The Cheapest Gaming PC

Say you wanted to build the cheapest gaming PC you could You’d go for second hand components

BUT SAY IT HAD TO BE NEW! You’d probably choose the 2200G, which is exactly what I chose for a PC I was building for a friend I then realised it would make an interesting video, which is what you’re seeing now The 2200G, in my mind, is a bit of a miracle product For £90 you get a processor worth about £90 But you also get a graphics card thrown in that’s also worth about… £90

Neither of these are insanely fast But they’re still powerful enough to run almost any game out there- and that’s the most important thing isn’t it So, if you’re a student or just incredibly poor, then this could be your way of getting into PC gaming! Sadly I can’t show you it, because it’s hidden underneath this fan… which you also get for free But under there, somewhere, is the 2200G It’s smaller than the wrapper for a small-sized condom

It only consumes up to 65 watts of power… and it remained so cool that, after benchmarking, I jammed my finger through the fan blades and the heatsink beneath wasn’t even warm The fans hurt though, be sure to turn the PC off before doing something like this And although it’s only £90, you also need to buy the rest of the PC I was lucky enough to have an old PC already, which cut the cost of this project down to £200 But if you’ve currently got nothing, then you could build this entire thing for under £300

And like I said, it will run ALMOST ANY game out there It will run newer games at lower settings and older games at higher The rest of this video will show examples of it running games at what I consider to be the best ‘playable’ settings and what the experience was like Because benchmarks and 60 fps targets can only tell you so much ALSO: This footage was recorded using Relive, AMD’s screen capture tool

It isn’t officially supported on the APUs, but a quick download later I got it working This is great news, since it means you could use this setup to stream with, or to record Youtube videos with or whatever But there’s just one, BIG downside: framerates are lower with it enabled! On powerful graphics cards this isn’t noticeable at all, but on the 2200G by disabling Relive, I got almost EXACTLY 20%(!) more performance out of every game I tested! This is great news! It means that, whatever the framerate shown in this video, expect 20% more if you’re simply playing it- unless I state otherwise I understand this confuses the video a bit, since the footage shown onscreen is a LIE But it’s a consistent lie

And since this video’s about the playability of the games, I do mention where disabling capture would make a difference- like where otherwise you can’t get enough FPS But for the most-part I still managed smooth performance WITH the capture enabled and the gameplay clips you’ll be seeing are testament to that It does mean you’ll likely be able to play these games beyond the resolution and quality settings shown, though, so treat this video as a worst-case scenario for the games in question We’ll start with CS:GO Running at 720p with all the settings on low, it ran at about 140 fps

And against bots, who are known for sucking CPU performance, this went down to about 120 CS:GO at these framerates felt very fluid… but is this enough? Some people will swear you need 200, or 300 FPS to play this game well I can’t speak for them But I would personally feel comfortable playing competitively on this system- and I’m a pretty good And I don’t want it to detract from the 2200G, but let’s be honest here… it’ll be a big step up from the laptops, 2006 Dells and consoles that the sort of person getting this system will be coming from

I’m going to say that, with 100’s of FPS, CS:GO’s performance is a big win for this system In fact, I reckon you could push it further At 1080p, medium settings, FXAA and with bots, it was still comfortably over 100 FPS a lot of the time and I think even this will be high enough for a lot of people And out of curiosity, very high at 1080p with 2x AA averaged around 60 FPS This still felt smooth, but I would not use this competitively

I didn’t take the time to identify which graphics options slowed it down the most, but the 2200G has comfortable headroom for you to turn up the graphics options that you care most about I would have done CS:GO in more depth… but my brother wanted to save this for his channel Next is another competitive game: Rainbow Six Siege At 1080p, lowest settings, it was very much on the line between playable and unplayable The benchmark results looked like this- so about 50 FPS

I suspect if you’re good at this game- which I’m not- you’ll have to lower the resolution somewhat to be happy with the framerate you’ll getting Disabling screen capture boosted framerates by 10% at 720p, and by 18% at 1080p What this means is that if you’re wanting the best framerates, stick to a low resolution but you might be able to up the graphics options a bit before the framerate begins to drop At 720p it felt NICE, averaging comfortably above 60 FPS, even with high settings Don’t blame the system, blame my skill at this game for this terrible gameplay performance

I’m confident that if you’re willing to take the time to dabble, you’ll be able to find a very reasonable balance between resolution and graphics options that runs well in this game It’s just somewhere below 1080p, that’s all PUBG is the most demanding ‘competitive’ game that I tested Because of that, I lowered all of the settings to prioritise getting a high framerate I started at 1080p but with 70% resolution scaling, which makes it roughly… 1344 x 756? And it was really nice and responsive in the starting area

Look, I even made a friend 😊 This stellar performance continued to the plane bit, in fact it was even reaching 70 and even 80 fps at points! …so I ramped it up to full 100% scaling again, returning it to 1080p But things took a turn for the worst as I was plummeting towards the ground and it dropped to the 20’s I hastily turned it back down to 70% scaling, but to my horror the low FPS remained About 20 fps in the air and 30 once I reached the ground of the jungle map Reflex took over and I found a rock to hide behind as I dropped the resolution further

1280×720 ran at a responsive 40 fps You can see from these clips how much control I had when aiming It honestly felt smoother than you might imagine 40 fps to But you being pro, competitive players, you’ll want more still! So I dropped the scaling down to 70%, to a pathetic 900 x 500! Roughly But boy, was it smooth! I couldn’t see much, but it ran like a dream

In fact, individual pixels had reached such a large size that they were beginning to anti-alias themselves It was WEIRD But can you play like this? I managed a kill A single kill! Making this one of my best games ever With the 2200G, I was on a roll

I was undefeated So I did the one thing that would keep it that way I did revisit this game to test without screen capture and it made anywhere between a 0 and 22% difference, depending on the direction I was looking, indicating that the CPU could be the bottleneck at points… but only when the framerate was already in excess of 60 FPS And nothing could stop it from slowing down as I was parachuting towards the ground But actual gameplay situations were unhindered

When asked about AMD, popular streamer and pro gamer Shroud said you shouldn’t buy them because: Just remember that: It’s not, it’s not cos they’re, y’know- fuckin… I dun HUH, Huh, I-I don’t even- I dunno… I DUNNO! You know? I just dunno So I guess… …he doesn’t know Next up: Skyrim! I started off testing at 1080p on high and with FXAA, but this is one game where I overestimated what it was capable of- -OH SH- How horrible- -I wasn’t even averaging 30 FPS! It appears that Skyrim: Special Edition is quite a bit more demanding than Skyrim used to be, back in the day Not wanting to sacrifice resolution, I tried to make it similar to what I felt high settings on vanilla Skyrim would have been like, by unticking all of the new features But it still didn’t feel completely smooth

Good enough for the types of people who play this game, maybe, but I felt I had to go lower still I set everything down to medium, keeping it at 1080p but without AA Even with these compromises, I still felt it looked better than vanilla Skyrim on highest did, whilst running at about the same performance as my Radeon 4850 did back in the day If that’s anything to go by, it’s the shadow setting that has the largest impact on performance I didn’t take the time to test it, but I swear the shadows set to medium in this Special Edition still look better than very high from the original game! I’m absolutely sure you could hit 60 FPS if you lowered the resolution, but I’d rather have 1080p and play like this- it was smooth enough for me for this kind of game

Especially without the 20% relive tax With GTA 5, I had no doubt that the game would run okay, and sure enough it did It hovered between 40 and 50 fps throughout the benchmark on normal settings at 1080p- and disabling Relive brought it comfortably up into the 50’s This game looks good even on the lowest, ‘normal’ settings But I also upped the graphics to HIGH, enabled ambient occlusion and upped the distance scaling a bit as well

Just to see what would happen The results dropped down to the mid 30’s The 2200G definitely has some headroom to play about with in GTA 5, but I think high everything is pushing it a bit If you really want higher settings in this game then you’ll have to lower the resolution to below 1080p It’s a viable alternative

Now the ultimate question: CAN IT RUN CRYSIS? …Uh, no, it can’t It refused to load to the menu, immediately booting me out and back onto the desktop! The problem isn’t with the 2200G, but rather that this game’s TOO OLD, but using a 64 bit executable I was able to load it up And in-game, it was a choice between medium settings at a smooth-feeling 50 or so FPS, or high settings at a slightly laggy-feeling 30 or so Frametimes felt very consistent though, so it felt better than the framerates may have suggested… though explosions in battles still made it stutter Crysis is still a challenge for a system like this

It performed roughly the same as a high-end graphics card from 2008 would have done So a bit like with Skyrim, expect the sort of performance you’d get from a Geforce 8800 or Radeon 4850 I’m not sure if I’m impressed or disappointed with this to be honest But the game’s known for being unoptimized! So next I tried Crysis 3 Unlike the first game, this one looks good even on low settings- so much so that I was happy to stick to that- really, look up comparison videos to see for yourself

I started at a full 1080p It ran at about 30 fps- a little too low for my liking, but it did at least remain rather constant at that level, with no stutters or freezes With budget hardware, antialiasing can be your worst enemy, but in this game it was my best friend; dropping to 1600×900 but turning on medium amounts of SMAA really smoothed the image out- I preferred the result to 1080p without antialiasing, and the framerate rose to a much more playable 40 fps And I mean it! If you’re used to modern reviews and benchmarks, you see 60 FPS as being the standard to aim for But with a 2200G it’s rather the upper limit of what you should expect in modern games- that doesn’t make the games unplayable, or even laggy

It just makes you appreciate steady frametimes so much more, and the huge role they play at determining how playable a game feels at 50, 40 or even just 30 FPS So although I say it’s playable at 900p, I also dropped it to 720p to try and hit 60 FPS It was only just shy, but felt very smooth and very responsive But this low resolution did look excessively blurry! Disabling screen capture was the golden ticket and that 20% extra performance opened up a lot of exciting opportunities, of which admittedly I didn’t spend much time experimenting with Even with relive still on, I found performance acceptable at 1366 x 768

Although just a small increase over 720p it reduced the jaggies- particularly on the foliage This was a very satisfying compromise and is probably what I’d want to play this game at using the 2200G Up next is Arma 3, which is more of a challenge for your CPU than it is your GPU But it ran fine on the 2200G, apart from the occasional FREEZE when it was loading a new line of dialogue for some reason At 1080p, but with very low settings it looked absolute ass

Don’t play like this, I know that gameplay’s what matters most… but even I have my limits I ramped the settings up to mid-high levels at 1080p It looked a lot better and, aside from 1-2 audio stutters which seem inevitable whatever setting you choose, it remained playable Being the kind of game it is, 30-40 FPS felt fine and there are enough graphics options to scale back should you really want more Rome 2 is another game that runs buttery smooth at lowest everything, so at least you know you can play it

But WOULD YOU WANT TO? It honestly looks worse than Rome 1! (And plays worse as well) Running on lowest is unnecessary, since it can also handle medium and with power to spare At these settings it looks absolutely fine, and is ultimately what I recommend running it at… …in part because it refused to run the benchmark at the high preset Doesn’t matter if you have unlimited RAM or not, it refused to work for me! I found this game’s benchmark results ‘only’ improved by 15% from disabling Relive, so there could be an element of CPU-limitness going on from this game, which wouldn’t surprise me I’d have investigated this game’s quirks further had I more time, but this isn’t even my PC

My friend is already going to be suspicious when they see all these icons on the desktop of their new system… …Tomb Raider 2013! This seems an odd choice since I have the 2016 Rise of the Tomb Raider as well- and I benchmark that next- but I thought it would be fun to compare the two At normal settings, at 1080p, it runs smoothly despite being just 40 FPS You could turn stuff down further to get more but I didn’t think it was necessary Instead, I ramped it up to HIGH, and although it only dropped by a bit to 35, it was enough to make my aim feel a bit ‘off’ Normal settings should be used to play this game- not that there’s anything wrong with that

RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER, on the other hand, is more demanding! But it’s also prettier, so we can lower stuff further with it still looking okay But in all seriousness, this is the game I think performed the worst out of all the ones that I tested I never enjoyed the combat in this game- for me it was more about the exploration and adventure And now I have another reason to hate it: it means you have to have playable framerates! If there weren’t enemies, I’d be a lot happier to stick to 30 FPS and to enjoy the beauty of this game at higher resolutions and settings But in this game, your aim seems tied to your framerate in a weird way that I’m not used to

Like, if there’s a dip while you’re turning the camera, it affects HOW quickly the camera turns and if this happens at an inconvenient moment, it can send Lara plummeting over a cliff DISABLE RELIVE! You might be screaming at me right now, but it didn’t help! Yes, I got an extra 20% performance But I don’t think it’s the framerate that was the problem in the first place This seems to be a CPU-limited game At points all 4 cores would max out at 100% and stick there for a few seconds and my aim would suffer during this period

Overclocking the 2200G might help, but really I think you’ll need more threads to make Rise of the Tomb Raider playable But say you’ve got the 2200G and want to play this game If it’s going to struggle on lowest then you might as well up the graphics settings! However, I didn’t get far before the graphics began to bottleneck performance either This is just a very demanding game DOOM! This was one I really wanted to test, being so well optimised and for supporting Vulkan and whatever

Despite that, 1080p at medium settings resulted in an unplayable- but consistent!- 25 FPS I lowered the resolution scaling to 75% and it ran pretty decently But Doom is a game you don’t want running ‘pretty decently’ High framerates are essential, and I went out of my way to hit 60 FPS Lowest settings at the lowest resolution scaling achieved this, making it totally smooth and a joy to play

It may not be crisp and clear, but unlike Rise of the Tomb Raider you can play this game with the gameplay unhindered by the framerate, provided you’re willing to lower the settings enough Just out of curiosity I kept the resolution at 720p but upped the quality to HIGH, and although I was still getting over 40 FPS, the input lag was off-putting and I ended up having THIS embarrassingly difficult battle with the easiest enemy in the game Even with Relive disabled, I’d still stick to lowest settings This really is a twitch-shooter and the extra 20% performance is best used as a buffer to protect against any nasty unwanted demonic stutters lurking around the next corner Maybe you’re disappointed with the results so far

Perhaps you were expecting 60 FPS at 1080p in all games, provided you lowered the quality settings enough! Time for a bit of good news I thought Dirt Rally would run at Low settings at 1080p But I underestimated what the 2200G could manage with this game It ran so well that I bumped it up to medium settings and it looked great whilst still running at a smooth average of about 60 FPS This makes it one of the more modern games that can be run decently and with plenty of power to spare- which is surprising, since my Geforce 1080 setup struggles with this game at higher settings… though that is at a 4K resolution

I saw Mirrors Edge on my Origin account and thought ‘yeah that’s a pretty game’ Remember, this is the original game, not the recent one Unfortunately, the video clips I captured looked more like 30 FPS, but in reality it’s a lot closer to 60 I tried to fix this by turning Relive off and on again but it didn’t seem to work, so you’ll just have to go off the framerates shown in the top left of the screen OR from this, where I fell back to the 2008-style way of capturing videogame footage

I started with this game on highest settings + AA but didn’t feel it comfortably managed 60, so lowered the settings a bit and it still didn’t quite reach it, so I was like SCREW IT and decided highest settings were good enough The game runs above 50 FPS most of the time, but there’s some kind of built-in framerate limiter that prevents it from ever going above 62 FPS for some reason, even with Vsync disabled! I tried turning that on and off again and everything I know that this is an older game, so being able to run it smoothly isn’t a big achievement, but if you’re just getting your first gaming rig, don’t dismiss the possibility of playing some of the older classics like this one If you think about it, the 2200G can handle the vast majority of games nicely It’s just a handful of the most recent that require compromises and I think you’d be missing out if you got a 2200G and then only played those

Don’t rule out the older classics and the enjoyment that can be had from them And lastly, the Witcher 3 This proved to be more demanding than I had expected- game at 720p and at low settings for a smooth experience This is a game where I tested framerate locking The idea is that by locking it to 30 fps will make it feel smoother than if it’s wildly fluctuating about between 30 and 50, for example

And it felt okay in this game You’ll have to be the one to decide if it’s good enough for YOU, but it is an option that you have with this game With it, low settings felt responsive, medium was acceptable apart from freezes between different areas, and high settings looked nice but the framerate was simply too low for me You could probably get away with low settings at 30 fps at a higher resolution as well, but I didn’t try it This game is playable, but requires sacrifices

I got about 5 more frames a second by disabling screen capture It made medium feel a bit more fluid, but high was still out of the question So: CONCLUSION TIME! I feel that you can split the 2200G’s performance up into 3 categories: OLD GAMES, NEW GAMES and COMPETITIVE GAMES Its strongest performance was in competitive games- these are generally designed to be scaleable and to work well with a wide range of hardware, and the 2200G typically has the horsepower required to score smooth framerates with extra power to spare, should you care strongly enough about particular graphics settings OLD GAMES, as you’d expect, perform reasonably well

If it’s over 5 years old then smooth performance at 1080p is generally attainable, though you may still have to drop a few graphics options to reach it! I was a little surprised -and disappointed- at times when it performed similarly to a high-end graphics card from a decade ago I was really hoping that we’d have left that era of performance behind, once and for all But then, you do have to remember that this is a £90 all-in-one device that consumes a tiny fraction of the power that the cards back then would have Plus, built-in screen capture Even with the 17% performance impact, it’s better than any option you had back then! And although the whole screen capture thing has been confusing, it does at least show that you CAN record and stream on the Ryzen 2200G, should you not mind the performance tax

And lastly are new games The 2200G struggles at times, but with the exception of Tomb Raider, are all perfectly smooth and responsive, provided you’re willing to lower the quality and resolution to minimum levels at times The important thing is, you can still play them! And at 50 or even 60 FPS, which puts it far ahead of many console games It’s also worth mentioning that since the Ryzen 2200G is an APU, this means the bit of it that’s a graphics card actually steals it from your PC’s main RAM supply! In normal systems, quantity of RAM matters more than quality But here, BOTH matter! Here are results from the benchmark in CS:GO

You need 2 sticks of fast RAM if you want to get the best gaming performance- for a budget PC build, I recommend 2 lots of 4 GB of the highest speed you can justify, though sadly I had to use 2 sticks of 8 GB in this video, since that’s all I had spare You can get RAM that’s faster than 2933 Mhz – the sticks I was using can actually go up to 3200 But this PC refused to load with anything higher ALSO: being an APU, you’ll need to use an HDMI cable to link it to your monitor… because the only other option is VGA And that is no

No-no NO NO NO Before testing it for myself, I had seen the benchmarks I knew roughly what to expect But nothing compares to actually testing it out and seeing it in game for yourself

I have my own personal thresholds for smoothness and what I consider to be ‘acceptable’, yours may vary But for the most-part I have been impressed with what the Ryzen 2200G is capable of If you’re scoffing at how much faster your PC is right now, chances are the 2200G was never going to interest you But if you’re a student or a really poor person who thinks a gaming PC is out of your price-range, this kind of system could be what you want If you currently only own a console, or a slow laptop or PC limping along on Vista, this will be a HUGE step up that will open up many exciting gaming opportunities for you

The other option if you’re looking to game on a budget is to risk it with second-hand stuff The plus-side is that it’s possible to get something even faster for the same price (although nowhere near as cool or power-efficient) Find an older i5 and Radeon 7870, save some money with the cheaper DDR3 as well and you’ll be onto a winner But there’s one last trick the 2200G has up its sleeve: it’s all upgradeable You can replace the CPU with anything up to a high-end 8-core Ryzen 2700X, and wait till next year and you’ll even be able to use the next-gen 3000 series

And, perhaps of even more interest to you in the near-future, you can slot a dedicated graphics card into the system whenever you like For about £50 you should be able to find a decent older graphics card that should let you play most modern games reasonably well at 1080p But really, there’s no limit to the power of the card you can get, provided your power supply (and wallet) can handle it You could even slot a Geforce 2080 TI in there This PC will now be passed onto a friend who I’m sure won’t be thrashing it quite as much as I have in these last 24 hours since building it

If you want to know more, check out Budget-Builds Official who’s an absolute master at picking up old and used bargains for budget rigs And here’s my video from earlier in the year where I first raved about how great the 2200G was And although I’ve only talked about that one… did you know it’s got a bigger brother?

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