview of this $9 it is a USB uh little Nano plug it's this little thing right here it plugs into one of the USB ports you forget about it boom instant Wi-Fi for $9 there is no need to worry about whether your motherboard has Wi-Fi buy one of these if you need it now this is a very basic Wi-Fi adapter and it's the N Wi-Fi it's not the fastest Wi-Fi on the market which for this computer is probably fine but if you care $20 three times faster buy that one instead take your pick so $9 for n wifi or $20 for a c WiFi knock yourself out the last component I'll mention is this a DVD burner I did install a DVD burner in this when I built the computer would I have put it in if I wasn't doing a build video no I don't use DVD or CD drives anymore I I have got one in my personal machines at home and I I they don't ever get used we just don't use them anymore um music videos are all digitally through the cloud everything streams all my programs are downloaded and installed through the cloud I simply don't use it I installed it to demonstrate it no more and no less and because I had an extra one sitting on the shelf um it works fine you just push this button here and it slides right out no worries I mean it's there but um that will probably never get used to be completely honest honest with you $18 uh they do go on sale regularly if you want to save some money and you come down here well they're shipping without there may not be cheaper um you can sometimes find deals I actually got a good daily deal on the one that's included you know so by all means put one in if you want ignore it if you don't um and that's pretty much it when it comes to the hardware in this computer those are the choices I made to try to fit within this budget those are some alternatives for you to consider I know that was long but if you're thinking of building your own machine and you're trying to get the the the mental engine running going should I buy this should I buy that should I buy this motherboard should I byy that hopefully that was helpful like the video if you like it don't if you don't remember to subscribe to my channel down there to get updates on future videos including the upcoming Windows performance reviews and gaming performance reviews of this computer and other builds questions comments thoughts feedback suggestions leave those down below I'm sure some of you will have some by all means let me know know what you think pros and cons versus what I showed you I am all ears to your viewpoints and opinions and questions which I will answer if I am able and as always all the parts that I have included in this machine as well as the alternate options I just showed you will all be linked in the video description below if you want to support my channel if you like these videos if you want to help me out use the links down there they go to both Amazon and Newegg I showed you Amazon here but you can use New Egg as well I'll link them all to new EG for you as well so if you want to support me use the the links I'll be very very appreciative thanks for watching this video I will see you next timehello and welcome to Tech deals computer review time on this custombuilt $350 gaming PC I've previously filmed the build of this computer taking a collection of Parts turning it into a computer Link in the description below as well as Windows performance review and game videos check those out the purpose of this video is to help you understand what components I put in here and more importantly why if you're thinking of building your own machine but you're trying to decide between this part or that part or understanding what's important and what's not I'm going to go through all the parts in this computer step by step and show you alternate options to consider and why you might want to consider them the idea is to stimulate your thinking process behind building your machine because you don't have to build this just the way I did or just the way anyone does when you buy a pre-built machine you have to take them as they come they might offer two or three models you pick one and you're happy with it with a custom machine the sky the limit you can do anything you want within a budget so for $350 these are the components I picked out but there are some changes you can make and let me show you what they are first of all I have each of the product pages pulled up on Amazon along with alternatives to talk about the different items the processor that I chose in this computer is the Intel Pentium g4400 two core two thread 3.3 GHz processor for $57 it's a great entry level chip and frankly for a $350 budget you'll be hardpressed to do any better than that but if you have any wiggle room in the budget let's say you go 350 is great but I could do 400 I'm okay to spend a little more what do I get well the other chip you should consider is this one the Intel Core i36100 it is more expensive it does raise the price from 350 to 4 what do you get for that great question it's still a two core chip but it is four threads so it will execute four things at once or at least Windows thinks it will even though it really only has two um actual calculators built in two execution units built in it takes four processes at once and orders them to be more efficient in programs that will use extra course such as games multitasking uh photo and video editing it can be much faster than the penum g4400 how much let me show you I have got a website called user Benchmark loaded and I've got the two processor side by side if you've never been to the site by all means check it out userbenchmark.com a great reference for comparing different components and parts now on um your left hand side you'll see the g4400 and on your right hand side you'll see the i36100 if I scroll down it gives an overall score difference of 32% meaning the i36100 is 32% faster than the g4400 now if you do some quick math and go wait a minute 50 7 to 117 is um 32% doesn't seem like you get performance for your dollar in applications programs that don't use more than two cores you are completely correct let me scroll down and show you because a single number doesn't often tell the story if I scroll down let's go to average user bench now this site takes results from lots of different computers in fact there are over 3,000 in different benchmarks compiled together to create an aggregate so this is a wide range of averages here average user bench the very first line which you might or might not be able to read says single core mixed meaning this is what uh the performance is when something is just using one of the processing cores the i36100 is only 10% faster big deal that's a terrible value don't buy it for that but what about multicore if you're doing quad core if you have something that will use all four of the three sprads on the I3 processor look at the middle line it's 50% faster the 32 37 the um excuse me the um the 32% average up here is combining the 10% and the 50% together should you get an i36100 it depends on what you're doing with the computer it could be 10% faster or 50% faster it totally depends on what you're doing if you run one program at a time if you open one web browser and one or two tabs at a time if you just open up simple games if you play Minecraft and League of Legends and Counter-Strike Global Offensive if you just run Microsoft Office and browse Facebook the g4400 is plenty you don't need any more than that want to play more advanced stuff want to play Grand Theft Auto 5 want to be able to open 12 browser tabs at once you want to be able to do more stuff get the i36100 it's worth the extra 50 or so dollars to upgrade to that chip all right so that's processor so we've got the g4400 which is in here and then you have your other choice which is the i36100 next component motherboard the big circuit board that goes into your computer I have an isus motherboard in here which is actually not the one that's on the screen and the reason is is because they make a ton of different models and the version that I put in here is actually out of stock at the moment I don't recommend you buy it anyway I buy I own it because I bought it three months ago and I've had it for a while the motherboard at this level of computer doesn't really matter they're all about the same it isn't going to make any real difference they're also all about the same price between $50 and $60 the chipset on the motherboard is exactly the same between all the boards it's the h110 Intel chipset and since Intel makes the chipset that drives the motherboard they're all basically the same now the motherboard that's on the screen is $57 and it is from isus and this is what's called a ddr4 or double dat rate 4 motherboard and the reason is and this is important Skylake the sixth generation of Intel chips which is what the uh chip in here is can use either three or four it cannot use both at the same time and you have to make that choice when you buy the motherboard so don't make the mistake of buying a ddr4 motherboard and then buying DDR3 RAM or the reverse buying a DDR3 motherboard with ddr4 ram the slots are physically different you cannot interchange them but you can pick which one you want when you buy the motherboard now at the time I bought this motherboard which is a DDR3 motherboard and at the time I did my original unboxing and review of Skylake DDR3 costs less that's no longer the case I'm filming this in July of 2016 that's no longer true if you're buying everything new by the ddr4 version at this point it is a little faster it isn't going to make much difference but it's faster by the ddr4 now so this motherboard is the isus h110 m-k the m-k is just asus's model it doesn't matter it's a fairly simple basic motherboard it looks almost exactly the same as the one that's in here except the two memory slots are just ddr4 instead of DDR3 now I've gotten a lot of questions people people saying why isus why not gigabyte why not MSI they're fine isus is my preferred brand I like their bios I like their instruction manuals I like the package they provide I've used them for years I own more than a dozen different isus motherboards I'm very happy with them that's a personal bias it is not a knock against the other brands they're fine and to show you that let me show you a slightly less expensive option from gigabyte the h110 m-a motherboard it is $7 less if it bothers you buy that one is there any difference no not really they're both basically the same they have the same basic ports they both have two memory slots they both have a graphics card slot they both have a sound chip they both have gigabit Ethernet they're pretty similar would I pay the $7 extra for the isus yes I would I have no problem paying the extra $7 just because I trust a Zeus I've had so much experience with him and it's a comfort factor there's nothing wrong with the gigabyte either I own one of the gigabytes I've done an unboxing of it so that's the motherboard moving on to the graphics card this is an interesting conversation now this computer has a Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti graphics card it's about a $100 graphics card okay the one that's in there is 109 there are other models you can buy for 100 this is 109 today this is a great graphics card for a couple of reasons first of all it will play most current games at full HD or 1080p at medium or higher detail at 60 frames a second average performance not every game it won't do Witcher 3 for example um there are a few it will struggle with but for $100 it's not a bad deal the other nice thing about this card is it's currently the fastest graphics card generally that you can buy that doesn't require what's called a six pin PCI Express power connector when I installed this card if you watched the build video I talked about this I mentioned this and I showed you an adapter between the two Molex power connectors in here and a six pin connector in case you want to get a better video card so there is that option if you want something better but this is a good card but what if you don't like that most current game limitations what if you want it to be all current games or at least more current games or maybe you want to play instead of medium detail you want to play at high detail okay let me show you an option now this is the 750 Ti let me show you the 950 why the 950 well if you look at the price on the screen don't buy it for $150 it's no longer worth $150 I wouldn't recommend it at that price however these are starting to become available on the used market for Less here on Amazon somebody is selling one for $10 that is only $10 or $15 with shipping more than the GTX 750 Ti now granted this is used and the other one's new and I understand that but I will put a link in the description below to the list of the full page of gtx950 cards and in fact I'll go ahead and show you gtx950 and here's why graphics card S I want you to look at this list and I want you to look at the new and used prices because if we come down this list the new prices are all still too high in my opinion but there's several of these down at $ 1220 to $125 that you can get why should you consider a 950 this is why userbenchmark.com again I've got the 750 Ti on your left and I've got the 9 50 on the right if I scroll these down the 950 is 53% faster that is a fairly Hefty performance improvement over the 750 Ti if you can swing a few extra dollars get a 950 now the 950 is going to require that six pin PCI Express power adapter if you buy one used make sure the seller who provides it includes one in fact this is not a bad deal this is the single fan version of the 750 Ti $117 and that's actually from Amazon's warehouse deals that's probably one that a customer bought and returned will it have the six pin adapter in it who knows Amazon's not very good about checking on accessories the nice part is free returns if it arrives without the adapter Amazon will take it back full refund free return shipping they won't give you any hassles that comes directly from Amazon that's probably an open box $17 and that will easily fit in here and you can use the two pin Molex to one pin six pin adapter with that in this power supply it will work just fine don't worry about it what about going higher than this if you do then you're on the wrong processor I wouldn't put anything more than about a 950 with the Intel g4400 that's in here you're getting two mismatched some people are bound to say what about amd's new rx480 or what about the new GTX 1060 yes they're great cards but not for this machine wrong wrong computer you wouldn't pair a Pentium g4400 with those cards you can but you shouldn't so graphics cards 120 or less get a 950 all day long Now flip side if you find a 750 Ti used in the $80 range that's fine too I'm comparing new to use so I I understand that anyway enough of that let me close those is there one of these oh there is one used at 87 would I buy one for 87 n maybe maybe not that's not bad depends on how much you want to save $10 or $20 case moving on to case this is the case that is sitting in front of you right here I've actually had this case for about three months I would not buy it again personally and here's why because oops wrong one that exists that is the replacement for this what's the difference $5 and usb3 ports this case only has if I can do it without looking those are USB 2 ports in the front now of course the motherboard has usb3 ports on the back but there's no usb3 ports on the front I bought this 3 months ago this I don't think was available at the time so what can I say now I like to have usb3 ports the other thing is this is black gloss and picks up every fingerprint on Earth and that doesn't look like I don't have one of those but that doesn't look like black black loss it is $5 more $45 for this case $50 for that one um they both come with power supplies let me pull this image up you can see the power supply it came with the power supply included this one same power supply they're both 400 watts they're both from r as well they're both basically the same size case but this one for $5 more has USB 3 ports in it now can you buy a separate case and separate power supply sure but you're starting to push the price budget one of the reasons I picked this is because 450 400 wat power supplies are about $25 and that made the case $20 and you'd be hardpressed to get a just an empty shell for $20 so it makes it a reasonable choice for this level of computer it's fine fine I wouldn't build a fancy computer in this but for 350 it's fine so consider consider your options um Amazon still has this one available and if you like the black glossy plastic knock yourself out if you don't there you go so those are the cases I just want to show you the comparison and the choices between the cases memory when if you watched my build video you saw me install two 4 GB memory modules for a total of eight that used up both memory slots so there's no room for expansion I don't care I'm not going to put more than 8 gigabytes in here anyway why did I not go with a single 8 gbyte memory stick because I already had the two 4 gbyte memory kit sitting on my shelf if you came to me in real life not on YouTube if you came to me and you said hey man what should I do should I get two 4 GB sticks or 18 I would say get 18 and here here's why if you buy one eight you can always buy a second eight and upgrade it to 16 GB in the future but if you buy two fours you can't do that you've got to take them both out and do something else with them to replace them with two eights there is a small performance difference between two fours and 18 two fours is faster not by much two to 3% at most maybe nothing unless the program you're running is RAM limited most games General web browsing isn't going to be any different between one stick or two buy the single stick in fact this one is made by crucial which is owned by Micron which is I think the largest memory company on Earth this is $33 with free shipping and it's a single 8 GB ddr4 memory stick I don't have anything else to recommend you can certainly get the two uh if you want 16 gigs by all means you know byy two but 16 gigs is a bit overkill for this processor so there's the memory storage I mentioned this when I was building it uh in the build video I installed a Toshiba ocz 240 GB solid state drive in here why I'd never done it before I picked it up on a daily deal and I wanted to see how the performance was how is it now that I've messed around with I've already filmed by the way the windows performance review and the and some of the game videos this is not my first video post build so I've had experience with this now how is this drive it's fine is it the fastest drive in the world no is it good enough yes is it substantially better or worse than the other cheap options no now the price on this drive today shows at $63 and this is something I'll mention about Amazon when you're browsing Amazon be aware if you look down here it says sold by yyy trade and fulfilled by Amazon if you buy this right now Amazon will ship it to you it will arrive in an Amazon box with the smile on the side of it and a packing slip and Amazon tape on it and as far as you're concerned it came from Amazon but it didn't it came from the warehouse but a company called yyy trade sold it to you they shipped it into Amazon's warehouse and Amazon shipped it to you now Amazon does sell this and if you come over to the right hand side of the screen you will see other sellers on Amazon and this one says sold by amazon.com and it also says temporarily out of stock you can order it and they'll deliver it when it's available you'll also see it's less expensive at $55 um if you need it right away obviously you don't want to order it and then wait weeks for something to show up you could certainly pay the $62 current asking price but let me show you another option ad data adata Premiere uh SP 550 solid state drive I've included this in my solid state Roundup I own one of these These are fine it's about the same performance give or take you will never notice any difference in what you'll use it for this one is $59 would I buy this for 59 over the other one at 62 yes would I buy this drive at 55 if it was in stock over the a data at 58 yes there's no real difference from your point of view in this type of computer between these drives even if I put them into two identical machines side by side and had you play with them I don't think most people myself included could tell which was which they it's not there isn't that much difference between these drives there is benchmarks will show a difference you'll never see it so by whichever one cheapest now you can of course go bigger and smaller in size for example it's $109 for a$ 480 it's $38 for a 120 I don't recommend the 120 anymore for $20 it's not worth losing half of your space I guess if you are completely money crunched and you're trying to save every last penny I appreciate that I've been there um I've lived on mac and cheese and baln sandwiches before uh so you know it is what it is but essentially it's $20 more to double your space get the 240 um likewise well actually that one that 120 doesn't save anything at all are there other brands now some people say well what's the best SSD I could buy well it doesn't matter for this machine the best SSD on the market at the moment is the 850 Evo for $91 is this drive faster than the one in here yes can I tell the difference having used a lot of different ssds yes I can could you tell the difference if you use them maybe a day apart and didn't use them a lot no and this is a waste of money for this computer for a $1,000 computer buy the 850 Evo all day long I firmly believe that for a 500 or less don't waste your money buy the cheap one the 850 Evo from Samsung is an awesome Drive its performance is excellent but it's a waste of money in this machine so those are solid state drives moving on this computer does not come with Wi-Fi and somebody is bound to say wait a minute those motherboards you showed me don't come with Wi-Fi is there a model that has Wi-Fi n probably who cares a lot of times the motherboard manufacturers charge a lot of extra money to put a Wi-Fi chip on the motherboard I've previously done an unboxing and overview of this $9 it is a USB uh little Nano plug it's this little thing right here it plugs into one of the USB ports you forget about it boom instant Wi-Fi for $9 there is no need to worry about whether your motherboard has Wi-Fi buy one of these if you need it now this is a very basic Wi-Fi adapter and it's the N Wi-Fi it's not the fastest Wi-Fi on the market which for this computer is probably fine but if you care $20 three times faster buy that one instead take your pick so $9 for n wifi or $20 for a c WiFi knock yourself out the last component I'll mention is this a DVD burner I did install a DVD burner in this when I built the computer would I have put it in if I wasn't doing a build video no I don't use DVD or CD drives anymore I I have got one in my personal machines at home and I I they don't ever get used we just don't use them anymore um music videos are all digitally through the cloud everything streams all my programs are downloaded and installed through the cloud I simply don't use it I installed it to demonstrate it no more and no less and because I had an extra one sitting on the shelf um it works fine you just push this button here and it slides right out no worries I mean it's there but um that will probably never get used to be completely honest honest with you $18 uh they do go on sale regularly if you want to save some money and you come down here well they're shipping without there may not be cheaper um you can sometimes find deals I actually got a good daily deal on the one that's included you know so by all means put one in if you want ignore it if you don't um and that's pretty much it when it comes to the hardware in this computer those are the choices I made to try to fit within this budget those are some alternatives for you to consider I know that was long but if you're thinking of building your own machine and you're trying to get the the the mental engine running going should I buy this should I buy that should I buy this motherboard should I byy that hopefully that was helpful like the video if you like it don't if you don't remember to subscribe to my channel down there to get updates on future videos including the upcoming Windows performance reviews and gaming performance reviews of this computer and other builds questions comments thoughts feedback suggestions leave those down below I'm sure some of you will have some by all means let me know know what you think pros and cons versus what I showed you I am all ears to your viewpoints and opinions and questions which I will answer if I am able and as always all the parts that I have included in this machine as well as the alternate options I just showed you will all be linked in the video description below if you want to support my channel if you like these videos if you want to help me out use the links down there they go to both Amazon and Newegg I showed you Amazon here but you can use New Egg as well I'll link them all to new EG for you as well so if you want to support me use the the links I'll be very very appreciative thanks for watching this video I will see you next time\n"