 Okay, it's in. In our recent secret shopper series, Agent Sarah determined which PC builder delivered the best balance of cost, price, and customer service. But one thing we didn't explore was what if she had just researched the parts herself and put it together creating her own gaming rig? Could she have saved money? Could she have gotten more performance? Could she have had a good time? Today we are going to answer all of those questions. We have set Agent Sarah out to sea with only three lifelines to get her through the process of independently researching and building her dream gaming rig. Let's see if she still thinks DIY is a good deal at the end of that ordeal. And let's see if you guys think our sponsor GlassWire is a good deal. GlassWire allows you to 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 GlassWire at the link down below. I know the CPU is quite important. I know the GPU is quite important. And if the motherboard is like the number one piece that I need, then I think that that would also be important. So maybe those are my top three that I should spend the most money on. I know Ryzen is a good CPU brand, so I think that's where I'm going to go. But they might be more expensive than Intel. I don't know. I don't know. That goes to show you the kind of mix of information Sarah got from the PC builders. This one looks cool. It has Wi-Fi and RGB. Yeah, that's a really easy way to spend way too much on a motherboard. She's not way off. Like CPU, GPU, motherboard. That's not a terrible list of your top three most important components of a computer. It's just that with the motherboard, because it doesn't affect performance, it basically comes down to does it have the features you want? Like is it the right form factor to fit in your case or does it have the IO that you need? I don't know. Let's just write down the number one motherboard for now. Honestly, if I was buying something I'm not familiar with, like a paintball marker, for example, I might just Google what's the best marker for a woods ball. And who cares, I guess, if they know anything about me or my play style or my skill level. Because I don't know. Apparently on Amazon, it's $255.99. But let's see how much it is on PC Picker. Ooh, OK. Yeah, it's $255.99. I guess I'll add that. Google, what's next? CPU. Like I know we want something that's high speed. Does CPU even control speed? It's central processing unit. Maybe it just controls other stuff. I mean, yeah, if I was a gamer and everyone told me, hey, you need a great graphics card, that's the most important thing for gaming. I might not even realize what a big deal that is. Maybe the Ryzen 5 5600X. It's oh, it's already it's already going to be more than half, I think, of my budget. Oh, maybe not. $5,4149. She's going to blow this budget real fast at this rate. It's supposed to work with my motherboard, I think. So I don't know. The fact that PC part picker exists does make this process a lot easier if you know to use it because it'll actually flag you if you pick a CPU that's accidentally not compatible. It'll even tell you if the BIOS of the motherboard might not be compatible out of the box and might require a flash. I mean, usually. What's the difference? What does 5600 versus 3600 versus 3700? What does that mean? That's a really fair question. It really was easier when we could chop at gigahertz. I don't want to go Intel, but Intel is cheaper. There's no shame in going Intel. Got to take advantage of that supply and demand, boys and girls. 5, 3600X. Okay, I'll add the 3600X then. She is way over spending on motherboard and under spending on CPU right now. I'll look back into it later. I think we should just get everything first. I actually support the idea of just getting everything thrown into a cart and then playing around with it after the fact because that way at least you can post to r slash build a PC or to the Linus Tech Tips forum and people can at least kind of help you tweak it as opposed to just going, I don't feel like doing any work and just dumping the work on someone else. Corsair Vengeance. I really like the white ones. Are they more expensive? Super shopping for RAM by color. I have a friend who shops for badminton rackets by whatever has the prettiest paint job and I'm just like. Best SSD for gaming. Top SSDs in 2021. ADATA. I've literally never heard of that company before. Oh no, the Samsung one is quite expensive as well. I trust Samsung. I've heard the company name before and I feel like when you can trust a company, you are more likely to go with their products. It's funny that she would say that because Samsung has a long and proud history of kind of coming in with a very mediocre product. Like their earlier optical drives, for example, terrible. And then just through sheer brute force, making it better or competitive with everyone else and then pushing everyone else out of the space. So eventually, yes, I trust a Samsung product. I trust a mature one. Samsung at 970 Pro, but it's $250. Wow. That is a really expensive SSD. What are we at now? 874 and we still need the graphics card and the case and the power supply. She is in for a real rude awakening when she tries to fit a graphics card in her budget. You know, you work around here and you just like see these cards being used in projects and you're like, oh, it can't be that expensive. Yeah. 3080, pretty pricey. 1660 Super, six gigabyte. That's $749. That's why gamers are so mad right now because a 1660 is costing what a freaking 3080 is supposed to. But shipping is free. What? I have no idea how I'm going to do this. Maybe the SSD is $250. Maybe I could find a better SSD for that price. This one is $119. I don't know if I would have gone with SATA. You can get some really good value M.2 drives these days, but I do agree with saving some money on the storage. Maybe I could downgrade the motherboard here. Does the motherboard just connect to the pieces? It's like the puzzle piece that holds everything together. $84 or 113. If it doesn't have wifi, then I have to get a wifi connector. Sarah, you can get a wifi dongle for like $7. This looks way more sensible given the other constraints on the build, like the GPU shortage. $169, but it's 750 watts. Core supplies are few and far between right now too, especially any that are high capacity enough for mining. We are under budget right now, but my case has to be less than $50. I mean, you can get cases for under 50 bucks. I might have balanced the budget a little differently. There's small cases for small pieces and big cases for big pieces. I don't know the size of my pieces, my components. Do I get like a really big case just in case or do I just YOLO and pick a case and hope everything fits? I feel like at LMG, we just YOLO. We don't YOLO? What does that even mean? That one's ugly. That one's ugly. Actually, that one's not bad. Cool case is just not a priority when you're this far over budget. Part picker doesn't have it. Or do they just order from other people? I don't understand. She thinks PC part picker is an actual store. Does PC part picker not have cases? Does PC part picker not have cases? They don't have anything. What are we at here? Okay. I only need to go down $85.92. With the motherboard change and dropping to an 870 EVO SSD, this is looking reasonably well balanced with the only thing that's out of whack being of course the graphics card. But what is Sarah supposed to do about that? I'm on the LTT forum. I'm going to post the parts that I've picked for my new PC. Hopefully somebody can suggest how we can get my budget down to $1,500. No $1,500 PC should have a 1660 Super and an A520 board. Okay. I agree. But like, it's not helpful. What is she supposed to do about it? Madison. Oh, my best Zoomer friends over here. Is this seriously Madison? Doesn't she have work to do? Slush your money down the toilet and flex on the haters. This person replied with quite a long post. They said, I understand the urge, but unless you look out at getting a card at MSRP, this is frankly a bad idea. Now that is a pretty helpful response. Unfortunately, we got to make a video. So you would think working in this office, you just pick up a thing about computers here or there, but the wing of the office she works in actually has very little computer conversation that takes place in it. I'd strongly recommend getting a B550 board instead of an A520. The chipset is better and you can get them for the same price. Okay. Is it B550F? This video is proof that manufacturers could do a way, way better job of improving clarity for the average consumer. I think it's more expensive, but this one for sure has Wi-Fi and it doesn't have those ugly orange accents. Why are you so obsessed with Wi-Fi, Sarah? Okay. I guess I'm downgrading my case again. I'm a piadocle. Now the funny thing is she was so determined not to go Intel, but if she'd gone Intel, she could have used onboard graphics while she waited for a decent deal on a graphics card. I wish that AMD had their best APUs available here. Like, isn't that ridiculous? All the motherboards still have like video outputs. So where do I start off from where we left off? I essentially need to figure out how to assemble it. I've heard a lot that building a computer is like adult Lego. If all the pieces were made by different manufacturers and there were eight different sets of instructions that don't really match up. So yeah, sort of. We'll see how this goes. Here we go. I don't know what parts I need to be gentle with and what parts I can be rough with. So I'm just going to be gentle with everything. The A520 board is fine if you need to save a buck. The one thing you're really missing out on is of course PCI express Gen 4, which might end up important for gaming in the future, but for now she's not really giving up any performance. I think it's safe for me to grab it from the bottom. Yeah, just put your hand all over it. Motherboard. Okay. So with this, I know the CPU is the next step. Just from watching our videos every once in a while. So I will grab that. Which found the CPU that's better than some of the ROG Rig Reboot contestants. This is the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 XT. I don't know what any of that means other than this is the processing unit. I think what it means is we didn't have a 3600 X in the warehouse. So we grabbed an XT. And I also know from illustrating the stealth CPU shirt that these little guys have triangles and I know the triangles line up with the triangle on here. But I don't see one. Maybe that. They really could make the triangles bigger, hey? There's probably no good way of doing this other than just trying to line it up best as possible. What do you mean no good way of doing it? No, no, there is a good way. Oh, I did it. And then this must go down. That seems pretty secure. Wait, let's check. Why? It's on there. Yes, I think next is the RAM. But I'm not sure what order they go in in the slots. It does look like there's two slots here that are open. Oh, that's so cheating because we built on this board before. Press. Oh my gosh. I don't want to break it. I am so scared by this every time. Press. Oh, I got one click, but not two. Okay. Wow. Why does she check things like this? You don't have to like heave on the RAM and try and shake the CPU out of the socket. It's in. I really hope I'm doing this in the right order. I'm kind of just going off of- Wait, what is she doing now? What? What I remember from watching our previous videos. Even if it wasn't in right, that wouldn't tell you. Oh, that's nice. We found one that still has the pre-applied thermal compound on it. That'll save her some trouble. Oh my gosh. Should I put it face down maybe? Yeah. Okay. Here, wait. Let me put it here. It doesn't look like there's any thermal paste in here. She's looking right at it. There's no instructions. Is there supposed to be instructions? Is this? This can't be the thermal paste. Hey, there we go. Oh, I touched it. I think- Why? I'm going to look this up. I'm just going to assume that this already has thermal paste or is already thermal paste. Did I touch it? Am I not supposed to touch it? Stop touching it. It feels like it doesn't belong there. Stop touching it. No. Maybe it does. This little doingy here will clip both of them in. I got this. I don't think she got this. I believe it would have to go somewhere on here, so maybe I want it to be facing that way. I can't even breathe. I'm just like, I'm so tense right now. Oh man, I want to help so bad. Because it's not hard, but it's tricky. You know what I mean? The distinction? Once you've done it, it's like, schwamp schwamp, here we go. She hasn't done it before, so it's not schwamp schwamp, here we go. It's this. It's stuck. Oh, okay. Wait. Oh, okay. You got to watch out for that, ladies and gentlemen. If your thermal paste is suctioned onto your CPU and you just pull your CPU cooler off, you can pull your CPU out of the socket and then it can fall and bend pins. Now we got to figure out how to clip it in without breaking it. No, we got to put the other clip on first. I'm going to break it. I'm so scared I'm going to break it. I'm so scared you're going to break it too. I got tiny fingers. Should I use something to pry it down? I feel like you're not supposed to be able to do that. What you need to use is a lifeline right now. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. If you put the clippy thingy down. You know this isn't the hardest part, right? If I push it. I did it. Oh my God, I did it. Wow. There was no point. I'm like a good luck charm. All right, well, that's one of your three hints. That's really not what I would have used it on. I have my case and I'm going to lay it down flat. Hopefully that doesn't do anything bad. Wait. Oh my gosh. She keeps whacking me. I'm being so aggressive. Please no. It's probably fine. I think this is fine. Okay, wait, let's do my test and see if this is in properly. Okay. It's in. Do I need to take this out? Is she about to start disassembling the drive? How? Oh, she thinks she bought an M.2. Is this not going to work? Did I buy the wrong SSD? I don't want to force it in. I don't want to break it. Oh no. I just want to know what I need to do. One into your SSD and the other into your motherboard. Why is she not watching Linus Tech Tips? Come on. We have a video on how to install an AMD cooler, for example. I kind of hate this. Doesn't this look tacky? But it's not supposed to be there like that. This spot right here looks like it fits a power supply unit. Wait, did she just decide we're going to put the power supply in the five and a quarter inch base? What is even happening? I'm wrong. It doesn't go here. It goes here. Because this needs to be facing outwards and this doesn't allow that, which means it goes this way. Ah, yes. Assuming that we want to blow this part, I would want it facing out. Oh no, now she's overthinking it. Then that would make this upside down. I'm going with my gut and saying the fan needs to be facing towards and not downwards. Because most of the airflow is going this way. Either way is honestly. Yeah, this is right. Is it bad to plug in things into the wrong places? Yes, it is. Am I going to destroy this computer by accident? Maybe. I think this matches that one. So I'm going to try. The scariest part of this is that you can actually get it in there. I proved that when I did my blindfolded build. They should have just done a 10 pin PCI express connector just to not have this happen. After examining, it's wrong. But this one, this one maybe. Let's try it. So this one says power LED plus and this one says power LED minus and I can see here that this says plus PLED and minus PLED. So I'm going to assume from that that the plus one goes here and the minus one goes here. Gg, Sarah. Damn. Oh, stop wobbling, wiggling things. It didn't really click, but it's in. Well, why don't you check and see if it's in by shaking the computer and seeing if it falls out. But no, don't. Oh, this cable probably. I should move that. Yeah, I should move that. The fact that it was that easy to pull out maybe doesn't mean it was improperly. Oh, stop. Okay, that was a good snap, not a bad snap. You can never really tell. It's in. It's in. I have successfully installed the GPU. I guess we don't know that until we get the computer running. Let's just guess. So I have kind of realized this cable is in the way and I could remove the graphics card to kind of slide it down the back here. No, please don't. But I'm trying to decide if it's worth the hassle for me because the last time I tried to remove a GPU, it really didn't turn out for literally anybody involved in that. Stop. But I really want to. I think if I just push this. Okay, it made a click. Now pull. Oh, that's yes. Wow, I did that so smoothly. Why wasn't it that easy the first time? So smoothly. Wait, we're going to go back now and do this once more. And this is lined up. Please just push it in straight. Now push. There we go. Stop. I'm going to see what I can do about this. There's our SSD still just hanging there. I have no clue what to do with this. Manual. Duct tape. Duct tape. I'm grabbing duct tape. Duct tape fixes everything. Yeah, there we go. I don't want that to be visible. I can't see it. I realized I have this little plate thing that's supposed to go. Oh crap, I'm going to try to get it in now. Cringing out my face. And see if that works. That I didn't even. No, you can't put it in. Oh no, I was supposed to put it in beforehand. It's too late. It's not going to work at all. Who cares about that stupid silver back plate anyways. I pressed the power button and it turned on. There's a light, which is good. We got lights. We got fan spin. My CPU cooler looks like Shrek. Looks like Shrek. But that doesn't help me here. No it says no DP detected. See, this is what I was talking about. Okay. AMD doesn't have proper top tier APUs here in North America. All the motherboards have video outputs. This is the kind of confusion you end up with. I have received a hint. I don't think this goes into the motherboard. It goes into the graphics card. Oh no, that says DP. Butts like clenching, just watching her like jam things into things. There's a lock on the cable. Does she know? This is the hardest part, is figuring out what's wrong. All she's got to do is just give it a quick power cycle. Display port does not hot plug as well as some other interfaces. So I have a computer. If it doesn't compute, is it a computer? I mean, according to my last logic, it is not a computer right now because it's not computing at all. So you see when I turn it on here, we've got RGB everywhere. Good. That's a first step. But then... Am I magic or what? I didn't even have to touch it. I don't even got magic fingers today. This is just magic presence. All right. See you later. You're welcome. Thanks. And select proper root device. How do I do that? Whether you're installing with UEFI windows or whether you need to enable CSM in the BIOS or whatever, it's really frustrating for even semi-experienced builders. Her Google food is quite strong. Download tool now. Okay. It's been at 97% for like two minutes. But does that mean I did something wrong or does that just mean the computer is... Well, I guess that still means I did something wrong. Reboot. The computer restarted. You told me it would be fine. I feel as though I belong here. I'm coming. All right. Yes. I think I did something wrong. So this is actually not my fault. I blame new guy. Right now what we're doing is we are reinstalling windows. So I'm choosing the boot device, which is your Corsair Voyager thumb drive. Where the hell is your Corsair... Oh, there it is. And we're just going to take a fresh go at that. Okay. It should be fine. I have my good luck dinosaurs. No, no. I'm the good luck. We determined that these are lucky, but you're lucky so you're also a dinosaur. LTTstar.com. I did it. I built a computer. Now all that remains to be seen is if she feels like it was worth the additional stress compared to having someone else build it for her. It was a struggle. You have no idea how much of a struggle it was. I had way more fun trying to build my own computer than I did making phone calls or trying to buy one online, which was easy. Yes. I really think that this is just something that you need to do in your lifetime. Build a computer. It's fun. I feel like I've learned a lot. Next time I build a computer, I'll know what I'm doing basically. Maybe now it's cheaper to buy a pre-build. If you can get a GPU at a regular price or a price that you're not worried about paying for then I a hundred percent would recommend building your own computer. Truly, it was worth it. What a great conclusion. Did she nail it or what? Yes, it's stressful and yes, it's way more difficult. It's a lot easier to just buy a pre-built computer, but it's rewarding. You'll learn something. It can be fun in like a stressful, anxious kind of way, but now is probably not the right time to do it unless you manage to get your hands on a GPU out of your MSRP. Nailed it, Sarah. Just like I always nail our sponsor segues, FreshBooks is the easy to use accounting software designed specifically for you, the small business owner. FreshBooks has everything you need to manage your books including invoicing, expensing, time tracking and more. And it's designed to be easy to use with built-in automation so you spend less time invoicing, expensing and tracking projects and more time doing what matters most, which is growing your business. So whether you're a trades person, a creative agency or a YouTuber, you can choose a plan that is just right for you. We have an award-winning Toronto-based customer support team who's always happy to help you if you need it. And you can try it out for free for 30 days by going to freshbooks.com slash Linus. There's no credit card required. That's freshbooks.com slash Linus. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out our last round of Secret Shopper where agent Sarah got absolutely bamboozled by Dell, though in her defense, that was entirely not her fault.