Building a 1080p Gaming PC: A Guide to Creating a Powerful and Affordable System

We're starting with four screw holes, one on each corner, which we'll use to secure the unit into place. Before wiring up the motherboard, power connector that's the largest PSU cable, CPU power connection that's the smallest motherboard power cable, and the SATA power cable for the SSD, which we touched on just a second ago. Finally, we're able to move on to the last component today – the GPU. Now, the 1650 has become my favorite GPU of the year, and we've used it in so many videos not because we don't have access to other cards, we're very lucky and brands will lend us out GPUs if we need them, but because it's a great card that can be found at affordable prices.

Now, I'm not budgeting MSRP for the GPU, I'm looking at current pricing on eBay of completed listings in the region of $300. Now somebody's gonna say, "James, i do not want to spend 300 on a 1650 and i agree it's a lot of money to spend on a 1650 but i think we have to think about the bigger picture if you want to build a 1080p gaming PC for $800 something that was quite reasonable before all the shortages kicked off, then this is the pill you need to swallow. This card is never going to be available again for $120-130; it's just not going to happen, and i'm really sorry that's the case.

Some people will also say that James isn't a console but better value in the current climate. In all honesty, probably yes, but console shortages have made those tricky to buy, and if you want the PC gaming experience, that's not something a console is going to provide either way though this card's a great card for 1080p gaming as we'll check out in the benchmarks very shortly.

This ZOTAC design is nice, but in all honesty, any 1650 that's in stock and readily available to buy from a retailer is what you should probably go for. As far as the installation goes, we need to proceed by removing this screw at the rear of our PCIe lane cover that just comes out nicely and easily, and then we'll fall off before going ahead and sliding the GPU into this rear slot cover line it up with the PCI slot on the motherboard and push it in.

Try to give you guys a bit of a different angle on that one actually as well, and then we can go ahead and secure the GPU down. This one doesn't require any additional power although our power supply does have the clearance and headroom to provide it but it makes things that little bit easier for this system.

And with that, the build itself is basically done. Don't go anywhere because we'll be looking at performance in just a second after the legendary e-co-op montage where we see how good this PC looks when it's all booted up powered up and ready to go. I'll see you in a second but first roll that montage.

Awesome stuff!

Now, we've seen just how good this system looks when it's all powered up; it's time to see just how well it performs on your screen. Now is a snapshot view of all the different games we tested out and we'll be diving title by title into more detail in a moment as always full unedited gaming benchmark runs can be found on our dedicated benchmarking YouTube channel so make sure to get subscribed over there.

Kicking things off by looking at Call of Duty Vanguard, we managed to achieve 67 frames per second on average at 1080p medium settings considering how budget-oriented this system is i was very impressed with these results the numbers look good and the game looked great. It's a similarly positive story in Forza Horizon 5 where 62 FPS on average in the game's inbuilt benchmarking mode covered us off nicely.

A brand new title and some great results here moving on to Apex Legends next up we got 109 frames per second on average when tested at 1080p medium to low some of those settings tuned down but still that full quality HD resolution the game visually as well looked really good especially considering we tuned some of the settings down.

Showing the power of the 1650 definitely not a card to be underestimated to wrap things up we also tested out Fortnite first at 1080p high and then competitive settings so hold out for that one at 1080p high we got 64 frames per second on average with strong 90 and 99 percentile results giving us a consistent frame rate and visually the best experience.

But tuning down to low delivered us even more fps specifically 134 frames per second on average wow.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat is up guys welcome back to another geeker video in this video i'm going to be building an awesome 800 gaming pc that you can actually buy right now i'll be running you through all the parts and how you can pick them up in budget so keep your eyes peeled for that assembling the system from start right through to finish looking at some of the cables and wiring too before booting up and testing out the performance a little bit later on we've got some really great hardware that makes this an awesome build for 1080p gaming before that though a quick word from today's video sponsor corsair's m65 rgb ultra wireless builds upon the legendary m65 design with the latest corsair slipstream wireless tech and much more with a 26 000 dpi corsair marksman sensor that can be adjusted in dpi steps as small as one this mouse means a business adjustable weight allows you to find your perfect centre of gravity while omron optical switches deliver hyper fast and precise responses everything you love about the m65 in 2021 now wireless check it out at the links in the description below throughout this video we'll be including screenshots from newegg.com of realistic pricing taken today and while this will change latest pricing and availability can be found at the description below enough of all that stuff though let's actually kick things off by taking a look at the cpu cooler the motherboard and of course our processor before diving into any of the other components today now for the cpu in this build i've gone for the intel core i5 10 400 f this is a great cpu choice because it's got good single and multi-threaded performance great for newer games like cyberpunk and older titles like fortnite for example it also performs really well without any need for overclocking which saves us money on our motherboard choice and isn't picky about ram speed either obviously it's not as powerful as the new intel processors but that doesn't matter we don't need the extra bandwidth in this build i'll be coupling it up with this gigabyte b560m ds3h now this runs on the intel b560 chipset which is actually a really really great choice for a build like this one not only does this motherboard have four included ram dimm slots giving us dual channel memory performance and good options for upgrades and future proofing down the line but you also get gen 4 nvme support and the socket for the 10th and 11th generation intel processors 12th gen chips do require a new socket but most of them also require ddr5 memory something which definitely isn't in the budget for an 800 system now to install the processor you want to go ahead and find the little golden triangle first it's in the corner just here and we're going to match this up with the bottom left corner of the cpu socket pull out your attention arm that will then release the cover nice and easily and we can drop the processor not literally nice and gently into place that's not the right way around there we go it is a wonder that i don't break more things here on the channel isn't it really and then we can fasten the cpu into place while we're here it also makes sense to install the ram or the memory this 3200 megahertz kit of xpg d20 is a great budget ram option and according to newegg you can pick it up for around 55 60 at least at the time of filming the video which makes a huge difference in giving us more money to spend later on the all-important gpu to install the ram you want to go ahead and find the gold contact strip locate the notch and match it up with the notch on your ram dim slot we're going to use the gray dimms for this build alternating dim slots if you've got all four dimms though populated of course use all four slots and if you've just got the one you want slot number two not sure why you would go for one when you've got four dim slots but each to their own we're also going to go ahead and install the cpu cooler at this stage of the build i've gone for the cooler master hyper 212 rgb black edition though if you wanted to save yourself a little bit of coin the standard 212 black edition without the rgb is a bit cheaper personally though i think this cooler is going to work amazingly well for this system and provide us with some really really cool temperatures on the 10400f preventing thermal throttling and doing so a lot more quietly than intel's included stock cooler which sounds like a rocket about to take off now for this build you want to go ahead and take the cooler you also need to go ahead and take the back plate with the scaffolding side sort of facing towards the back of your motherboard you want four silver posts through each corner we're going to use these to actually fasten the cpu cooler into place this is best demonstrated if i flip the motherboard over take a look at these four holes right here these match up nice and easily to the back plate look at that beautifully done and then we can position the motherboard onto our motherboard box you then want to go ahead and grab these now these are four female to female screws or spacers that come included with the 212 black edition we're going to then screw these over the four silver posts that we literally just popped through the rear of the board installing a cooler does vary based on the cpu you've got and sometimes even the motherboard so make sure to consult the cpu cooler manual as this does have an impact for this build though is nice and easy it's back plate then it's female to female posts and then it's the cooler itself the cooler then with the fan removed at least for now simply sits on top and screws into these posts but wait we do need to actually pop one thing on before we do that some thermal paste it comes included with your cooler and creates a nice thermal bond between the cpu and the copper cooler plate as well so make sure you go ahead and do that and then you can tighten the cpu cooler down leave the fan off for now we're going to add that in later once we've moved our motherboard assembly into the case speaking of which this comes in from techware and it's one of their new forge lineup of cases i've looked at a few techwear chassis actually over the last year or so and been mightily impressed it's a great budget option coming in around the 40 45 pounds mark here in the uk 50 mark over in the us it's got a really great feature set too with rgb fans up front and this cool polygon mesh design that helps to ensure plenty of airflow it kind of resembles to me a cooler master td 500 mesh but smaller which is not a bad thing because i love that case as well this one also has a white motherboard tray which is a cool little accent and a two and a half inch ssd sled at the rear something we'll be using for our storage later before any of that though we're gonna go ahead and actually install the motherboard into the build to do this it is recommended that you lay the case down flat as that will make sliding the motherboard in a lot easier before that though we need to go ahead and grab this thing the motherboard's rear i o shield this provides basically the link between the back of the chassis and of course the motherboard itself it clips in just down here on the rear with this rectangular cutout the circular audio port should be towards the bottom of the case and it clicks in nice and easily on higher end motherboards this will actually come pre-done but for this system we've got to go ahead and do it manually now there's one more thing you do need to check though before installing the motherboard to do this lift it up and locate any of the holes through the board itself you can see there's a number of different standoff holes and these need to match up with the standoffs in the case so for us we've got three at the top three along the middle and two towards the bottom actually perfect for our motherboard config so no changes needed here we can go ahead slide the motherboard in lining up the ports through the rear i o shield and then of course our standoff holes should line up too then it's a simple case of fastening down each of the eight standoffs hopefully you can get a nice view of that as well from our overhead camera angle and once you've done that you can pop your cpu cooler fan back on too and the motherboard is done we're now going to proceed by installing the ssd before moving on to the gpu and power supply now for this system i opted to go for the seagate barracuda q1 a drive you can find for about 55 in the 500 gig capacity or close to 100 for more like a terabyte now if you wanted to spend a bit more money again a bit more speed a gen 3 nvme drive would be a good choice too just watch out because some cheaper m.2 drives that aren't nvme often aren't any quicker than the saturn alternatives so make sure you read reviews and check that you're buying a good drive i've gone ahead and removed this plastic sled this is what we'll be starting the ssd into and you can see here that the silver screw holes on the ssd will line up with the four holes on the bottom of the ssd tray we can then take some really really small screws now these screws come included with your case in an accessory bag and should allow us to secure the ssd in without any problems remember of course an ssd is solid state so you've got no moving parts you haven't got to worry about vibrations or anything like that it's just a case of securing it down and screwing it back on once you've secured the ssd into the sled and then return the sled onto the case you simply want to wire up a set of data and sata power cable sata power will have to wait though as our power supply is not yet installed speaking of which it's not going to be not installed for long because it's the next component on the list it's called a masters mwe 500. now this is an 80 plus certified unit that is pretty budget i'm not going to lie to you but with nice black included cables and plenty of connections as well for any future gpu upgrade it's going to work well you're never going to be able to run a 30 70 on a power supply like this it wouldn't end very well but i don't think that's anyone's intention with a system like this one it's still gonna provide plenty of room for any overclocking of your cpu should that be something you want to do later down the line or the addition of course of a slightly better gpu we're gonna go ahead and slide it into the bottom of the case like so and then spinning the chassis round you can see here that we're presented with four screw holes one on each corner we're going to use these to secure the unit into place before wiring up a motherboard power connector that's the largest psu cable a cpu power connection that's the smallest motherboard power cable and the sata power cable for the ssd which we touched on just a second ago finally then we're able to move on to the last component today the gpu now the 1650 has basically become my favorite gpu of the year and we've used it in so many videos not because we don't have access to other cards we're very lucky and brands will lend us out gpus if we need them but because it's a great card that can be found at affordable prices now to be clear i'm not budgeting msrp for the gpu i'm looking at current pricing on ebay of completed listings in the region of three hundred dollars now somebody's gonna be going james i do not want to spend 300 on a 1650 and i agree it's a lot of money to spend on a 1650 but i think we have to think about the bigger picture if you want to build a 1080p gaming pc for 800 something that was quite reasonable before all the shortages kicked off then this is the pill you need to swallow this card is never going to be available again for 120 130 it is just not going to happen and i'm really sorry that that's the case some people will also be saying but james isn't a console just better value in the current climate in all honesty probably yes but console shortages have made those tricky to buy and if you want the pc gaming experience that's not something a console is going to provide either way though this card's a great card for 1080p gaming as we'll check out in the benchmarks very shortly this zotek design is nice but in all honesty any 1650 that's in stock and readily available to buy from a retailer is what you should probably go for as far as the installation goes we need to proceed by removing this screw at the rear on our pcie lane cover that just comes out nice and easily and then we'll fall off before going ahead and sliding the gpu into this rear slot cover line it up with the pci slot on the motherboard and push it in try to give you guys a bit of a different angle on that one actually as well and then we can go ahead and secure the gpu down this one doesn't require any additional power although our power supply does have the clearance and the headroom to provide it but it makes things that little bit easier for this system and with that the build itself is basically done but don't go anywhere because we'll be looking at performance in just a second after the legendary e-co-op montage where we see how good this pc looks when it's all booted up powered up and ready to go i'll see you in a second but first roll that montage awesome stuff now we've seen just how good this system looks when it's all powered up it's time to see just how well it performs on your screen now is a summary a snapshot view of all of the different games we tested out and we'll be diving title by title into more detail in a moment as always full unedited gaming benchmark runs can be found on our dedicated benchmarking youtube channel so make sure to get subscribed over there kicking things off by looking at call of duty vanguard we managed to achieve 67 frames per second on average at 1080p medium settings considering how budget oriented this system is i was very impressed with these results the numbers look good and the game looked great it's a similarly positive story in forza horizon 5 where 62 fps on average in the game's inbuilt benchmarking mode covered us off nicely a brand new title and some great results here moving on to apex legends next up we got 109 frames per second on average when tested at 1080p medium to low some of those settings tuned down but still that full quality hd resolution the game visually as well looked really good especially considering we tuned some of the settings down showing the power of the 1650 definitely not a card to be underestimated to wrap things up we also tested out fortnite first at 1080p high and then competitive settings so hold out for that one at 1080p high we got 64 frames per second on average with strong 90 and 99 percentile results giving us a consistent frame rate and visually the best experience but tuning down to low delivered us even more fps specifically 134 frames per second on average wow and with that that pretty much wraps it up for this video if you enjoyed it make sure to get subscribed so you don't miss any more from us thanks for tuning in and as always we'll see you in the next one\n"