A Very Repeatable $400 Gaming PC Build Guide

today we're finally back with another episode of flipping Friday what took you so long and today we're using my personal favorite budget CPU and GPU combo as well as a budget case that's completely dominating the PC flipping market right now let's start Builders [Music] starting with the CPU here we have what's now considered a ryzen OG the ryzen 5 3600 and this 6 quart and 1230 chip used to dominate the mid-range builds just a few short years ago back in 2019 when this chip was brand new this CPU could be paired with literally any graphics

card without bottlenecking it and that means that today in 2023 it's become a really solid budget option on the used Market a ton of people bought the 3600 when it first launched and now this is about the normal time when those people sell it to upgrade to something better so it's a really hot product right now for Budget builds and flips the motherboard were plugging the 3600 into is way more boring this is just the Asus Prime b450m-a2 and this was simply the cheapest option that I could find for this project that had a somewhat

white and black color scheme the used am4 motherboard Market is still very hit or miss right now and more often than not it's just better to go with a brand new board as opposed to a used one you can obviously sometimes find a really good deal for like less than 50 bucks but right now most am4 and especially b450m motherboards are around 60 to 70 dollars used and at that point you might as well mitigate the possible issues that you could have and just buy a brand new one for around 80 bucks that's at least

My Philosophy right now during the current motherboard market and real quickly before we move on to the ram selection if you're trying to keep those profit margins high for your PC flipping business then today's video sponsor can definitely help you out with that today's video is sponsored by gvg mall and you probably already know that I've been using them for so long to activate Windows on a ton of my own builds they're actually running a huge sale right now which boosts my normal 18 discount up to 25 off if you use code ztt18 and I'll

have that linked at the top of the description they not only have Windows keys but also a ton of other stuff such as office and even game keys for platforms like steam origin and Uplay and they even have console stuff too like PSN and Xbox prepaid cards as well activating Windows is super simple it only takes like three minutes total so activate Windows today and remove that nasty Watermark and don't forget to use ztt18 for 25 off so next up we have the RAM and here I actually dip my toes in the used market and

stumbled on this hyperx all-white 2x8 gigabyte kit that's clocked at 3200 megahertz and I got this for a pretty solid price of just 36 dollars now just like the motherboard here's a place where most of the time it makes sense to go with a brand new kit but that's because the RAM prices are so cheap these days that the difference between new and use just isn't usually a lot at the time I was putting together this project this 36 kit was the cheapest all white kit that I could find but you absolutely we can repeat

this price point with a brand new kit if there's a decent deal going on after that we got to do something about the storage and I went with a very boring team mp33 512 gigabyte nvme drive but I do have an alternative part for you and I'm starting to see this become more and more attractive lately this MSI spatium m450 drive has been going on some killer sales for both the 512 gigabyte and one terabyte model and this is actually a much better drive than the mp33 not only does this drive still TLC with slightly

faster read and write speeds than the mp33 but this is also a pcie Gen 4 Drive which is another thing that you can Market in your sales posting most people buying pre-built gaming PCs probably don't know what the difference between pcie Gen 3 and Gen 4 but it's still an advantage to advertise Gen 4 to the people that would know that it's better so I pick up this drive over the mp33 if you see it go on another sale and finally to polish off this motherboard prep we have the CPU Cooler and today we're going

with my trusty old painted stock ryzen cooler because our 3600 came with that if your CPU does not come with the original cooler you can always go with something like the thermal right assassin 120 SE argb which only ever costs around 20 bucks but if I can save money by painting this stock cooler myself I'm gonna do it this is actually exactly what we do with our frostinova V3 gaming PCs over on ztt builds.com and we've sold over 35 of these units so far so clearly buyers don't mind if you do it this way we

actually just refresh all of our builds over there with better performance specs such as the Icebreaker getting upgraded to the RX 6600 and I'll have the link to ztdbuilds.com down in the description for you moving on it's time to get to our power supply and we'll have another chat about this one real quick as we all know the power supply Market is horrendous right now and it's easily the hardest PC component to shop for right now for Budget builds specifically usually I'll be throwing in a thermaltake 550 watt bm2 in these builds but that PSU

has been MIA for over a month what the is that now so we have to resort to even worse options here we have the bit Phoenix formula bronze 600 watt and I actually got this for a decent price of 45 but this deal didn't last long from what I can see it's actually not too bad as it's got plenty of wattage it's 80 plus bronze certified which is what the casual buyers care about and it's also rated tier C on the PSU tier list which is what I care about now I'm not 100 up to

speed on this model specifically and I don't know if it's one of the better or worst TRC models but for a budget 400-ish dollar gaming PC I think it's perfectly fine now one thing to note is that the power supply does come with ketchup and mustard cables and you absolutely cannot expose these for a gaming PC flip if you want to make a lot of money so you have to pair it with cable extensions which is exactly what I did of course for today I'm just using the Asia horse white extension kit and this has

actually been consistently on sale lately for 19 bucks for the past several weeks so it's been the only kit that I've really been buying whenever these creep up to around the 22 to 23 dollar Mark I'll usually explore some other options from easy DIY or whoever else but at 19 bucks I'm gonna go with Asia horse any day of the week because they're the best but now that everything is prepped it's finally time to talk about this new case meta and if you've been watching my channel this month then you'll already know that this is

the DIY PC argb Q3 and it's been dominating the budget PC flipping scene like I said in the intro this is actually the third one that's coming to the studio in the past last month but this is my first time personally Building inside of it I first checked out the case in person when we bought a 500 Jawa pre-built PC undercover and then I just used it last week in my budget Diablo 4 build video which I definitely recommend checking out if you haven't already Sam built that PC by the way it wasn't me the

reason why this is dominating the market lately though is because if it's clearly Lee and Lee 011 knockoff design but for an all glass Micro ATX case that comes with three pre-installed RGB fans it's rocking some serious value at only costing 60 bucks I absolutely love this dual chamber design because it allows for plenty of room in the back to Bunch up and hide your sloppy cable management and most people tend to favor this low to the ground design lately so it looks great on top of your desk the only downside is that I think

PC flippers like myself and our community in the ztd Discord server which is linked down below by the way absolutely smash the order button and it's been out of stock or own back order for a few weeks now hopefully it comes back into stock soon but be prepared to buy this one quick because a lot of people are buying it and if you scroll on Java right now then you'll see exactly what I'm talking about one weird thing that I just discovered with the case I'm not sure if this is a mistake with the manufacturer

or if this is just normal but our case arrived without one of the pcie brackets up top and I've seen some manufacturers do that before but they include it in the accessories kit and our accessories kit does not have one and the reason why this is a problem for this case is because when you put in your graphics card the one that's missing is not for the GPU it's the slot above the GPU so that hole is still going to be here and then with these other brackets that are down here normally you would be

able to just move them up but these are the Breakaway style so I can't just reinstall this so if you're going to use this case and if this is just the normal thing or maybe we just got unlucky this is why it's always just a good idea to keep your other brackets from different cases that way I can just simply install this up here it's from a different case but it'll fit perfectly fine just like that because we don't want to leave a huge gap like that and finally to polish off this build we have

one more part to install this here is none other than my favorite the Asus dual GTX 1060 six gigabyte which looks beautiful in an all white build like this now before you think you're an expert and just assume the GTX 1060 is awful you'll need to stick around for these benchmarks because this GPU is still playing literally every game in 1080P these days with some good FPS numbers especially if you get the six gigabyte version which is what we have I scoop this one off Java for just 68 bucks recently and despite having to pay

slightly more for an all-white version of literally any PC component this is still a pretty solid purchase so in terms of controlling the rgbs on these three pre-installed fans there's actually two methods of doing it and the first one is a typical 3-pin argb connector which you could just plug into your motherboard that's somewhere buried under this Rat's Nest but if you're using a budget motherboard which chances are high you're going to do that if you're Building inside this case the other option you can use is it comes with this connector here and you can

route the reset switch button from your case directly to here you'll lose the ability to hit the reset button but most people don't even use that so you should be perfectly fine and then you'll end up just pressing the reset switch to control the colors of the RGB so I'm very glad that they include ways to do it especially for a budget case when you're using a budget motherboard that probably doesn't have argb problem though is I gotta reroute that but before getting into those benchmarks here's what the entire build is looking like and in

my opinion this is a very typical aesthetic design for a ztt build at this point I absolutely love when I can rely on mostly the case to do the aesthetic work for us because these glass panels and RGB fans just look so good from all the different angles when you combine this case with all white components inside like the ram GPU extensions and a painted CPU Cooler then you have a build that looks much more expensive than the total price I paid for which was only 398 dollars if you're not a PC flipper and you

just want an ultra budget build this is the exact parts list that I would try to copy and next we'll see just how much value you're actually getting with the performance here's the benchmarks that we ran and I wasn't kidding this ryzen 5 3600 and GTX 1060 six gigabyte combo can still kick it here in 2023 and it played literally every game we tested including the tougher to one runs like Hogwarts Legacy just fine without any issues and for the easier to run title such as Valor and Minecraft a PC like this can absolutely smoke

these types of games for sure and for one last Benchmark here we have the time spy score just so you have a consistent comparison across all of my builds if you're debating about which one to copy and just in case you feel like you'll need some extra help with your next gaming PC or gaming PC flip feel free to hit me up on Zack's Tech nerf.com Consulting I'd love to help you out one-on-one to make sure you're buying and building everything correctly so you have peace of mind before making any purchases so hopefully you enjoyed

this episode of flip and Friday feel free to click the playlist that's on the screen now to get caught up on all the other flipping Friday episodes especially if you want to make some money with PC flipping but I'll catch you guys in the next video