this isn't running very well, but it's fine.

We love building, benchmarking, and gaming

on the kinds of showcase one-percenter machines

that most people can only ever dream of,

but as much fun as that is,

the vast majority of those rigs

actually get torn down for reuse in future videos,

because even for us, daily driving that kind of hardware,

it's just not cost-effective or practical.

It also kinda gives PC gaming a bad image

as something that only the elite can afford,

when that couldn't be farther from the truth.

We've built competent esports gaming machines

at great prices and even for under $100 on this channel,

and you can too if you're willing to make some compromises.

Of course,

the kinds of machines that the average gamer is running

are somewhere between potato and dream battle station.

How do we know this?

Well, the monthly Steam hardware survey,

which tells us exactly

which PC gaming hardware is the most popular.

So with its help

we built the most popular gaming PC on the planet

and we're gonna show you guys

exactly how much it would cost you to build it

and what kind of performance you can expect.

And today's video is brought to you by Corsair.

The Corsair iCUE 5000X RGB tempered glass smart case

features their RapidRoute cable management system,

smart RGB out of the box, and more.

Check it out at the link down below.

(upbeat music)

That's right, we've gone one:

a quad-core Core i7 4770K.

According to the Steam hardware survey,

42.94% of you are rocking four-core processors,

with 18.03% of you running a hyperthreaded model

like this one between 3.3 and 3.69 gigahertz, nice.

It turns out then

that as much as we all love Ryzen right now,

AMD couldn't possibly even manufacture

enough of these things to put a dent

in Intel's years of dominance,

and as of January 2021,

Team Blue still owns 72% of the install base.

Now, that number is shifting, and fast.

Intel is down almost 10% since December,

but it's gonna take time.

Since motherboard choice shouldn't impact performance much,

we grabbed a Z87I-Deluxe from Asus

that was lying around on a shelf.

This combo should put us in the top range

of average CPU performance according to the survey.

It was important for us

to find something with hyperthreading

since just shy of 20% of you apparently do have it.

It's kind of amazing how long

this chip has kept its relevance.

And we actually checked out some reviews

on Newegg and PCPartPicker leading up to this video,

and it's mostly super positive.

Like, even as recently as a couple of years ago.

In the interest of strictly adhering

to the specs in the Steam hardware survey,

we're unfortunately gonna be running this puppy

at stock speed.

But lots of users of this CPU

report running it at 4.2, 4.3,

or even 4.4 gigahertz for years at a time.

That's not too shabby for a CPU

that's older than our new social media coordinator.

Memory was a surprising one for me.

The average gamer out there, a whopping 43.85% of you,

is running 16 gigs of system memory.

Not bad!

So we picked up two 8-gig sticks

of good, old-fashioned DDR3 1866.

This is actually a great middle ground today.

You can still squeeze by with 8 gigs,

but most triple-A games are recommending 16 gigs or more

and a lot of other desktop applications

can also benefit from more RAM.

We're gonna go ahead and assume

that you guys are running your memory in dual-channel mode

and install it that way.

You are running in dual-channel mode, right?

Now, a few things the survey doesn't mention

include the case, power supply,

cooler, and other peripherals,

so we went with some Amazon bestsellers

that I'm sure most of you will recognize.

We've got the NZXT H510,

a Hyper 212 EVO V2,

and a Corsair CX550 power supply.

All of them are tried-and-true classics

and all of them should fit comfortably

within most people's budgets.

That is, unlike our solid-gold Xbox controller. Ha ha!

Get subscribed so you don't miss those videos.

That is, like, the emptiest-looking computer.

Now it's time for what you guys all crave: the GPU.

Thing is, as much as we may all lust after ray tracing,

you might surprised to learn

that the top ray tracing-capable card

was the RTX 2060 in fifth place with only 3.6% share.

Pretty much every current card, then,

that is capable of delivering

a smooth ray-traced gaming experience

is conspicuously absent.

The 3070 isn't even on the list

and the 3080 maintains a slim .6% market share.

So it ended up being a pretty close race

with the GTX 1060 leading the pack at 9.4%.

Okay. Get outta here.

(Linus grunts)

We've gone with the 6-gig model

since that's how much VRAM 23.5% of you have,

and with 66.7% of you running 1080p displays,

this should be more than good enough.

All that remains is storage.

On average you guys are running

over one terabyte of storage.

It didn't specify whether it's solid state or mechanical,

so we're putting an SSD in here

just to make our benchmarking run a little bit faster.

And that's it.

Ain't she a beauty?

Looks to me like a lean, mean Steam machine.

Or at least an LTT Steam game-playing machine,

since that whole Steam Machine idea

totally, unexpectedly, fizzled and died.

Let's go ahead and fire her up.

But what games should we play?

How 'bout the top five games on Steam? All right.

So we got "CS:GO," "Dota 2," "PUBG," "Apex Legends," and

"Source SDK Base 2013 Multiplayer"?

Wait.

Is that really "Garry's Mod"

and "Half-Life 2: Deathmatch" in fifth place?

Did this thing take us back in time?

To a time when there was no LTT underwear on lttstore.com?

Nope. They're definitely there.

Go check 'em out at the link below.

As it turns out, most Source mods running on Steam

contribute to this inflated number,

including the "GTA V" community with the FiveM mod.

So "Team Fortress 2" in sixth place?

Let's go with that.

Who put this here?

Whee!

Okay, I'm gonna fight this guy.

Honestly, it's running pretty darn well.

We're at 80, 90 FPS, dropping as low as 70,

but this is totally an acceptable gameplay experience.

Now you might've noticed the, ah,

details of the game are lookin' a little basic.

That's on purpose. That's so that we get enough FPS.

How have I not...

Dang it.

Aw, I'm knocked...

I'm dead.

I'm still a winner 'cause the game ran okay.

And overall,

the average Steam gamer with a machine like this

is having a pretty smooth experience.

Only "Apex Legends" and "PUBG" fell to 60-FPS lows,

with most of these competitive titles here

managing closer to 100 FPS

with reasonably consistent frame times.

Now, that's not to say that these games

wouldn't benefit from a faster machine.

We did a video back in 2019

demonstrating the competitive advantage

of running at higher FPS,

even if you don't have a high-refresh rate monitor,

since your eyes will get more up-to-date information

than your competitors'.

And "CS:GO" was an example of a situation

where that difference is quite noticeable.

It's really at its best

when you can crank out over 200, 300 FPS.

The competency of our...

Competence? Whatever.

Of our Steam PC shouldn't be that surprising though,

I guess.

Most of these games are actually from around the same era.

So to kick things up a notch we're heading over to Twitch

to see if we could use this thing

to play along with our favorite streamers.

We didn't plan on this part of the video,

but it is an interesting point to make.

Sometimes your CPU can actually be a bottleneck

when it comes to downloading and installing games.

But our 4770K is actually keeping up pretty nicely

with a 107-megabyte-per-second download

of "CoD: Warzone" from Battle.net, so...

Oh yeah, it's at 20, 30% CPU usage.

Not bad.

Really? They make you watch a cutscene.

See, every other game knows not to do this.

Okay, here we go. Whee!

Let's see if I can manage to stay alive

slightly longer than last time.

You know, the script calls for me to say

this isn't running very well, but it's fine.

Definitely a little chuggier and a little more tear-y

than what we looked at before, but actually looks not bad.

Okay, that's a lot of tearing right there.

When I was a kid

I'd have been absolutely elated

to have anything over 60 FPS

regardless of whether I had to smear Vaseline on the screen

for that free anti-aliasing.

As for the rest of our games, you know,

being on older hardware really isn't the end of the world.

"Fortnite" was only a little rough

when flying in on the Battle Bus,

and even "GTA V" was able to run at plenty of FPS by default

and even looked pretty decent

if we didn't mind losing a little bit of frame rate.

So there are a couple of lessons here for us,

with the biggest one being

that all it takes to join the PC master race

is an interest in computers,

and the gatekeepers who fawn over brand-new hardware

and put down anything less than the latest and greatest

can go suck an egg.

Because unless you're trying to run

brand-new triple-A games on high or ultra settings,

like "Cyberpunk," "The Medium," or "Microsoft Flight Sim,"

you can have a really solid gaming experience

with hardware like this.

And the best part is that with some savvy eBay-ing

you can build a machine like this,

or upgrade a non-gaming machine that you get your hands on,

for anywhere from 750 to $1,300.

Or maybe even less if you're willing

to get a little creative with a Dremel

to fit things together.

With that said,

a lot of this hardware is starting to show its age,

and if you upgraded you'd definitely appreciate

the smoother animations and additional image quality,

especially in anything fast-paced.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen,

the average Steam hardware survey PC.

Are any of you guys out there

running any of these components?

Of course you are.

Are you still happy with them,

or are you ready for an upgrade?

Let us know in the comments below.

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