It was snowing outside, I was bored, and I finally had a minute after being slammed with school (and taking Mark Rober’s engineering course), so I built a clean 2021 gaming PC and ran some benchmarks. The star of the show is the RTX 2060—back when I grabbed it around $300 before the stock shortages and crypto mining madness sent prices into the stratosphere. I pair it with a Ryzen 5 2600 (6 cores / 12 threads) because it’s still a really solid value chip for 1080p gaming, some 1440p, and even light 1080p video editing. In the build, I break down every part and why it makes sense: MSI’s B450M Bazooka Max WiFi (no BIOS update needed, and it can even handle a Ryzen 7), XPG Spectrix D60G 3000MHz CL16 RAM with full-stick RGB, an EVGA 600 BR PSU that’s more than enough wattage for this combo, and an Inland Premium 500GB SSD from Micro Center that keeps things feeling snappy. I also talk through the UpHere RGB fans (great value, but they’re a workout to install and the wiring gets messy) and the DarkFlash DLM21 Mesh case—hinged tempered glass, mesh front, and it honestly feels like a luxury chassis for the price.