 You know, the script calls for me to say this isn't running very well, but it's like, it's fine. We love building, benchmarking, and gaming on the kinds of showcase one 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 for reuse in future videos, because even for us, daily driving that kind of hardware, it's just not cost-effective or practical. It also kind of gives PC gaming a bad image as something that only the elite can afford when that couldn't be farther from the truth. We've built competent e-sports gaming machines at great prices, and even for under $100 on this channel. And you can too, if you're willing to make some compromises. Of course, the kinds of machines that the average gamer is running are somewhere between potato and dream battle station. How do we know this? Well, the monthly Steam hardware survey, which tells us exactly which PC gaming hardware is the most popular. So with its help, we built the most popular gaming PC on the planet, and we're gonna show you guys exactly how much it would cost you to build it, and what kind of performance you can expect. And today's video is brought to you by Corsair. The Corsair IQ 5000X RGB tempered glass smart case features their rapid-route cable management system, smart RGB out of the box, and more. Check it out at the link down below. That's right, we've got one. A quad-core Core i7 4770K. According to the Steam hardware survey, 42.94% of you are rocking four core processors, with 18.03% of you running a hyper-threaded model like this one, between 3.3 and 3.69 gigahertz. That's nice. It turns out then that as much as we all love 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 owns 72% 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 choice shouldn'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 performance, according to the survey. It was important for us to find something with hyper-threading, since just shy of 20% of you 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 PC part picker leading up to this video, and it's mostly super positive, like even as recently as a couple of years ago. In the interest of strictly adhering to the specs in the Steam hardware survey, we're unfortunately gonna be 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 new social 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 eight gig sticks of good old fashioned DDR3 1866. This is actually a great middle ground today. You can still squeeze by with eight gigs, but most AAA games are recommending 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 your memory in dual channel mode and install it that way. You are running in dual channel mode, right? Now, a few things the survey 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 gold Xbox controller. Ha ha, get subscribed so you don't miss those videos. That is like the emptiest looking computer. Now it's time for what you guys all crave, the GPU. Thing is, as much as we may all lust after ray tracing, you might be surprised to learn that the top ray tracing capable card was the RTX 2060 in fifth place 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 maintains a slim 0.6% market share. So it ended up being a pretty close race with the GTX 1060 leading the pack at 9.4%. Get out of here. We've gone with the six gig model since that's how much VRAM 23.5% of you have, and with 66.7% of you running 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's solid state or mechanical. So we're putting an SSD in here just to make our benchmarking run 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 steam game 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 about the top five games on steam? All right, so we got CSGO, Dota 2, PUBG, Apex Legends, and Source SDK Base 2013 multiplayer. Wait, is that really Gary's Mod and Half-Life 2 Deathmatch in fifth place? Did this thing take us back in time to a time when there was no LTT underwear on lttstore.com? Nope, they're definitely there. Go check them out at the link below. As it turns out, most source mods running on steam contribute to this inflated number, including the GTA V community with the 5M mod. So Team Fortress 2 in sixth place, let's go with that. Who put this here? Wee! Okay, I'm gonna fight this guy. Honestly, it's running pretty darn well. We're at 80, 90 FPS, dropping as low as like 70, but this is totally an acceptable gameplay experience. Now, you might've noticed the details of the game are looking a little basic. That's on purpose, that's so that we get enough FPS. How have I not, dang it. Oh, I'm knocked. I'm dead. I'm still a winner, because the game ran okay. And overall, the average team gamer with 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 a high refresh rate monitor, since your eyes will get more up-to-date information than your competitors. And CS GO is 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't be that surprising though, I guess. Most of these games are actually from around the same era. So to kick things up a notch, we'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 can actually be a bottleneck when it comes to downloading and installing games. But our 4770K is actually keeping up pretty nicely with a 107 megabyte per second download of Cod War Zone from Battle.net. So, 20, 30% CPU usage, not bad. Really? They make you watch a cut scene. See, every other game knows not to do this. Okay, here we go. Wee! 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 very well, but it's like, it's fine. Definitely a little chuggier and a little more teary 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 to smear Vaseline on the screen for that free anti-aliasing. As for the rest of our games, you know, being on older hardware really isn'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 to run at plenty of FPS by default and even look pretty decent if we didn't mind losing a little bit of frame rate. So, there are a couple of lessons here for us, with the biggest one being that all it takes to join the PC master race is an interest in computers, and the gatekeepers who fawn over brand new hardware and put down anything less than the latest and greatest can go suck an egg. Because unless you're trying to run brand new AAA games on high or ultra settings, like Cyberpunk, the medium, or Microsoft Flight Sim, you can have a really solid gaming experience with hardware like this. And the best part is that with some savvy e-bang, you can build a machine like this or upgrade a non-gaming machine that 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 is starting to show its age, and if you upgrade it, you definitely appreciate the smoother animations and additional 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. Do you need to create a beautiful website without the hassle? Check out Squarespace. Their all-in-one platform makes it easy to get up and running quickly. They have award-winning templates that you can use as starting points for a wide range of projects, and if you ever need additional help, Squarespace also offers webinars, a full series of help guides, or you can even contact their 24-7 customer support via live chat or email. If you already have a third-party domain, you don't have to give it up, just transfer it over to Squarespace, or you can get one directly from them. Plus, you get e-commerce features to help you sell merch or services online and easily manage your inventory and orders. So head to squarespace.com forward slash LTT to get 10% off your first purchase. And if you liked this video and you're looking to build something like it, check out the Dell Office PC that I upgraded to run Valorant a few months back. It's got some really great tips in that video for optimizing Optiplex gamer builds, as we like to call them.