buying a PC part by part can be tough. Thanks to modern branding, it's impossible to know what's good, especially if you've been out of the loop for a while. What is the difference between a Ryzen 7700 and 7700X? Should I save the dollar? Is an expensive motherboard really faster? And what's better between Super and XT? I know I'm just going to mosey on over to Newegg and round up the best-rated parts and see if the herd mentality steers me wrong or lands me knee-deep in manure. But first, I got to rustle up a segue to our sponsor, Pulseway. Monitor, automate, and take control of your IT systems from your phone with Pulse's full-function mobile app. Use our link to try it for free today and secure 40% off on any plan, including their month-to-month options. First, the rules. We decided that to be a herd mentality part, every product we chose had to have five eggs. Good job, buddy. We also decided that they needed at least 100 reviews to

ensure that they were proven performers, and we filtered by in stock so you know you could actually buy the stuff. So, drum roll please, your CPU of choice is Intel's Core i7 12700K. I got to say, way to go, herd. I mean, a couple of months back when we started compiling our list, we were a little surprised to see you all sticking with tried and true 12th gen. But since then, it's emerged that 13th and 14th gen Intel chips have been susceptible to random crashing and even outright failure. So, we give up some speed, sure, but we've still got 12 stable cores in our socket for around 260 bucks. Not bad. In fact, the only thing people didn't like about it was that it failed to boot and then boots all right. Then our other contender for the best-rated CPU was the AMD 7800 X3D. It ties the 4.9 egg rating, but given that it shares its 636 reviews with two other chips, we couldn't very well give it the win, even

If we'd like to, it is another $100 and actually has four fewer cores, but those cores absolutely excel for gaming, and its AM5 socket is expected to be supported until at least 2027, making it a no-brainer for the gamers out there. After adjusting our search parameters to include only compatible LGA 1700 boards, MSI's Pro Z690 A Wi-Fi DDR5 is our big winner. Now, this one's another aggregate review score, so it's kind of hard to say which of those boards are the best-reviewed ones, but it comes up first in the results compared to its product page siblings, and it gets only 4 and 1/2 eggs. Yep, this is our first piece that lands outside of our 5-egg target, but as it turns out, that's as good as it gets for a motherboard, and it might be all right. I mean, MSI won our shootout a few years back when we tried 10 boards with one CPU, and it's also got a healthy mix of features with lots of I/O, PCIe Gen 5.

for our graphics card, decent expansion for later RGB and Wi-Fi 6E. So, what's not to love about it? Well, according to our one-egg reviewers, the ones that don't work. Next up comes memory, and after much deliberation, we settled on the 64-gig Fury Beast kit from Kingston. Why deliberation? Well, none of the 5A gram kits had a lot of reviews, so we sorted by rating and lowered the threshold to 20, which put this one on top. Unfortunately, it's my first real display. I mean, it's not bad, but does the average user in 2024 really need 64 gigs of RAM? And at 6,000 megat transfers per second CL 36, it's not the greatest performing kit either, especially given we're spending $220. Bad reviews here focused mainly on their instability, though realistically, that's probably more down to their motherboard choice or the memory controller on their CPU. Anyway, another disappointment for us was our store, because while it is an m.2 nvme Drive.

which should be plenty fast for the modern gamer. Specifically, it's the Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500 gig. That's not a lot of space for the modern gamer. Our one or two egg reviews here focused on its lack of longevity, lack of longevity, and especially lack of longevity. Though it is worth noting that none of those reviews have shown up recently, and we did find some forum articles that seem to indicate that S might have patched some bugs in this particular drive. Speaking of situations that have changed recently, our last part before we unveil our case is Deep Cool's AG 620 Tower cooler. You um can't buy these in the United States anymore on account of Deep Cool allegedly engaging in selling to Russian businesses and whatnot. But before that happened, we bought this fine 5A cooler for just $61.50. Since it's no longer listed on the US site, though we had to go to the Canadian website to get a screen capture of the reviews, where there weren't any reviews below 4 eggs, no complaints.

know what else you won't be complaining about? Our new Intergalactic GPU poster from LTD store.com. And the best thing is, you can buy one without supporting the Russian war machine. Woo! Now let's get all of this into the case. Nice! The fractal meshify 2 might not meet our 4o egg threshold anymore, but it did when we ordered it. And come on, Joshua D, that has nothing to do with the build quality of this fine case. It's got loads of room to work in, rubber grommets for cable management, it comes with fans, and thanks to its mesh front panel, it should keep our components nice and cool. Also, luckily for us, while it is on the expensive side at $160, the light tint teered glass window option that we got is still on sale for just $110. Complaints about it mostly centered on its lack of E ATX support, a lack of support for 420 mm radiators without removing the front fans, and some stripped screws. Now to get things powered up with a power supply from oh.

Of course, it is SE Sonic. It's the Vertex GX1000. This is a 1,000 watt, 80 plus gold, fully modular power supply. And what's not to love? It was even on sale for 170 bucks when we bought it. I think the only real criticism that I would level at the herd here is that this is kind of overkill. I mean, I haven't shown you guys the GPU yet, but we do not need a 1,000 W power supply, and we could have saved some money if we'd gone with an 800 watt. But I'm not the one making the rules today, folks. Now, the astute observers out there are probably yelling, Lonus, that's not 100 reviews. You cheated 'cause you love SEIC so much. But you know what I say to that? Look again. Boom. The only one egg review for this thing was from someone who ordered the Platinum rated variant but got gold. And that was probably New Egg's fault. That is some fine power supply making. Now it's time, at long last, to talk GPU.

love them or hate them, Asus takes this one with exactly 100 reviews on their 470 TI super OC Edition. There's a lot to like about this guy: 16 gigs of vram, an elevated boost clock, fourth gen tensor course, third gen rate tracing course. It's a great card no matter which brand you buy it from, and ours was on sale. The one egg reviews here had to do with a DOA product and, surprise surprise, a lack of customer support. And would you look at that, it's a pretty nice build at just over $900. We've spent a lot of money, but we've also got a very competent high-end gaming rig. It looks good, it games good, but does it compete good? You see, I've been hiding something from you this whole time. We built a second PC with our own choices, with the goal of bleeding, excuse me, I mean beating the herd. And okay, we went like $9 over budget, but come on, it's going to be the best $9 you ever spent, 'cause I think we did awesome.

Here we've got a one TB Gen4 Drive instead of 512 gigs. We upgraded our CPU, remember? Of course, we were looking at parts before AMD launched Ryzen 9900 and put the 7000 series on promo, but we've got half as much RAM running at a much faster speed. And the best part, gamers, we squeezed in a 4080 Super instead of that 4070 Ti Super. Now, we did compromise a little bit on our eggs. Most of them are in the 4 and a half range, but some of them are even still five egg products. So, we didn't do any weird bottom-of-the-barrel dumpster diving in order to save that money. But enough chitchat, let's see how we did. We'll kick things off with good old-fashioned Cinebench. And wait, why do you get the good one? 'Cause I chose the good one, mind you. I mean, it's a miracle it even finished the run, so yeah. Make sure mic code update is available now, but uh, anyway, my 12th gen

one definitely works yep but what about games? What do you want to start with? Counter Strike? Counter Strike two? That's it. All right. Now I'd like people to note that just because he gets more kills than me doesn't mean that his computer is that much better than me. He's just a much better gamer. Oh, we're totally in the same match. Let's go. Where you at, brother? I killed. Huge reaction. No. Oh, I'm dead too. We died like nice. I just got three in rapid succession here. I'm catching up. It's over. What? Yeah, match is over. Oh, are we in different matches? We must be 'cause my match is over. I thought it looked like the same match loaded in at like the exact same time. You know what we haven't been doing? Paying attention to the frame rate. Oh, right. Wow, they're really close. I'm sitting at like 270 FPS. I mean, mine fluctuates a lot. It goes from like 220 to 320, 293, 280, 290. See, let's see your kill to death.

ratio though oh my God, that's the real mark of a gaming rig. Yeah, that's how that works. I'm a little surprised that you're not getting any extra on the 280 super. This is 4K basically cranked, right? Yeah, but Counterstrike is really CPU-bound, and as much as the 13 700k is a little better than, it's not that much better, right? And certainly not in like single-threaded performance. My GPU peaked at 62. Okay, so they're pretty close. Yeah, mine's also around 62. Okay, all right, let's Halo infin. Halo infinite, sure. Where are you? Okay, all right, let's go, let's go. Okay, I like this gun. Uh, okay, I'm at 120, you're at one. Oh yeah, I'm clearly in the lead. It's not a lot. I would say that it's enough that in a pretty bad situation, you're going to have a slight edge for smoothness, but both of these are extremely playable. Yeah, I don't think this one's going to be that close. I mean, with Ray tracing on

I'm actually losing right now. Get out of the way, buddy. Hey, hey, I'm driving here, okay? You know what? Now it's pretty. I am winning. Like, I know we're not in the same spot, but I'm getting like 30 pretty consistently, whereas you're at like a consistent 24. That's a pretty solid machine, man. They're both good, yeah. They're both good. That's a quite a bit better, measurably better. I mean, okay, when it's this low of an FPS, yeah, 7 FPS, 6 FPS, that's like more than 10%. Yeah, but they're both around the same, like realistically, 32 to 27 FPS. If I had both of these in front of me, I wouldn't be able to tell. Okay, okay, yeah, you're right. Look, all right, all right, you built a better machine. You want a cookie? Yes, give cookie please, dude. I can't even like aame. That's not good. Yeah, what are your 1%? Not great. Oh yeah, see, my 1% are pretty consistently 30, 30 plus, whereas

you're dipping into like 24 territory for your 1% lows. That's that big difference right there. Yeah, realistically, you'd be pretty happy with either of these, I think. The herd did a great job, but Ploof's system does show how important it is to prioritize a bigger GPU and faster memory. I also think we could have gotten better bang for the buck if we didn't care about buying into a modern platform. Something like a 5800 X 3D with some higher-end DDR4 and a cheap AM4 motherboard makes for a wicked value gaming system and would give you even more money to spend on your GPU. So yeah, it's a tad overpriced for what you get, but you can't fault the quality. And if you want to buy anything that you saw here today, well, except maybe that Deep Cool cooler, we're going to have links in the video description. And the big conclusion here is that in spite of all the attempts to spread misinformation online, reviews still largely serve their purpose. You just might have to sift a

little bit and do some research to really find the absolute best bang for your buck. Oh, and make sure to shop around because you never know when you might find a deal somewhere or free shipping or a segue to today's sponsor, Bessie, an amalgamation of style and functionality with a touch of old school class. Bessie's new Courtside classic kicks are reminiscent of a traditional tennis shoe but with the added benefit that Vessie claims they are fully waterproof. They also feature a specially constructed tongue to provide additional flexibility and removable insoles, so you're free to slide in your custom orthotics for even more comfort. Whether it's a nice long stroll through the park or a lazy day on the beach, you can rock that vintage look without fear of sudden downpours. Their shoes are also vegan-friendly, so you can do your urban exploring guilt-free, and the cherry on top of it all is they offer free 90-day returns and exchanges within North America. So get yours at vy.com Linus.

techtips or scan the code on screen and save 15% off your entire purchase. If you guys enjoyed this video, maybe check out the last time we did this. The PC landscape sure has changed in the last couple of years.

The Herd Mentality PC 2024

Linus Tech Tips is a passionate team of "professionally curious" experts in consumer technology and video production who aim to educate and entertain.
