Giving the cheapest new prebuilt PC a low-cost gaming makeover

There are plenty of brand new pre-built PCs out there for very reasonable prices, and while they are perfectly fine for their intended use, it doesn't always take a lot of money to transform them into gaming systems.
This Xenta machine is a good example. At less than £200, it's fine for a home office, but how little can we spend to be able to play some games?
0:00 Intro and Unboxing
1:41 What's Inside?
3:10 Out-Of-The-Box Performance
3:54 The Upgrades
4:52 About The PSU...
5:29 Gaming Performance
5:49 Counter-Strike 2
6:20 Grand Theft Auto V
6:47 Team Fortress 2
7:18 Apex Legends
7:51 Minecraft
8:10 Fortnite
8:59 Red Dead Redemption 2
9:34 Final Thoughts
Thanks for watching :)

[@zk0rned]

Low-cost PCs when under a high inflation economy are always a welcome inclusion

[@jesuschrist2284]

10% inflation isnt high lol

[@HypeXesk]

Welcome to the usa

[@jesuschrist2284]

@@HypeXesk not even close to high inflation was 20% hundred years ago

[@jesuschrist2284]

@@Ethananal inflation being high or not?

[@DanielMYT]

​​@@jesuschrist2284 Except that almost no-one here was alive 100 years ago, so it's a meaningless comparison. On the other hand, when comparing current inflation rates to those of the past 10/20/30 years, as is reasonable to assume the original commenter is doing, it is clear that inflation is indeed very high right now.

[@leighjenkins5601]

Love the low cost PC's. Not many can afford a 4090 and a 14900K.

[@droson8712]

This is the perfect channel for that, actually reasonable hardware

[@SmitsterGames]

There’s not much reason to get the 14th gen anyways, it preforms pretty much exactly like the 13th generation

[@groenevinger3893]

There are allot of pc´s between low cost and a 14900k tho..

[@smilingpolitely12345]

"can afford" , well depend where you are living I live in Sweden , I could buy such PC from one slary , I have buddy in Poland he have RTX4090 with ryzen and he is proffesional soldier , those are just PC parts , to be honnest , my first car have cost more that RTX4090 higer price in store , yeah people can afford such PC parts , but for most people RTX4090 is just useless , for me who is "upgrating" pc for a year , RTX 4060ti is enough , I will only play in 1080p .

[@Waldherz]

Because those two extremes are totally comparable.

[@ypoora1]

FSP power supplies are high quality, not surprised it held on. I really like this system. It's compact and VERY upgradeable. I think the major OEM's can learn something from this.

[@rel8m868]

yup theyre great, had one in a 2012 prebuilt that i added a 750ti to later on. been using the same PSU since 2018 to power my amp/subwoofer in my room

[@lozyl956]

These ultra budget pcs are what I live for ❤

[@DJEylisium]

Honestly, the fact you can get thid off the shelf basic PC with 3 year warranty for less than £200 is great! I remember paying £499 for my core 2 duo e6600 512mb ram & 40GB HDD back in the day, came bundled with a copy of Vista and an AOC 720p LCD monitor too. God I loved that machine 😂

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Awesome. My granddads pentium 4 machine cost £900 when he got it. Was top of the range at the time. I see the same model go for £20 used now haha. I loved that PC, but how times change!

[@smilingpolitely12345]

@@RandomGaminginHD I am silly , when I see older high end GPU in adds , I get exited , but then come realization that that kind of hardware 2023 is only for playing retro games ... but that dont change fact I would like to have them all :)))

[@cydragon2.099]

it wouldn't've handled GTA IV well

[@SonicBoone56]

​@@cydragon2.099 GTA 4's PC port was unoptimized to begin with

[@blankmeme224]

Windows Vista 💀

[@Aruneh]

Slightly related, but I have to say, your channel is both entertaining and useful. I just upgraded a nephews “gaming” PC (it had a GT710…) to be much more capable for not much money, and this channel was definitely an inspiration. So kudos to you!

[@MattJDylan]

Yeah I remember back then, r3 + 1050ti used to be the go-to combo for whoever had a slightly bigger budget... while for the people who liked to live dangerously and for really cheap, the combo was: used Intel q6600 + 750ti from aliexpress 😂 "100$ gaming build" titles on youtube (which usually included also going through the trash to find a psu+case someone threw away lol) Good times for people on a budget!

[@LexyDaShmexxy]

i like the fact this pc is so easy to upgrade, especially for a prebuilt where nowadays they're completely proprietary

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah could probably go for a better Ryzen and 1650 on the PSU as well

[@TheProJigsaw]

I love how apex's cpu & gpu usage was pinned near 100% ! very well suited combo, and pretty good game optimisation :DD

[@greenprotag]

Oddly... I really like this chassis. I like Matx based small chassis in the mini tower and slip tower varieties. Some of these are nearly the same size as their ITX counterparts, but are often a little cheaper to build.

[@TheSpotify95]

That was a nice little Xenta machine, if you can find the upgrade parts cheap enough then I'd say definitely go for it. It will definitely outperform my older gaming oriented system, which has an i5-4460 and 2GB 960.

[@TheBlazegt]

Oh wow, I think this spec that my friend built for me, except it use i5-6500 and 500W psu. He put 2 SSD and 1HDD too. Glad he pick for me the msi gtx1050 ti for low power consumption as I just wanna emulate ps2 game and old pc game

[@NickHasntSlept]

i can picture as soon as we get a 5 minute break from rain in the uk you leg it outside to film, love it

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Exactly right haha

[@darthwiizius]

I'm convinced his garden sits at an energy nexus that repels rain from falling on it.

[@mathiasmorrison1530]

This channel is so underrated. One of the best PC Channels on youtube.

[@MrChriss000]

Those Fortron 250w units are good for what they are rated as, I have come across 15 of them in old ex cyber cafe machines and they all still worked fine after many years of 12 hr day every day use.

[@Teste-gp7bm]

The FSPs of this type I have had are not the best. Maybe some notches above complete garbage. But they were Core 2 era PSUs though.

[@heyitszim6359]

If it's a normal SFX PSU and not a proprietary model, then there's room to expand to a 500w SFX PSU and an ITX sized RX 6600 XT. A Ryzen 3 3300X or a Ryzen 5 5600 can really bring up its gaming performance. Of course at this point, you might as well just build a new PC using a mix of new and second hand parts. A pairing of Ryzen 5 5600 and either a second hand RX 6600 or a brand new RX 7600 are hot now on the price to performance market.

[@RealEclipsed]

Quick bit of advice for certain games: In games like GTA V where the CPU is the bottleneck, actually increasing the video settings may actually lead to either higher fps/higher percentile lows, as removing the CPU bottleneck will generally make the game run smoother

[@sebaschan-uwu]

I've noticed that generally, the more fps the gpu is allowed to generate, the harder to cpu works to manage it, so it makes sense that making the load on the gpu harder leading to lower fps would free up some bandwidth on the cpu

[@paulj5336]

Great video. I love seeing little office computers given a new lease of life. Keep up the great work.

[@emmett_shortt]

Always enjoyed your videos. Thanks for doing what you do!

[@antoniom.andersen6704]

I'd like to see you upgrade it to a 3100x/3300x and maybe a used GTX 1060 or GTX 1660/S/Ti if there's power enough for it. Could be a great value if someone found that PC used and just want a cheap upgrade. The 3100x/3300x are beasts in their own right. Great vid

[@GigaChad-lr2gx]

I love your vids man, thank you for making great content.

[@anomonyous]

This is why I love this channel. Interesting stuff like this.

[@javelin1423]

Your low budget pc recommended back in covid is what made me subscribed back then! Low budget build is always welcome

[@rometherevenant8749]

I know that there are some tech heads that flip pcs for a profit but theres something about this channel that I love. You take in all these pcs, give it a nice clean, upgrade parts of it and resell it to buy more hardware to keep the channel and videos going is really stellar. This kind of content for me never gets stale and I love seeing used pcs going to other people.

[@RevDrCCoonansr]

Oh and thank you! I have about a dozen of the A320 A6/A8 systems and was pondering what to do with them. I totally spaced that most of the boards are Zen compatible so thank you for the reminder.

[@darylandcat]

I miss the cases with the side vent straight to a tunnel to the cpu fan.

[@MoultrieGeek]

The airflow on this potato PC puts most MSI/Alienware crap boxes to shame.

[@americasace]

This is a whole new level of "budget gaming" for me. But wow, it's nice to see that even with something this cheap you can still game on low settings but at 1080p without having to set it down to 720p. Very nice. thumbs up!

[@MarcosCodas]

I’d have loved to see the A6 with no other upgrade besides the GPU.

[@diegoleiva7242]

I'm surprised to see that A6 still being sold in 2023. I'm pretty sure it's slower than my A8-6410 APU laptop from 2015 was and that thing was rough even back then. The 1200 is a huge upgrade and the price you got it for is just tremendous. Well done sir!

[@jotarokujo1127]

love your content man

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Thanks!

[@lolok.9656]

epic video, my fav tech channel

[@JimsTechNonsense]

Did the warranty mention anything about upgrading voiding it or is it assumed that if you don't break anything that the components are covered? Either way great content as always, it takes dedication to do what you do.

[@carlholmberg4205]

I had this combo as my first ever pc build back in the day! Lasted me for a while before I upgraded to a 144hz monitor and needed hardware to match, excellent for hitting 1080p 60fps on practically everything out there, even in the modern age!

[@michaelthompson9798]

FSP make very good quality power supplies💪🤩😇👍and I’d trust one of their 200w psu over a 450w no name psu! Great video and a nicely upgraded compact pc!🥰✊

[@qrogueuk]

Built a new PC for my Dad, in Dec 2019 (when mining dropped off a little, so parts pricing dropped a bit). He uses it for browsing, emails and office programs. Most of the time he prefers using android phones. I could have gone pre-built route or built a much lower spec and saved a bit of cash, for his user case. But with 20+ years of me building PC. I looked at the options and went for; msi b450 tomahawk, R7 2700, 16GB (3200) ram, Rx580 (8GB), 512GB Nvme, be-quiet 500w PSU, DVD-RW (we sometimes use), £600 all in at the time. Which I was happy to with and should see many years of use for his user case.

[@colinwatt9387]

I got a neat little PC from ebay a few weeks ago for £25 - a cool small form factor Stone case with an i5 4690 and 256gb SSD - I put a low profile 1050 ti in it and an extra 8gb of memory and use it to play classic racing games with my nVidia 3D vision glasses. I had previously used a similar Lenovo M93 for that set up but I repurposed it as a Batocera box and gave it to my brother in law.

[@thenoob8182]

First!

[@christohees9150]

Love this channel 🤘

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Glad you enjoy it!

[@ramiel7666]

I have 2 pc's, a main gaming pc, and a secondary, where I keep my movies and various older emulators and games. The secondary is about the same as this one, and cost only a bit more. Always nice to see budget pc's doing their best!

[@dianaalyssa8726]

Nice upgrade

[@tjek12345]

My 2080ti/3900x build has been kicking great even now. The CPU is the drag

[@pdunderhill]

Thank God you are doing this so nobody else has to, still not sure how Win 11 rollout will work so will keep an eyeout.

[@pottingsoil723]

Considering Microsoft wants to make Windows 12 a subscription service as if ANYONE would be happy to rent their frigging OS ......also with how well Proton and Linux gaming in general has improved I am 100% ready to say goodbye to Windows forever when that day arrives.

[@gtasomogyi]

Great video again! Would be interesting to see what it can just with the GPU upgrade. And was nice to see the Ryzen 3 1200, have the same, with single 8gigs and an RX570 4gb, powered by a 350W Corsair PSU. So far no issues, and was good to see, that I don't have to worry about perfomance for a while (for my use). Plus I have room for cheap upgrades.

[@DanielCardei]

I love the Garden B-Rolls ever 2 weeks when it doesn`t rain in UK 🤣

[@RobVee.]

Great temps, goddang

[@IndellableHatesHandles]

I like the idea of not disclosing the specs until the end of the video. It prevents viewers from passing judgement on the PC based on the CPU and GPU included. Would be useful for any lower-end PC.

[@EestiGaming]

Seems like the 1050Ti is actually being held back a decent bit by the R3 1200. I wonder how much more you'd need to spend on an AM4 cpu to not hold back the 1050Ti. Considering the CPU and GPU don't seem to be consuming more than 150W according to the Afterburner OSD, there should be some headroom for a different CPU.

[@MapOfEurasia]

Low budget PC are always welcome. Can you test next an Athlon 7120U/7220U APU based laptop? I heard good things about those little Mendocino APUs with RDNA2 graphics.

[@D3LB0Y]

pretty good game play for the price 👍

[@NoobSniper]

Awesome budget build as usual! I would be curious is the Ryzen 5 1600AF would be a suitable CPU upgrade for around £20-25 more. Going 4C/4T to 6C/12T and double overall cache at the same 65W TDP would offer a big performance bump 👍

[@Teste-gp7bm]

Indeed, it was what I was thinking... The 1600AF/2600 are also compatible with Win11, which the 1400 also isn't. Just that alone is prob worth it, as Win10 will EOL less than 2y from now.

[@anomonyous]

What a lovely little budget PC. Absolutely lovely that is. Could do with being a little cheaper still. Maybe under a hundred, but maybe that's being too hopeful. Love stuff like this. Looks solid, decent, affordable and reliable. A PC for the masses, as it were. Very nice. A little anemic perhaps. But I'm sure it does the job just fine.

[@teaspoon966]

FSP PSU - Fortron is a great brand, you should mention it next time.

[@jonzo22]

The small form factor is actually nice. It can be very hard to find a small case that doesn't cost a million dollars alone. This comes with a small power supply and a whole computer for the price of some SFF cases.

[@stormbreaker82]

Cool video

[@gtijason7853]

When you said the AMD A6-9500 was on AM4 it blew my mind. Had completely forgotten that fact

[@vill2980]

for something that costs a little below 300, it performed good. Plus, you can always sell the a6 for cheap and get your money back, even by a little bit. By the way, is that Java Minecraft you tested? If so, then that is performing gloriously even at vanilla experience. Slap a few performance mods and it could maybe triple the frames. I rate it 8/10. Great video as always.

[@demimob_]

I wish case manufacturers can make low cost SFF cases. Sucks to see only OEMs do and no one else.

[@warrengouldthorpe5091]

I'm currently using a ryzen 3 1200 and it is a pretty good processor for older games, especially game that came out before the ryzen 3 1200 came out

[@BillyBoy444]

I bought several Zoostorm Stormforce A8-9600 and A10-9700 system off eBays and upgraded them with a Ryzen 2600 and 1050Ti. They come in a half decnt case as well with a pretty decent PSU too. So it was easy money... I think XENTA seems to be the new Zoostorm. Not sure whether they took them over or whether they just have the same parts supplier for the cases but some models are identical except for the badge.

[@cliffordgerona6023]

can you make a short video on how you set up your Afterburner/Rivatuner overlay?

[@danielivanov930]

cpu and gpu were quite cool,i usually got used to see 60-70 degrees in benchmarks on other builds

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah that was quite surprising.

[@firisrozley5768]

Definitely not a PC for triple A gaming but a nice candidate for Windows 10 LTSC or Batocera build. Slapped a low-profile graphics card, any Ryzen 3 series chipset, 2 sticks of 8GB DDR4 RAM and here you go, a machine for Esports, indie & older titles up till early era of PS4 / Xbox One.

[@ZipplyZane]

If Alan Wake shows mesh shaders becoming the norm, it might be worth making the 1650 be your minimum Apparnetly there are sub-75W versions without the additional power plug.

[@JinghisKhan]

Either the 1650 Low Profile ones, or the RTX A2000 which is essentially a 6 GB version of the 3050 in a 75W, Low Profile mount. The RX 6400 is also a possibility.

[@philtkaswahl2124]

It's like a slightly wider update to the more compact Optiplex models.

[@miroslavdenic4561]

In Serbia, you can get a ryzen 5 4650g system (8gb of ram tho) for about 220 euros. Add a second stick of ram and you're good for basic gaming. Most games will run with reduced settings on vega 7 until you can afford a good gpu.

[@AndersHass]

First time I have heard about an A6 CPU from AMD. Interesting it does use AM4 socket so it could be upgraded to a more powerful CPU (if the motherboard has BIOS updates for it).

[@btmedic04]

I love cheap and cheerful builds. its a great reminder that you dont have to buy into the marketing tactics of companies in order to have a good experience while gaming.

[@anomonyous]

Hell yeah. 1050Ti. The OG budget gaming BEAST!

[@curvingfyre6810]

am4 is still the sweet spot of entry level to be honest, dead platform or no. you can get SUCH cheap processors for it now and upgrade later, plus your same kit of ram will be fine all throughout a decades worth of hardware progress - and maybe even your motherboard too depending on what bios revisions are available.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Yeah definitely still a great platform especially for budget gamers

[@jayb2705]

It's a nice little PC, be interesting to see if money is better spend on a 150 quid old office computer or this. I think having the AM4 board means more options, you could go for something like a 5600 or 3600 and you'd have a decent gaming PC.

[@pitrochied]

love ur videos... I am a returning viewer ( subscribed for 2 years now) ... as a constructive criticism/ feedback., i suggest you to improve the thumbnails as they fly by the feed without catching the attraction even tho the videos peak my interest.... hope you find it helpful..👍

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Ah ok thanks! And thanks for sticking around so long!

[@pablo_p_art]

I had that case.That's Zoostorm case rocking SFX PSU with a terrible mount. It's lovely small for MATX, but awful for GPU upgrade due to space (both length and height).

[@dodgydruid]

Game that looks and plays awesome for me at mo is Return to Moria by Epic, 7am and have played it solidly since yesterday afternoon not realising a whole evening and night just whooshed on by... been a long long time since a game captured my attention like that, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King expansions on WoW I did pull all nighters and three dayers. RtM is a game really for those of us who are LotR nerds or for people who don't mind a bit of a grind sesh, no quick travel options available you pound the streets of Khazad Dum in real time, you also have to manage resources without a communal "chest" and you have to set up a big base and several sub bases to manage your crafting and building.

[@Beisepimp]

I never expected , that there are still new AMD A6 PC's out there.. :'D

[@tz8785]

From the look of the front and the interior, you could put a DVD drive in.

[@simonbannow3905]

Looks like it yes

[@simonbannow3905]

But not enough to actually do it?

[@thatwilldopig]

*surprised tone: “and the 250w psu hasn’t blown up yet!” - RGiHD 2023

[@lewzealand4717]

The R5 1200 can easily be OCd to 3.4 with no voltage increase and to 3.6 and sometimes even 3.8 with minimal extra voltage for 20+% more CPU performance

[@oscarmetal]

Nice built,you should have gone higher with the cpu. I made a cheap built for my nephew for basic gaming, buying components in cex or renew. Here are the specs: Cooler master 600w bronze bulk(new)--->30€+5€shipping Msi a320m a pro(renew)------>22€ R5 2600 in cex---->40€+2,5€shipping 2x8gb Kingston 3200mhz ddr4(new)----->37€ Gtx950 in cex---->35€+2,5€shipping I reused his old pc case. 175€, all components with warranty...and he can play all Star Wars games except Survivor(a rx570 8gb will do the job, i guess)

[@maxhammick948]

Even with the limited VRM on that motherboard, an efficient more recent chip like a 3600 or 3700X would work fine in it (they're on the CPU support list and only need 65W). If you can find a good deal on the chip, that's a lot of CPU power in a very cheap package.

[@manurz1]

I do rlly like the front panel in the bottom Im have the pc at the desk and i hate to see cables hanging

[@Kaaputenen]

That A6 chip was just made a few years ago but it's still Excavator, not Zen!

[@lc7ineo]

Great video as always¡ Now that AM4 is on the way to retirement, could you make a video trying to find the best AM4 CPU ever, on a price to performance basis? Not the 5800x3D or the 5950X which are amazing but amazingly expensive as well, maybe it is the 3600X? maybe something else?

[@CorbinsDedah]

5600 or 5600x, I would think. The non X version is well within 10% of the X version.

[@binnieismynamefasho]

Okay but you should do a video putting a 5900x in that mobo and comparing the performance to something more suitable

[@Babbages]

rofl I built my friend almost this same system with old stuff I had laying around ryzen 1200 16 GB RAM and a 4 GB RX470 DVI only mining edition with a 480 SSD and a 500 GB HDD it plays everything I've thrown at it pretty good and apparently nowadays dvi connector actually does sound through a tv with hdmi adapter that 1 kinda blew me away lol

[@radradR0bot]

I like that case. Do they sell it stand alone?

[@carlnauwelaerts4802]

I still play XCom sometimes on an old A8-9600, which is the quad core version of the A6. Works just fine. :-) At +- 35 fps at 900p. Mind you, Microsoft does not officially support Windows 11 on the A series of APUs, so you'll need to cheat to install it.

[@dusanmilovic7421]

Good

[@Timmy51m]

I put a 1050ti in my nephews X51 with a 240w supply and it ran fine for a couple of years, so no worries there unless the psu rails are utter trash.

[@hamzamohammad3287]

Owned a Ryzen 9 3900x with 64gb of ram and RX6700XT back in June of this year but sold it cuz my car broke down and needed fixing (couldn't give up on my TT like that) and so I built myself a Ryzen 3 3100 with 16gb of ram and an rx580 4gb totalled to £260 as all parts were used except motherboard, really gonna think twice before upgrading

[@greendude0420]

Dang I might get a 1050 for my i3 12100 that’s coming in soon

[@cecilb7927]

As you stated, it doesn't make sense todaty, but in the near future, if that same machine is available used for $100 USD or so, and something like an RX 6600M (the Aliexpress laptop ones on discrete cards) are around $100, this could well be an appealing option, especially if a Ryzen 5 4500 could be had cheap.

[@immortaljellyfish1051]

The ryzen 1600 is £28 from cex and get a little trade in with the old cpu. Can't really see an upgrade unfortunately from the 1050ti.

[@yummyburgerpanini2868]

Are you familiar with Aisurix? Its a budget friendly graphics card i hope you can make a review of it

[@greenprotag]

I would LOVE to see this upgraded to a 5500 & A2000 combo... but that might seem silly jumping that high spending close to $350 USD...

[@thomaskrakenes333]

I am using a 160W Pico PSU that can peak up to 200W with no problem (230W external brick), on my Ryzen 7 5700x and Rx6400 combo😅 No problems at all with my type of use, movie encoding and light gaming.

[@RandomGaminginHD]

Haha if it works, it works

[@LilyVale-gi3si]

I have that exact gpu rn :D 4:03

[@palanidr1398]

Hello fine day I would like to see what is the minimum pc you can build from scratch using completely new or completly used components

[@ZipplyZane]

Interesting that an AM4 mobo isn't using NVMe. I was definitely expecting this to be older than that. Does it not have the slot, or was the SATA SSD just cheaper? I'd love to find what the oldest Intel CPU that would perform about the same as the original CPU. I'm seeing refurbished gen 7 Intel i7s for around the same price.

[@marlon.8051]

probably just not having the nvme slot is cheaper to make

[@BenAkenobi]

Intel's equivalent to AMD A6 series would be something like a Pentium G4400

[@gizarno]

"just does the basics just right out of the box, and sometimes that's all you need" "not us though" 😈

[@electrofreak0]

Makes me wonder about price to performance for Xbox series x. I understand the lack of regular computer abilities, but for gaming