 So the general wisdom these days seems to be that if you want to save a buck and build a gaming rig, AMD is the way to go, but what does that mean exactly? Like, AMD is for poor people who can't afford Intel? Well, at a very high price point you could make that argument. I mean remember, we're talking about gaming here, where Intel's top spec chips do outperform AMDs. But most people aren't buying top-of-the-line computers, and that doesn't mean that they're poor. It just means they want a good value. So we designed today's challenge to find out if AMD's performance deficit can be overcome by its advantages, which include less expensive CPUs and motherboards and included overclocking support all the way up and down the Ryzen lineup. And I think you guys are going to find our results really surprising, no matter what you were expecting. I certainly did. Eleven hardware sponsors are giving away a slew of awesome prizes at random to people voting in the Builds.gg 10k challenge, so head over to Builds.gg today for your chance to win. So we're gonna start things off right with a head-to-head build-off. Basically, here's how it's gonna go down. Using PC part picker, Anthony and I are each going to put together the best build we can, one for each side with a budget of $750 US dollars before taxes and shipping. And a big list of requirements. We both want to be able to overclock, if not now then later on. We're both gonna need at least one terabyte of storage and 8 gigs of RAM, and we both want at least a 500 watt power supply with 80 plus bronze certification. So here we go then. First order of business is gonna be the CPU. Both of us know that we need something reasonably powerful, but because of the overclocking stipulation, Anthony is going to get a big discount by going with AMD because all desktop Ryzen processors are unlocked. Thankfully, the Core i3-8350K isn't too expensive. Also, because AMD's mid-tier chipset enables overclocking, I can save money by going with a B-series motherboard. Not the cheapest one, mind you, because overclocking is a consideration. I'll want a board with decent VRMs. Of course, my K-series chip also doesn't come with a cooler, which means I need to drop yet more of my precious budget on one of those. Wow, this is starting to add up really quickly. Knowing Anthony's going for higher speed memory, I can claw back a bit of my budget by going with a less expensive kit. Unfortunately, that does mean that the per thread performance gap is gonna close between us, which is something I can't really afford. Pardon the pun. For storage, this Hitachi 1TB drive is a no-brainer. There are cheaper 1TB drives, but none are 7200 RPM. I'm also gonna pick up this DIY PC case and a Rosewill Arc 650W power supply. It's not the best quality unit, but for $40, it's 80 plus bronze and has a 3-year warranty. On to the graphics card. I really don't have much money left to spend here, and this is probably where I'm gonna get killed. I can only hope that Anthony isn't very good at putting together value builds. Okay, you just about ready there Linus? It's been a while. Yeah, I think I'm done. You good? Yeah. And with that, our builds are complete. So pencils down. Time to compare. Ooh. Yeah, I think I win. Well, okay, it's not about whether you win or lose. It's- Is it? More about how you play the game. Oh, okay. Well, I think I played better. Gaming. Um... So we've got a lot in common. We're both only spending 20-25 bucks on our cases. Yeah. Rosewill power supply. Yeah, you got the same Hitachi hard drive as well. The graphics card is gonna kill me. Honestly, I could almost afford an RTX, except I couldn't. Right. And I've only got a quad-core processor. Because your CPU is only five bucks more even though it's only a quad-core, but like it's a faster quad-core than it is than the Ryzen cores are. So it's the $45 on the board and the cooler that are costing me that GPU upgrade. Yeah, and your RAM is cheaper too. Yeah, I probably should have gone dual channel. It didn't make that much of a difference. So here's the thing. Requiring overclocking capability isn't really fair in the sense that Intel can deliver much better performance per dollar outside of their K-series overclockable chips. Even if those limitations are entirely their own doing. So let's actually work together then and modify the Blue Team build to try and get a little bit closer to that bang for the buck, shall we? Sure. Basically CPU's gotta go. Yeah, and I think you can get like an 8400 out of that. 8400 is such an underrated CPU. 64 reviews is all it's got. The value is entirely there. Yeah, it's outstanding. So that means I don't need a cooler anymore. Yeah, you can kill it. I don't need a Z-series board anymore. Yeah, you can go with a I would say B360. So now you should be able to afford the 2060. Okay. So with the Intel build now running a more reasonable B-series chipset, because we can't overclock anyway, we're able to get both a more powerful CPU and GPU. So that's six cores now and an RTX 2060. So with this modification then, our specs actually even out significantly. But it's worth noting that any edge the Intel system gets in its stock performance in games may be offset at least partially by AMD's unlocked core multiplier and higher thread count depending on the workload. So now what? Well, why don't I throw a couple of benches together and see if I can't figure out what the performance difference is between these? Oh, so we're not just gonna do this theoretical. We're gonna build these rigs and see what happens. Yeah, I like it. After an afternoon of prep, our performance results came out to be pretty interesting. As you can see, our first builds are really different. But while our AMD machine is way out ahead thanks to its powerful RTX 2060 graphics card, Intel does pull up close in some less GPU bound cases and in CSGO even manages to pull ahead. Though it should be noted that this game is notorious for performing much better on Intel. When we overclocked our first builds, all those extra threads on AMD's processor added up to a lot of oomph. And since our graphics card was a little bottlenecked at stock, this translated to a nice increase in gaming performance. So AMD beat out Intel by about 6% overall. With that said, our overclocked Intel machine on average beat our stock AMD systems RTX numbers. Not bad for a GTX 1660. Moving along, we've got our adjusted builds. So remember, our AMD machine saved a few bucks on the motherboard and our Intel one jumps up to a Core i5-8400 and RTX 2060, but loses its overclocking capability. So here, Intel is top dog for performance with neither machine overclocked, but then gets edged out by our overclocked AMD machine. This is proving to be a much closer race than we could have possibly hoped. And it gets even more interesting when we look at the value proposition. For our original configurations, despite very decent performance levels and a lower price tag, the Intel build ends up delivering poorer performance per dollar than our AMD one, both at stock speeds and when both of them are overclocked. Now, our Intel build ended up a little bit cheaper though, because we had some budget left over. Just not enough for anything that would impact performance like an RTX upgrade. So if you were building this box at home and didn't have a hard and fast $750 limit, the story might be a little bit different. But we are operating within the constraints that we set and AMD came out ahead at this price point. As for the adjusted builds, this puts Intel's value at the closest to parity out of all of our comparisons. But then when we compare it against our AMD builds overclocked numbers, it again gets edged out. And I guess it's that word that keeps coming up, edged, that is kind of the most interesting takeaway here. So as it turns out, go figure, neither AMD nor Intel's product management departments are staffed by C-Sponges. And every rig from both teams, regardless of overclocking, ended up being within about 5% in terms of the performance per dollar. Like it's almost like AMD's pricing structure is designed to maximize their profits while slightly undercutting Intel, but not so much that they have to react and drop their pricing. And like Intel's is designed to demand a small premium because of their more recognizable brand. Truly fascinating, isn't it? I honestly did not expect it to be this close. No. Like when we set out for this, what was your expectation? I was expecting AMD to just cream Intel at the low end. And then when we adjusted them, I would expect Intel to cream AMD because it's roughly the same price. And you had six cores of more gaming optimized single threaded performance like it? Yeah. So, I don't know. We ended up with a result that wasn't what we were going for, but we certainly had a lot of fun with it. And let us know in the comments below if you'd like to see any other of these kinds of value analysis pieces in the future, maybe at different price points or looking at different components of the system rather than just the CPU. Speaking of in the future, this message from our sponsor used to be in the future, but now, it's now. Get your fix on with iFixit's new line of Marlin screwdrivers. Each fixed blade screwdriver features an ergonomic knurled rubberized handle with a swivel top, plus a black oxide coated tip so it hangs on to tiny screws with a steel grip. The set caseline is held in place magnetically and can be used as a sorting tray, which is super handy, and it's manufactured in Germany and backed by iFixit's lifetime warranty. So even in the event that something goes wrong, you can contact the folks over there and they will get you fixed up in a hurry. It's almost like they fix things, like for a living. We've been using iFixit's tools for years and they make building PCs and repairing electronics around the office a breeze. Or at least as good as it can be. Sometimes it's very frustrating. So get the Marlin screwdriver set for $24.99 at iFixit.com forward slash Linus at the link in the video description. So thanks for watching guys, if you disliked this video you can hit that button. But if you liked it, I don't know who could dislike it because like there wasn't really a... Yeah, I don't think fanboys could... Yeah, like Intel can't be like, oh, AMD is so stupid and AMD can't be like, oh Intel is a little stupid. 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