 I would like to apologize for being so late on this video, but it wasn't my fault. Anthony got sick! That was a reenactment. He's fine now. So, let's set the ground rules. Products we choose for our builds this year must be available brand new, taken at either the regular retail pricing, or if they're like, perpetually on sale, whatever their usual price is, and they must fit within about 5% of our target budget, of which there are actually five this time around, from under $300 all the way up to $3,000. Also, they must wait until after this message from our sponsor, GlassWire, who lets you instantly see your current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device. Use offer code LINUS to get 25% off down below. Our new My First Gaming Rig price tier was challenging to hit, but this year, the stars aligned, and we actually pulled off a passable eSports gaming rig for about $300 with all brand new components. We started with the impressive Athlon 3000G from AMD, which, while only a dual-core CPU, has integrated Radeon Vega graphics, and seems to have become a darling for amateur overclockers and value seekers, thanks to its unlocked core multiplier and tame power draw and thermals. Of course, since we're espousing the OC capabilities of this chip, we will need a decent motherboard. MSI's B450M Pro VDH Max isn't high-end, but it's got four RAM slots for expansion, and is capable of 100 amps of current, according to our forum's handy-dandy motherboard tier list. Our deep-cool Matrix 30 case is unremarkable, but solid enough, and our Corsair VS450W is not only enough for today, but could even handle an upgraded graphics card if you wanted. The good news, though, is that you could do that later, because with 8GB of DDR4 3000 memory and a 1TB SSHD for storage, this build is absolutely capable of entry-level gaming today without the graphics card, so you could do far worse than this for your starter Pokemon. It has been a great year for first-time gamers. If you're still on a budget, but you want a little more bang for more competitive play, then our $500 Just Game Build is for you. At just $90, Intel's Core i3-9100F is a great upgrade from last year's Ryzen 3 2200G, giving us four faster cores, which is key for gaming. Isn't competition beautiful, ladies and gentlemen? Like our $300 build, we're sticking with 8GB of DDR4 3000 memory, but unlike that build, since this CPU has a locked multiplier, we won't be gearing up for overclocking. What we will be gearing up is our graphics. The newly released GeForce GTX 1650 Super is the obvious choice here, and it hits much harder than last year's GTX 1050 Ti, enabling entry-level AAA gaming without breaking the bank. What's more, since it has the Turing and Bank Encoder, you can even stream your exploits with only a small performance and quality loss. It all goes into the same inexpensive chassis as the Lite, powered by the same Corsair VS450W power supply. One note, though, is that while the VS is way ahead of some of our previous Just Game Builds, with like case-provided power supplies, a GPU upgrade down the road will likely require a more powerful unit. What won't need an upgrade, though, is our storage. For the first time ever, our $500 tier has no spinning rust, thanks to our 960GB Patriot Burst SSD. All in all, it's been a great year for budget gamers. For a Hamilton more than last year, we are getting substantially more performance across the board. Now, how about the mid-range, where our $1,000 GameNow build lives? Here, you start to get into 1080p AAA gaming, or even Lite workstation capabilities. The Ryzen 5 3600 takes over CPU duties from last year's 2600, and boy, is it ever a lot faster, thanks to Zen 2's performance improvements. This plucky chip, in combination with fast RAM, like the 16 gigs of DDR4 3600 we're giving it, actually handles pretty much anything that you can think to throw at it, as we demonstrated in our budget 4K editing workstation video. It is seriously versatile, and we've teamed it up with a seriously versatile XFX Radeon RX 5700DD Ultra for graphics. It convincingly beats last year's fire sale 1070 Ti out of the box, and has the potential to reach much faster speeds via a BIOS flash, or soft powerplay tables boost to enable 5700 XT-like performance. Now, if Nvidia is more your thing, an RTX 2060 would be their equivalent, but it costs a bit more, and what it has in features, it gives up in raw performance per dollar. We went with an MSI B450 Gaming Plus Max motherboard for its decent VRMs and features, including a BIOS flashback button and four DIMM slots for expansion, and it's plenty for our 3600, but guys, if you plan to upgrade in the future, you might want to consider an X series board instead, since a 12-core 3900X would need to be undervolted in order to reach max performance on this board. Powering all of it is a 550-watt Corsair CX 2017. It's not modular, but it's one of the better units at this price point, and it'll go into a practical, if not spectacular, fractal focus G. Capping things off, we went with a Noctua NH-U12S should we want to overclock our CPU, and storage duties are handled by a 1TB NVMe Corsair Force MP512 SSD. Overall, we spent a few bucks less than last year, but we are getting a lot more computer in every way. It's been a great year for mid-range gamers. And guys, this is regular price. Once you get up into the higher price brackets, you tend to see deeper promos. So get a couple of these things on sale, and you could fit an awesome shirt like this one into your budget. LTTstore.com. Moving up, our $2,000 game on build puts us in spendy territory where most people will probably draw the line, but where we get some serious horsepower to play with. The Ryzen 7 3700X is an eight-core, 16-thread monster of a CPU that's actually priced lower than last year's Core i7. And while it is marginally slower for gaming, it runs circles around that chip for anything else. And you'll be doing plenty of else with it because we are backing it up with 32 gigs of Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 memory, and of course our H1-15i Pro cooler so it can really stretch its legs. In fact, you can try and push it even further thanks to its unlocked core multiplier and Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi motherboard that's capable of maxing out even a 3900X with no tweaks required. The RTX 2070 Super in this year's build comes in as a direct replacement for last year's non-Super 2070. And while it isn't quite RTX 2080 levels, even a little more performance at the same price, and that's pretty super, I guess. It's a great 1440p card capable of everything RTX implies, and you're not really likely to feel restricted anytime soon unless you are super into ray tracing. Powering this beast is a 650 watt Corsair RM 2019, one of the higher end units you can buy right now, and it all goes into the NZXT H510 for a clean tempered glass aesthetic. As for storage, how does two terabytes of PCI Express Gen 4 SSD sound? Good? I thought so. We've got a faster and cheaper CPU, faster memory, faster GPU, bigger and faster SSD, no more hard drive, and a price tag that is essentially unchanged from last year. It's been a good year for high end gamers. Merry freaking Christmas. Finally, let's have a look at the $3,000 game end more build for those of you who lead more serious lives. Anthony has actually secretly been putting builds like these together for years of buyer's guides, but balanced machines kept ending up in the stratospheric $4,000 range. Fortunately, AMD's Ryzen 9 3950X changes all of that, bringing 16 cores into the realm of mere mortals with Perth red performance that is definitely making teen glue nervous. To go with it, we've got not one, but two 32 gig kits of Trident Z Neo DDR4 3600 memory, a beefy Fractal Celsius S36 360 millimeter AIO for cooling, and an X570 Aorus Master motherboard to give plenty of room to maneuver for tinkerers. Pulling graphics duty is the RTX 2080 Super, a small improvement over the 2080, but quite a lot cheaper than the TI, and that should tackle pretty much any task you'd care to throw at it. Decoding 8K red footage, running premiere and after effects compositions, light CAD, 3D rendering, and of course, its gaming performance is awesome too. It all goes into a Corsair Obsidian 500D powered by an 850 watt Corsair HX Platinum, and rolling a Gen 4 two terabyte NVMe SSD. I mean, compared to previous years, there is just no contest. The faster CPU and lower price, just knock it out of the park. It has been a good year for Budget Works to, that's the fifth time I've said that. I mean, that's the truth of it. 2019 was a great year for the PC industry and enthusiasts as a whole. I don't remember the last time the landscape changed this much, and all for the better in a single year. Prices are low for everything, including volatile commodities like DRAM and NAND flash, performance is up, competition is back, and it just feels good, right? Let's just bask in this. We don't get it very often. Like we have had so many frustrating years for building PCs. 2016 sucked, 2017 sucked, 2018 sucked a little less. This year, this year things are back on track. I can't think of a better Christmas gift than that. Unless it's a gorgeous website that's super easy to build. If you want one of those, check out our sponsor, Squarespace. Wait, what? You think you don't need a website? Of course you do. It's easy and you can do almost anything on it using Squarespace. They've got award-winning templates that will make building your website super easy and make it stand out instead of looking like it's from the 90s. So if you're looking to open a business online, selling products or whatever, they've got you covered there too. Squarespace can help you showcase what you're selling in a modern style. They've got a rich product display, including videos and image zoom. They've got automatic inventory management and there's no limit to how many items you wanna sell. Even we use Squarespace for both our linusmediagroup.com and LTXExpo.com websites. And if you ever get stuck, they have 24 seven support that is ready to help you out via live chat and email. So head to squarespace.com forward slash LTT and get 10% off Squarespace down below. Thanks for watching guys. If you're looking for another video to watch and maybe you're upgrading instead of doing a full build, check out our CPU buyers guide for this year and make sure you get subscribed so you don't miss any of our other holiday guides. Ciao.