Building a PC on a Budget: A Tech Fam Collab Build Off

In this article, we'll take a closer look at one of the entries in our tech fam collab build off, where a group of tech enthusiasts and YouTubers came together to create a high-performance gaming PC within a tight budget. The entry was created by Coalition Gaming Crew, who pushed the limits of their budget to create a complete package that would hold its own against more expensive builds.

To start with, Coalition Gaming Crew chose a motherboard from ECS Z420M-H4, which offered good features at an affordable price. They also selected an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X processor, which provided plenty of power for gaming and content creation tasks. For RAM, they opted for 16GB of DDR4 memory, which should be more than enough for most users.

Next, the team turned their attention to storage. While many budget builders might have settled for a slower hard drive or even a 5400 RPM SSD, Coalition Gaming Crew chose a faster 128GB SSD from Amazon, which should provide plenty of speed for loading games and applications. However, they also added a Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB hard drive, which would serve as their secondary storage device.

For the power supply, Coalition Gaming Crew opted for an Apevia Prestige 800W 80 Plus Gold unit from eBay, which should provide plenty of power to support the build's components. The team also chose a CPU cooler from ID Cooling, which was a four-heat pipe unit that provided good airflow and a sleek design.

In terms of the case, Coalition Gaming Crew decided to go for something cheap but still included fans. They opted for the DiP DIY PC Dragon R from Newegg, which featured tempered glass and mesh panels on the front, as well as four included red LED fans. The team was pleased with the airflow in this case and felt that it provided a good balance of style and practicality.

One of the key decisions Coalition Gaming Crew made was to add the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, which should provide excellent performance for gaming and content creation tasks. They also decided to overclock the CPU and GPU using Intel XTU software, but unfortunately, they were unable to achieve any significant improvements in single-threaded performance.

Finally, the team assembled all of their components and installed Windows on the system. After a few hours of benchmarking and testing, they realized that the build was complete and ready for use.

In terms of benchmarks, Coalition Gaming Crew achieved excellent results with their RTX 3080-equipped build, particularly in games that utilized the GPU's ray tracing capabilities. While they were unable to achieve any significant improvements in single-threaded performance, the team was still pleased with the overall performance of the system.

For those who are interested in seeing the full build and its components, Coalition Gaming Crew has uploaded a video of their PC build process to their YouTube channel. They have also linked to the builds of other participants in our tech fam collab build off, including ScatterVault's Nerd on a Budget build, Stocks' Hardware Tech by Matt toasty bros' Zack Sexsurf and Greg Salazar's entry.

Overall, Coalition Gaming Crew's PC build was an impressive achievement, particularly considering their tight budget. While it may not have been the most optimized or efficient build, it provided excellent performance for gaming and content creation tasks, and its components were well-chosen to support a wide range of applications.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: encheck fam assemble a challenge has been issued to see who can build the best 1 000 rtx 3080 gaming machine that doesn't leave much on the table for the rest of the components the challengers greg salazar tech by mad scatterbolt zax tech turf toasty bros us talks hardware nerd under budget and of course us coalition gaming nobody challenges the mad mexican and wins mexican real quick if you're new around here and are into pc hardware tech gaming stream tips tutorials news and reviews then you're in the right place hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload also i stream to twitch every friday at 8pm pacific at twitch.tv coalition gaming crew so feel free to stop in drop drop a follow and talk some tech anyways let's get to the video is a thousand dollars enough for an rtx 3080 based gaming rig the msrp of the 3080 is 700 so that leaves you with only 300 for the rest of the system think about that for a second 300 to build the best system that you can to pair with the rtx 3080 what parts would you end up with okay sure the 3080 is really hard to get right now i wouldn't say impossible one of my co-workers got screwed out of one on launch day by bots or whatever just like everyone else but you know what he eventually got a 3080 still go evga and their new q system it really worked out anyways most people buying this graphics card have a beast of a computer to go with it but what if you don't what if you have something old or something weak but really want an rtx 3080 then eventually plan to catch up the rest of your system to it well this is the video for you when the rtx 2060 originally dropped i took part in a 600 build competition with the tech fam utilizing the 2060. back then that left a pc build budget of 250 dollars well now we're doing that again but with the 3080 and bumping the total budget to a thousand dollars which still only leaves 300 for the rest of the build this is gonna be pretty tight so right about now you might be asking yourself what i ended up with all i gotta say is man do i love xeons the motherboard hp z420 this is a sandy bridge era c600 chipset board or x79 as most consumers know it this platform can even take high frequency eight core 16 thread xeons like the e5 2667 v2 which we have a build video on so make sure to check that out link down below and right up here as well and it can support massive amounts of cheap ram the cpu for this build is a xeon e5 1650 this is a six core 12 thread sandy bridge cpu aka second gen the ipc of the cpu might hold me back a bit but the multi-core performance should still be pretty good the cpu and motherboard came as a bundle deal which i got on ebay for 95 dollars this motherboard doesn't use a standard atx power connector though so i needed an adapter which i got for 11 off ebay for system ram i went with two 8 gigabyte sticks of registered ddr3 1600 server ram for twenty dollars also off ebay for storage i went with a 500 gigabyte hard drive for 12 and a 128 gig ssd for 14 both off ebay as well power supply is an apevia prestige 800 watt 80 plus gold for 66.99 this might sound risky because the pva isn't known for good power supplies but reviews on on this one point out that they changed oems and are now decent quality besides i didn't really have much choice the cpu cooler i went with is the id cooling se224xt it's a four heat pipe cooler looks nice for a basic unit and costs 22.94 now for the case i definitely needed something cheap but since the budget is so tight i also wanted fans included this really changed how i consider cases and i ended up with the dip diy pc dragon r from newegg for 57.99 this case is nice because the front has both tempered glass and mesh kind of weird right can't say that i've really seen that before but more importantly it has four included red led fans airflow will be on point all right so let's add that up 95 for the motherboard and cpu 11 for the power supply adapter 20 for the ram 12 for the hard drive 14 for the ssd 66.99 for the power supply 22.94 for the cooler 57.99 for the case total comes out to 299.92 holy crap that i pushed that 300 limit but uh but i think this is a very complete system all around no compromising with just a regular hard drive in there or a 5400 rpm drive or an ugly case or a case with no fans nothing like that it's the complete package so add the rtx 3080 at msrp and boom 998.92 grand total since this is a competition among us tech fam homies and we're all in different states we decided not to count taxes in the prices since uh that varies for each of us whatever the cost is plus shipping there we go so i gathered all the parts together set my cameras up and headed over to twitch to stream the pc build if you haven't followed us on twitch yet make sure to head over to twitch.tv coalition gaming crew to do that you could have had a sneak peek at this build nearly a month before it was unveiled on the youtube channel anyways the whole thing went pretty smoothly this case while a little on the flimsy side was very easy to build in so no real complaints here was great just chatting with the stream while building it always a good time although for the stream since the rtx 3080 was in use doing the stream encoding a gtx 460 backup gpu was uh subbed in for the moment so if you don't see the stream footage if you don't see the 38 in the stream footage that's why after a couple of hours the build was complete then it was time to install windows download the benchmarks swap the 3080 in and get to benchmarking one little caveat i forgot to mention overclocking is allowed last time i was able to use intel xtu to software overclock the cpu to 4 gigahertz and i was hoping to do the same with this z420 and unlock xeon but i didn't luck out and i couldn't overclock at all this is really going to negatively impact me especially on single threaded performance however i was able to lock in a good plus 130 megahertz core clock and plus 600 megahertz vram overclock on the 3080 fe so hopefully that makes up for it a little bit maybe with the platform that i went with i'm sure some of the other guys will crush me in single threaded performance but i think i'll do pretty well overall so as i mentioned previously this is an entry for our tech fam collab build off scatter vault nerd on a budget on stocks hardware tech by matt toasty bros zack sexsurf and even greg salazar are are all partaking and one of the reasons that we lean heavily towards canned benchmarks is because of that makes things easier for everyone make sure to check out each of their individual videos on on their entries and see how they stack up to mine i'll have links to everyone's video in the description below as they release them whose do you think was the best looking what did you think of the build did it do better or worse than you expected i don't think any of us will be recommending these builds to do with a with the 3080 but hey doing this is just part of the fun i hope you enjoyed this video follow us on all our socials link down below and make sure to follow on our twitch we'll see in the next video bye also we got a lot of other videos over here the full rtx 3080 review bunch of other content make sure you check out one of those yeah clicked one yet no come on click one click one clickcheck fam assemble a challenge has been issued to see who can build the best 1 000 rtx 3080 gaming machine that doesn't leave much on the table for the rest of the components the challengers greg salazar tech by mad scatterbolt zax tech turf toasty bros us talks hardware nerd under budget and of course us coalition gaming nobody challenges the mad mexican and wins mexican real quick if you're new around here and are into pc hardware tech gaming stream tips tutorials news and reviews then you're in the right place hit that subscribe button and that bell so you don't miss a single upload also i stream to twitch every friday at 8pm pacific at twitch.tv coalition gaming crew so feel free to stop in drop drop a follow and talk some tech anyways let's get to the video is a thousand dollars enough for an rtx 3080 based gaming rig the msrp of the 3080 is 700 so that leaves you with only 300 for the rest of the system think about that for a second 300 to build the best system that you can to pair with the rtx 3080 what parts would you end up with okay sure the 3080 is really hard to get right now i wouldn't say impossible one of my co-workers got screwed out of one on launch day by bots or whatever just like everyone else but you know what he eventually got a 3080 still go evga and their new q system it really worked out anyways most people buying this graphics card have a beast of a computer to go with it but what if you don't what if you have something old or something weak but really want an rtx 3080 then eventually plan to catch up the rest of your system to it well this is the video for you when the rtx 2060 originally dropped i took part in a 600 build competition with the tech fam utilizing the 2060. back then that left a pc build budget of 250 dollars well now we're doing that again but with the 3080 and bumping the total budget to a thousand dollars which still only leaves 300 for the rest of the build this is gonna be pretty tight so right about now you might be asking yourself what i ended up with all i gotta say is man do i love xeons the motherboard hp z420 this is a sandy bridge era c600 chipset board or x79 as most consumers know it this platform can even take high frequency eight core 16 thread xeons like the e5 2667 v2 which we have a build video on so make sure to check that out link down below and right up here as well and it can support massive amounts of cheap ram the cpu for this build is a xeon e5 1650 this is a six core 12 thread sandy bridge cpu aka second gen the ipc of the cpu might hold me back a bit but the multi-core performance should still be pretty good the cpu and motherboard came as a bundle deal which i got on ebay for 95 dollars this motherboard doesn't use a standard atx power connector though so i needed an adapter which i got for 11 off ebay for system ram i went with two 8 gigabyte sticks of registered ddr3 1600 server ram for twenty dollars also off ebay for storage i went with a 500 gigabyte hard drive for 12 and a 128 gig ssd for 14 both off ebay as well power supply is an apevia prestige 800 watt 80 plus gold for 66.99 this might sound risky because the pva isn't known for good power supplies but reviews on on this one point out that they changed oems and are now decent quality besides i didn't really have much choice the cpu cooler i went with is the id cooling se224xt it's a four heat pipe cooler looks nice for a basic unit and costs 22.94 now for the case i definitely needed something cheap but since the budget is so tight i also wanted fans included this really changed how i consider cases and i ended up with the dip diy pc dragon r from newegg for 57.99 this case is nice because the front has both tempered glass and mesh kind of weird right can't say that i've really seen that before but more importantly it has four included red led fans airflow will be on point all right so let's add that up 95 for the motherboard and cpu 11 for the power supply adapter 20 for the ram 12 for the hard drive 14 for the ssd 66.99 for the power supply 22.94 for the cooler 57.99 for the case total comes out to 299.92 holy crap that i pushed that 300 limit but uh but i think this is a very complete system all around no compromising with just a regular hard drive in there or a 5400 rpm drive or an ugly case or a case with no fans nothing like that it's the complete package so add the rtx 3080 at msrp and boom 998.92 grand total since this is a competition among us tech fam homies and we're all in different states we decided not to count taxes in the prices since uh that varies for each of us whatever the cost is plus shipping there we go so i gathered all the parts together set my cameras up and headed over to twitch to stream the pc build if you haven't followed us on twitch yet make sure to head over to twitch.tv coalition gaming crew to do that you could have had a sneak peek at this build nearly a month before it was unveiled on the youtube channel anyways the whole thing went pretty smoothly this case while a little on the flimsy side was very easy to build in so no real complaints here was great just chatting with the stream while building it always a good time although for the stream since the rtx 3080 was in use doing the stream encoding a gtx 460 backup gpu was uh subbed in for the moment so if you don't see the stream footage if you don't see the 38 in the stream footage that's why after a couple of hours the build was complete then it was time to install windows download the benchmarks swap the 3080 in and get to benchmarking one little caveat i forgot to mention overclocking is allowed last time i was able to use intel xtu to software overclock the cpu to 4 gigahertz and i was hoping to do the same with this z420 and unlock xeon but i didn't luck out and i couldn't overclock at all this is really going to negatively impact me especially on single threaded performance however i was able to lock in a good plus 130 megahertz core clock and plus 600 megahertz vram overclock on the 3080 fe so hopefully that makes up for it a little bit maybe with the platform that i went with i'm sure some of the other guys will crush me in single threaded performance but i think i'll do pretty well overall so as i mentioned previously this is an entry for our tech fam collab build off scatter vault nerd on a budget on stocks hardware tech by matt toasty bros zack sexsurf and even greg salazar are are all partaking and one of the reasons that we lean heavily towards canned benchmarks is because of that makes things easier for everyone make sure to check out each of their individual videos on on their entries and see how they stack up to mine i'll have links to everyone's video in the description below as they release them whose do you think was the best looking what did you think of the build did it do better or worse than you expected i don't think any of us will be recommending these builds to do with a with the 3080 but hey doing this is just part of the fun i hope you enjoyed this video follow us on all our socials link down below and make sure to follow on our twitch we'll see in the next video bye also we got a lot of other videos over here the full rtx 3080 review bunch of other content make sure you check out one of those yeah clicked one yet no come on click one click one click\n"