the most average gaming PC

 - You know, the script calls for me to say this isn't running verywell, but it's fine. We love building, benchmarking, and gaming on the kinds of showcaseone-percenter machines that most people can only ever dream of, but as much fun as that is, the vast majority of those rigs actually get torn down forreuse in future videos, because even for us, dailydriving that kind of hardware, it's just not cost-effective or practical. It also kinda gives PC gaming a bad image as something that onlythe elite can afford, when that couldn't befarther from the truth. We've built competentesports gaming machines at great prices and even forunder $100 on this channel, and you can too if you'rewilling to make some compromises. Of course, the kinds of machines thatthe average gamer is running are somewhere between potatoand dream battle station. How do we know this? Well, the monthly Steam hardware survey, which tells us exactly which PC gaming hardwareis the most popular. So with its help we built the most populargaming PC on the planet and we're gonna show you guys exactly how much it wouldcost you to build it and what kind ofperformance you can expect. And today's video isbrought to you by Corsair. The Corsair iCUE 5000X RGBtempered glass smart case features their RapidRoutecable management system, smart RGB out of the box, and more. Check it out at the link down below. (upbeat music) That's right, we've gone one: a quad-core Core i7 4770K. According to the Steam hardware survey, 42.94% of you are rockingfour-core processors, with 18.03% of you runninga hyperthreaded model like this one between 3.3and 3.69 gigahertz, nice. It turns out then that as much as we alllove Ryzen right now, AMD couldn't possibly even manufacture enough of these things to put a dent in Intel's years of dominance, and as of January 2021, Team Blue still owns72% of the install base. Now, that number is shifting, and fast. Intel is down almost 10% since December, but it's gonna take time. Since motherboard choiceshouldn't impact performance much, we grabbed a Z87I-Deluxe from Asus that was lying around on a shelf. This combo should put us in the top range of average CPU performanceaccording to the survey. It was important for us to find something with hyperthreading since just shy of 20% ofyou apparently do have it. It's kind of amazing how long this chip has kept its relevance. And we actually checked out some reviews on Newegg and PCPartPickerleading up to this video, and it's mostly super positive. Like, even as recentlyas a couple of years ago. In the interest of strictly adhering to the specs in the Steam hardware survey, we're unfortunately gonnabe running this puppy at stock speed. But lots of users of this CPU report running it at 4.2, 4.3, or even 4.4 gigahertz for years at a time. That's not too shabby for a CPU that's older than our newsocial media coordinator. Memory was a surprising one for me. The average gamer out there,a whopping 43.85% of you, is running 16 gigs of system memory. Not bad! So we picked up two 8-gig sticks of good, old-fashioned DDR3 1866. This is actually a greatmiddle ground today. You can still squeeze by with 8 gigs, but most triple-A games arerecommending 16 gigs or more and a lot of other desktop applications can also benefit from more RAM. We're gonna go ahead and assume that you guys are running yourmemory in dual-channel mode and install it that way. You are running indual-channel mode, right? Now, a few things thesurvey doesn't mention include the case, power supply, cooler, and other peripherals, so we went with some Amazon bestsellers that I'm sure most of you will recognize. We've got the NZXT H510, a Hyper 212 EVO V2, and a Corsair CX550 power supply. All of them are tried-and-true classics and all of them should fit comfortably within most people's budgets. That is, unlike our solid-goldXbox controller. Ha ha! Get subscribed so youdon't miss those videos. That is, like, theemptiest-looking computer. Now it's time for what youguys all crave: the GPU. Thing is, as much as we mayall lust after ray tracing, you might surprised to learn that the top ray tracing-capable card was the RTX 2060 in fifthplace with only 3.6% share. Pretty much every current card, then, that is capable of delivering a smooth ray-traced gaming experience is conspicuously absent. The 3070 isn't even on the list and the 3080 maintainsa slim .6% market share. So it ended up being a pretty close race with the GTX 1060leading the pack at 9.4%. Okay. Get outta here. (Linus grunts) We've gone with the 6-gig model since that's how muchVRAM 23.5% of you have, and with 66.7% of yourunning 1080p displays, this should be more than good enough. All that remains is storage. On average you guys are running over one terabyte of storage. It didn't specify whether it'ssolid state or mechanical, so we're putting an SSD in here just to make our benchmarkingrun a little bit faster. And that's it. Ain't she a beauty? Looks to me like a lean,mean Steam machine. Or at least an LTT Steamgame-playing machine, since that whole Steam Machine idea totally, unexpectedly, fizzled and died. Let's go ahead and fire her up. But what games should we play? How 'bout the top fivegames on Steam? All right. So we got "CS:GO," "Dota 2,""PUBG," "Apex Legends," and "Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer"? Wait. Is that really "Garry's Mod" and "Half-Life 2:Deathmatch" in fifth place? Did this thing take us back in time? To a time when there was noLTT underwear on lttstore.com? Nope. They're definitely there. Go check 'em out at the link below. As it turns out, mostSource mods running on Steam contribute to this inflated number, including the "GTA V"community with the FiveM mod. So "Team Fortress 2" in sixth place? Let's go with that. Who put this here? Whee! Okay, I'm gonna fight this guy. Honestly, it's running pretty darn well. We're at 80, 90 FPS,dropping as low as 70, but this is totally anacceptable gameplay experience. Now you might've noticed the, ah, details of the game arelookin' a little basic. That's on purpose. That'sso that we get enough FPS. How have I not... Dang it. Aw, I'm knocked... I'm dead. I'm still a winner'cause the game ran okay. And overall, the average Steam gamerwith a machine like this is having a pretty smooth experience. Only "Apex Legends" and"PUBG" fell to 60-FPS lows, with most of these competitive titles here managing closer to 100 FPS with reasonably consistent frame times. Now, that's not to say that these games wouldn't benefit from a faster machine. We did a video back in 2019 demonstrating the competitive advantage of running at higher FPS, even if you don't have ahigh-refresh rate monitor, since your eyes will getmore up-to-date information than your competitors'. And "CS:GO" was an example of a situation where that difference is quite noticeable. It's really at its best when you can crank out over 200, 300 FPS. The competency of our... Competence? Whatever. Of our Steam PC shouldn'tbe that surprising though, I guess. Most of these games are actuallyfrom around the same era. So to kick things up a notchwe're heading over to Twitch to see if we could use this thing to play along with our favorite streamers. We didn't plan on this part of the video, but it is an interesting point to make. Sometimes your CPU canactually be a bottleneck when it comes to downloadingand installing games. But our 4770K is actuallykeeping up pretty nicely with a 107-megabyte-per-second download of "CoD: Warzone" from Battle.net, so... Oh yeah, it's at 20, 30% CPU usage. Not bad. Really? They make you watch a cutscene. See, every other gameknows not to do this. Okay, here we go. Whee! Let's see if I can manage to stay alive slightly longer than last time. You know, the script calls for me to say this isn't running verywell, but it's fine. Definitely a little chuggierand a little more tear-y than what we looked at before,but actually looks not bad. Okay, that's a lot of tearing right there. When I was a kid I'd have been absolutely elated to have anything over 60 FPS regardless of whether I had tosmear Vaseline on the screen for that free anti-aliasing. As for the rest of our games, you know, being on older hardware reallyisn't the end of the world. "Fortnite" was only a little rough when flying in on the Battle Bus, and even "GTA V" was able torun at plenty of FPS by default and even looked pretty decent if we didn't mind losing alittle bit of frame rate. So there are a coupleof lessons here for us, with the biggest one being that all it takes tojoin the PC master race is an interest in computers, and the gatekeepers whofawn over brand-new hardware and put down anything lessthan the latest and greatest can go suck an egg. Because unless you're trying to run brand-new triple-A gameson high or ultra settings, like "Cyberpunk," "The Medium,"or "Microsoft Flight Sim," you can have a reallysolid gaming experience with hardware like this. And the best part is thatwith some savvy eBay-ing you can build a machine like this, or upgrade a non-gaming machinethat you get your hands on, for anywhere from 750 to $1,300. Or maybe even less if you're willing to get a little creative with a Dremel to fit things together. With that said, a lot of this hardware isstarting to show its age, and if you upgraded you'ddefinitely appreciate the smoother animations andadditional image quality, especially in anything fast-paced. So there you have it,ladies and gentlemen, the average Steam hardware survey PC. Are any of you guys out there running any of these components? Of course you are. Are you still happy with them, or are you ready for an upgrade? Let us know in the comments below. 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