Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Building a $500 Intel Gaming PC”.
I know what you’re thinking it’s only been nine months since our last 500 budget build, but in that short time we’ve seen AMD and Intel launch new product families and we’ve seen inflation. Take away about three percent of our buying power, which had a 500 budget works out to about 15, which is the difference between 8 and 16 gigs of RAM or between a 512 gig and a one terabyte SSD. So you got a lot of questions to answer today like how far will 500 go. If we want the latest CPU Tech, will we be able to afford a good GPU, an okay GPU, a GPU? Can I afford a segue to our? Oh, I faked you out. We’Re gon na get right into it today, starting with the core I3 13100f four hyper-threaded performance cores and a boost clock of 4.5 gigahertz. The core I3 13100f doesn’t offer a lot of bells and whistles. It doesn’t even have Onboard video, but it does support Intel’s latest platform features like pcie, Gen, 5 and ddr5, even if we won’t be using them and it’s only a hundred dollars making it well the only option by comparison, the cheapest 7000 series, ryzen CPU is the 7600 for a whopping 120 dollars more to be clear.
It is much faster six cores, rather than four at up to 5.1 gigahertz, but at this price AMD just isn’t viable for our system and what’s really wild is even if we go back to their older am4 platform, we find that AMD has simply abandoned the budget-minded Customers that kept them alive during the bad years, even with a ryzen 5600, we would need to make extra compromises to hit our 500 budget like trying to find a free case or buying a used GPU. But today is a no compromise day. I especially am not going to compromise on this Segway to our sponsor enlisted. Take part in iconic World War II campaigns in this immersive free to play first person shooter use detailed era, accurate Firepower to dominate the competition get enlisted at the link below unlike 20 years ago, when I first got into this hobby, there’s not much left in the Way of bad motherboard Brands, so really what it comes down to is finding something that has the features and connectivity that you require.
We settled on the b660m hdv from ASRock. It’S got a total of six USB 35 gigabit ports, including one type c: dual m.2 SSD slots, ample pcie, USB 2 and SATA expansion, and while it only has two ddr4 memory slots, unlike the h610 chipset motherboards that come in a little bit cheaper than this, those Slots support overclocking, which means we’re not leaving any performance on the table. I well not that that’s necessarily concern given our Ram choice. We ended up with a single eight gig stick of patriot Viper Elite 2, and I know I know, is going to be a bit of a controversial pick.
So please allow me to explain this lands firmly in the bang for the buck. Speed range for this platform, and while we could have gone with 16 gigs of RAM or at least a dual Channel 8 gig kit, which would have netted us some additional performance, it’s a slippery slope right guys. I mean if we start with a budget, but then we keep saying ten dollars more suddenly, we find ourselves with a six hundred dollar build rather than a 500 build and a hundred dollars of debt, to our mean older sister, it’s far better to just drop a Second, stick in down the road upgrade to dual Channel later, when it can be found Dirt, Cheap second hand or when cash flows a little bit looser, which, while I tend to shy away from the f word, ended up being one of the big themes of this Build: let’s talk about storage for nearly the same price as this Intel, 670p 512 gig SSD. I could have had an SSD and hard drive combo. That would have netted me significantly more capacity and in an era when some games will take up a hundred gigs on their own. There’S no question that that’s desirable, but storage is one area where I just don’t like to screw around, and the 670p is not only a known good performer punching well above its pcie gen 3 weight class.
It’S also got an excellent reputation for reliability. I mean. Do you want to be gaming, or do you want to be waiting around for a warranty replacement that might never come, and besides once this is full and you want to boost your storage space down the line those Dirt Cheap drives on NewEgg are still going to Be there and you can always throw them in knowing that you’ve got a rock solid foundation, though I’m not sure I can say the same about our case. The DIY PC, f2’s main selling, point is available in purple or orange.
It doesn’t have entirely terrible Cable Management. Thanks to this kind of popped out back panel, here, you can see when we pop off the panel, it’s totally flat here, no room for anything, but that’s where your space is. As far as I can tell it’s to save the like six percent materials, cost of making everything else a little bit bigger to accommodate that extra width, so you just stamp it out of the side panel. It’S it’s ingenious! Actually, truthfully, though, none of that is why we chose this, we chose it only because it is literally the cheapest matx case that we could find on PC part picker, and I would never buy this case not because I’m some kind of out of touch elitist, but Because I am willing to get down and dirty if Scavenging from a dumpster means saving 38 dollars – almost 10 percent of my total budget here I’ll do it and you should too, the ATX standard hasn’t been meaningfully changed in almost 30 years, which means, unless you’re buying A top of the line GPU, which you’re not your modern system, will probably fit in this or this or this or this or this, and on the subject of using what you’ve got.
Let’S talk about cooling, even as you start to upgrade the machine. The CPU heatsink is one of the last things that I would recommend. You spend money on Intel stock, cooler, it ain’t much but it’ll. Take you all the way up to a 13 700 non-k, so you might as well use it now.
We just need to plug in our CPU fan header and while we’re at it, let’s do our case fans as well. We’Ve got the rear one and the fun one header here. Yes, if you must have something bigger or especially quieter, there are plenty of options in the 15 to 40 dollar price range, we’re going to have some of those linked down below, or you could just take my advice and spend that on an adorable wag hoodie.
For your four-legged friend just 24.99 at lttstore.com, now we just got to do a little bit of cable management. Here’S our front USB 2, as well as our HD audio. Oh so convenient these come in little bricks, easy peasy! They only go in one way. I can’t say the same for our front panel connectors, but what I can say is everything is very helpfully labeled reset right power. Switch last thing: we’ve got is our front USB 3.
just be careful with this one. These pins are very fragile. Make sure you got it aligned before you click it in time for power. This is going to be yet another controversial Choice. We’Ve gone with the enermax Cyber Brawn 500 watt, it’s non-modular, but it does at least have black cables.
So it’ll look nice, it’s 80 plus bronze. It’S got dual six plus two pcie connectors, so it’s good for pretty much any performance tearing down GPU, but the issue is that you can get a functioning power supply for as little as like 20 bucks. The issue for us is that our options below this price point are either from unknown brands or from thermaltake, whose entry level lineup doesn’t have a great reputation, and the thing is given the risk of collateral damage when a power supply blows.
From my point of view, you just can’t afford not to spend a bit more here, didn’t really script, anything for cable management here, so I guess we’re just gon na wing it, oh yeah, eight pin the eight pin has no cable management cut out. So it’s just gon na go here. This is going to come right here, cool, not bad, not bad, yeah yeah! I just do everybody just relax for a second okay, all right! Go there all right, and now it’s pretty all. Right again. I had to segue into this written, but we’re completely off script now, so I’m just going to open by saying it’s amazing what 200 bucks can buy again these days anything the ASRock Challenger D, Radeon RX 6600, has eight gigs of vram a core clock of 1626 Megahertz and a dual fan: cooler: that’s not bad! Considering that our only real criteria was how much money do we have left? Okay I’ll, take that one at two hundred dollars you’re pretty much looking at the GTX 1660 or the RX 6600 between those two, the 6600 is much newer and way more powerful. See you later Nvidia, not bad, though right. No, I mean it’s not great, but but not bad powers in and everything’s. Looking pretty good on this side, um, not as great on this side, we’ll deal with that in a sec. First, I want to address some of the other options for gpus if you’re not married to buying brand new at 200. There are some very interesting options in the second hand, Market including 2080s, 1080 TI’s, 5700, XTS and 6600 xt’s, it’s a lot more performance, but you do miss out on your warranty. Oh boy! Oh, I don’t know if I want you to roll on this uh yeah wow, that’s something really good case wow! It’S like it’s like that. Video of the bloated whale carcass, where the guy like cuts it open.
It’S like okay, let’s fire it up! Oh, how close the panels bad GBS? It’S not gon na work, everything up after a small mail-in rebate. I think it was like 10 bucks right. We are just under our budget at 498 dollars. We’Re gon na have a link in the description to our PC part.
Picker list before you click on that, though, let’s see if it’s worth buying, this is freaking awesome sitting at nine percent. Eight six percent CPU usage with screen capture going we’re using the GPU for encoding. That does still use a little bit of CPU. Let’S fire up a game: we’re gon na go hard going straight to Halo infinite. I think we can go to High preset.
We started the game to take effect. Now, I’m not going to restart the game. Fine, whatever 1080p medium preset, still we’re looking at 80 FPS for our one percent lows. So, if you’re losing at that point, that’s on you, that’s good! They didn’t even pick up my sniper. These guys suck definitely struggling a little bit. Sometimes the real world experience is not quite on par with what the FPS numbers would suggest. It’S almost like there’s a little bit more input lag, can’t put my finger on it.
No I’m busy winning I’m the top on my team. What do you mean? That’S what winning looks like you want me to capture this like fine I’ll Capture the Flag. I don’t even care wait, 10 seconds 10 seconds of what we’re almost out of time draw or oh, we won. We won what we won.
All right do Eternal, hey but notice how quiet it is not bad generic orange LED fans and even that poor Intel stock heatsink when it’s barely doing any work. Very quiet, I think Ultra nightmare is probably a little aggressive for this. Let’S try High something something’s attacking me. Look, I don’t have any audio, and this is running amazing.
Okay, I probably could be running Ultra nightmare right now. Okay, we’re turning it up. It’S way way too good, uh Ultra nightmares. A little much! That’S not quite right! Oh crap yeah, no, this is laggy, let’s try a nightmare or let’s try Ultra how about Ultra uh.
Okay, too easy now we’re getting 150 frames per. Second, there has got to be a middle ground here. You know what I thought it was a CPU issue, even playing a single player game. Four cores these days very borderline, I’m hitting 80 plus, sometimes 90 CPU usage. Do maternal right in multiplayer games there’s a little bit more for the CPU to keep track of, and that can be more of a challenge to be clear, it was very playable, but it’s not going to be necessarily optimal, but I only have a pistol now wait. What was that, oh, that was, was that warm-up my knife what’s happening right now: oh man, oh, did I yeah yeah. It is free from okay. No! No! So I was supposed to do that.
So that was epic, then yeah whatever dang it oh come on, come on they’re too good. I can’t hit myself I’m coming at him for every side he’s dominating me yeah. Thank you for that David anyway. We’Re getting anywhere from 150 to 300 frames per second I’d, say that’s fairly playable, not that it helps me not suck. No, I’m killing this guy. How David help me out here these guys good or am I terrible, oh, who would have thought that Intel would be not just a good budget gaming option, but the budget gaming option if we wanted to go AMD with this we’d, have to go all the way Back to am4, maybe a ryzen 5600 on an a520m board, or something like that. The point is: that’s taking me into probably going to regret this territory on the cheapness of the motherboard, and it would still cost me a bit more and if I wanted to spend a bit more, this is still a great starting point. I could cheap out on my case and spend a little bit more.
I could get a Core i5. 13, 400 on the same platform, or, if I didn’t want to spend anything at all, I could go for the Segway to our sponsor enlisted transport yourself onto the battlefield during iconic World War II, campaigns with Enlisted the free to play first person shooter that blends PVE And PVP elements together to create an immersive and unique combat experience. That’S a lot safer than the real thing command a squad of customizable AI soldiers and upgrade and equip them to adapt to any engage with over 100 weapons and vehicles at your disposal. You have boundless ways of neutralizing the enemy, M1 carbine or Thompson Panzer or tiger. The choice of brutal killing machine is yours with so much customization. No one firefight will feel the same.
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