Gadgetory

hi and welcome back to hardware unboxed I'm your host Matt and today we're going to build the best gaming system possible with an $800 budget our budget today doesn't include your monitor keyboard mouse speakers or any software a lot of people are gonna have this left over from a previous build and that sort of stuff really does come down to personal preference our focus with this build is on 1080p gaming as this covers most monitors from the 24 to 27 inch range so let's check out the hardware that we've chosen bang for your buck nothing beats the latest range of fourth generation as well core i3 processors when it comes to general usage it's almost impossible to tell between a core i3 system to a core i5 or even the core i7 for the most part this is generally true for gaming too especially with low to mid-range GPUs therefore we've gone with the affordable core i3 4170 which comes clocked at 3.7 gigahertz and costs just 135 bucks with a few dozen options picking the right motherboard can be tough although this is an entry-level system we decided against an Intel h97 motherboard the z97 version cost us $20 more and you get a few extra features that can be handy down the track such as overclocking as standard all dead 97 motherboards should provide 6 USB 3 ports you give it Ethernet and 6 SATA 3 ports the cheapest and best values at 97 motherboards come from a drop in our opinion and we decided on the z97 empro 4 this is a micro ATX motherboard and although we're using an ATX mid tower it is possible to opt for a smaller micro ATX case if you wish if you want an ATX size motherboard for a few dollars less as Rocksteady 97 anniversary is also an option the days of skating by with just four gigabytes of RAM almost over imaginable invest now in an anchor kid after all it's just $50 the g.skill ripjaws x-series 8 gigabyte ddr3 2133 kit is a serious bargain we don't see my Stenson saving $20 to get a 4 gigabyte kit we recommend a minimum memory speed of 1866 megahertz for the current generation Intel Haswell processors know dearly you should aim for 21 33 megahertz or even 20 400 megahertz with a budget of $800 it doesn't leave a whole lot of moolah for your GPU which is most likely going to be the most expensive component gamers will most likely be limited into a sub $200 option thankfully that buys you a very powerful GPU right now especially if you plan on 1080p gaming bang on $200 we landed the EVGA geforce gtx 960 2 gigabyte a CX 2.0 + graphics card this card features a nice dual fan cooler that keeps the gtx 960 cool and quiet there isn't a reference design for the gtx 960 from what we've seen all manufacturers are offering solid products so you don't necessarily have to go with EVGA really I'd suggest picking up the cheapest gtx 960 that you can find for audio we're relying on the integrated Realtek ALC 892 codec which is found on the motherboard this isn't the greatest option but unless you're spending serious dollars and your headphones or speakers this is going to be fine right now the best value SSDs without a doubt crucial is VX 100 and since $100 gets to the 250 gigabyte model that's what we've gone for personally I find 120 view bytes it's just not enough these days especially with the way games growing in science the 250 gigabyte model allows you to have all your favorite games installed as well as all the essentials for everything else that won't fit or doesn't need to be on the snappy SSD we've got a secondary hard drive the Western Digital Black Series is a little pricey but for reliability it's excellent and for a hard drive that performance is pretty good personally I haven't found the need for an optical drive in many years now but if you do need one the Samsung DVD rewrite is available for about 20 bucks corsair CX series power supply units are an excellent choice of basic system builds and pasty upgrades see f-series PS use are available in a variety of power configurations and include features that are normally found earning a premium power supplies since the core i3 and gtx 960 combo won't draw a great deal of power an overclocking is essentially off the table for 30 watts iax will be ample however we do only happen to have the CX 750m on hand it's obviously where it affect performance at all this is the first time I've used a deep cool product but for just $40 the tesseract SW really caught my attention this ultra affordable case looks pretty good features an eye-catching window and even comes with a pair of blue LED 120 millimeter fans the tesseract SW is painted inside now offers plenty of room for radiators can handle full-size 310 millimeter long GPUs 165 millimeter tall CPU coolers and 230 millimeter long power supplies what more could you ask for of this price now I've got it all installed let's run a few benchmarks and see how it performs we have reached 24 frames per second when playing project cars with a very demanding wet weather conditions while the clear conditions allow for a much smoother 50 frames per second Witcher 3 Wild Hunt was very playable with an average of 45 frames per second with everything turned up with the exception of Nvidia hare works which was disabled why time to wake up and master these lessons so boring they put you to sleep - dying light average 38 frames per second with everything turned up at 1080p Far Cry 4 was very playable for the smooth 55 frames per second on average for $800 for all the core components this entry level gaming system allow gamers to enjoy all the latest triple-a titles at 1080p factoring the cost of a good quality monitor keyboard mouse and speakers are headphones you'd expect the total cost of hardware to come in at about $1,100 for this system thanks for watching our PC build this has been Matt from hardware unbox don't forget to hit like and subscribe and we'll see you next time