Edit: Gonna add this in because some people are getting the wrong impression from my post. I am not asking for youtubers to painstakingly look through and account for the sales tax rate in every state, let alone the rest of the world.
All I am asking is for them to not ignore the very existence of taxes. The title of all of these videos mention the $1,000 build. The problem is that this supposed "$1,000" price tag that they slap onto the title does not account for taxes. So not only is the title incorrect, its blatantly disingenuous.
Secondly, these youtubers build their builds as if taxes dont exist. Meaning that pre tax these builds are either over $1,000 already, or just below $1,000. When in reality if you live in a state where a sales tax exist, your build pre taxes is going to be somewhere around the low $900 range, not at almost $1,000.
Again I am not advocating that they go through the sales tax of every state. But at least acknowledge to the viewers that taxes exist, and build your pc with that in mind.
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I did this because I always felt like these youtubers were leaving things out to get that $1000 budget title. So I decided to actually test out the price of the builds. I also made a note of youtubers that provided alternative components, and whether or not they mentioned taxes. In terms of the markets that I used, I used the links provided in the descriptions. So mainly Amazon, and Newegg.
| Name and date of video | Price USD | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ScatterVolt, 3 months | $1,120 | No mention of taxes, but did provide alternative components |
| Crater, 5 months | $1,187 | No mentions of taxes |
| PC Builder. 11 days ago | $1,057 | No mention of taxes, but did provide alternative components |
| TechSource, 2 months | $1,073 | No mentions of taxes, but did provide alternative components |
| Zach Tech Turf, 1 month | $1,181 | No mentions of taxes, but did mention tarrifs |
| Paul's Hardware, 3 months | $1,126 | No mention of taxes, but did provide alternative components |
| PC Centric, 1 month | $1,219 | No mention of taxes, but did provide alternative components. Also stated that the price will be at about $1,000. |
| GeekaWhat, 1 month | $1,223 | No mention of taxes. Stated to be as close to $1,000 as possible. |
| Toasty Bros, 3 months | $1,131 | No mention of taxes. Stated to be a little over $1,000, at around $1,050. |
| Nerd on a Budget, 2 months | $1,002 | Mentioned taxes, and that the build was made with good deals. Stated that without good deals the build will be a little over $1,000 |
These prices are with taxes taken into consideration, but no shipping since I have Amazon Prime. Taking all those prices into consideration the average price is roughly 13% over the proposed $1,000 limit.
These builds are often targeted towards people who're just getting into pc gaming and dont want to spend an exorbitant amount on a pc. What these builds do not take into considerations are the prices for the monitor, and peripherals. As such you're easily looking at adding at the minimum $130 more to the overall setup.
Im not doing this in an attempt to shit or expose any of these youtubers especially since I watch them. I was simply interested to see if the numbers were accurate, and not to my surprise the majority of them fail to stay at or under even $1,100.
Links to the videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHy-XxlJbBU&t=157s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DNllu7c3QY&t=54s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCV5vVSA7Hg&t=26s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULx3wX_E76Q&t=359s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RJ5QbypM38&t=65s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT2KxwBYG9I&t=234s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1dtLswCms8&t=144s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAKOErVoSQY&t=9s