the cheapest gaming PC we've ever built at just under $300.

Let's put this thing together

and see how it actually performs.

And huge shout out to LastPass for sponsoring this video.

If you guys have watched the channel for a while,

you know that I've been using LastPass for years

since way before they ever actually sponsored a video.

Now, LastPass really is the single spot that

you can keep all of your passwords not only safe but also

secure so you just don't have to worry about them anymore.

With LastPass you never need to write down, remember,

or reset another password.

They're all kept safe and secure in the LastPass vault.

And the best part is, is that it would generate a unique

and secure password for every single site you visit.

Which is especially helpful if you're one of those people

who uses the same password for every single site you use.

John.

- [Ken] What?

- LastPass will auto-fill your passwords

across your computer as well as your phone, where it works

not only on websites but also inside of apps.

On top of that, LastPass has some great

two factor authentication options.

Including support for the YubiKey, which is what I use

on my personal account.

If you're not already using LastPass to keep your

passwords and logins safe and secure, definitely be sure

to go check it out in the link in the description.

And of course, huge shout out to LastPass

for sponsoring this video.

Now let's go build a PC.

If you remember the very first $300 Bose one we did,

it was taking advantage of an AMD Athlon processor

so it's only fitting that this new version has

a much much newer version.

The Athlon 200GE.

Unlike older Athlons, this is taking advantage

of the newer Ryzen architecture.

So inside we have two Zen cores,

which are clocked at 3.2 gigahertz.

They do support hyper threading.

As well as important though, we also have

AMD Vega graphics built in.

Mind you, its Vega three so it's about the smallest version

of Vega you can get but this is a big step up

over those earlier Athlon's and actually should give us

enough performance for gaming.

I hope so.

It's a $55 processor so...

Backing it up, we have eight gigabytes

of Corsair Vengeance LPX RAM.

Now what's important about this is that any time you're

using something with integrated graphics such as

the Athlon 200GE you want to give it as much

memory bandwidth as possible, which is why we're going

with dual channel memory.

And while eight gigs isn't a ton, especially for

such a cheap system that's less than $300,

it should be just fine.

Everything is going inside the Gigabyte A320M-S2H.

Now this is a very cheap motherboard but importantly,

because we are based on the newer Ryzen chipset,

we actually have a lot of the higher end features.

So not only will this support our Athlon processor

but you could go all the way up to something like

a Ryzen 72700X if you ever wanted to upgrade,

although that might be a slightly ambitious

upgrade but we do have support for DDR4

and importantly an M.2 SSD.

That's important because we're using a

128 gigabyte 88 into SSD.

Now first of all an SSD is always faster than

a standard mechanical hard drive.

One of the nice things about budget builds is that

this is actually cheaper than a full hard drive.

And with only 128 gigs of capacity,

it's not going to be great but definitely should

be enough to install a few games and get us up and running.

Again, this computer's all about getting us ready

to go right now with plenty of upgrade potential later.

Like buying a hard drive, or more memory,

or a graphics card, or a better processor.

All these things are possible at some point.

But not today.

When you build a budget computer, there are a lot of ways

you can cut corners and save a little bit of money.

One area you shouldn't cut corners on is

with the power supply.

So this is a 450 watt EVGA 80 plus bronze unit.

Now the 80 plus is important.

Yes you could save probably like 15, 20 bucks

by getting a cheap Diablo tech power supply.

And it would work for like 15 minutes if you building

a backpack PC but for something that's actually going

to last you a few years, and importantly give you a little

bit of upgrade capacity in the future, going with something

that's a little bit high quality is definitely worth

the few extra dollars that it costs.

So what I liked about this case case is, like I was saying,

it actually has some features, which is not always a given

when you spend a very very small amount of money on a case.

So with this guy we do get an 80 millimeter exhaust fan.

And it also has a full USB 3.0 port.

A single one but you know, USB three is nice

on a very very cheap case.

Look at this.

We even have a little dust filter on the bottom,

which is actually not super important because

the power supply is on the top but OK I'll take that.

I like just how ridiculously light weight this case is.

So we do have our USB 3.0 port on the side.

You also do have a pair of USB twos on the front.

And once we get the motherboard in,

we'll have a few more around the back.

I'm guessing that would open up our optical drive

if we had one but in true cheap PC fashion,

instead of an optical drive, that's where we're gonna

stuff all our extra cables that we don't need.

So I've actually built a system in this case before,

and it is a little bit tight but it's not too bad.

One of the nice things is that it is a full micro ATX case.

Which means you're going to save a little bit of room

on your desk or underneath your desk

or where ever you wanna put it.

The main issue here is that there's basically no room

around back for cable management but for a system like this

especially concerning how basic it is,

I think we'll be just fine.

Now I'm not doing a full PC build tutorial in this video.

If you guys wanna check that out we do one every year

and I'll link in the description as well as on a card.

But the system itself actually should be pretty

easy to put together.

One of the nice things about this is because it is so cheap

there are very few components.

It's not really that difficult to work inside the case.

Basically what I'm saying is that if this is

the very first time you've ever built a computer

it is hard to go wrong with something like this.

It as about as simple as it gets.

I'm actually kind of excited to

see just how well this performs.

So we did take a look at the Ryzen three

and the Ryzen five chips with integrated graphics

a little bit earlier this year

and they were impressive but they're also

like, double the price of this.

Mind you, this is like, half the CPU cores

and less than half the GPU but considering we can build

this entire system for less than $300,

I really just wanna see, how good is it really?

Also wow that is some incredibly well applied thermal paste.

You see that?

Look how perfect it is.

I feel bad about ruining it.

Squash.

Because RAM is so expensive these days, the eight gigs

of RAM is actually the most expensive part of this build.

Now you could get away with four.

Especially if you're not really trying to do

all that much gaming, you'd be just fine.

But considering that I actually wanna have enough RAM to

you know, open up a couple tabs in Chrome

and also play a game of Fortnite.

I feel like eight gigs is a worthy investment.

And the nice thing about this board is that even though

it's not really super simple to upgrade,

since you only have two dim slots, you could, in theory,

bump this up to 16 gigs later once RAM prices eventually,

you know, come back down to earth.

So if we screw our SSD into place,

we're actually almost done.

This is a very simple build.

All that's left now is to put the motherboard

inside the case, get everything wired up,

and we can actually see how well

our awesome $300 system performs.

Or how not awesome it performs.

A little bit of cable management, installing Windows,

and a couple of software updates later,

let's see how the actual system performs.

The spiritual successor to Boson.

So to start out with we have the good old classic Cinebench.

Now this is not an incredibly powerful system,

with only a dual core Ryzen based CPU,

as well as those Vega three graphics,

but, well I have to benchmark things cause that's what I do.

And not too bad, so we've got 122 in single core

and 355 on the multi core.

Now the only issue with these Athlon chips,

I mean I guess there's a couple, is there is really no

over clocking capability, unlike the Ryzen chips.

But because this is a full desktop processor, we look like

we're pretty much running at 3.2 gigahertz across the board.

1322, so definitely not setting the world on fire.

But again this is better than the equivalent

Intel integrated graphics.

Getting into a real game we have CS:GO.

Now on medium settings at 1080p we've got

somewhere between 50 to 60 fps.

If we wanna go a little bit higher,

we turn the settings down.

But this is pretty playable.

Just stay still.

Stay still, I'll get you.

(button clicking)

Damn, alright.

Wow we all died together.

(laughter) So Fortnite does run.

It's at 720p medium settings but we do get

a pretty respectable 35 frames per second.

I would love to show you Overwatch but for some reason

when I actually try to open the game,

even though it's running here,

it just turns off the monitor.

Like legitimately just turns the whole thing off.

I can Alt tab back in and Windows pops right up.

Nothing is crashing just the monitor doesn't like Overwatch.

Yeah there we go.

Hamster (mumbles) wins again.

So Overwatch is actually kinda playable.

Now mind you we are running it on low settings

and its at 75% scale at 1080p, which is I think roughly

1600 by 900-ish if my math is right.

But yes, totally playable.

We're getting about 40 frames per second or so.

Next up we have Call of Duty Black Ops 4.

A game which should not be able to run on this system.

But I'm going to try anyway.

Yup yup yup yup.

(mumbles) or whatever.

Yeah yeah yeah that's fine.

Low low low low low off off off off off off low low off off

off off off off off off.

Perfect, that sound exactly like what we need right now.

(chuckle) Based on the 12 frames per second loading screen,

I don't have high hopes right now.

I don't think it's gonna work.

The problem with Black Ops is,