A $1,500 Gaming and Video Editing Monster – The Best $1500 Desktop Build May 2020 (Hopefully)

Categories Miscellaneous

This is a desktop PC build suitable for 4K gaming, high resolution video editing and more. There were a couple places that corners could be cut to make it cheaper, but I was primarily interested in a computer that would survive long term and be suitable for upgrades.

After being burned by the lack of upgradability to my last AMD desktop (it was an AM3+ socket, which did not have an upgrade path) I was hesitant to go with them again, however the value for the money ended up winning me out.

Here is the parts list:

The total cost of this build was approximately $1,500 USD ($2,100 CAD).

If you want a build with similar performance but need to spend less there are a few changes you could make to save money.

First of all, if you already have a case there is likely no need to upgrade that. I ended up going for a more premium case than I initially figured I would use and the cost savings for something less expensive (albeit maybe not as pretty) would be about $50.

As well, if you already have hard drives and SSDs, there is an easy cost saving there.

Finally, the last place you could save some money is with the motherboard. The B450 series motherboards are often $100 cheaper than the X570 Pro but offer good performance for the money. My decision to go with this motherboard instead was because of a bundle deal from Memory Express (plus as a bundle they would install the processor at no charge, saving me the scariest part of building a computer).

Even with saving $100 – $200 on the above components it would not be enough to upgrade from a 2070 to a 2080. But for editing and playing games at 4K this graphics card is more than enough.

Performance

Day to day performance is great. Apps launch quickly, webpages render instantly and video and social media stuff is seamless.

It’s somewhat difficult to quantify the performance of this build for high end applications especially since the difference compared to your previous machine will depend what you started with. For me, coming from a laptop, this difference means I no longer have to reincode my 4K video down to 480p in order to edit it. The time savings are immense!

Most games at 1080p max out their settings and consistently run at a higher FPS than my screen can display. At 4K, I’m getting consistent 60FPS on high settings for many games.

So if it’s really worth your hard earned money, think about what you have now and think about whether or not you’ll get use of the new machine. The difference from an older computer is quite huge.

Thanks for watching/reading!

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