**Building a Budget Gaming PC: The HP Z420 Workstation**

In this article, we'll explore the capabilities of a budget gaming PC built around the HP Z420 workstation. This system is an affordable and efficient way to build a gaming rig that can handle demanding games at high settings.

**Testing Performance with Fortnite**

We began our testing by running Fortnite, a game known for its demanding performance requirements. We set the Epic view distance to High, turned down textures, and everything else to its lowest competitive setting. With FSR 2.1 enabled and performance mode turned on, we were able to achieve an average frame rate of over 60 FPS, with occasional dips in FPS due to the age of the processor.

One notable issue was stutters and inconsistencies, which were largely unavoidable due to the age of the processor. However, these issues did not detract from our overall experience, as the game still looked great despite the performance drops. In fact, FSR 2.1 really impressed us, bringing the game's visuals very close to native resolution.

**Testing Performance with Forza Horizon 5**

Next, we moved on to Forza Horizon 5, a game that is notoriously demanding in terms of performance. We set the high preset and turned up the graphics settings as much as possible while still maintaining a smooth experience. With FSR 2.1 enabled, we were able to achieve an average frame rate of over 80 FPS, with little to no stuttering or dips.

The one percent and point one percent lows were also very solid, reflecting the overall performance of the system. In fact, even with four gig cards, which are modern but have lower bandwidth, the system held up well, thanks in part to the 1650 V2 CPU and low preset graphics settings.

**Testing Performance with GTA 5**

We then turned our attention to GTA 5, an older game that is still known for its demanding performance requirements. We set the console quality settings, which brought the game's visuals very close to how it looks on the Xbox Series X or PS4/PS5.

With FSR 2.1 enabled and performance mode turned on, we achieved a solid average frame rate of 57 FPS, with decent one percent and point one percent lows. The processor did exhibit some higher usage in areas with more traffic, which is to be expected given its age, but overall the system held up fairly well.

**Testing Performance with Red Dead Redemption 2**

Finally, we moved on to Red Dead Redemption 2, a game that is known for its demanding performance requirements. We set the console quality settings, which brought the game's visuals very close to how it looks on the Xbox Series X or PS4/PS5.

With FSR 2.1 enabled and performance mode turned on, we achieved a solid average frame rate of 57 FPS, with decent one percent and point one percent lows. The processor did exhibit some higher usage in areas with more traffic, which is to be expected given its age, but overall the system held up fairly well.

**Testing Performance with Spider-Man Remastered**

We then turned our attention to Marvel Spider-Man remastered, a game that is known for its demanding performance requirements. We set the low preset and enabled FSR 2.1, which brought the game's visuals very close to native resolution.

With FSR 2.1 enabled, we achieved an average frame rate of 69 FPS, with decent one percent and point one percent lows. The system held up well even at lower graphics settings, making it a great option for those who want to balance visual quality and performance.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, our budget gaming PC built around the HP Z420 workstation was able to handle demanding games at high settings, albeit with some occasional dips in FPS due to the age of the processor. However, FSR 2.1 really impressed us, bringing many games to life with great visuals and performance.

While the system may not be capable of handling the highest graphics settings at all times, it provides a great balance between visual quality and performance. With an SSD, this system could potentially be even more efficient in 2023.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone and welcome to another video now one of the easiest ways to build a gaming PC is to buy an old workstation like this one and add a graphics card of your choice sometimes that choice can be limited especially if for example the power supply is proprietary and doesn't always feature the extra connectors you need that's why it's always important to do your research if you are considering something like this this HP z420 was a bit of a beast back in its day I won this one for 133 pounds in an eBay auction though once I sold the quadro graphics card inside of it my total expenditure was at just over 100 I'm pretty pleased with this especially as we have a 6 core Xeon E5 1650 V2 a huge 64 gigs of 1866 megahertz DDR3 in Quad Channel and a one terabyte 10K hard drive I especially like hp's interesting all-in-one liquid cooler that sits in atop the CPU this is such a cool piece of design the radiator is stuck right to the back of the fan we'll see how effective it is later there's also a speaker built into this machine which is great if you haven't got monitor speakers though the quality is well it's how you can imagine it would sound now I'd always recommend adding a cheap SSD these days even if it's just for the OS because it will massively improve Boot and loading times so bear that in mind a traditional hard drive is fine but an SSD seems like more of a must in 2023 especially considering that they are very inexpensive remember what I said about limitations at the start well despite the beefy 600 watt PSU we've only got one six pin graphics card connector it's not the end of the world as from what I understand you can buy 18 to 24 pin converter cables specifically for this PC and then proceed to swap out the PSU for something with as many any connectors as you desire I'm not sure how well a new PSU will fit in here physically but that's a video for another day today this system is fine as is because we're working to a lesser budget and with that in mind here's what I've gone with this is a lower spec yet still capable option the gigabyte 1650 OC Edition is the later and slightly better gddr6 card which offers faster performance than its gddr5 counterpart some of these cards have no power connectors and some like this model have a single six pin requirement although it has just four gigs of memory it is still pretty capable these days and will work just fine inside this HP as you'll see from the following results the processor can be the limiting factor in certain titles because despite its 6 cores and 12 threads it is almost 10 years old it's weaker than a first gen ryzen 5 1600 for example and as far as rendering video it goes it'll be outpaced by a modern core I3 from Intel we'll have to see if we can upgrade this at some point and what sort of performance gains we get it is by no means bad though and in combination with the fast 64 gigs of DDR3 it is still suitable for CPU intensive tasks and of course gaming thanks to the liquid cooler the Xeon stays very cool under load and as we get into our first game Apex Legends we get a good idea of how capable a setup like this still is in Apex Legends at 1080p I've gone with the high textures and tsaa while setting everything else to its lowest I've done this because this combines a nice mixture of graphical quality with performance and on average we hit 116 FPS with some pretty solid 1 and 0.1 percent lows I always like to try and keep that one percent low above 60 if I'm targeting a high average frame rate especially in these multiplayer competitive titles as it means that we will retain an overall consistency to the game that's important when you're trying to wipe out enemy players Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 I'm having real fun with this one I actually prefer it to Warzone 2 but of course that's a personal preference I'm not sure how differently these games will perform but if you want me to add war zone 2 as well as this one into the benchmarks just let me know now at 1080p with the basic preset and normal textures with smaa t2x set to high quality we were hitting over 60 FPS in fact over 70 FPS here now the 1.1 lows were okay I did notice a couple of little dips and drops these were mainly at the start of the games I tested but overall this is going to be a very solid experience and you won't need to implement any sort of FSR or upscaling methods here unless of course you want to opt for an even higher frame rate in which case I'd recommend turning everything down to the minimum settings cyberpunk 2077 was of course the one that was going to push our CPU to the Limit all along this is where the age of the processor is really shown because in those busier crowded areas we will get some pretty hefty FPS dips now overall the average frame rate came back at over 60 with FSR 2.1 and performance enabled and the game does still look pretty good it doesn't look too different from native because FSR 2.1 really is quite impressive there's nothing we can really do about the stutters and inconsistencies though because of the age of the processor but I wouldn't build a PC like this and then expect top tier performance anyway so I think for what we've got this is acceptable now in fortnite with the Epic view distance High textures and everything else at its lowest sort of competitive settings I guess you could say we actually retain pretty solid average and one percent lows we saw 29 as the 0.1 percent low which is a given there is the occasional stutter in fortnite with seems to happen no matter the quality I choose but I think here this was a pretty solid result I'd always recommend implementing epic view distance just so you can see as far as possible you can see other enemy players you can see other structures stuff like that it is entirely up to you of course everything else remains at the lowest settings fortnite can look really nice when everything is turned up but in the interest of performance here with this setup I think this was just about right we could of course turn the texture quality down a little bit for a slight bump in that average Forza Horizon 5 is very well optimized and in usual fashion performed really well with over 80 FPS at the high preset the frame rate held steady even when we started to drive through those busier towns and when entering multi-competitor races too the one percent and point one percent lows were very solid and are reflective of the overall experience I played this one for about half an hour and experienced no issues other four gig cards modern ones say the 6400 and 6500 XT due to their lower bandwidth will actually sort of start to show problems with anything higher than the low preset but the old 1650 here really holds up quite well despite what some may think is a vram limitation in 2023. GTA 5 an older game obviously no problems here High settings across the board msaa was set to 2x here solid figures in terms of the average one percent low and point one percent low so it really is a good experience with this test setup and as you can see the CPU still remaining nice and cool and the fan isn't getting very loud at all on both the CPU and the graphics card in Red Dead Redemption 2 with the console quality settings these are the settings I always like to opt for this makes the game look similar to how it does on the Xbox series X or the PS4 or PS5 we actually hit 57 FPS here so not quite 60 frames per second of course but the game felt very smooth indeed with solid 1 and 0.1 percent low figures the processor did exhibit some higher usage in and around town areas which is to be expected because it is older the cores are weaker but it still held up fairly well but all in all this was pretty decent effort from this system in Red Dead finally then we have Spider-Man or Marvel Spider-Man remastered 1080p with FSR performance mode yet again with the low preset this also uses FSR 2.1 so it still looks really nice and quite close to Native 69 was the average nice with decent 1 and 0.1 percent lows as well this was actually with the low preset of course you could turn things up to medium and still Implement FSR but this gave us a nice balance between visual quality and performance I feel because even at the lower setting Spider-Man still looks pretty good overall the old HP z420 workstation possibly has potential for further upgrades but as it is you find one of these with an Audi 5 1650 V2 CPU you slap in a 1650 and you've got yourself a pretty decent gaming PC for not very much money especially if like this one it comes with 64 gigs of RAM remember though that an SSD will certainly help out a machine like this in 2023 and even if you have to buy a used one I'd recommend buying one if it's just for the operating system alone thank you very much for watching then I apologize if you can hear my dog's feet in the background is running about at the moment I think there's a few squirrels in the garden so yeah can't help that I'm afraid if you enjoyed this one leave a like on it down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully I'll see all of you in the next onehello everyone and welcome to another video now one of the easiest ways to build a gaming PC is to buy an old workstation like this one and add a graphics card of your choice sometimes that choice can be limited especially if for example the power supply is proprietary and doesn't always feature the extra connectors you need that's why it's always important to do your research if you are considering something like this this HP z420 was a bit of a beast back in its day I won this one for 133 pounds in an eBay auction though once I sold the quadro graphics card inside of it my total expenditure was at just over 100 I'm pretty pleased with this especially as we have a 6 core Xeon E5 1650 V2 a huge 64 gigs of 1866 megahertz DDR3 in Quad Channel and a one terabyte 10K hard drive I especially like hp's interesting all-in-one liquid cooler that sits in atop the CPU this is such a cool piece of design the radiator is stuck right to the back of the fan we'll see how effective it is later there's also a speaker built into this machine which is great if you haven't got monitor speakers though the quality is well it's how you can imagine it would sound now I'd always recommend adding a cheap SSD these days even if it's just for the OS because it will massively improve Boot and loading times so bear that in mind a traditional hard drive is fine but an SSD seems like more of a must in 2023 especially considering that they are very inexpensive remember what I said about limitations at the start well despite the beefy 600 watt PSU we've only got one six pin graphics card connector it's not the end of the world as from what I understand you can buy 18 to 24 pin converter cables specifically for this PC and then proceed to swap out the PSU for something with as many any connectors as you desire I'm not sure how well a new PSU will fit in here physically but that's a video for another day today this system is fine as is because we're working to a lesser budget and with that in mind here's what I've gone with this is a lower spec yet still capable option the gigabyte 1650 OC Edition is the later and slightly better gddr6 card which offers faster performance than its gddr5 counterpart some of these cards have no power connectors and some like this model have a single six pin requirement although it has just four gigs of memory it is still pretty capable these days and will work just fine inside this HP as you'll see from the following results the processor can be the limiting factor in certain titles because despite its 6 cores and 12 threads it is almost 10 years old it's weaker than a first gen ryzen 5 1600 for example and as far as rendering video it goes it'll be outpaced by a modern core I3 from Intel we'll have to see if we can upgrade this at some point and what sort of performance gains we get it is by no means bad though and in combination with the fast 64 gigs of DDR3 it is still suitable for CPU intensive tasks and of course gaming thanks to the liquid cooler the Xeon stays very cool under load and as we get into our first game Apex Legends we get a good idea of how capable a setup like this still is in Apex Legends at 1080p I've gone with the high textures and tsaa while setting everything else to its lowest I've done this because this combines a nice mixture of graphical quality with performance and on average we hit 116 FPS with some pretty solid 1 and 0.1 percent lows I always like to try and keep that one percent low above 60 if I'm targeting a high average frame rate especially in these multiplayer competitive titles as it means that we will retain an overall consistency to the game that's important when you're trying to wipe out enemy players Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 I'm having real fun with this one I actually prefer it to Warzone 2 but of course that's a personal preference I'm not sure how differently these games will perform but if you want me to add war zone 2 as well as this one into the benchmarks just let me know now at 1080p with the basic preset and normal textures with smaa t2x set to high quality we were hitting over 60 FPS in fact over 70 FPS here now the 1.1 lows were okay I did notice a couple of little dips and drops these were mainly at the start of the games I tested but overall this is going to be a very solid experience and you won't need to implement any sort of FSR or upscaling methods here unless of course you want to opt for an even higher frame rate in which case I'd recommend turning everything down to the minimum settings cyberpunk 2077 was of course the one that was going to push our CPU to the Limit all along this is where the age of the processor is really shown because in those busier crowded areas we will get some pretty hefty FPS dips now overall the average frame rate came back at over 60 with FSR 2.1 and performance enabled and the game does still look pretty good it doesn't look too different from native because FSR 2.1 really is quite impressive there's nothing we can really do about the stutters and inconsistencies though because of the age of the processor but I wouldn't build a PC like this and then expect top tier performance anyway so I think for what we've got this is acceptable now in fortnite with the Epic view distance High textures and everything else at its lowest sort of competitive settings I guess you could say we actually retain pretty solid average and one percent lows we saw 29 as the 0.1 percent low which is a given there is the occasional stutter in fortnite with seems to happen no matter the quality I choose but I think here this was a pretty solid result I'd always recommend implementing epic view distance just so you can see as far as possible you can see other enemy players you can see other structures stuff like that it is entirely up to you of course everything else remains at the lowest settings fortnite can look really nice when everything is turned up but in the interest of performance here with this setup I think this was just about right we could of course turn the texture quality down a little bit for a slight bump in that average Forza Horizon 5 is very well optimized and in usual fashion performed really well with over 80 FPS at the high preset the frame rate held steady even when we started to drive through those busier towns and when entering multi-competitor races too the one percent and point one percent lows were very solid and are reflective of the overall experience I played this one for about half an hour and experienced no issues other four gig cards modern ones say the 6400 and 6500 XT due to their lower bandwidth will actually sort of start to show problems with anything higher than the low preset but the old 1650 here really holds up quite well despite what some may think is a vram limitation in 2023. GTA 5 an older game obviously no problems here High settings across the board msaa was set to 2x here solid figures in terms of the average one percent low and point one percent low so it really is a good experience with this test setup and as you can see the CPU still remaining nice and cool and the fan isn't getting very loud at all on both the CPU and the graphics card in Red Dead Redemption 2 with the console quality settings these are the settings I always like to opt for this makes the game look similar to how it does on the Xbox series X or the PS4 or PS5 we actually hit 57 FPS here so not quite 60 frames per second of course but the game felt very smooth indeed with solid 1 and 0.1 percent low figures the processor did exhibit some higher usage in and around town areas which is to be expected because it is older the cores are weaker but it still held up fairly well but all in all this was pretty decent effort from this system in Red Dead finally then we have Spider-Man or Marvel Spider-Man remastered 1080p with FSR performance mode yet again with the low preset this also uses FSR 2.1 so it still looks really nice and quite close to Native 69 was the average nice with decent 1 and 0.1 percent lows as well this was actually with the low preset of course you could turn things up to medium and still Implement FSR but this gave us a nice balance between visual quality and performance I feel because even at the lower setting Spider-Man still looks pretty good overall the old HP z420 workstation possibly has potential for further upgrades but as it is you find one of these with an Audi 5 1650 V2 CPU you slap in a 1650 and you've got yourself a pretty decent gaming PC for not very much money especially if like this one it comes with 64 gigs of RAM remember though that an SSD will certainly help out a machine like this in 2023 and even if you have to buy a used one I'd recommend buying one if it's just for the operating system alone thank you very much for watching then I apologize if you can hear my dog's feet in the background is running about at the moment I think there's a few squirrels in the garden so yeah can't help that I'm afraid if you enjoyed this one leave a like on it down below leave a dislike if you didn't subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already and hopefully I'll see all of you in the next one\n"