Positron 2.0 $1000 Gaming PC Build - #Helpful Post

Hey guys, this is Austin and welcome to the Positron 2.0.

As my first build of 2016, I wanted to kick it off

with a bang, and what better way than to start

with the most requested build I've had in a long time?

The biggest upgrade is on the CPU side.

We're now using an Intel Core i5-6500.

As one of Intel's new Skylake processors, not only is it

still a quad-core chip that can clock well over 3 gigahertz,

it's also based on the new Skylake architecture, which is

two generations newer than what was in the old Positron.

One of the nice parts about this chip is that

it is much less expensive than its bigger brother.

Now, part of this is due to the fact that

it's not overclockable, however it's still fairly fast,

and one of the most important things is

is that you can still upgrade in the future.

So with our Z170 motherboard, if you ever want

to go to, say, an unlocked Core i5,

or even a Core i7, it's a super simple upgrade.

The real heart of the build though,

is the MSI Radeon R9 390 graphics card.

Compared to the GTX 970 in the original Positron,

it's able to outperform in benchmarks like Fire Strike.

However, the real advantage is having that whopping

eight gigabytes of GDDR5 memory.

Get into games and as you would expect, this thing is no joke.

So in Grand Theft Auto 5, you're easily able

to run at 1440p, very high settings, and you're still

getting roughly around 60 frames per second.

Move over to Metro Last Light Redux, and again,

it's easily playable at 1440p, and you're

still getting some really rock solid frame rates.

Shadow of Mordor is another demanding game,

and here again we're able to play on ultra settings

at 1440p with just over 50 frames per second.

While 1440p really is a sweet spot for this system,

you can play games at 4K as well.

The Witcher 3 is playable on medium settings,

around 30 frames per second, which,

while it might not be ideal, is totally playable,

especially if you want those extra pixels.

Now while usually I focus on the gaming side

of these systems, you can also do video editing

on the Positron 2.0 as well.

I loaded up some 4K Sony FS7 footage using Premiere,

and it handles it reasonably well.

If this was a dedicated editing PC, I would probably

bump it up to a Core i7 and 16 gigs of RAM,

but considering that it can handle 4K footage

right out of the box is not too bad.

And speaking of the box, I'm kind of

partial to the NZXT S340 case.

It's got a big window to show off your build in all

of its glory, well, depending on your cable management.

But it's got really good cable management as well

to kinda help things be nice and neat, and on top

of that, it has this awesome red and black finish.

Seriously, this is one sexy looking PC.

And of course, going through the rest of the system

we do have eight gigabytes of Corsair DDR4 memory.

For storage we're using a 250 gigabyte Crucial

BX100 SSD alongside a one terabyte WD Blue hard drive.

This is a great combo for giving you not only that SSD

speed that you really should have in a system like this,

but also giving you plenty of storage

for your extra files and media.

On top of that, the combo is really

not that expensive either.

And powering the build is a 600 watt

Corsair CX600 power supply.

Pretty standard stuff, but it'll get the job done.

Put it all together, and the Positron 2.0

is a build I'm really happy with.

As always, I'll have all the links you guys need

in the description of this video,

and I will catch you in the next one.

However, with that extra memory it means that you

can do other stuff that I haven't really remembered.

It can do stuff though, probably.