I built a gaming PC for UNDER $400 that runs ZWIFT in 1440p, 60fps, and ULTRA profile graphics!!!!

I built a gaming PC for my virtual bike racing and streaming. Managed the full build for under $400 and it streams my main game (Zwift) in HD at 60 FPS! Zwift is a peculiar game, and the good news is that you don’t have to spend a ton of money to get the most out of it. When I’m not streaming, this setup will actually run Zwift in 4K with ultra profile graphics! Most Zwifters don’t even realize that ultra graphics exist in the game, because Zwift doesn’t give you the option to choose them. Zwift just checks for your graphics card and automatically turns it on or off. Subscribe to see some crispy live streamed virtual races and more Zwift hacks soon!

[@rgrant51rg]

You've produced excellent content in the past. I'm sure this will be the same. Way to go.

[@JonathanCrain]

Thanks! Hopefully this new PC build makes future content even better

[@rpdole]

I’ve learned so much about Zwift and Zwift racing from you. Thanks so much!

[@USMCcharmer]

Looks great bro. Very resourceful!

[@blackcyclist]

Great Video Jonathan. Love the cat interruption !

[@mikesuarez9780]

Nice looking forward to your new Ultra content!

[@JonathanCrain]

Thanks, me too! Haha. May take some tweaking to get my stream settings dialed, but I’m going to try an HD race stream (or two) tomorrow

[@jackwaters3891]

Hello from Michigan! I found you on r/zwift and I have been loving all of your videos and commentary! Keep it up!

[@JonathanCrain]

thanks man!

[@JimHaysom]

Great video! Really helpful.

[@amahmood3799]

Good stuff!

[@internziko]

Thanks for posting this. My client needs a budget Zwift build and noe i know where to start

[@JonathanCrain]

No problem man! I was in the same boat early in lockdown. ZPCMR Facebook group is a great resource. People are always posting deals on office pre builts and components

[@MM-lx9gj]

Great video and content dude! Do you need a specific type of monitor? Presumably HD?

[@sethfrankel3542]

Bike tool for computer build screwdriver. Classy!

[@JonathanCrain]

gotta do what you gotta do! haha

[@kpgadre]

Nice setup Jonathan. I have GTX 1650 too but ryzen 5 3rd gen processor. I usually get around 55-60 fps in high and 45-50 fps in Ultra. I would suggest that you should turn on FPS overlay either in Geforce experience or by tweaking config files. That would be very helpful I feel. N btw, this looks much better than previous. Ride on.

[@JonathanCrain]

Technodoc have you ever used “zwiftalyzer” it’s a tool that shows a lot of stats for your Zwift ride including resolution, frame rate among others. I’m going to use that to try and tweak some settings.

[@davidkelly4400]

Which Ryzen processor specifically are you using? TY

[@kpgadre]

@@JonathanCrain Never used Zwiftalizer. Will give it a go.

[@kpgadre]

@@davidkelly4400 Ryzen 5 3550h

[@LD-bv1pm]

Nicely done. I run Zwift on a very old iMac and it's horrible. It starts 50% of the time and when it does it takes 5-10 mins and only runs at the lowest settings. So I have to plan ahead, I usually get started at least 30 mins ahead of time and I have missed rides/races as a result. This is something I might consider. Thanks!!

[@JonathanCrain]

hop on that zpcmr facebook group! They are always posting deals on refurbished desktops that would make capable Zwift machines. This whole process only took me a few hours. Totally worth it.

[@mikesuarez9780]

I bought a similar PC on Amazon. Can't beat Amazons return policy. 1st PC I bought was not really refurbished, returned. 2nd was Awesome!

[@sdjkirk]

Thanks for an informative video. This may be self-evident to others, but I am very curious whether you use ANT or BE to interact with Zwift?

[@JonathanCrain]

sdjkirk both actually. My controllable trainer is BT and my power meter pedals and heart rate are Ant+

[@sdjkirk]

Jonathan Crain thanks!

[@JeroenEmmens]

Hi Jonathan, watched this video with interest and plan to buy similar PC for my Zwifting as well. After 5 months still happy with this PC? Plesd to hear!

[@JonathanCrain]

Still going great! I think this is one of the best pain cave investments

[@ML-np5ml]

Great content let's go 1000 subs

[@JonathanCrain]

Thanks! I’m trying to think of something special to do for 1000 🤔. Maybe sub 45 min Alp Du Zwift attempt???

[@ML-np5ml]

@@JonathanCrain chat does love pain haha

[@keithtse6834]

Which generation i5 CPU was in the PC?

[@michaelgravlund9194]

Hi Jonathan... so is it this rig you now have a 4 K resolution on ? Makes me want to leave my ATV 4K for that 😄👍

[@JonathanCrain]

Michael Gravlund after overclocking it a bit, it runs 4K at about 40-50 FPS for solo rides. Group ride starts sup down to 20fps but stabilize around 30.

[@kingdaniel69]

Jonathon. Did the low profile bracket come with the video card? Also, how did you know how and where to put the video card in to?

[@JonathanCrain]

It did come with that bracket. I think it comes with it if the card lists “low profile”. And putting it in was simple. I just looked at some stuff in the ZPCMR group and some KZbin videos

[@kingdaniel69]

@@JonathanCrain Thanks mate. I've seen an i5 ex-lease PC with 8gb ram etc plus the geforce video card. All up $380 Australian. Can't wait to try it.

[@JonathanCrain]

@@kingdaniel69 awesome! Make sure to jump in the ZPCMR Facebook group and check out the guides posted in there. Once I followed the overclocking guide I was able to get my meager rig to do 4k at 30+FPS! Also plenty of info on there to troubleshoot updating bios and making BT work. Stuff like that. Hope yours turns out as well as mine. I’m riding it right now and it’s crushing!

[@byronwellburn]

What i5 is that? You got me building similar. 👍 Got a Lenovo ThinkCentre 920s with an i3 8100 3.6GHz 👍 was hoping for a low profile 1660 but looks like they don't exist. Could turn into a bit of a modding project. Also what you wear in your ears while racing?

[@JonathanCrain]

Low profile 1650 is as beefy as you can get in a low pro setup. You can check benchmarks for different CPU’s and gpu’s on zwiftalizer.com/benchmarks . I also recommend getting on that ZPCMR Facebook group. Dave on there is the guru of budget Zwift rig builds. I’ve been meaning to do a video on these headphones, because they’re amazing for the money. HUGE battery life, and so far, really waterproof. www.amazon.com/dp/B07W6N4HNP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_imm_t1_nma2FbAE9QMGG?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

[@JonathanCrain]

Oh and I can’t remember exactly what gen i5 it is. I’ll look next time I boot it up.

[@byronwellburn]

Do a 15min phones review 👍 will get some new people in. And if I did go larger card option it would be in there horizontal with a PCI express extension cable www.amazon.co.uk/PCI-Express-Extender-Flexible-Extension/dp/B008BZBFTG. Need to see my rig tomorrow see if I can get some 6 pin power and sort a janky mount. Or I might just go 1650 🤣 I like the easy life.

[@byronwellburn]

@@JonathanCrain yeah you right. I can't even fit an ITX card in here. I would have to put the power supply external. Not worth it.

[@paulruffy8389]

Need to check the PSU in those SFF pc's is capable of handling the extra watts the GPU will pull.

[@JonathanCrain]

That’s true. I ran it by the ZPCMR group to make sure before I bought mine. Two years on and it’s going strong.

[@SteveHill68K]

Question - you said you were running Zwift in 1440p, but you only had a 1080p monitor connected. Is that right? If that's true, you could get the render resolution back to 1080p and get even smoother graphics.

[@JonathanCrain]

Steve Hill according to Dave on ZPCMR, as long as the jump to 1440 doesn’t lower your frame rate below the monitor refresh rate, you’re still getting a better picture, even if your Zwift resolution is over what your monitor can handle. Now, what I’m finding is, while that’s true on the monitor in front of me, the higher resolution and downscaling can make things a little more blocky when I’m recording/streaming because that software is an additional bottleneck. Still playing with the exact combo for the most crisp results, but I streamed a race with a decent size bunch on Wednesday and it looked much better, both on my screen and the stream.

[@Joecycles]

Hey did you ever come up with any obs setting any chance of a video on best setting for streaming with this setup. I have a 1650 in the post.

[@StephenCunningham1]

How did you get that card for $160? You can barely find it and the price is through the roof now.

[@JonathanCrain]

Just go back in time to April 2020! Haha

[@JonathanCrain]

That is a bummer though. Seems like there’s a pandemic related graphics card shortage

[@francisa.5737]

I'm looking to build a Zwifting/Gaming PC too. Can you drop the log.txt file to Zwiftanalyzer.com so we can see the actual frame rates?

[@mikesuarez9780]

Check out the FB group. Lots of Zwiftanalyzer screenshots there

[@jwpait]

How about RGT? Does it make any difference there?

[@JonathanCrain]

Jonathan Pait only ridden it on RGT twice, and once was a new course (to me) the other was a magic road w/o much scenery. So I haven’t gotten a good comparison yet

[@keaganvaldez24]

Are u using a bluetooth on this?? My devices are paired and connected but it's indicating that there's no signal 😭

[@JonathanCrain]

I am, I bought a Bluetooth dongle and extender for it. Plugs into the USB slot. It’s better than built in Bluetooth because you can get it closer to the trainer or power meter with an extender

[@Moolaz]

How many USB adapters did you use and which one?

[@JonathanCrain]

I used the wahoo brand ant+ dongle and extender. For bluetooth I bought a dongle and extender off of amazon

[@BillyVerden]

Cool video as always! Glad you got your computer all together.. I thought you might take a look at this video for some settings help. I did pretty much everything that's in this video and went from 30fps to 120fps running Zwift.. only thing I did different was to do all the settings changes under program settings, choosing Zwift of course.. instead of making the settings changes under global setting's. Worked for me! Lol. Great Video! kzbin.info/www/bejne/lXzWfGhrr8yId7M

[@JonathanCrain]

Sweet! Thanks for the tip

[@BillyVerden]

@@JonathanCrain he has a rather long intro but when he gets to the settings they are really good.. hope it helps!

[@JonathanCrain]

welp, I just applied those settings. I guess we will see how it looks on my 2 streams later! haha

[@BillyVerden]

@@JonathanCrain Cool.. yeah I'm going to try and catch your races today.. hopefully you'll get a win and look good doing it with those settings.. lol. Good Luck Man!!

[@jrcp87]

so how is it that you are playing on 1440p on a 1080p monitor? How does that work?

[@JonathanCrain]

I can actually run 4k on it. It’s the resolution that Zwift is sending to the monitor, and confusingly, even if the monitor is then scaling it down, the game renders different stuff at each resolution. So there are actually animals, rocks, trees etc that don’t show up at all of Zwift is running on 1080 vs 1440 and so on. Textures are different too. So even if your monitor has less resolution than Zwift is putting out, if your computer can run the higher resolution, that will look better

[@jrcp87]

@@JonathanCrain does it run smooth on "4k" with that setup and monitor? Any idea.how many FPS does it run reliably? I am about to build a similar setup.

[@JonathanCrain]

@@jrcp87 because of Zwift architecture frame rate takes a nose dive in larger groups. At 4k it’ll run about 30fps at 4k most of the time. I normally leave it on 1440 so that it stays between 30 and 60fps

[@jrcp87]

@@JonathanCrain thanks for the heads up! Makes it even more affordable now. I was looking into 24-27inch QHD monitors with good frame rates but they were SUPER expensive. Getting a 1080p one will be way cheaper.

[@JonathanCrain]

@@jrcp87 yeah, obviously, those better monitors will look a little bit better, but it looks very good on this cheap ish setup. Check out the ZPCMR group on Facebook. They get into the exact specifics about different types of monitors and how they play with Zwift. There’s a whole monitor guide on there

[@DingoDyce]

Incorrect. It's not limited to the two graphics profiles. It's less common, but there's also a medium and high profile.

[@JonathanCrain]

DingoDyce yeah the zpcmr guys pointed that out. I think I had just never seen either of those on a zwiftalyzer log, and the Zwift insider article about Zwift on a PC kinda brushes over that.

[@byronwellburn]

My laptop runs it at low 540p 😱 smooth though considering

[@ea21411]

What gpu?

[@JonathanCrain]

NVIDIA gtx 1650 low profile

[@tualatindjep]

$0.00 for Windows? How is that possible?

[@JonathanCrain]

Computer was secondhand, windows license was already on it I just updated the drivers and stuff