I Bought a Gaming PC at Best Buy… Am I Dumb?
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Check out ORIGIN PC’s lineup this holiday season at bit.ly We were pleasantly surprised in 2016, and again in 2020, but can we still get a decent Gaming PC by wandering into a Best Buy and taking whatever the sales rep recommends? Our secret shopper finds out! Discuss on the forum: linustechtips.com Buy a Rog Strix G10CE Gaming PC: howl.me Buy an Intel Core i5 11400F: geni.us Buy an Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti: geni.us Buy a 600W LiteOn PSU: geni.us Asus ROG B560M Plus: geni.us Buy a kit of SK Hynix DDR4: geni.us Buy a Western Digital 512GB SSD: geni.us AMD Ryzen 5 5600X: geni.us MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX:geni.us Buy a kit of Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 RAM: geni.us Buy an Intel 670p 1TB SSD: geni.us Buy an MSI Mech 2X Radeon RX 6650 XT:geni.us Buy an ASUS Tuf Gaming 750 W 80+ Bronze PSU: geni.us Buy Fractal Design Focus G Mid-Tower Case: geni.us Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group. ► GET MERCH: lttstore.com ► SUPPORT US ON FLOATPLANE: floatplane.com ► AFFILIATES, SPONSORS & REFERRALS: lmg.gg ► PODCAST GEAR: lmg.gg FOLLOW US --------------------------------------------------- Twitter: twitter.com Facebook: @LinusTech Instagram: @linustech TikTok: @linustech Twitch: twitch.tv MUSIC CREDIT --------------------------------------------------- Intro: Laszlo - Supernova Video Link: youtube.com iTunes Download Link: itunes.apple.com Artist Link: soundcloud.com Outro: Approaching Nirvana - Sugar High Video Link: youtube.com Listen on Spotify: spoti.fi Artist Link: youtube.com Intro animation by MBarek Abdelwassaa @mbarek_abdel Monitor And Keyboard by vadimmihalkevich / CC BY 4.0 geni.us Mechanical RGB Keyboard by BigBrotherECE / CC BY 4.0 geni.us Mouse Gamer free Model By Oscar Creativo / CC BY 4.0 geni.us CHAPTERS --------------------------------------------------- 0:00 Intro 0:55 The Rules 1:31 Weirdest Advice Ever 2:28 What we got 3:53 The catch 5:14 His biggest mistake 6:06 What if we spec our own? 6:51 What if we build our own? 8:48 Who wins? 10:18 Outro
I bought a gaming PC from Best Buy and documented whether the prebuilt option offered good value under a strict set of rules. The first segment outlines the shopping constraints Maria must follow: keep the price under $1,000, ensure there is a discrete graphics card, and be able to walk out the door with the purchase. The sales process is shown as both chaotic and revealing, with the salesman pushing borderline strategies like backordering or price-protection schemes, which Maria rightly questions. The resulting machine, an ASUS G10CE-BB1560TI, is inspected in detail: its front and back panel layouts, video outputs, and a basic cooling solution are evaluated. The build quality is critiqued, highlighting loose cables and limited storage options, plus an older CPU and GPU combination that limits upgrade potential. The team compares this prebuilt to a personally assembled PC within the same $1,000 budget, including a hypothetical build fee for external builders, to ground the shopping experience in tangible value. In performance tests, the prebuilt holds up in some games at 1080p but falls behind a purpose-built rig, especially when the BIOS features like Smart Access Memory are properly enabled. The testing extends to non-gaming workloads, where the custom build clearly wins, underscoring why some buyers opt for DIY builds despite the convenience of prebuilt machines. Ultimately the video suggests that the Best Buy prebuilt can be a reasonable choice for a newcomer, but smarter component selections and a DIY build can yield a noticeably better system within the same budget. The sponsorships and holiday deals from MSI and Origin PC are woven in as context for consumer options, reiterating that deals may vary and that informed buying decisions are crucial. The closing takeaway is a nuanced verdict: Best Buy can deliver acceptable value with the right approach, but the best deal often comes from selecting smarter components or building your own rig, especially when budgeting with performance in mind.
Topics · technology · gaming · consumer-electronics · product-review
Questions answered
- What were the three rules Maria used to evaluate the Best Buy prebuilt PC?
- The PC had to cost under $1,000, include a discrete graphics card, and be ready to buy off the shelf without special ordering.
- What was the main hardware downside of the ASUS G10CE prebuilt compared to the DIY build?
- The prebuilt used an older Core i5 11400F, 12 GB of RAM, and a GTX 1660 Ti, which lagged behind the upgradable potential and performance of a custom build within the same budget.
- How did enabling a specific BIOS feature affect gaming benchmarks?
- Enabling Smart Access Memory in the BIOS significantly increased CS:GO performance, boosting average FPS by about 42% after the adjustment.
- What is the overall conclusion about buying from Best Buy versus building your own PC?
- Best Buy can deliver reasonable value for newcomers if components are chosen carefully, but a DIY build often yields a substantially better performance-per-dollar within the same budget.