the Boson 4.0

So, for $400, not only are you getting a system

that's going to be easy to build,

especially if this is your first time

building a gaming PC,

we're also getting a lot of power.

So to start with, we have the Thermaltake Versa H15 case.

So this is going to be micro-ATX, which means

that we have plenty of room for

all of our components plus a little bit of

upgrading in the future.

But more importantly than that,

it's going to be easy to work in.

So, if I pop it open here,

you can see that I'm looking at the wrong side.

But in theory it's easy to work on

if I come at it from this way.

So around back, there's a 120mm exhaust fan,

and up front there's a USB 2 port,

as well as a USB 3.

So while this might not be the most fancy case in the world,

it does have some cool features,

including a removable dust filter for

your power supply, for when you put this

on carpet and it gets all gross and dusty.

For power, we have the 430 watt EVGA supply.

Now, especially when it comes to budget builds,

you do need to be careful

what kind of power supply you're getting.

So, while sure, there are cheaper options than this,

this is kind of the heart of the build.

You do not want to put a very cheap

supply in your build and have it explode.

Maybe not explode, but seriously,

you do want to at least get something decent.

And with 430 watts of capacity,

this should be more than enough for the build as is.

So once we get the power supply slid in here,

you'll see that it actually fits pretty well.

And while this case doesn't have

the best cable management in the world,

we actually do have some room back here

to route some of our cables.

For the motherboard, we have the MSI B250M Pro-VD.

Because motherboard names are awesome.

What is cool about this is

it is with that B250 chipset, supporting not only

Skylake, but also the brand new Intel Kaby Lake processors.

So, while it's a little bit of a basic board,

we do have some cool features, including

check out that PCI slot.

So I've actually never seen one that's metal.

The idea is that this is gonna give

some more protection when you're say,

traveling with a computer, and you've got

that heavy graphics card that's trying to

rip the whole thing out of the slot.

Trust me, it happens.

On top of that, we also do have an M.2 slot,

which not only supports SSDs, but also

the new Intel Optane.

Powering the Boson 4.0 is the new Intel Pentium G4560.

Now, typically Pentiums haven't been good for gaming builds,

but what's special about this

is that it supports hyper threading,

essentially turning this into a Core i3

that costs a whole lot less.

So even though it might be cheap,

don't underestimate the Pentium.

With a clock speed of 3.5 gigahertz,

it actually really isn't that far off

from even the higher end chips

like the Core i5, depending on the game.

But generally speaking for a build like this,

this is gonna be pretty much perfect.

So this is actually going to be my first time

trying the G4560.

Now, as a guy who's done just a couple of budget builds,

I'm really excited to see what this thing can do,

but from everything I've seen,

it is no joke as far as performance goes.

Next up we have memory, and here we're using

eight gigabytes of Hyper-X Fury.

So the cool things about Skylake and Kaby Lake chips

is that they do support DDR4.

So while it's not really a huge difference

compared to DDR3, it is a little bit quicker,

and hey, I'll always take a couple extra frames

when I can get 'em.

So this is going to give us eight gigabytes of RAM

in the Boson, which is fine for now,

but if you ever do want to upgrade,

we do have an additional DIMM slot,

so if you ever want to get this guy

up to 16 gigabytes, it's no problem.

So things are coming along pretty nicely so far,

however next up, we have the graphics card,

which in this case is an EVGA GTX 1050.

So the GTX 1050 is another one of these parts

that really does make a ton of sense for budget builds.

For about $110 or so, we're getting

a lot of horsepower here.

And especially when you pair it with that Pentium,

we should be good for some pretty decent 1080p gaming.

While it packs a punch, the 1050 is

a pretty small little card.

Now that's not exactly a bad thing.

Not only does it easily fit in our case,

with tons of room to spare,

but it also is completely powered from the motherboard.

So while we have all of our connectors

for more beefy graphics cards,

this guy pulls all the power it needs

straight from that PCI slot.

And that is about it.

However, not but not least, we have an SSD.

And yes, this is an SSD in a $400 system.

So it is 2017, and I am a firm believer

that you should not be buying or building

a computer without an SSD.

It makes such a huge difference to

every day usability of a computer,

so much faster, so much less frustrating.

So for this, we actually went with

a Kingston SSDNow UV400, and the only real downside

with this is that it's only 120 gigabytes.

So if you don't mind going just a little bit over

the $400 budget, you can upgrade this

to 240 gigabytes, or, since this is a gaming PC,

and we have plenty of room for expansion,

you can add an additional hard drive here

to have extra stuff like games, files,

that kind of thing, so you kind of get

the best of both worlds.

And it's as simple as that to build the Boson 4.0.

So now I'm going to do a little bit of

cable management, get this guy all up and running,

and we'll see what it can actually do.

So this is Grand Theft Auto 5 running on the Boson.

So right now we're playing at 1080p High settings,

and we're getting anywhere between about

70 to 100 frames, depending on what we're doing.

So this is a 144hz monitor, so that extra frame rate

actually does look nice and smooth,

but if you're playing on a standard display,

you can actually crank the setting up even more

and still get a very smooth output.

Next up we have Overwatch, and this is

one of those games that really does look better

on PC versus console.

Not only do the graphics look nice

at 1080p on high, we're also getting

a super smooth 80 to about 100 frames per second.

Now, I think, I mean, sure, it's totally playable

on console, and even if you're playing at 60hz,

it's fine, but being able to have the option

of actually really cranking that

graphics setting up, while still getting

a nice solid frame rate, is really helpful.

For $400, the Boson 4.0 is a pretty solid

little gaming PC.

So as always, the links to everything

you guys need to actually build this guy

will be in the description.

I'm curious, what do you guys think about the latest Boson?

Let me know in the comments below,

and I will catch you on the next one.