How To Build a Gaming PC in 2019! Part 1 - Hardware Basics

For over 10 years now I have been creating videos about computers and how to build them on YouTube and 2019 is no different. Now that we're a couple months into the year, I'm creating a new How to Build a Computer series. This one is aimed at beginners, so if you've never built a computer before and you're thinking you might want to do it, welcome! And hopefully this video will help you out. Whether you want to build a larger computer or a smaller computer, the first thing you're going to want to do is figure out what parts you need to go in there. Choosing the parts can be confusing in and of itself, so in this video we're going to figure out how big you want your computer to be, how much you want it to cost, and of course how powerful you want it to be. I'm going to go over all the core parts of a computer, what they are, what they do, and give you guys recommendations on what you should buy right now, this year. So stay tuned, but first, this video is sponsored by Squarespace. If you're interested, go to squarespace.com slash ballshardware. You get 10% off of your first order. Of course hang out to the end of the video for more on that. For now, let's get started. Excellent! With computer building it's funny how things change, but also how things stay the same. So for instance, my recommendation still going back 8 or 10 years is that you mainly only are going to need a phillips head screwdriver in order to assemble a standard modern day pc. However, they've gotten a little bit fancier these days, and they even have integrated stuff like all these fancy RGB lights. Not going to be diving too much into RGB lighting for this video, that's more of an aesthetic thing. My goal is to get you guys a computer that's powerful and hopefully affordable. The lighting and the aesthetics come later, but going back to those first three things you need to decide. One, how big do you want your computer to be? Two, how powerful you want it to be? Then three, of course, very important, how much do you want it to cost? Computers can cost as little as $400 for a computer that you can get up and running with. $600 to $800 is kind of a nice reasonable range to get yourself a good functional computer that you're not spending too much money on. Then of course you can spend $1,000, $1,500, $2,000, and beyond if you're looking for high-end desktop components, high core count components, high-end graphics cards like the but let's keep things a little bit more reasonable to start out with and talk about what you already have. So since you're watching this video I'm assuming you have an internet connection at home and you probably already have something that you can watch YouTube with. Maybe that is a cell phone or a tablet, but maybe you already have an existing computer and if you already have an existing computer you might have some stuff that you can start out with and carry over to your new computer continue using. The peripherals are the things apart from the actual computer itself are the things you can probably carry on using and save yourself some money in the process. So you're going to need a keyboard, you're going to need a mouse, you're going to need a monitor that can connect up to your computer, then you're going to need that internet connection which is probably handled by a router that's provided by your internet service provider. The only reason I bring this up is because your router might have ethernet plugs to plug in directly to the computer or more likely you have wi-fi available so you want to make sure that your computer is set up and has a wi-fi connection via an antenna. That can usually be purchased along with the motherboard but let's not get too far ahead of yourselves. Just make sure that you've got the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor, the internet connection. Beyond that I'm mostly going to be focusing on the computer itself from here on out. Actually two other quick things before we move on. One is that if you want to be able to hear your computer you're going to need speakers or headphones of some variety. Oftentimes your monitor has speakers built into it so if you connect via HDMI to your monitor you can have sound that way but you might also consider a headset something like this that'll allow you to hear stuff and then also if it's got a built-in microphone if you're going to play online games and you want to talk to people a mic is a very nice thing to have as well. Last thing to check with your old computer and this is not an old computer by the way just using it as an example but is there any old parts that you can reuse? Chances are the core components and the case would be harder to take over to a new system but you might be able to salvage a power supply if it's got enough wattage and you might definitely be able to salvage some old storage. You can take old storage hard drives wipe them and reuse them as fresh new storage so if you've got an old one terabyte hard drive or something in an old system consider reusing it just bear in mind older hard drives can fail eventually so you'll want to make sure you have that data on there backed up somewhere else as well. So now let's get back to building your computer and choosing the parts that you want to go inside. The way I usually think about building a computer the core computer itself is that there are seven main components that you will need to consider and have in mind in order to get everything together and up and running. The first part is the CPU. The CPU also has additional parts because there's a CPU and then there's a heat sink fan that helps keep it cool by providing a heat sink and a fan to blow air over it. Those will sometimes come with the CPU if you get certain CPUs from AMD or Intel or if it doesn't you might need to buy a third-party one separately to install in there as well and for that you have air coolers as well as all-in-one liquid coolers like the one that's currently installed in this system. Those can get more fancy and expensive so I'm going to mostly be focusing on the stock coolers that can come with the CPUs that you buy but that's sort of your assessment there. Second part is going to be memory. Memory is volatile storage so it only stores data while there's actually power going to it. It's very fast and more of it will often make your system faster. More on that when we get into the detail about the memory though. The motherboard is the central component that sits in the case that everything plugs into including a socket for the CPU, slots for the memory as well as expansion slots over here to install graphics card or other things like capture cards. There's a ton of motherboard options out there when it comes to the size of the motherboard, the compatibility with the socket for the CPU and the CPU that you've chosen as well as additional features that can really drive up the price a lot. Motherboards for me usually cost $100 to $200. This is actually a high-end desktop motherboard that has lots of memory slots. We're not going to be dealing with this today. We're mainly going to be focusing on the mainstream platforms from Intel and AMD right now. For AMD that is socket AM4. For Intel they have socket LGA1151 and you want the newer version of that that works with Intel's 8th gen and 9th gen processors. So the CPU, the memory and the motherboard are the first three components and I list those together because you need to make sure that they're all compatible with each other and they're also going to be very key to the actual performance of your system, especially the CPU, the memory to a lesser extent. When it comes to gaming performance that is where you're going to potentially want a graphics card. Graphics cards again can range hugely in price from $100 all the way up to $1,500 and more. Most people in 2019 are probably going to spend between $200 and $400 on a graphics card if you're at a mid-range to high-end system that's dedicated for gaming, but you can actually get away without having a graphics card completely if you go with integrated graphics that are built into your CPU. If you're going with an Intel CPU I don't recommend that because the integrated graphics aren't that good. If you're going AMD you need to make sure you get an AMD APU. They have a 2200G and a 2400G. Those are what I recommend for entry-level builds that you can get for as low as $400 to $500. It's a great way to get up and running with a gaming PC and not have to invest the several hundred dollars in a graphics card, but also gives you the ability to upgrade to that down the road. Just bear in mind if you're getting an APU you need a motherboard that has video outs as well. Just three parts left. The next one is storage. This is long-term storage, so this will save data even when your computer is off. There are three different variants of this. The first is old-school mechanical spinning hard drives. These are usually larger 3.5-inch drives. These you can get a lot of storage for less money, but they're not as fast. You're definitely going to want an SSD for your main operating system drive where you install Windows. For that you can either get a 2.5-inch SATA SSD like this, and for this you can get a very fast drive with good price per gigabyte that you spend. And then we also have newer M.2 SSDs like this one. The newest ones use NVMe as a communication protocol for the rest of the system, but they can cost a little bit more, so it's going to be up to you whether you want to go with one of these or just stick with a standard 2.5-inch SSD. The last two parts actually have the least amount of impact on how fast your system is going to be overall. That is the case, which can largely be aesthetic, but you also want to make sure the case has enough airflow to evacuate the hot air that computers can generate while they're being used. And also case is important when it comes to form factor, whether you want a standard full-size ATX case like this or a mini-ATX case like this one back here that supports smaller size motherboards. More on that in just a second, but the last thing is the power supply. Here's an example of a power supply. It's basically a brick that plugs into the wall at one end so you can get power from your home, and then at the other end you're going to have cables that come out and those provide power to the rest of the components. Some plug into the motherboard, some will plug directly into storage drives, some plug directly into your GPU. More on that when we get to the actual build in the next video, but there are some things you want to consider about a power supply too, which we'll come back to in just a second. So let's talk about cases. I have a few different case examples for you guys here. The main thing you're going to be thinking about when you look at a case is how much space do I have to work with on my desk or wherever I'm going to be keeping my computer, and do I want something that's small and compact and maybe even portable with a handle like this little mini-ITX case here from Corsair, or do I want something that's a little bit more flexible, full-size, full-ATX. Mini-ATX cases can be a little bit more challenging to work with. You simply don't have as much space inside the case as you normally would. You're also going to find a variety of layouts. So here you can see the motherboard sits horizontally. This is a little mini-ITX motherboard. Power supply sits on the bottom. There's a few expansion slots here for storage drives, and that's mostly it. I was able to fit an all-in-one liquid cooler in this system here as well, but just overall a little bit more cramped, not quite as much room to work with the cables. And this is actually on the large side when it comes to mini-ITX cases. There is an in-between form factor often neglected called micro-ATX. So here's a micro-ATX motherboard on the left versus a full-size ATX motherboard on the right. Micro-ATX gives you a little bit more expansion down here than a mini-ITX, which is the smallest size. So it's kind of an in-between. You're still limited on case options for micro-ATX. I actually don't have a micro-ATX case here to show you guys, but for that reason I'm going to focus on full-size ATX from here on out. So these are both full-ATX cases. You can really see the ATX size motherboard in that one. Also, it's showing off that cases that are fancy and more expensive can have stuff like a tempered glass side panel window that lets you see into the case at your build once it's all finished. Both of these cases have a more normal vertical orientation, but neither of these cases have the power supply where the power supply usually is. I just realized both cases I have over there for an example of case airflow are really bad examples because neither of them use standard case airflow. So I'm using my very fancy Arctic Panther custom liquid cooled system to show you a more standard case layout, which is that we have intakes in the front, and it is very nice to have a dust filter for your front intakes if that's available on a case. And then after the air flows through the system, it can escape either via an exhaust at the back here or an exhaust across the top. And the top exhaust is a very popular place to put a radiator if you're using liquid cooling or one of the all-in-one liquid coolers that I showed you on that first system. Also in this layout, the power supply is going to be on the bottom left, which lets you look at it. And then a lot of cases will have sort of a basement area down here at the bottom that's separated for the power supply to kind of hide that in the cables. Although that is mostly an aesthetic addition, and depending on how pretty your cables are and your power supply, you may or may not want a case that has that. Of course, these two cases that I chose for this video both do not use that standard layout, mainly because they have blocked off front intakes. This is the SL600M from Cooler Master, by the way, as well as the Lian Li PC011 Dynamic in white from Lian Li. Apart from the airflow and power supply mount though, these have standard layouts, which is the ATX motherboard, which is back there on a motherboard tray at the back of the case, and that lets you install everything on top of that. A graphics card, which is installed right here. There's a Radeon VII over in this one. CPU is in a socket at the center of the motherboard, cooled by the air or liquid cooler. Memory is in the slots just to the right of that. Then your storage might install directly to the motherboard if you're looking at one of these little M.2 drives, or you'll have 2.5 inch drive mounting points where you can install SSDs. So if you've figured out what size case you want and you've taken a look at the airflow and aesthetic concerns, then you're probably also going to be concerned about price. You can get cases as cheap as 20 bucks or so, but I would recommend about $40 to $60 should be your ballpark range for an entry-level case, and you can get really solid cases in the $40 to $60 range. You can get a Masterbox Q300L for $45 or $50. This is a micro ATX case, but very solid all around. It's been very well reviewed. Cooler Master also has a Masterbox Lite 5, which is a full-size ATX case, but around $65 or $70. The Fractal Design Focus G, also available for $55 or $60, a very solid mid-range all-black case. Corsair's got a Carbide Spec 06 they just recently launched. This is another case that has a lot of features for a budget price. Sells for $75 or $80 normally, but you can often get it on sale for as cheap as $55 or $60. NZXT's H500 is also a really solid case, available with a few accent colors as well, but you can get the black version for $70. Phanteks has the Eclipse P400, available for $80. This is, again, a really solid all-around case, so just take a look at these cases, their features, their reviews, see if they have a look that stands out to you, factor in your budget, and then make a choice on which one you want. The last one here is the Fractal Design Meshify C. This is also a really solid case, it has really nice airflow, so if you're concerned about things getting warm, that's a good choice for you, and this one you can get for $100. Next we'll look at power supply, and here there's a few things you should consider. A power supply you should be able to get for about $40 to $60 as well, so similar price to a mid-range case, and the things that the power supply you'll be concerned about are the wattage, whether or not it is modular, and the efficiency rating. For a standard gaming PC, I usually look at wattage between 500 and 800 watts. 500 is kind of the starting out point, you can get away with less than that, but if you have 500 or 550 watts on your power supply, you'll be able to support mid-range and high-end graphics cards if you add one in the future. Next is the efficiency rating, you have bronze, gold, platinum, and titanium. You at least want to get 80 plus bronze rated. You can also take a look at 80 plus gold rated power supplies as well, but you can usually get better deals on the bronze ones. As for brands, there are a lot of power supply brands out there. I typically go with EVGA, Corsair, Seasonic, Silverstone. Rosewill has some good power supplies, but they also have some bad ones too, so you got to double check the reviews. And then from there, just start looking at actual power supplies to see how they're configured. So Corsair, for example, has their CX-M series that they've recently upgraded, so they have all black cables. They're also partially modular. Modular cables allows you to not use the cables that you're not going to use, because you don't need all the cables that come with any given power supply. So here's a non-modular power supply on the right, and you can see how having this big grip of cables in your case might be hard to deal with. Then we have a mostly modular power supply over here on the left. This one has a bunch of extra cables plugged in here. If I didn't need these, I could unplug them. Then we have a few fixed cables for stuff like the main motherboard power connector. The only other thing you might want to consider with a power supply is that these cables, again, can look kind of ugly if you have this multicolored nonsense going on there. I actually taped over this one to block it off, but some power supplies will have modular cables, and will also have all black cables like these, so that they just look a little bit cleaner, and they don't stand out as much when you've built your system. Moving on to talk about motherboards, and I have CPUs also right here, because there's a very close relationship between the CPU you get and the motherboard. You got to make sure that they're compatible, and here's where you get to make that age-old decision, AMD or Intel, because AMD makes CPUs, Intel makes CPUs, and you got to get a compatible motherboard for an Intel CPU, a compatible motherboard for an AMD CPU. They are not swappable in any way, shape, or form. In fact, the CPUs themselves are different. Intel uses LGA on these mainstream boards, AMD uses PGA. I have a separate video on the difference between those if you want to check it out. But every motherboard is going to have these basic features. First, a socket at the center where your CPU gets installed. You want to be careful with that, it can be delicate. Next to that, we have these long vertical slots, that's for memory. You can have two-slot motherboards, I recommend trying to get a four-slot one because you're probably going to start out with two sticks of memory, and you have expansion space for adding two more in the future if you start with four slots. Most Mini-ITX boards only have two slots because that's all there's room for, that is one of the sacrifices you make by going with Mini-ITX. You're also going to have places to connect up power from your power supply, usually a larger 24-pin power, and then a smaller either 4 or 8-pin power up in the top left. Right here is where you have power delivery componentry for the CPU, and if you're looking into overclocking, that's something you want to pay attention to and double-check the reviews for your given motherboard. Most motherboards will be able to run any CPU it's compatible with at stock frequencies, but having better power delivery is important for overclocking. In the bottom left, you have expansion slots, these are typically called PCI Express, and you'll want at least one full-size x16 one for installing a graphics card to. A full-size ATX motherboard gives you additional slots as well though, so for instance, a two-way graphics card setup, or perhaps expansion cards for video capture or adding more USB ports. Beyond that, you will have ports to connect up your storage drive via SATA ports over on this side, or M.2 slots, this board has one of them right here, there's another one beneath the heatsink down here. And then along the right edge on the bottom, you'll have other connectivity for stuff like USB 3.1 Gen 2, front panel connectors, fan headers for connecting up fans, USB 3, front panel audio, RGB headers, not going to get into too much detail on those, but they are things you'll want to take a look at if you're about connecting, for example, an addressable RGB LED strip. So at this point, you're probably like, alright Paul, I got a reasonable idea of what's going on with the motherboard itself, what installs where, I know about the form factor, small, medium, or large, mini-ATX, micro-ATX, standard ATX, and I know I want to get the right socket for the CPU I'm choosing, LGA1151 for modern 8th and 9th Gen Intel CPUs, and socket AM4 for AMD Ryzen 1000 series or 2000 series CPUs or APUs. But what are all these other numbers on the boxes? Z390 here on the Intel boxes, we have B350M and X470 there for MSI. Those are for the chipsets. A chipset is an extra chip that sits on the motherboard that helps the CPU handle additional IOs. So you might have additional PCIe slots or M.2 slots or SATA slots that go through the chipset, and then that communicates back to the CPU so you can connect up drives. Unfortunately, Intel and AMD have been in kind of a branding battle when it comes to their chipsets. They're all really similarly named, and it's very confusing which one is which. So pay more attention to the sockets first of all, then look at the chipset, and just know that right now, for Intel, you want Z390 or Z370 if you're getting an unlocked processor and you want to overclock. You can save some money by getting lower-end chipsets, but definitely Z390 or Z370 if you're getting an unlocked overclocking processor, which is one of the nice things you should get with Intel, although that costs a bit more. And then for AMD, I would recommend a B450 chipset motherboard, simply because that still allows overclocking. They're not going to be as expensive as the X470 motherboards, and you still have backwards compatibility with first-generation Ryzen. You will know you have compatibility with Ryzen 1000 series or Ryzen 2000 series, and honestly, the main benefits you get with going with X470 over B450 are the ability to do two-way graphics card setups, which honestly most people never bother with. If you're shopping online for a motherboard, I recommend using PC Part Picker and choosing your processor first. The Ryzen 5 2600 is a really, really nice mid-range $165 processor from AMD. Once you've chosen that, it's got a compatibility feature, so if you go to try to choose a motherboard, it will only show you compatible boards. From there, you can drill down to stuff like the form factor, so we want ATX, and I recommended the B450 chipset, so we'll choose that as well. And then here we can see compatible B450 motherboards listed between a price of about $94 all the way up to $140. If you want a recommendation from me right now, this MSI B450 Tomahawk is a solid board with some RGB LED features, but also has really good power delivery, so if you're going to overclock there in the future, you'd be set. And you can, of course, do the same thing with Intel. Intel has really fast processors. I gotta give them that, but they tend to be more expensive, so their current flagship on the mainstream side is the i9-9900K, which costs about $500. That's a lot more than the AMD option, but we can also go to choose a motherboard here, and then again, it would list us compatible boards. But just reality check here, because it's listing this B360 Gigabyte motherboard as compatible. The B360 chipset from Intel limits you as far as your connectivity, and it also doesn't allow you to overclock, so that's really a bad choice of motherboard to pair with something like a 9900K. But if we again use our filters here to just choose Z370 and Z390, those would allow overclocking. Then we can sort by price and get ourselves some more reasonable options here. Now you'll notice some less expensive boards that are compatible here. Chances are these aren't going to have the greatest power delivery, so you're probably not going to be able to overclock quite as well. Although on the AMD side, I was able to get away with a maybe $100 to $120 range motherboard and still do some overclocking, I would probably want to go more towards the $150 range to get yourself a solid Intel motherboard, and maybe even up towards $200 if you're looking for some more advanced features. Now let's talk about the CPU, potentially one of the more expensive parts of your builds. Maybe eclipsed by the graphics card, depending on what graphics card you get. But again, we're talking about mainstream CPUs from AMD on the right and Intel on the left, and if you're just looking at the bottom of the CPU from Intel, for example, whether this is a $500 9900K or like one of their $80 dual cores, they're going to look exactly the same on the bottom because they have the same pin count. They're LGA 1151, so they have 1151 contacts down there on the bottom. Same goes for AMD, whether you're talking about an entry-level $100 part or their flagship 2700X, it'll look the exact same from the bottom. You'll only be able to tell what it is by looking at the actual labeling on the CPU itself. I also want to point out that these are not all of the consumer CPUs available. There's also stuff like Ryzen Threadripper from AMD, then Intel also has their LGA 2066 stuff. These are called prosumer or high-end desktop chips, and I'm only showing them to point out that they exist. Not going to touch on them much in this video because they're much more expensive, so if you're just learning how to build a PC, you should start out with the mainstream platform stuff. So beyond that, how do you choose? You're mainly going to be looking at the core count of a processor, the thread count of the processor, where it takes the number of cores and actually provides twice the number of threads available to the operating system to use for calculating stuff. And then finally, the frequency that the CPU runs at. When you're comparing CPUs of the same generation and architecture, a higher frequency CPU will be faster. I'll talk about pricing and decision making in just a second, but the only other thing you want to concern yourself with is whether or not your CPU comes with a heatsink fan. If you buy an Intel CPU that's not a K skew on the end, so if you get the 8700, it will come with a stock heatsink fan. These are usually adequate, so you can get some benefits by upgrading them, but you can at least get up and running with that. Almost all current AMD AM4 processors do come with a heatsink fan of some variety. They have different sizes of them depending on how expensive the CPU is that you buy, and they're actually pretty decent. The Wraith Stealth and the Wraith Spire. So again, if you're just getting up and running it off the ground and you want to save some money, you can totally just go with the included heatsink fan that comes with your AMD CPU. So back to pricing for a CPU, starting on the AMD side. So I've chosen a B450 motherboard. I'm now going to choose a CPU, so the compatibility filter will only show me compatible CPUs on PC Part Picker, and here we can see that for 165 bucks we got that Ryzen 5 2600. I think this is the best bang for your buck CPU right now at a reasonable price of 165 bucks, because you get six cores and 12 threads. It does have simultaneous multi-threading. It comes with a heatsink fan in the box, and it's completely unlocked for overclocking, so you can overclock this if you so desire. Another standout for me from AMD is the Ryzen 3 2200G. Again, this is that APU, but you can get by without a graphics card with this. You can get it for as little as $92, but usually about $95 or $100. This is a quad-core CPU without SMT, so you only get four cores and four threads, but it's 100 bucks and you don't have to buy a graphics card. If you want a lot of processing power, then you want more cores. So getting an eight core on this platform from AMD, you can actually get as cheap as $170 for the Ryzen 7 1700. I think the 2600 is a little bit better as a gaming CPU, but you can also get the eight core 1700X or even the eight core 2700 for about $260. If we compare that to what's available over on the Intel side, you will note that for a six core locked Intel processor, you have to pay $185. For the current gen unlocked six core from Intel, you have to pay $260, and this does not have multi-threading or hyper-threading as Intel calls it. Still, six cores and six threads. If you want what is, in my opinion, the equivalent of the unlocked six core with multi-threading from AMD from Intel, you got to go to the i7-8700K, which still costs $350 to $400, and that is last generation. Still a very good CPU, but their current generation replacement is the 9700K, which you can get for $410, which is an eight core unlocked CPU, but it does not have hyper-threading. For all of the goodness and speed possible on the Intel side right now, on the mainstream platform, you got to go with the i9-9900K, which is eight cores and unlocked and is a very fast and capable processor, mind you, but it's $500, so you got to pay for that performance. Let's move on to system memory. System memory comes in these sticks, often called DIMMs. Dual Inline Memory Module is what DIMM stands for, and memory is pretty simple. There are no moving parts, so that's easy enough. You know, pretty difficult to damage if you drop them or anything. All you really need to be concerned about with memory is what version you're getting, and anything in the past two years is going to use DDR4, not DDR3. This is a DDR4 module on the top and DDR3 on the bottom. You'll note that the notches here are not in the same place, so it's actually pretty much impossible to install a DDR3 module into a DDR4 slot. And then you have two main specs you want to look at. One is the capacity, or how much actual space is in each memory stick. You usually will see a listed amount of memory per stick, so this is originally a 4GB by 4 setup, so there were four 4GB DIMMs for 16GB total. And then you have two ratings for the speed. One is what's usually called memory speed itself, so DDR4, this is DDR4-3200, higher is better. You'll see 3000 speed, 3200 speed, 3400, up to 4000 speed. The speeds that you can get for reasonable prices right now that are also good speeds are about 3000 or 3200. And finally you'll have a CL rating that's known as cast latency, that is the latency or how many clock cycles it takes for the memory to do a specific job. Lower is better when it comes to that number, so cast latency 14 is better than cast latency 16. And when it comes to the CPU you've chosen, you also want to make sure your memory will play nice with that. Ryzen likes higher speed memory, so I usually recommend 3000 or 3200 speed memory for a Ryzen CPU. And you'll have better luck getting your memory to run at that rated speed if you get memory that's listed as compatible with Ryzen, or just double check your motherboard's memory compatibility list, you should be able to find that on your motherboard manufacturer's website. They'll have specific kits that they've tested at specific speeds and they'll tell you yes it will work with your CPU. Intel CPUs tend to be a little bit more flexible when it comes to memory, I still recommend higher speed if you can afford it, but usually you can get away with 2666 or 3000. All that said, if you can find memory that's just a couple bucks more that's on the faster rated speed, I would recommend going for it, but don't spend $20 or $30 to jump from 3200 to 3400 for example. Finally, I recommend buying your memory in a match set just so you can plug it in and make sure that it will play nice together. Dual channel kit is just fine for getting you up and running on the mainstream platform. You can also get quad channel matched kits as well that you may or may not be interested in, usually those are for the high-end desktop platform. And then what is all the rage right now is RGB lighting on everything, right? So you'll find some memory that has RGB lighting across the top that is purely aesthetic, does not make your memory any faster, so again, don't spend a bunch of money on RGB memory, go for faster memory first. But you know, if the same kit's available with RGB and not, and you prefer RGB and it's the same price, then go for it, you know, it's not going to hurt your performance either. And when it comes to graphics cards, I could easily do a full video by itself on choosing graphics cards, the difference between AMD and Nvidia, who are the two main GPU makers, and the pros and cons, and price range and everything, but I'm going to try to keep this simple since this is already a fairly long video. With graphics cards, you get what you pay for. If you pay more money, you're going to get more GPU performance. If you want to game at 1920 by 1080, you can get away with a graphics card in the $150 to $300 range. If you want to play at $1440, you probably want to spend $250 to $400, and if you want to go upwards beyond that to 4k or some of the ultra widescreen resolutions, then you probably want to spend $500 plus on your GPU. I'll make a couple notes on compatibility and then go into some recommendations for you. When it comes to physical compatibility, as long as you have a modern GPU, it uses PCI Express, it slots into the top PCI Express slot usually on your motherboard, and you're going to have pretty much universal compatibility. It's just like that, that's how it works. When it comes to the GPU itself physically, usually the length of the GPU this way can sometimes be a conflict if you have a shorter case. Most cases list the GPU length that they're compatible with, and that's also something that PC part picker keeps in mind if you're picking out a GPU there. And then you might want to keep an eye on the height or width, I guess, depending on how you hold the graphics card as well. Some cases don't have as much space horizontally, and in fact this case is one of the ones where if you have a big fat GPU and like a water block on it that has more stuff sticking off of it, it can potentially conflict with the glass part right there. That's less of a concern, but something you should keep an eye on, especially if you're buying one of these overbuilt aftermarket third-party designs. This is a Gigabyte Aorus RTX 2080 Ti. So if you're looking in the low to mid-range, say $200 to $300 price range, I would recommend on the NVIDIA side the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, or on the AMD side the RX 580 8GB, or the RX 590 8GB. If you can claw your way up to the $350 to $400 range, I was formally recommending AMD's Radeon Vega 56 or Vega 64 if you could find them in stock and at reasonable prices. However, NVIDIA has just recently launched the RTX 2060 for $350. Between the two, if you can get a really good deal on a Vega 56 or 64, still go for that. But the RTX 2060, whether you're talking about the Founder's Edition or any of the third-party versions, that's what I would go for there. If you can spend $500, go for an RTX 2060. If you can spend $700, go for an RTX 2080. If you can spend $1,000 to $1,400, I guess maybe consider the RTX 2080 Ti, but honestly that is a lot of money to spend, especially if you're just building a system for the first time. It's the gaming graphics card you can get. It's just more money than a lot of people spend on their entire computer, so you know, spend the money that you have. Don't go into debt over something like this. And the last component I'm going to talk about is storage, and fortunately storage is really flexible. Apart from your main operating system drive, that you'll want to pay attention to from the get-go, because when you first set up your system, you're going to want to install probably Windows on it if you're building a gaming PC. Linux is totally fine too for people who like that. I'll be covering that procedure in part three of this video, but suffice it to say, what you want to start out with is a single fast SSD, preferably an M.2 NVMe one right now if you can afford it, but if you can't, you can easily save 20 or 30 bucks by just going with a SATA SSD like this one. These little M.2 drives are really nice because you just install them directly to your motherboard. You don't have to worry about running cables over from your SATA ports, or powering it via an extra plug coming over from your power supply. And although most people aren't going to take advantage of the speed that you get from a higher-end NVMe M.2 SSD, they can get much, much faster than these SATA drives. The SATA drives typically top out at about 500 to 550 megabytes per second read and write speeds, whereas NVMe drives can go to 2,000 or 3,000 and beyond. So back over on PC Part Picker to look at storage this time, and I'm going to drill down to just look at SSDs, and to see what the best deals are, I'm sorting by price per gigabyte, and just over 10 cents per gig is what you can get an SSD for right now. So that means you can get 480 gig SSDs for about 50 bucks. You can get 1 terabyte SSDs for about $100. You can even get 240 gig drives for maybe about $25 to $30, so if you're really on a budget that's what I would go with to get yourself started out. For most people, a 500 gig class drive for about 50 bucks would be just fine. And then if we go down here and look just for M.2 2280 drives, we can potentially start looking at some NVMe options. Just keep in mind, not all M.2 drives are NVMe. For instance, this WD Blue drive is a SATA 3 drive, so it's still only going to top out at about 560 megabytes per second sequential reads, 530 megabytes per second sequential writes. This Intel 660P, 2 terabyte actually, is an NVMe drive, so this will get you sequential reads and writes closer to 1800 megabytes per second, and this is NVMe. So tons of good options here when it comes to SSDs to get your operating system drive loaded up to. I would just recommend if you're looking at standard SATA drives, just take a look at what some of these NVMe drives are in the same price range, and you might find that some of them are pretty reasonable, and sometimes worth spending the extra 15 or 20 bucks to get them. Before I close out this video though, I have been using Squarespace recently, actually for the past few years, to power my store paulshardware.net, and you guys should also try out Squarespace if you want to put together a website. I have a link in the video's description and you should check that out. Squarespace basically helps you do the internet better by helping you set up a website. They have templates to help you get started with responsive designs so you can get your website looking good whether it's on a cell phone or a desktop or any other device. So whether you need a website for your business or for a hobby or for anything that you might want to create a website for, Squarespace is good for creating that website. They have 24-7 support via live chat and email, and they have commerce functions available so you can integrate products to sell and set up a store just like mine at paulshardware.net, especially if you have super sweet merch to sell like I do. So click the sponsor link in the description or go to squarespace.com slash paulshardware. You will get 10% off of your first purchase, and a big thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring my YouTube channel. So that is part one of my three-part series on how to build a computer in 2019. I hope you guys have enjoyed it, maybe learned a little bit more about how a computer gets put together these days, and of course, remember those three key things. Decide how big your computer wants to be, decide how powerful you want your computer to be, and then those should probably determine how much you can spend on your computer. Of course, you can also do it the other way, figure out how much money you have first and then drill down to figure out how much you can spend on the computer itself. But if you would like some more guidance with putting your own PC together, definitely check out my monthly build series. At the beginning of every month, I do a couple PC builds partless based on price points or specific use cases, and there you will find full lists of my recommendations on how to build a PC for 600 bucks or a thousand bucks or just however much you happen to have on you right at the moment. Thank you guys so much for watching this video, though definitely hit the thumbs up button if you enjoyed it. Links are in the description to a lot of the stuff I talked about today as well as to PC Part Picker who has a great site for helping choose your own PC parts, and let me know what you think of this video in the comments section down below. If you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Thanks again for watching, guys. We'll see you next time.