Notes/Errata: Sorry, I messed up some of the text. The RAM is 8 sticks of DDR4-2133, not DDR3-2133 as stated on screen; also, I forgot to change the scene numbers in Starfield. I shouldn't edit on 4 hours sleep, I guess! Normally my capture footage matches the resolutions and settings being described by the voiceover. For this video, I’ve focused on just a single capture per game, so don’t worry too much if the Afterburner overlay doesn’t match the stats on screen at the time.
While this is a great idea, this video is very very flawed. You are comparing used parts to a new console. If you wanted to do a proper comparison, you’d compare new to new or used to used. You can get a used series S for sub 200 quid. I’ve seen them at 130-150 quid. So no, you cannot build a Series S pc killer right now. Maybe soon.
@@OgoTheKeeperYou're just coping right now. The video was fine, we know that during this generation the PC prices are way higher than previous generation. Iceberg went for a computer that will last and be easily upgrade. He could have easily built a computer that hits close to this performance for 150 quid. But that would be just as shortsighted as buying a console. As the upgrade path would be non-existent. Just buy your console and move on bud.
Games are much cheaper on pc plus you can pirate of you'd like, aren't limited to controller input and don't have to pay online. So in terms of price/value that more than counter balances the fact the used console is a little cheaper. Even with a used console a pc at the price of the new one works out cheaper very quickly.
Just built a similar console killer pc last 2023 for the same cost of a series S. i7 4790 itx motherboard 2x8gb ddr3 450w sfx psu Rx 6600 Silverstone sugo 13 Primarily targetted at 1440p gaming. Runs newer games at 1440p60fps mid-high settings + fsr(if available) Runs older and easier to run games at 4k60fps low-med-high mix + fsr(if avail) System is attached to a 4k TV while using a controller. Never been happier with the build
Your warning at the end is so true in the industry. Office PCs with enough power to still be used but have 1 quirk that just kills them for upgradability. Thank you for making that clear and giving an example of what can happen when you buy a closed ecosystem build.
This was such an interesting build. Overall I would hesitate to call it as "kiling" the Xbox Series S, and that was a lowly task. To me it seems impossible to match or surpass the PS5 and XSX at this moment. They're too cheap, the games are too optimised, and PC Hardware is too janky and overpriced. Console Killers were a challenge during the Xbox to WiiU era, but not impossible. And during the XB1 to the XB1X period they were pretty easy to build. The current climate isn't so good, I'm thinking we'll need to wait some more years until we see Office PCs with the likes of Intel i9-9900 (or equivalent/better) hit that budget segment of under USD $300 to make the build viable, and next-gen dGPUs that are much cheaper and much faster and need very little energy. So maybe in Late 2025 or later, we will have to see.
@@ekintekoFor 500 USD w/ an RX 5700 XT you can absolutely buy a console killer that easy runs 90% of games above 120+fps at 1080p and even runs many games at 60+ fps 1440p. That is a console killer in my eyes.
It’s interesting to see the 2060 maintaining a somewhat relevant position in the current PC landscape. Granted, it is basically a 1080 with RT + DLSS support but 2GB less VRAM, the latter of which seems to be its Achilles’ heel. Which leads me to my main point, the budget “sweet spot” has to be the RX 6600 / 2060 Super (the 3050 is laughably still selling for far more than it should) thanks to modern feature sets & 8GB of VRAM. That being said, I’d take the Radeon in this scenario as RT performance is simply too weak at this price point to be the driving factor behind which card you go with. The 6600 regularly goes for less than $180-200 where I live, and that’s brand new. It’s also fairly power efficient, at a 132w TDP it can even be powered by a ~400w PSU (as long as it has a single 8-pin connector)
I've considered pairing a 2060 Super with an i7-5775c, if I ever get to build my own gaming PC one day. Toggling the eDRAM can bring me 10100-level performance or better, and can alleviate bottlenecks in most games.
@@donatedflea There is no such thing as a console killer. Over 90% of games are sold on consoles so they are optimized for console PC's are an afterthought and you have to constantly shovel money into them to keep them remotely viable
They never said that lol. The way I and most other people interpreted it was that it's nice to see videos about them again not that it's difficult to build one lol.@@donatedflea
yes this machine cant even play ratchet and clark in mid settings ... cant even play starfield with 30 fps i think ... holy crap so good that pc is and what kind of cpu intel xeon 5000 ? Nha not gonna work, you basicly build just a bad pc or in other words waste of sand that has no options for future upgrades.
So 3 years after they came out, we still have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a decent enough perf/price thing... I'd say Sony and MS did a wonderful job. Especially Sony.
Consoles are always objectively better money than pcs for the first 2/3 of their life time, just when they are at the end of their life time you can build a pc that performs better for less
Good call-out for disabling the spectre/meltdown mitigation. Wouldn't have thought of that being such a draw on performance. Good build, though you'll spend a Series S's worth on electricity playing over the years (exaggeration!) (and I posted before the end of the video where you said basically this)
It seemed to be a real drag, CPU usage was way higher and it dragged the 1% lows down. Cyberpunk was so bad the audio was affected, which I haven't seen since I tried running it off an old hard drive...
Excellent video my friend, I had just about given up on console killer PCs thanks to the ridiculous prices these days. I ran into similar problems with my kid's Lenovo box and complete lack of 6 or 8 pin PCIe connectors and the proprietary 10 pin motherboard connector. I resorted to a jank adapter that worked surprisingly well out of the box with a new PSU. With a 7700k and a 2060 Super it runs fine for most games but RT is out of the question. Still, he's happy and I no longer hear screams of frustration about low frame rates in Fortnite.
Great video! Its awesome to see youtubers making videos on more budget oriented builds. Even thought I have a relatively high end build myself, builds like this are amazing for people who have been wanting to dip their toes in the PC gaming space but not want to break the bank. Its also a great way for them to learn and get used to tinkering with their machine and get them ready for when they decide to drop more money on a higher end build later down the road once they feel ready. Your earned yourself a new subscriber friend! :)
I like this kind of content and growing up with a pc as my only mean of gaming... i kinda feel stuck to the pc even though i have all the consoles too i still find myself using the pc much more. I guess the ps5 i keep for the exclusives and the xbox series X is nice because my son plays on it allot and when going on vacation nothing beats the 120 euros i payed for the series S refurbished with gamepass :D
This is not gonna be related to the actual video. But I just started watching and. You have a vibe going. Your style of video and audio. Everything is just something different and comfy to watch thank you and keep it up!
i switched to PC in 2015, I been building since 2016 I've sold over 35 PCs and have never lost a dime on any of them, my smallest profit was $50, the most was $350, average around $100 just work your way up, start cheap and buy and sell your way up, i went from a $120 PC to a $1000 ryzen 7 5800x 6900xt PC from beginning to start
I got an XBOX Series X and a PC for $700 total. The $400 XBOX came with 4 games, 2 controllers with rechargeable battery packs, and an RGB stand. The $300 PC came with an i7 8700k, ASUS GTX 1060 6GB TURBO, 16GB of Patriot Viper DDR4 RAM at 3000MHz, Corsair H100i 240mm AIO cooler, and perhaps the best part being the case a Kediers C570 open air with 7 RGB fans.
To be honest, the power connector issue could just be fixed by going up to the next gen P520. That has two 8 pins routed from the board directly by default and comes with much faster Xeon W processors. Funny enough it usually is cheaper or the same price over the P500/P510 as it is being dumped so heavily by workplaces (or wherever they come from.)
Funny you went with the E5 2640 V3 at the incredible £7 price tag... There's a listing for 10 OF THEM at £15 at the moment on ebay, just picked one up and planning some tasty X99 builds soon :) Genuinely ridiculous value
I love x79, you sacrifice a couple of cores, but you can overclock the crap out of a 1680v2 or V3 8 core, and DDR3 2400 is the same speed as DDR4 2400, plus I can boot from NVMe with my x79
Recently did one of these builds $70 HP Z440 w/ 980 ti, 16gb of slow ram, Xeon E5 1660 V3 (+$45 Shipping) The one thing I added was a sketchy Amazon PCIE 4x to M.2 adapter and a cheap storage harvested from other computers. It works great for my little cousin, dominates his Xbox One in everything imaginable.
For the price of my new mid-range PC I'm assembling right now, I could have bought a PS5 and an XBOX Series X together.... Ryzen 5 7500 F, 32GB DDR5-6000, RTX 4070 and a 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD.
from many years of working on Lenovo and IBM computers, for your purpose you will want the 650W power supply with the upgraded FRU 03T8801 wire harness that supplies 6+2 and 6 pin PCIE connectors. this is a replacement for the single 6 pin PCIE cable (which is FRU 0C61063). also for those wanting more disk drives, FRU 03T8800 is the cable with 4 SATA power connectors from the motherboard's 4 pin connector (port 16 as per the MM, page 36). as for booting, it is intended to use an HBA or PCIE SSD (Intel P4600 for example) that has it's own BIOS to initialize and present the disks to the system, or you should use the built-in SATA ports at the bottom of the motherboard (not all P500 or P700 will have the same configuration or blind-connect assembly since these are CTO). the "flex slot" uses carrier adapters for this purpose of added SSD support. FRU 00FC864 for example is for M.2 SSDs. Note that the flex slot capacity and speed depends on chipset, so the P500 might be limited to only one device in the flex slot (regardless of if the carrier can support two devices).
@@ravenkf142 yes Lenovo FRU 54Y8908 and FRU 03T8801 are the PSU and wire harness for the P500/510 and is a direct replacement for the 490W PSU to 650W PSU with dual-drop PCIE power. the existing wiring for other devices like SATA is wired through the motherboard via the PSU card-edge connector. FRU 03T8801 wire harness is rated for 300W PCIE cards or less power draw.
great topic, great content, great analysis, great approch, great presentation. P.S. please do a spectre / meltdown performance comparisson video. ideally with different AMD/Intel CPUs form different generations. Though i understand thats a hell of an effort
After years of using, messing with, upgrading and fixing hp, dell and Lenovo office pcs with the proprietary components i would never mess with them again. It is just too much of a headache. I'll take atx, micro atx and itx standards any and every day of the week
@@yyeezyy630 Except this pc is performing much better than series s and you can do another tasks beside gaming on it. Its price is pretty similar to the new Series S. Massive win for PC here, not even a question.
Strongly agree that workstation Market is insane I have a p700 with a two E5 2698 V3 I use it for gaming and video rendering The only issue is the power supply
Ik u probably already know this, but the e5-1660v3 is going for like 60 or less and it's basically a 5960x (without overclocking but there is a microcode bug which allows it), which as you've shown is a killer chip often comparable to modern 5th gen ryzen in some scenarios
Where I live anything with a V3 or newer Xeon is sold for at least $350, the cheapest Dell Precision T5810 is $650. Not sure what the sellers here are on when you can get a similar machine from ebay for about $200-250 shipped.
Great vid! a followup(maybe a short?) with a better cpu (260quid pc?) would be nice to see how it improves the games where it was lacking. BUT I really hope theres a 500$ series x/ps5 killer vid coming 😁maybe a p520 with a w-2145, or whatever you think is more fun!
Awesome work again my dude! FYI, look into P520's for any future recommendations, dual 8 pin PCIE support(900W psu is stock) and 2x M.2 support on the motherboard(no adaptor card needed)
It doesn't matter to me if the hardware value is doing poorly compared to consoles. Even in times when that is at its worst, what I want always remains a PC. I make video games. I edit videos. I like the freedom of installing whatever I want and doing whatever I want with my PC. That versatility is so much more important to me than somewhat better graphics in games. I honestly don't game much, and when I do, it's TF2 or something like that. Even my own game, I'm making to run on pretty old hardware, because I just can't be arsed to care about max polygon counts or any other such metric anymore. I think TF2, BioShock, and many PS2 games have beautiful visuals still. I think it's a weakness to require such extremely powerful hardware just to be able to make your games look good. Style is most important there. I remember when 8th gen came out, and consoles went from comically far behind PCs in terms of graphics to right on par with them. In late 2013, they were like mid-range PCs. But that didn't cause a PC gaming crash. I think more and more people are sick of AAA games and are turning to the superiour indie games which also don't require such powerful hardware. Roblox is another great example of today's gamers' interests. Console users are less likely to think this way, and more likely to still be excited by the next AAA thing.
Hey, there ya go... Nice video as always ice. That optiplex from toasty bros was great, loved those (in videos only). But your creation is much more eligible to be called a console killer. I sold evga 2060 ko ultra for 150€ two months ago, so I can confirm this.
I started to build a PC before Starfield, I quickly realized that a $600 PC had 0 longevity. And decided after the launch of the game to wait and by components one at a time. To build a $1500 machine with a AM5 upgrade path. Not to mention that new games seem to be built for the newest hardware and screw everyone for being a generation cycle behind.
I have been doing these types of builds for over a decade and they are still the best super low budget option, though the super low prices that we used to be able to get, the dime a dozen reference that we were so fond of is getting more scarce these days. But if you can find one that will accept a standard power supply with maybe just a 24 pin adapter you are much better off.
That moment when you just built a stadia dev kit, and I thought thats what this video was about. Turning a stadia devkit back into a normal pc.. which it is, but actually using it as one.
Just got myself a laptop again and tries to play some old games. After a gazillion updates installing reinstallin checking for newer driver.... ... It made me remember why I prefer console after 25 years of pc gaming.
I did this last year when I found this PC for cheap. The gpu upgrade was annoying but worth it in the end. The specs are a radeon 5600 xt, an E5 2630 v3 and 16gb of ram. I could have made better choices but it has served me well regardless!
A few months ago I put together a PC for my daughter's birthday. HP Z840 with dual E5-2690V4, 160GB RAM (I know it's overkill, but I got a good deal on used sticks through a work connection) and an EVGA 2080TI Hybrid FTW3. Booting it off of an NVMe drive on a PCIe adaptor. She has an awesome rig that we will eventually convert to a server in a few years.
As a pc gamer myself i have always find this console killer idea is complete bull Because the console when you buy them for $500 or $300 they are brand new which means they will last you a long time unless it's the 360 😅 but other then that they work perfectly for years to come but with this console killer idea most RU-vidrs like linus or austin evans all buy second hand parts that may not last as long sometimes you get great deals buying secondhand but not always so the idea of in order to beat a console in price to performance you must buy a secondhand gpu or cpu ,in my eyes thats wrong because if you buy a console second hand the performance and price will outperform a pc thats second hand . I'll wait and see if you (iceberg) or anyone can convince me im wrong 😊
I need a pc for photo editing and cad work anyways, it also is the easiest way to control my 3D printer, organise my cloud storage and what not, so to me it never is about "do I get a console or a pc", it is more about "do I have spend much more on my pc for the same gaming performance?"
Biggest advantage of consoles, specifically modern, continues to be the uniform hardware set that allows companies to more heavily focus their optimization to run better on them. The simplification of its plug and play nature with cost effective bulk manufacturing and ease of dropping next to just about any TV that most people already have and the included controller make it still the go to for the average person looking to just 'play some games', especially when gaming is a side activity and not a main hobby.
I hasten to mention if you want an 8 core W 2145 chip the cheapest way is a P520 Lenovo or an HP Z4 with it already installed. Skylake based it is better than a Haswell or Broadwell. 2 NVMe slots already on a Lenovo, and port bifurcation is available to add 4 more on a $15 PCIe card from AliExpress.
At 25:20 those are both actually DUALSHOCK 4 controllers for the PS4 lol.. I know because the neon light bars on the front of those controllers were made to automatically boost your gamer style to maximum when gaming on your PS4… It also aided the PlayStation camera to aid the PS VR for positional tracking lol
People apparently don't like the Series S where I live, I see them going for $125-150 USD used pretty regularly. Even if you add in $20 for developer mode, it's unkillable for the foreseeable future, especially with devs fighting to optimize for it for years to come. A cheap 1070 might save it, though. 8gb VRAM, low price of ~$75 if you can scour for deals, and can run Starfield at mostly mid settings 1080p upscaled to 4K at ~30FPS.
If you get an HP Z440 workstation instead, and a V3 16XX series processor, you can overclock them via a neat software trick. I own one. My E5-1650V3 sits at 4.6GHz.
There was a series a few years ago called 'The Potato Masher' by the channel JERMgaming. The purpose of the series was to build a PC for the price of a PS4 and to see how they'd compare over the life cycle of the console. Now the Masher did get a few upgrades but it was never more than a year's worth of PSN to play online. I don't know if that is something you'd find possible to do between this system and an Xbox Series S but I would certainly find it interesting.
I went with the precision 5810 an a E5-1650 v4 when I did one of these builds for a friend earlier in the year. Only 6 core 12 thread but the 3.6 base clock with 4.0 boost made it seem like the best deal at 20 bucks. I would be curious if the extra single core performance and slightly newer architecture would be enough to give it an edge over the slower/older 8 core.
To be fair consoles include subscriptions that wreck the value over time. It maybe possible that the console will be worth $1000 by the time one is replaced. So, is it really a great value long term?
@@OgoTheKeeper has something changed since I was on console? I remember xbox live gold being necessary for playing online, and not being able to play online is a dealbreaker at this point.
Nice video, as always. I recently picked up a P520 with a Xeon W-2145 (and included 8-pin power connectors... 😊) for a few dollars more than this, and I'm loving it so far. I'm a bit conused at your comments around @15:35. How is this CPU limited, when your GPU is pegged at 95+%, while the CPU is neither being utilized nor boosting anywhere near max clock speed? Lastly, any chance of cicling back on your previous video on SAM, and testing an AMD card in this system? Lenovo doesn't advertize whether resizeable BAR is supported in their BIOS updates. I'd try it myself, but I'm using a GTX 1070, and a legacy boot (non-UEFI) SSD from an old system at the moment.
This deal doesn't really exist in Sweden. And while it would definitely be more expensive, it seems the better value would be buying new, even though it's all just too expensive. A pretty cheap B550 motherboard, 32 gigs of DDR4 RAM, and a Ryzen 9 5900X. But then I thought about it and realised that if performance has increased so drastically in CPUs over like 6 years, and kept going through very tough conditions, there's no reason to think it'll stop now. It would make a lot more sense to buy a new mobo + cpu + RAM set once they start to stagnate, so it'll last longer. I'm at a stage where I kind of want to do the PC component stuff, but it isn't what it used to be and it's way too expensive. I'd rather spend the money on bumper plates (200 kg of the cheap type are cheaper than this set I mentioned), and even then that's a lot of money.
Ive built PCs for friends on tight budgets with the lenovo p520 with the xeon w 2135, 16gb ram, and some type of storage all included for around $130 usd. Ive also used the hp z440 with the xeon e5 1650 v4, 16gb ram, and some storage all included for around $115 usd. Theyre very capable machines even today! The z440 has dual 6 pin pcie connectors with the 700w PSU and the p520 has 8 pin connectors with the 900w PSU
I have bought many P520's and turned them into gaming beasts, as they came with a 900w power supply. Big difference I can get them here for only 107 bare bones. P520 comes with 2 6+2 connectors.
id argue getting a deal on a mobo/ryzen/ram for $150, a $50 700w tt smart psu, a cheap case for $50, a 1TB nVME, and a $200 1080ti or 2080ti, it'd be up to you to find a good gpu deal but i think the overall balance in system performance, combined with a real case, on a far newer platform, would make it a much better solution, and something comparable to next gen in gaming chops
I want to add something, for anyone in the states (I specifically live in Michigan so I can't say its this way country wide), I would recommend the Lenovo thinkstation P520 over the P500, the power supply is the biggest reason, the lowest spec power supply in the P520 is 690 watts, and the biggest advantage it has is its 2 8 (6+2) pin power connectors, which boosts your GPU compatibility out of the box significantly, they are a bit more expensive then the P500 so if your trying to make a series S killer then maybe consider the P500 instead, but if your instead looking for a PS5/Series X killer then that extra GPU compatibility will allow for that, looking at the used market rn you can get a P520 with 16GBs of RAM for $150, a 3070 for $300, then that leaves $50 for an SSD, which btw the P520 does have m.2 ports so no need for a PCIe to m.2 adapter, and that right there is a $500 PS5 killer if you ask me also to mention at the end here, the CPUs in the P520 do technically vary a lot, but the most common one I found has a Xeon w-2135, which is about an i7 8700k from the benchmark comparisons I can find, specs wise the Xeon W 2135 is in-between an i7 7700k and an i7 8800k, the Xeon has 6 cores 12 threads , so on par with the 8700k, but it has less cache, 8MB instead of 12, putting it on par with the 7700k in that regard and clock speed it is the same 4.5GHz as the 7700k, so at worse I would expect in between those 2 chips in terms of performance 1 disadvantage to the P520 is that unlike the P500 the CPUs available as an upgrade are still pretty pricy, if you wanted to upgrade to a W 2145 which is an 8 core 16 thread with 11MBs of cache it would cost you about $80, and anything past the 2145 is to expensive to even come close to making sense
Nice to see console killers making a comeback. It was tough to beat a Series X or PS5 simply because both companies designed really good consoles this time, unlike the last gen. A series X is equalling RTX 2070S in rasterisation performance, which if you consider 2 years ago, was an insane value proposition.
With Starfield he mentioned how he could get FPS by turning of protection on the CPU? Mentioned something about "inspector" or something. Can anyone explain what he was talking about there?
The thing you also have to remember is that consoles don't really make that much money on Hardware if at all, Microsoft/Xbox has admitted as much, it's always about the software and game sales, there's a reason they want everything to be digital
Seems like an extension of my advice that has stood for 20 years now. Everytime some kid asks for advice on getting a laptop for going to college and gaming on my recommendation has to get two devices, one that is light with good battery life you can cart around and the second one sits on your desk for gaming.
It's finally good to see people recognizing x99 for the truly amazing platform that it presents for budget builds, P900's, P500s, Z series, and T5810 desktops are the the best thing ever!
My main rig is a P520 (W-2140B, 4x32g 2133, 5700xt). I don't recommend these old platforms anymore. You can do a 12600kf build for a little more than twice the $, which is WELL worth it as I'm CPU bound in EVERYTHING I do.
My current bedroom pc with a brand new z590 mobo and ssd is still cheaper and rest of the components used was still cheaper than my ps5 which was 7600sek, or 640€. I got an vega 64 which is used and an 1080ti, so even if they cant raytrace either gpu with the 10400f/32GB ddr4 ram and 1TB ssd with rmx 750w psu is pretty much what the ps5 is capable of,rasterization wise. Remember that the gpu in the ps5 is actually as fast as an 5700xt/6600xt.
There's actually a very specific but not uncommon scenario that easily kills the series x. All it takes is buying the expansion drive. The best way to explain this is to explain why its so hard to build a ps5 killer. 1. Lower starting price. The ps5 digital only costs $400. There's no good reason to compare a pc to the physical version, but the series x only has a $500 physical version that has to be used for comparison. 2. Solid gen4 SSD. A series x build only requires gen3, you can save money on both the motherboard and ssd when building an xsx killer as it's ssd doesn't even reach full gen3 speeds. 3. Uses pc ssds for expanded storage. It costs $70 to buy a solid 1tb ssd for the ps5 and for the pc it would be compared to. The much slower xsx 1tb ssd costs $150. A faster 2tb gen3 ssd costs around half that. An all new gen4 capable "console killer" pc costs around $650 compared to the ps5 digital's $400. Adding a 1tb drive to the ps5 costs another $70 while changing the pc's drive adds $50. Doesn't do much to help the PC's value. But with that same $650 when comparing to the xsx we can save $25 by switching to a gen3 mobo and use it to get a 2tb gen3 ssd instead of a 1tb gen4 one. Suddenly the pc and the xsx cost the same both being new. Any storage added to the xsx beyond that destroys its value even more. $780 for a series x + 2tb expansion card. $780 gets you a gpu upgrade, mobo upgrade to gen4, and 2tb of top tier gen4 ssd + 1tb of faster than xsx gen3 ssd.
