Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today we are going to discuss why right now is a good time to build and you're going PC was about this time last year that we talked about why building a new gaming PC was a bad idea but thankfully quite a bit has changed since then and we'll go over all that in this video so I think it's fair to say that this time at last year things weren't great ddr4 memory prices were through the roof graphics card prices were also through the roof and availability was extremely poor and on top of all of that we were at the end of a few practicals from AMD we had a number of product releases in coming on the horizon where they're second-generation rise in CPU so at the time we didn't know the improvements wouldn't be huge but we did suspect that the release would help drive down pricing of first-gen parts and this is exactly what we saw then for entry level gaming we were just a month away from the arrival of Raven Ridge a m-- DS n based ap use another point when getting your hands on a discrete GPU was costly and difficult the promise of decent integrated graphics couldn't have come at a better time third on the other side of the fence we had Intel and they're yet to be fully released coffee-like series along with supporting chipsets back in January of 2017 you could still only pair an eighth gen core processor with a Zed 370 motherboard and pricing started at a hundred and ten dollars u.s. for budget shoppers this really didn't make that much sense and almost eliminated the otherwise great value core i3 8100 we knew motherboard makers at the time we're prepping B 360 H 310 and H 370 motherboards we just didn't know they would mostly end up being a waste of time so fast forward a year what's changed well for one memory prices have dropped significantly and this is something we've predicted would happen by early 2019 back in January 2018 the cheaper 16 gigabyte ddr4 kit that I could find cost 170 dollars u.s. and today we're almost half that figure so I think it's fair to say that memory prices have dropped take G skills popular Ripjaws 5 Series for example a 16 gigabyte kit of the ddr4 3000 memory cost just a hundred and five dollars us back in January of 2017 however after prices continued to rise throughout 2017 and peak by November we entered 2018 with the same memory costing $200 u.s. based on official pricing from Newegg that's essentially a doubling of price a year later and for much of 2017 pricing held steady at $180 us and didn't start to fall till around August finally we're now back down to early 2017 memory pricing so I don't expect ddr4 prices to fall much further from this point but at least we can now shave an extra hundred dollars off the cost of a gaming system with 16 gigabytes of memory now moving on from memory to graphics cards it's fair to say that the demand from cryptocurrency - has died off now that the value of cryptocurrency has pretty well imploded it's collapsing on itself let's say a graphics card pricing began to fall quite sharply in August last year and naturally availability improved at the same time take the Radeon rx 570 for example currently our favorite budget mid-range GPU it comes at an MSRP of 170 dollars u.s. and upon release in April 2017 was available at that price that said just two short months later prices began to increase hitting a $190 US and 210 and by September was selling everywhere for at least 250 dollars though most outlets were unable to provide stock by January 2018 the cheapest rx 570s cost 290 dollars u.s. that was an insane 70 percent price Ike from it to release nine months earlier if that wasn't bad enough by February prices hit 335 dollars u.s. at Newegg while other outlets were charging $370 u.s. or even more by June availability and pricing started to improve though gamers were still faced with ridiculous asking prices you know things have been bad when a $290 X 570 seems like a good deal then by mid-october we were finally starting to see pricing drop back down to MSRP levels and gamers rejoiced at the opportunity to buy one or even two year old technology at the release price over the coming months prices continue to drop in holiday sales saw the I have 70 selling for as little as 130 dollars u.s. which isn't incredible by today you can expect to pay around 150 dollars u.s. which is still a great deal especially for a GPU that can easily tear through the latest and greatest titles using high quality settings at 1080p for now this is as good as graphics card pricing is really going to get won't be until AMD unleash Navi later in the year that we might see improved performance at these price points and frankly if you need an upgrade now I just wouldn't bother holding out and videos 2050 they'll come out soon but I don't expect that that will hold a candle to the price versus performance ratio of something like the rx 570 for example as for CPU prices well it depends on which way you want to go there all right now Intel CPUs are still a little overpriced the core i7 8700 K for example has an MSRP of 360 dollars but right now seems to be typically selling for three hundred and ninety dollars u.s. so it's not terrible but it's not great either most Intel CPUs such as the core i5 add you 400 or Core i3 8100 are about 10 to 20 dollars over the MSRP so not a really big deal and if you want to go with Intel then well this won't stop you honestly if I was after an extreme high-end gaming rig with an RT X 20 80 or 20 80 TI I'd get either the 87 or okay 9700 K or 9900 K so I'm by no means an AMD fanboy or Schiller whatever the loopy extremists on the other side wouldn't come up with that said if I was a budget conscious shopper which I definitely am I'd get the rise in 5 2604 $165 u.s. and right now you do get a free copy of Tom Clancy's the division - okay enough Schilling now my check had better be in the mail AMD Athlon is gonna land really poorly with the folks who don't understand sarcasm which could be quite a few people of the youtube comment section has anything to go by moving on in all seriousness an unlocked brand new 6 chord 12 thread CPU $165 really is an incredible Buy if you pair that with a 150 dollar X 570 then get yourself a hundred dollars worth of ddr4 memory which at the moment is a 16 gigabyte kit then you'll end up with an exceptionally good 1080p gaming machine in fact Tim recently built such a machine he thinks it's pretty brilliant and this is coming from a man who often games with an RT x28 e TI on one of those $2,000 us 4k 144 Hertz HDR displays but like I said there are a number of affordable CP options from both AMD and Intel right now you could certainly argue and I'm sure many of you will in the comments section below that it would be better to wait for AMD to release their Zen true based processes the seven nanometer rise in 3000 series should be pretty bloody impressive but keep in mind you could wait for months for those parts and even then it could be a few more months before we get the sub $200 models of course if you can wait well feel free to do so but in this industry there's always something new right around the corner and I feel like with what's available right now you can't really go to wrong also one way to measure the value of a PC is by what it enables and right now affordable GPUs and CPUs enable a seriously fun gaming experience so if you've been holding off then I recommend you just stop doing that stop robbing yourself of any potential fun and just finally there's also the used market and recently we did a big GPU roundup looking a whole heap of GPU categories and then obviously the graphics cards that are available there and there was plenty of GeForce ten series cards Vega rx 400 and 500 series graphics cards so plenty of pretty new graphics cards at reasonable discounts so certainly worth checking out if you're trying to save every last dollar and that is going to do it for this one if you enjoyed the video be sure to the like button for us subscribe for more content just like this and if you appreciate the web your hard box then consider supporting us on patreon thanks for watching I'm your host Steve see you next time