Transcription
Hello and welcome to the Skyle channel. And today, we're going to be building the best $1,000 gaming PC for 2026.
So, despite the RAM crisis, this PC uses DDR5 memory. Despite the RAM crisis, this PC uses one of the latest Ryzen 7000 CPUs on AMD's current AM5 socket, not the old AM4 socket. And despite the RAM crisis, this PC has a graphics card with 12 GB of VRAM that can play at 1440p, record and stream your favorite games, do video editing, all that sort of stuff. So, despite the times we're in, this PC, all things considered, isn't that bad.
So, in today's build guide, I'm going to show you guys the parts going inside this PC, how to put it all together step by step, how to install Windows, drivers, all that good stuff. And then it's 1440p gaming performance. And if you want to build this PC yourself, and honestly, if you just want to skip this video and get straight to the parts list, I have a dedicated PC build.DG link in the description down below. You can click and check out all the parts I use and this exact build guide in that full build list.
So, all you'll need to build this PC is really simple. All you need is a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, one like on this video, yep, that is something you need to build this PC, and a USB flash drive containing a Windows bootable media device, which you can easily create. I'll cover that later in this video, but I also have a dedicated video showing you how to create one of those when we get around to it. We'll need that when we finish building the PC, but otherwise, we actually need to build it in the first place.
So, I like to lay out all my parts just on the table. Easy peasy. And the first thing I like to unbox is the processor, which I've already got, and it is the Ryzen 57500F. This is the best budget gaming CPU in 2026. Here in the United States, it retails for about $120 on Newegg and for a bit higher on Amazon. And internationally, it's also widely available and also for a good price. I would buy this CPU over many others like the Ryzen 5 7600, 7600X, even the 9600X. And of course, this will beat any Intel CPU in its price range as well, just because the price to performance of this CPU is unbeatable. Spending an additional $60 is not going to yield you that much more performance over a 7500F, which is why we're going with it.
Then for the motherboard, I'm going with a B850 motherboard here from ASRock. I would only make sure that it's microATX and that's basically it. You don't need to stress too much about the exact model or brand of the motherboard. It's really flexible. As long as it's microATX, it will work in this build guide. And I went with this ASRock one because this is the cheapest B850M motherboard that I am comfortable going with in this thousand build guide.
Anyways, with both of those taken care of, I'm going to go ahead and unbox the motherboard. Should be right here. I'm going to go ahead and take this out. All right, there is our motherboard. We'll set this off to the side. And I don't have it here with me, but one thing you will need is a motherboard manual just in case you have any questions on where to plug in what on your motherboard. That can be taken care of on the manual.
Anyways, I'm just going to place the motherboard here. Just off to the side, we have our CPU. Let's go ahead and put the CPU onto the motherboard. So, here we have our CPU socket. We're going to go ahead and press down on this lever, unlatch the socket, pull this up. Now, our socket is exposed. Let's go ahead and take out our Ryzen 5 7500F. And one important thing I want you to note before you just place this in is that there's going to be a triangle found here on the top left of the CPU that's going to line up with this triangle found here on the top left of the socket. You're going to put the two and two together. Basically, you should be able to read the AMD Ryzen logo upright. Drop that in. Should be pretty effortless. Give it a jiggle. That's definitely in there. We're going to bring this down. Clamp this. And there's our 7500F installed.
All right. So, with the CPU installed inside the motherboard, next, let's go ahead and unbox our memory and our SSD. So, as promised, because you'll find this in other thousand build guides on YouTube that use DDR4 memory, this build uses the latest DDR5. So, we are not making any compromises there. And we are going to be using two sticks of Corsair Vengeance DR5 memory, but these are going to total up to 16 GB of DDR5 memory. These also run at a speed of 6,000 MHz, but with a slightly higher cast latency of 36 than the usual 30. And these I believe I bought for around $200. And I'm happy we're on DDR5 instead of DDR4 because DDR4 is old. It's ancient. We're going to be replacing it anyways.
Then for our SSD, we are going with a 1 TBTE PCHN 4.0 SSD from Patriot. This is the P400 V4. This is unfortunately a DR RAMless SSD because I always like recommending DRAM supported drives in my build guides. However, this is the fastest DRAMless SSD you can buy that is within a reasonable budget for this build guide. So, this is making the best of a worst-case scenario because not only have RAM prices gone up, but so have SSDs. So, this is just about the best we can do.
Now, do you need this exact kit of RAM and this exact SSD to make this thousand build guide work? No, it could be a different brand. It can be a different speed, different capacity, whatever. But note, whatever I've linked in the PC builds.gg link in the description down below is going to be compatible with this $1,000 build guide if I ever happen to update the parts of this build guide in the future.
Otherwise, let's go ahead and install these onto the motherboard. So, installing the RAM into this motherboard is going to be super simple. Even if you have a four-slot motherboard, it's very straightforward. But here on this two-slot, it's going to be basically easy. So, we're going to go ahead and flip these tabs open. And as you'll notice here on our RAM kit, the inserts here are different sizes, meaning this will go in only one direction into our RAM slots on our motherboard. So, I'm going to go ahead and place it in this direction because this is going to line up. Don't forget my tabs are up. I think this is going to go in. I'm going to give it a firm press. No, no, actually, it's the other way around. Let's go ahead and try this again. Let's give it a firm press. That went in. Let's do it again. And there we go.
Now, next up, we have our one TB PCH Gen 4.0 M.2 SSD. As you'll notice, there's this little notch here on this part of the SSD. It's going to line up a certain way again with the connector. But to access this, we got to go ahead and get bust out our screwdriver. So, I've got my LTT store screwdriver right here. I'm going to find the right bit for it, which is just a Phillips head zero attachment. I'm going to go ahead and start unscrewing this. All right, we've got this taken out. But first, let's go ahead and peel off this plastic protective cover. And let's peel off the one that is down here. There we are. And like I said, this little notch is going to line up a certain way with the motherboard. So, I'm going to go ahead and click this in just like that. Then, I'm going go ahead and press this down. And we have this little plastic tab right here that I'm going to go ahead and flip around. So, this is locked into place. And voila.
Now, while we're down here, let's go ahead and install our custom aftermarket CPU cooler onto the CPU. Now, this motherboard was an open-box deal. So, as you can tell, these black plastic tabs that would be here that we would always have to remove are not there. That is fine. But don't forget to do that if you buy this motherboard brand new. They will be there. You just unscrew it with a Phillips head screwdriver. But now, let's go ahead and install our CPU cooler, which...
Now, let's go ahead and install the CPU cooler, which I'm going to bust out right here in front of you guys. Well, bam, there you are. Now, I'm not going to bore you guys with the specifics on how to exactly install this CPU cooler because the one I may have linked in the PC builds.gg link could be different. But note that pretty much every single 120 mm water cooler, sorry, 120 mm air cooler is going to install the exact same way. No matter the brand, no matter the specifications. So, as long as you follow your included manual, you should be able to put this on fine, easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
So, with our RAM, SSD, CPU, CPU cooler now all installed onto the motherboard, next we can talk about the PC case, which is the new Lian Li V150 INF. Now, spoiler alert, I've actually technically already built this PC case before. As a matter of fact, if you remember my last $1,000 gaming PC build guide, it used a very similar chassis from Lian Li. But this one here is a little bit more squashed. It's microATX. But what makes this case stand out is this front right here. This right here has two front 140 mm case fans with this almost like transparent glass front. So you are still going to be able to get airflow in through these two front fans. And this provides such a cool look that I think Lian Li are the first ones to actually get to. So, this could actually be a trendsetter going forward for PC cases. So, if you see a bunch of case manufacturers copying Lian Li like they always do, they can always point back to the V150 INF for what started that trend.
Otherwise, I really like this chassis. I got no complaints. Here we go. We're going to take off the front panel. And I mean, check this out, guys. You have, of course, where your motherboard is going to be. You have a GPU sag bracket right there, all ready to go for your very long graphics cards, which won't be a problem today with our build, but could be if you decide to upgrade the graphics card in this build later down the road. And you have this cool little slant right here, which helps direct a little bit more airflow from those two 140 mm up to the rest of your PC. And look at that. This is why Lian Li might be the goat, or yeah, this is why Lian Li could be one of the goats of PC cases.
So, any screws, anything you might need to install whatever you want into the V150 INF, whether it's the motherboard, SSDs, power supplies, PC case fans, whatever. It's all going to be found in here. You don't need to buy any additional screws. Oh, yeah. And taking off the rear panel, you don't even need a screw. It just comes off by itself. Anyways, I'm really excited to see how our build kind of pans out in this PC case. Oh, and look at that. What do I see right here? Is that an RGB controller in the PC case? Okay. All right, Lian Li.
Anyways, enough glazing the PC case. Let's put the motherboard into the PC case. So, before we put the motherboard into the PC case, first thing we got to do is insert the IO shield, which is going to be this metal shield you put here in the rear of the PC case where there is this rectangle. I've done it before many times on this channel. Here's some footage of me doing it. But since I bought an open-box deal from Newegg, it didn't come with an IO shield. So anyways, all these little standoffs right here are going to line up with the holes on your motherboard. And since this is a microATX motherboard, all the standoffs are already pre-screwed in. So we don't need to worry about putting in our own. So we're going to line this up with the standoffs. And once the motherboard isn't moving anymore, then that means they're pretty much all logged in there.
And then as far as what screws you'll need, we're just going to go ahead and open up our handy little toolbox here full of all these screws. They're going to be in this baggie right here. And then if you're wondering which screws are what, check that out. Right here on the second page of the manual, we are shown all the various screws that are in that toolbox. And it shows us what tools are for what. So if we actually check out right here where screw B is, it says these are the screws for the motherboard and for any 2.5 inch SSDs, which we don't have in this build. So we already know what screws we'll need, which is awesome. So I'm going to go ahead and open this baggie up. And would you look at that? I found the screw that we need for our motherboard standoff. So, I'm going to go ahead and start screwing these into the motherboard one by one in a crisscross formation. And I'm not going to tighten each of these all the way as soon as I put them in. I'll tighten them once I get all the screws in first.
All right, with the motherboard inside the PC case, let's go ahead and talk about the power supply, which I have this 650 W 80 plus bronze unit from Montek. Do you need this exact power supply in order to make this PC build work? Nope. It could be from whatever brand you want. Heck, you can go with a 550 watt, a 750 watt, 80 plus gold, 80 plus, whatever power supply. I would just say if you wanted to maybe future-proof your PC a little bit in terms of power supplies, maybe instead of a 650 watt, you can go with an 850 watt, which can allow you to throw in a graphics card like the RX970 XT or whatever high-end Nvidia AMD or Intel GPU comes out in the future to eventually throw into this PC without having to upgrade your power supply. Otherwise, this is going to be useful for pretty much all current mid-range graphics cards.
Anyways, we're going to go ahead and unbox this. Should be really quickly. There is our power cable. We'll eventually plug into the wall outlet, so have this later. Here is our power supply. This is a non-modular unit, so all of the power supply cables are pre-attached to the power supply. You may find some that are fully modular where all the connectors are on the power supply itself. That isn't too bad to figure out, but once again, whatever I've linked in the PC builds.gg link for the power supply will work with this PC build regardless. I'm going to go ahead and untangle this and then put it inside the PC case.
So, to install the power supply into this PC case or whatever power supply you eventually end up going with, again, here's that power supply cable. Have this on hand for later. And this is going to go for any power supply you find, but the screws you'll need to put it inside the PC case will always come with the power supply. So, go ahead and set that aside. And to insert a power supply into a PC case is very easy. This side right here with the mesh is where your fan is. This side needs to be facing down. And it's going to be just as easy as sliding this in, butting it up into the back of the PC case, taking out our screws that came with the power supply box, and then grabbing our screwdriver, which can be found in the PC builds link in the description under peripherals. Here's your LTT screwdriver if you want to pick one up. You're welcome, Linus. And uh yeah, we're just going to go ahead and screw this in. Really easy. And if you're wondering about this switch here on the power supply, it can stay at the zero. It only needs to be switched to the one whenever we're ready to turn on this PC for the first time.
And now with our power supply installed, what we're going to do next is that we're going to go ahead and plug in all the cables into the motherboard. When it comes to the power supply cables, IO cables, fan cables, let's go ahead and take care of all of that now before we put in the graphics card. So, here on the rear of the PC case, we've got a bunch of cables. And I'm going to go ahead and describe to you guys which one is which, just so you know what we're looking at. All this right here is our power supply cables. We will not be messing with that for the moment. We're going to mess with all of this stuff here in the middle. This is our IO cables and our fan cables as well. So, I'm going to go ahead and unlatch these so I can have access to all of these cables right here. All right. And here are two cables from that RGB and fan controller, which looks like all they need is a SATA power cable, which is going to be handled by one of our power supply cables. Oh, and then here is our 5V ARGB cable, which we're going to plug into the motherboard. And then here is our fan cable that we're also going to plug into the motherboard. So, we'll set this aside for later. And we'll deal with all of these cables, which is our front power button, our USBs, our reset button, all of that first.
So, out of all of our front IO connectors, let's go ahead and deal with the front panel connector first. This is going to go into the bottom right of universally any motherboard. No matter the brand, no matter the CPU, no matter the socket. And if you're wondering where I'm finding all the locations for these individual connectors, they can all be found in the motherboard manual. There should be like a cool little map that shows you where each connector goes. You're just going to want to follow that. So, that's the front panel already taken care of. So, that's your power button and your reset button. Above that is going to be your USB 3.0 header, which we're going to take care of with this connector right here, which if we flip it around, you'll notice there's a little notch here on the top of the connector. And that's going to line up with this insert on the connector. So, this will only go in one way. Now, just above it, we have our USB type-C header where this connector is going to go in. This also is only going to go in one way, and you may need a few tries because you may have to flip it, which is what we're going to do right now. There we go. That is in. And then down here on the bottom left is where your HD audio connector goes in. This is going to go in the bottom left only one way. There we go. I got that plugged in. I'm going to feed the cable back.
And here at the top, if you're wondering, I've actually got the two cables that came from that RGB and fan controller that is on the rear side panel of the PC case. So, this controls the two front PC case fans and the rear. So, this is only going to need a single system fan header one. So, this black one right here. And then a 5-volt ARGB connector right here as well. And on our motherboard, we have some located here on the top right. Again, no matter the brand, no matter the CPU, whatever, there's always going to be some ARGB and fan headers here on the top right of any motherboard. And I'm going to go ahead and plug this into this one right here. There we go. And like that. That is all of our front IO and fan connectors taken care of.
Now, let's finish out with the power supply cables. So, we have our two power connectors we're going to need for our motherboard. This big chunky one right here is your big motherboard power connector. Notice the latch right here. That's going to line up with this notch here on the connector. So, that's not going to go like that. Let's flip it around. Nope. Bring it the other way. Curl this around. Press it in. There we go. And then here on the top left is our single CPU power connector. Sometimes your motherboard may have two of these. All you need is really just to plug in one. You only need to plug in two if you're going to overclock your CPU, which I highly doubt you're going to do in this kind of a system. And even if you did have two connectors up here, you have a second CPU connector here on the top left, if you can see. But if you're wondering which cable this is, well, it should say CPU. That's how you know it's the CPU power cable. And once again, there is a latch here on the connector that's going to line up with a notch here on the top of the connection. So, I'm going to flip this around, curl it, get it in there. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Wab.
And then down here is a little cutout here on the Lian Li V150 INF where we can thread in our PCIe power cable for our graphics card when we eventually put that in. And if you're wondering what cable that is, once again, it'll say something like PCIe. And then there's one more thing we need to do on the back. Don't forget, we need to supply power to our RGB and fan controller that controls the two front 140s and the one rear 120 mm fan. And all we need for this is just a single SATA power connector, which we have plenty of from our power supply. So, we're just going to go ahead and find the connector for this. Plug it in the right way. And those are all our connectors plugged in. I'm going to go ahead and clean this up a little bit. And then we'll put in the graphics card.
All right. So, with everything hooked up and ready for the graphics card, what I have chosen for this $1,000 build guide is the Intel Arc B580. In the United States, this retails for about $290, and it puts it in basically no man's land. There are no graphics cards below $300 that offer this sort of performance with this much VRAM and this much hardware. Yes, you do have other options like the RTX 5060 and the RX 9060 XT 8 gigabyte, but both of these retail for above $300, at least here in the United States by about 50 or $60 more than the Intel Arc B580. And I would argue these two options here aren't worth the $50 or $60 premium. I would only look at getting one of these two graphics cards if they happen to be even closer in price to the Arc B580 depending where you live. Maybe if these are within $20 to maybe even $30 of the Arc B580, then they're worth considering. But here in the United States, there's a really big price difference, which is why we're going with the B580. And heck, this graphics card right here is not much slower than those ones I just talked about. Plus, you get 12 gigabytes of VRAM. Really excellent onboard encoder and decoders with Intel Quick Sync. And this can do entry-level 1440p gaming. And the best part is that I've already tested this CPU and GPU combo before. I've actually done this exact build guide last year with the Ryzen 57500F and the Arc B580 and it ran just about any game at 1440p that I wanted to other than the most intensive ray tracing experiences at the highest graphical settings possible. Otherwise, the other 90% of PC gaming scenarios you're going to run into are going to run fine on this PC with this graphics card.
So, let's go ahead and unbox it. And this card that I have right here is the ASRock Challenger Edition. However, I want to point out that you don't need this exact Intel Arc B580 in order to make this $1,000 gaming PC work. It can be one from Intel themselves. It can be an Onyx edition card. It can be an Acer edition card. It can be whatever kind of card. Heck, if you wanted to go with a completely different graphics card like the other graphics cards I mentioned earlier, you can do that, too. But do note whatever I have in that PC builds.gg link in the description down below will always be compatible with this PC build no matter what.
All right, there's our B580. We're going to set this off to the side. And before we place the graphics card into the PC case, I'm going to go ahead and take out this PCI Express lock cover. Put that off to the side. Then I'm going to go ahead and take our LTT screwdriver, which you can find in the PC builds.gg link at the bottom of the description. And I'm going to go ahead and start unscrewing out the two PCI brackets we're eventually going to need to take out for the graphics card. So there's bracket number one out of the way. And for bracket number two, there we go. That one is out. Then let's take our graphics card, line it up with the topmost PCI Express slot here in the PC. There we go. That is about to go in. So I'm going to go ahead and give it a firm press. All right, that is all the way in there. I'm going to go ahead and take those two screws we just unscrewed and screw in our graphics card now into the PC case. And then we're going to go ahead and take our PCIe Express power cable that I was talking about earlier that we have left over from our power supply. And we're going to plug this into the 8-pin power connector here for our graphics card. There we go. That is in. I'll clean this up a little bit later.
And now we're going to go ahead and set up our monitor, keyboard, mouse, and install Windows on this PC once we turn it on for the first time.
All right, so I've got the PC set up here just to the left of me and we're going to go ahead and show what we got to do to turn on this PC for the first time and then install Windows. So, first and foremost, don't forget that power cable that came with your power supply. You're going to want to plug one end into your power supply and the other end into a wall outlet. And while you're back here, you can go ahead and flick the switch from the zero to the one. That primes the PC, ready for boot up whenever you press the power button. Otherwise, you've got your cables right here for your display. For this tutorial, I'm using DisplayPort, but you can use HDMI as well. Just do whatever your monitor or your TV accepts. It doesn't matter. So, I'm going to plug one end into the monitor right back over here and then the other end into the graphics card. So, important distinction right here. Note where the cable is coming out. The cable is coming out where the graphics card is, not where the motherboard is. The motherboard doesn't have any graphics. Your graphics card does. So, plug in your display cable, whether it's HDMI, DisplayPort, or whatever into your graphics card.
So once that's done, go ahead and don't forget to plug in the power for your monitor, your keyboard, your mouse, and then finally, it's time to pull out your Windows 10 or 11, probably want to do 11, bootable media device. Now, I have a full video tutorial showing you how to create one of these for free with any 8 GB USB flash drive. The type doesn't matter, blah blah blah, just as long as it's 8 GB. I have that video tutorial linked in the description down below if you want to check how to create one of these for free. But most importantly, make sure to plug this into the rear of your PC case and one of the blue USB 3.0 ports. And once all that is done, you can press the power button. You can press the power button. There we go. And we just go ahead and wait and observe our monitor and see if anything pops up.
So, as we can see, something just popped up on the monitor. There is the ASRock logo. That is the logo of our motherboard. And we should see a little spinning circle pop up really soon. Oh, see, told you right there. And all right, let's go ahead and install Windows.
All right, so go ahead and hit next. Install Windows 11. I agree to everything. So, here is where we can enter in a product key, which I will have one soon on me thanks to a website I'm going to currently work with for getting Windows keys. Hey there, this is Mark from the future. I actually did get my hands on a Windows key for this PC because I partnered up with a new Windows key website called winprokeys.com. They sell genuine Windows 11 Home and Pro keys all on a really simple and clean website. I hate how many of the other key websites are just littered with ads and a bunch of nonsense. You won't find that on Winprokeys. They're really clean and simple to use. I actually bought one of their Windows 11 Pro keys for this PC, activated it, and all worked out fine. It's like a regular key. I'll have their keys linked in the description down below or at the bottom of the pcbuilds.gg list if you want to check them out for yourself. I will enter this in later. Maybe I'll show it on screen. But if you don't have a product key on you right then and there, you can click on "I don't have a product key." Here's where you can choose your version of Windows. I'm going to go ahead and choose Windows 11 Pro. And here I'm going to go ahead and click accept. Now, here's where we can go ahead and choose that 1 TBTE M.2 PCI gen 4.0 SSD that we have as our boot drive. Hit next, install, and we're done.
All right. So, once you get that install finished, go ahead and choose your country. Choose your preferred keyboard language. Skip. So, here's where your let's connect you to a network screen is. And if I'm right, you should be able to open command prompt here, which you can do through pressing Shift F10 on your keyboard, which opens up this screen. And here on the screen, go ahead and type in start space ms-cx colon local only. Enter. Now, here is basically like an offline account. You can name this whatever you want. It doesn't matter. I'm going to hit next. Or I guess we do have to name it. We'll call this $1,000 PC. Next. And voila. We bypass the Windows mandatory internet install, which don't worry, we can install Wi-Fi drivers later and properly set up Windows when we get around to it.
All right, so here's where we can go ahead and tweak some of our settings for privacy. I just turn all this off because I don't want Microsoft tracking me. And here we're on the Windows 10, Windows 10, Windows 11 home screen. Now, the first thing we have to address is Wi-Fi, because currently we don't have a Wi-Fi connection, unless you're lucky, and you can just connect an Ethernet cable from the back of your PC to a router.
So, first, let's go ahead and install the necessary drivers for our motherboard, that being the Wi-Fi driver. So, type in the name of our motherboard, which is that ASRock B850M-X Wi-Fi R2.0. Make sure it's the one with Wi-Fi, because that's the motherboard that we got. Click on support. Click on download. Here are all the things we can install. And the one that we want is the Bluetooth driver because that would just be nice to have, as well as where is it? MediaTek wireless LAN driver. So, let's go ahead get that downloaded. We'll get that Bluetooth driver also downloaded. Is there anything else we want to get from here? We could also install the Realtek HD audio driver if we want. We also probably want to install the latest AMD chipset driver, which yep, April, that looks soon enough. We'll also go ahead and download that. And if we want to feel complete, we can also download the motherboard utility. I won't do that because we don't need it. And also, if you're curious on how to control the RGB in the PC case, we should actually download the Polychrome RGB software. And that's all the stuff we need. So, we have all these downloaded. One by one, we are going to extract each of these, such as, you know, what I'm about to do right here. Extract. Double click. And we're just going to run each of these softwares one by one. And I'll catch up with you guys later once we have all this installed.
I should clarify, if you don't have any internet, you should be doing this on a separate PC. So, if you have a spare laptop, spare desktop computer lying around, or if you happen to have an iPhone with a USB-C flash drive attached to it, you can do all this stuff and download that onto that USB flash drive, extract all those files and run that on this PC to get Wi-Fi running on it. I already have Wi-Fi running because I have a Wi-Fi stick plugged in just for tutorial purposes, but you're going to want to do this on a separate PC. But anyways, I've got all that stuff installed and into uh to apply all that stuff, we're going to have to restart the PC. So, I'll catch up with you guys in a little bit.
So, by now you should see a little Wi-Fi icon on the bottom right of your Windows desktop, which means you are completely free to then install anything else you want on this PC. But, we got to do graphics card drivers first before we actually get to gaming. So, since we have an Intel Arc graphics card, we're just going to type in Intel Arc drivers. But do note if you have any other brand of graphics card, whether it's AMD or Nvidia, you can just type in AMD drivers and then it'll be right there. You can just type in Nvidia drivers and it'll be right there. This is pretty straightforward stuff, guys. It's not that complicated to install drivers. We're just going to go ahead and click on the latest game on GPU drivers. Download. Well, bam. It's going to run. All right, looks like we are currently installing it. Hit yes. Yes. We're going to go ahead and click begin. And that's literally all it's going to take. Our graphics card drivers are going to install. And I'll catch up with you guys in a little bit.
So, our drivers are finished. We're not going to launch anything. What we need to do is actually restart the PC. So, I don't know why this has such shutdown, but I'm just going to go ahead and hit restart instead because there's one thing we need to do in the BIOS. Actually, I'll show you the easy way to do it. Just type in advanced startup into your Windows search bar. There's your advanced startup. Click on restart now. Restart now. All right, once you reach the blue screen, click on troubleshoot advanced UEFI or EEFI firmware settings. That's another name for the BIOS. And we once we are in the BIOS, all we got to do is click on OC Tweaker, DRAM Profile Configuration, DRAM Profile Setting, and we will set that to EXPO. I've already got it enabled, but this is going to let your RAM run at its full advertised speed of 6,000 MHz, which will translate to more frame rate. Now, if you have a different brand of motherboard, if it's Gigabyte, if it's ASUS, if it's MSI, this is going to look a little bit different, but regardless, there should be something on screen that shows you the speed of your memory and should let you change it. And that's all we got to do in the BIOS. We'll just hit exit, save changes, and exit. And then we are ready to get to gaming.
So, let's kick off our benchmarks here with Fortnite. And right now, I've got no audio. I don't know why. I hope it picks up. I guess my headphones aren't working anymore, but otherwise, let me show you guys the graphics settings real quick. We're running the game at 1080p. And I promise you, the other games we're going to be running will be at 1440p. I promise. I just wanted to do 1080p because this is Fortnite. Fortnite players, as you all know, don't care about resolution and graphics. They care about frame rate. And what I've got for graphics right now is I have Intel XeSS set to balance and everything else set to medium to far settings. And let's drop down, find a place, and show you guys what the frame rate looks like once we get on the ground.
Anyways, we are getting, as you could tell, well above 144 FPS at 1080p. So, if you have a high refresh rate 1080p monitor, don't worry. This PC is going to max out that refresh rate on Fortnite. People who said that Fortnite runs bad on Intel Arc graphics cards were right. When these cards first came out almost 4 years ago, but now in 2026, Intel Arc, I'm actually surprised this is actually running it pretty well. Yeah, I know. Um, Fortnite optimization has come a long way on Intel Arc graphics cards. Anyways, there's so much fighting happening over there. Again, I can't hear it. It looks like there's some crap going over there. Actually, I can use my grapple hook. Can we? Can I do it on this tree? Oh, I can. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. Sweet. And if I throw something right here and then pull up my gun, uh I see some guys fighting. Okay. And uh Oh, got one down. And I'm down. Hey, I'm good. I'm good. Uh that's Fortnite. It actually ran really well on an Arc graphics card for once. And let's move on to the next game.
Okay. So, I'm here on Arc Raiders. This is a game we're playing at 1440p. For whatever reason, I don't have audio. I'll look into that later. But, uh I went ahead and just opened up the game. I've only changed one graphics setting, but this is just to show you that this PC can run games at 1440p, a high frame rate. So, we've got everything set to medium settings. And yes, we do have Intel XeSS turned on. I'm sorry if that triggers a lot of you who hate fake frames. I'm sorry. I'm going to show this PC getting a high frame rate at 1440p because, you know, with RAM prices, you know, graphics cards are quite expensive. So, you got to make the most of them. And unfortunately, yes, we do have to do that through upscaling. And I've got the XeSS quality set to performance. And if we check, we are getting just about damn near 144 FPS just for this tutorial section in Arc Raiders at 1440p at medium settings. I'll take this. I mean, if you have a 1440p 144 Hz monitor, this PC is maxing out the refresh rate of that visible FPS on that monitor completely. I mean, yeah, if you get above 144, that'll be good. That'll help lower your frame times a little bit, but otherwise, this is it, man. Like, this PC can run, you know, games like Arc Raiders, Marathon, whatever first-person shooters you want at 1440p at decently high frame rates. And we'll go ahead and knock this guy off. There's the big walking robot. And let's try another game.
All right, let's finish up benchmarks with a big boy game that came out in 2026, Resident Evil 4 Remake. And uh just again to show, you know, all the people out there who are I don't know, they're going to be upset about frame generation. Here I am running Resident Evil 4 Remake at 1440p. You guys show Let me show you the graphics settings real quick. We've got it at normal settings all around. But if we check here at the upscaler, we have upscaling and frame generation turned off. And we are getting what? 35 fps. Oh, by the way, ray tracing is turned on. So for all of you, I don't know, frame rate elitists out there that get triggered by frame generation and frame upscaling for I don't know, whatever principles you decide to stand on for some moral high ground. This is the experience you're going to get on a $1,000 PC in 2026. Enjoy. But for the rest of us, let's go ahead and show you guys how much of a frame rate boost we can get just by enabling some of those things.
So, first things first, let's go ahead and turn on upscaling. That easily is like it's been many years since upscaling was first introduced. So, this should be non-controversial in any way. Let's do AMD FSR 3.1 because it can also work on Intel Arc graphics cards. And we've gone ahead improved our frame rate by a fairly decent amount. We went from 34, 35 to over 50. And you know, I guess for those of you who dislike frame generation, this is the experience you'll get in a AAA game on a $1,000 PC in 2026. So, uh, hope you enjoy that. But once again, for the rest of us who are not crazy and will take what we have, we'll go down here. Advanced settings and let's do the last thing, the last piece of the puzzle. Let's turn on frame generation. Let's see what we get now. And we've gone from 50 to almost 90 fps. And hey, here we are running a game with ray tracing Resident Evil 4 Remake main title PC game that came out earlier this year at 1440p on a $1,000 PC. And this is a single-player game. It doesn't have to run at 144 fps. We're not playing competitive first-person shooters here. We're just playing a single-player game. We're just here to enjoy the graphics. I mean, seriously, wow, what a difference. Just turning on frame generation and uh frame upscaling, we can now get this game to be very playable at 1440p that otherwise would have been quite challenging without it. So, I mean, by all means, if you want to spend, I don't know, double the amount on this PC to achieve what we got with frame generation and upscaling, by all means, be my guest. Just want to show that this thousand PC can game competitive games, intermediate games, and graphically demanding games.
So, with that, let's finish out the video.
All right, so those were the benchmarks for this $1,000 PC build in 2026, and let's finish out with my final thoughts on this build. To be blunt with you, this is my $800 gaming PC from 2025 as a $1,000 gaming PC in 2026. Pretty much everything, even from the CPU and GPU combo, are the exact same. So, if you're curious at all to know how RAM prices have affected the price of a DIY PC build in 2026, this is about a $200 increase from last year. Does that make this a bad PC to build? Definitely not. I don't know if you guys saw that 1440p performance in Resident Evil 4 Remake. Even with the assistance of frame generation and upscaling, we were getting very playable frame rates around 80 to 70 FPS in a AAA 2026 game with ray tracing turned on on a $1,000 PC. And even if you were crazy about frame rate, this PC did surprisingly well in Fortnite, which is something that I maybe wouldn't have said if I built this PC two years ago when the Intel Arc B580 first came out. But now that this graphics card has been out for over 2 years, drivers for it have aged pretty well and they've gotten only mature since then. And yeah, at 1080p, you were getting some really high frame rates that would have easily maxed out a 144Hz or even 165Hz 1080p monitor. So that's to say this is still a good PC to build.
But if for whatever reason you feel like you're getting ripped off, if you feel like, "Oh, AI is ruining PC building and I need to get more bang for my buck in my PC build." Well, still build this exact thousand build, but you're welcome to swap out the graphics card for a used one on the used market. And some good examples of those would be a Radeon RX6800, RX700 XT, and if you're lucky, somehow if you're able to get your hands on an RTX 4060 Ti 16 GB, that would also be a decent pick if you can find those for around $300. Otherwise, the Intel Arc B580 brand new for $290 is still a good pick. And rumors are floating around that AMD might release an RX950, maybe below the price of a B580. We don't know yet, but um that'll be an interesting one to look out for if it happens to be faster than the B580. But if it is, I'll just update that PCbuilds.gg link in the description down below, which contains all the parts you need to build this thousand PC just like how I did it in this video.
So, with all that said, thank you so much for watching and this is the Skyville channel signing.