 What a roller coaster. In this crazy year, AMD finally eclipsed Intel in gaming performance with their new 5,000 series CPUs, Nvidia unleashed true 4K 120 Hertz gaming on the world with the new RTX 3000 series, and Team Red brought out a true competitor with their big Navi RX 6000. All of these things happened at relatively attainable manufacturer suggested prices. But there's one problem, you can't have any. Even large retailers just cannot get enough stock. And the situation is made worse by opportunistic butt holes, scooping up what little there is and selling it at jacked up prices on eBay. But that never stopped us from doing a holiday buyer's guide before, and it sure as heck won't stop us now. With GlassWire, you can keep track of the weird stuff that's connecting to your PC, even when you aren't using it. If a strange device joins your Wi-Fi, you'll be notified instantly. Get 25% off using code Linus at the link below. (*upbeat music*) Like last year, products that we choose for our build must be available brand new, taken at whatever their usual price is, and they've got to fit within about 5% of our target budgets. At $300, our Just Game Lite price tier was just as challenging to hit as last year. But we did pull off a passable e-sports gaming experience. We're still rocking a dual core Athlon 3000G from AMD with integrated Radeon Vega graphics. And as before, we would recommend taking advantage of its unlocked core multiplier for a little bit of extra performance. Our motherboard this year is an ASUS Prime B450M-A. It's got four RAM slots for expansion, some basic overclocking capabilities, and ASUS has committed to adding Ryzen 5000 series CPU support, giving you a ton of room to upgrade. We went with a Rosewill FBMX2, which is unremarkable, but gets the job done. And we even managed a modest upgrade to our power supply, going from a 450 watt to 500 watt unit from Thermaltake. It's plenty for today, and it'll even be good enough for a modest graphics card upgrade. To round out the build, we've got eight gigs of DDR4 3000 memory and a one terabyte SSHD from Seagate for storage. It's a great little build, and it's absolutely capable of entry-level gaming. Although I do have to confess that if it was my money, I'd probably buy an Xbox Series S at this price. Assuming of course that you can find one. Our $500 tier was also a bit of a struggle. We would have loved to go for a Ryzen 33100, but well, you know. Fortunately, Intel stock is a little better in this price tier at the moment. And if we roll the dice on an ASRock B460M HDV, whatever that thing is, it's got like no user reviews, we can squeeze in a 10th gen Core i3-10100F. Paired with a GeForce GTX 1650 Super, this CPU will handle AAA gaming at 1080p, no problem. And as an extra bonus, the super version of the 1650 features Nvidia's Turing and Vencon Coder. So you can capture your epic gaming moments at very high quality with only a small hit to your PC's performance. The same inexpensive case and power supply combo returned from our $300 machine, but instead of resorting to a spinning disc, we've gone full SSD with a 960 gig Patriot burst. Now we could have dropped some of that capacity and invested that savings into a faster graphics card. But honestly, we felt it was better to just save our pennies for today and upgrade the GPU down the line once availability improves and next gen budget products launch. Now, a thousand US dollars tends to be the bang for the buck sweet spot. So our intention was to use the best bang for the buck CPU on the market, AMD's Ryzen 5 3600. But there aren't any. Fortunately, the Core i5 9600K and an MSI Z390A Pro is gonna cost us almost the same amount and it's in stock. We equipped our board with 16 gigs of DDR4 3600 rip saw memory from G skill. And you know what? This actually ain't bad. We didn't give up much in terms of performance going to last gen Intel here. But if you are watching down the line, a Ryzen 5 3600 with an ASUS Prime B550M-A would have been our first choice because even though it would sacrifice some raw gaming performance, it offers a better upgrade path for the future. As for our graphics card, man, I got to level with you here guys. This was really tough. When we put this script together just a couple of days ago, we had an ASUS dual fan RTX 2060 in here for 330 bucks. Since then, it's gone, everything's gone. And the best we can do is an RX 5600 XT. Now the 1660 Super is also an option, but it costs more than AMD's offering and generally performs worse. So I'd stick with Team Red here unless ShadowPlay gameplay capture is particularly important to you. An Noctua NH-U12S CPU cooler gives us plenty of thermal room for overclocking and goes perfectly with our quiet Seasonic S12 III 650 watt power supply. We chose a Phanteks P300A mesh case for its great airflow and aesthetics. And as a bonus, it is super easy to build in. Now we didn't get a capacity upgrade for storage, but our one terabyte Samsung 970 Evo NVMe drive is likely to contribute to better game loading times in the future. At $2,000, we are teetering on the precipice of big spender territory. And this is probably where most people will draw the line. Now we would have strongly preferred a Ryzen 5 5600X here, but at roughly the same price, the 3700X is not without its charm either. It offers decent gaming performance and with eight cores, 16 threads, it runs circles around most of its competition at this price point in pretty much anything else. With value like that, you can show off your inner geek by also picking up a Stealth Pins CPU shirt from lttstore.com. Ah, you snuck that in there, that's good. Now we also doubled our RAM to 32 gigs of Trident Z Neo DDR4 3600 and went with a ChromeX Black Noctua NHD 15S. The black version does cost a little bit more, but it looks so good. And we decided to treat ourselves. We also splurged on our motherboard, choosing an Asus TUF X570 Pro WiFi. It's got all the modern features, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, two and a half gigabit ethernet, and an internal USB 3.2 Gen 2 header for high speed USB. Powering this computer is an 850 watt Seasonic Focus G, giving us plenty of power and decent efficiency with an 80 plus gold rating. And we picked up two terabytes of PCI express Gen 4 storage in the form of the Corsair MP600. All of this is housed in the new 4000D, also from Corsair, with its ample airflow, space for a 360 millimeter radiator if we ever wanna go water cooling in the future, and a clean tempered glass look. For graphics, there is no graphics card that we can recommend in this price bracket. But we left you $500 of budget to work with to pick up an RTX 3070 once the world returns to sanity. If you don't have an older card to use while you wait, I don't know. GTX 1070 seem to be going for about 250 bucks on eBay. They're gonna drop by at least $100 in value while you wait, but that's a lot better to me than spending $900 today on a 2080 Ti, and then having it drop four to $500 of that value in a few months. So the best of the worst options. And it's with that in mind that we are actually abandoning our $3,000 game and more tier this year. I mean, I would have loved to put together like a dream machine list with a 16 core 5950X and a 3080 for you work by day, extreme gamer by night folks. But the cold hard truth is that enthusiast tier hardware is already a dubious value proposition at manufacturer suggested prices. And if you're paying a big premium on top of that, it's just not good money sense. Don't do it. If this is what you were after, you should have listened to me eight months ago when I told you to buy PC now before everything is out of stock. For everyone other than the extreme tier folks, you probably noticed some main themes in all of our builds. Compared to last year, we dug deep to upgrade our power supplies and work in motherboards with updated feature sets. We also chose cases with a little bit more airflow. That's because all of our systems, except the thousand dollar tier where we kind of had to skimp on our motherboard are designed to be upgraded in the future. Cause we'd expect many of you to be able to sell your placeholder CPUs and GPUs without taking too much of a hit and then upgrade to the latest generation components when the time comes. None of that is probably what you wanted to hear, but it's the truth. Get the best prices and best selection on PC hardware and other technology at any of Micro Center's 25 locations across the United States. You can check out their custom PC builder to configure the best custom PC for your price point. And for a fee, you can check the same day pro assembly box to have Micro Center's expert in-store technicians assemble the PC for you. Check them out today and follow the link in the video description for a three 32 gig flash drive and 32 gig micro SD card offer that's valid in-store only, no purchase necessary. You're looking for another video to watch? Maybe check out this over the top build I did and sold to a lucky customer for just 20 bucks. It was a lot of fun.