Photon 2.0 $500 Gaming PC Build - October 2016 #Helpful Post

hey guys Austin and today I'm here with

the photon 2.0 so for $5.00 this should

be a pretty solid computer but first we

have to put it together so $500 is an

interesting sweet spot you're getting a

system that's going to be a lot more

powerful than one of the ultra budget

rigs well still not being that much more

expensive than something like a console

for the case we have the thermal take

versa h15 I actually really like this

chassis so not only is going to be

fairly affordable which is definitely

appreciated on a build like this but

you're really not losing a lot so we

have USB three we have a full 120

millimeter fan around back now

importantly especially if this is your

first computer build there's plenty of

room inside so it should be fairly easy

to work on cable management and height

and not be quite so clean and we'll see

in a few minutes but this should be a

great chassis to start with powering the

photon 2.0 is this 500 watt EVGA power

supply this is actually a little bit

overkill for what we need right now

however with that 500 watts of capacity

that means that you have a little bit of

extra capacity if you want to do some

upgrades which is always nice and it's

still an 80 plus certified supply which

means that now is it efficient that also

should be fairly well quality eyes for

the motherboard we have a gigabyte h1

10ma now this is a fairly basic

motherboard to be fair however the most

important thing is is that you have a

lot of future expandability options so

while you can rock this guy for now

which makes the photon a great system

for today over this will support a core

i5 core i7 we can pump up the memory

there's a lot that we can do this is a

great starting point powering the system

is an Intel Core i3 6100 now I'm

actually a pretty good Vanacore I freeze

for gaming builds so especially on the

budget side while you can go AMD I like

the i3 for the expandability options so

here we have 3.7 gigahertz a raw dual

core hyper threaded fury honestly this

is actually fine for pretty much any

game out there with that hyper threading

it allows it to act like a quad-core

processor so most any game should run

fine on the core i3

and we're getting it like 100 bucks so

it's hard to complain remembering we

have a gigabytes of Crucial Ballistix

sport ram now I like this for a couple

reasons

first of all eight gigs of DDR 4 clocked

at 2400 megahertz is totally fine for

anything we want to do today and

amazingly enough it's also ready for

upgrades so because this is a sink

them that means that we have a full

extra slot here if you want to ever

upgrade so for example if you want to

bump this up to 16 gigabytes it's super

easy powering everything is the new EVGA

geforce gtx 1060 graphics card now this

thing is no joke especially when you

consider this is a 500 allah gaming

computer build we're here spending most

of our budget on the card however that's

a good thing graphics cards are easily

one of the most important parts of a

gaming computer so this is a three

gigabyte version of the card however

it's still going to be powerful enough

to handle literally any game out there

so around back you have up to five

display outs so if you want to go multi

monitor crazy you can so you might not

want to game on five monitors at once

and it also shares a lot of DNA with its

bigger brothers the 1070 and the 1080

all in all a great card for the builds

rounding things out we have a one

terabyte Western Digital blue hard drive

now I've used these and a ton of gaming

PC built in the past they're rock solid

reliable while they might not be the

fastest things in the world if you don't

want to go full SSD and this is gonna be

a lot cheaper than that this is gonna be

completely fine however as always I feel

like I've said this like a million times

with this build it's very simple to use

an SSD on top of this to get nine of the

capacity but also the speed however for

now we're just rocking the blue alright

so the photon 2.0 is done however now

comes the fun part

how does it actually perform get into a

game like GTA 5 and you'll see we're

easily capable of running on very high

settings at 1080p with a solid 60 FPS

this is a great example of getting

better than console graphics and a

rock-solid frame rate moving on to a

title which has been a staple of my

testing for a while we have Middle Earth

shadow of Mordor

here again we're easily able to play on

Ultra settings at 1080p at well over 60

frames this is a title you could

probably bump up to 1440p and still be

fine getting into a DirectX 12 game we

have ashes of the singularity this is a

much more demanding title that

especially taxes the CPU but even here

we're able to play on extreme settings

at 1080p with around 38 fps as always

all the links you guys need to build

this will be in the description as well

as a full tutorial on how to put

together a gaming computer and you also

may want to stay tuned to the channel

may or may not be a giveaway going on

pretty soon catch you guys the next one