Market Watch
A sampling of PC systems available this month.
PC Case Gear Lancool 2060 $1,799 TINYURL.COM/APC470PCC
If the Night King from Game of Thrones owned a computer, I reckon this is what it would look like. This cool build is well themed and lit, and packages together a reasonably powerful system for the price. It’s capable of 1080p gaming with high details and refresh rates, even with some ray tracing if managed properly. The CPU will handle any modern game easily. No Hyper-Threading, overclocking or iGPU combined with the stock HSF will curtail what any enthusiast might want from a system, but if you just want a PC that works and don’t want to play around with configuration options, this is a solid pick. A no-nonsense rig that looks the part.
KEY SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i5- 9400F
COOLER: OEM MOTHERBOARD: MSI B360M Gaming Plus GRAPHICS: MSI GeForce RTX 2060 Ventus XS OC 6GB MEMORY: Team T-Force Night Hawk RGB 3000MHz 16GB DDR4 STORAGE: Adata XPG SX8200 Pro 256GB SSD, Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD POWER SUPPLY: Phanteks PH-P550GF 550W CASE: Lian Li Lancool One
Scorptec Master RTX 2070 $1,949 TINYURL.COM/APC470SCO
Coming in at $150 more than the Lancool 2060 system, this system is much better in some important areas. The big-ticket item in this system is the graphics card, pushing well into the performance market, this will easily handle 1440p gaming and 144Hz refresh rate targets. The CPU is arguably more fun for enthusiasts than the Lancool PC to the left, as this is unlocked, meaning overclocking is possible for some free extra performance. The rest of the system looks reasonable, specs wise, for the price point. A lack of 2933MHz-supporting memory will hurt the processor a little bit, as AMD’s underlying Infinity Fabric technology likes the extra bandwidth for inter-core communications, but at this point we’re just nitpicking. Great performance for the price.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600
COOLER: OEM MOTHERBOARD: MSI Bazooka B450M GRAPHICS: MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 2070 8GB MEMORY: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 STORAGE: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M. 2 SSD, Seagate BarraCuda 2TB HDD POWER SUPPLY: Corsair CX550M 550W
CASE: Cooler Master MasterBox Lite 3.1 TG
PLE Computers Home Focus $846 TINYURL.COM/APC470PLE
This is perfect for a typical family computer system. It’s cost-effective at well under $1,000, with a good amount of storage included for all those family photos, videos or school projects. The processor is quite handy for typical everyday tasks and with decent integrated graphics it’ll even let you run less-demanding game titles... after the homework is done of course! With a direct upgrade path to the new Ryzen 3000-series APUs, this system can be upgraded if the need arises later, however the 450W power supply will limit discrete graphics card upgrades unless the PSU gets upgraded as well. Funnily enough, it sports an optical drive. Remove it at checkout to save $18.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2400
COOLER: OEM MOTHERBOARD: Asus Prime A320M-E GRAPHICS: Onboard MEMORY: Geil 8GB DDR4 Pristine 2400MHz STORAGE: WD Green 240GB SSD, Seagate Barracuda 1TB HDD
POWER SUPPLY: eVGA GD Series 450W
CASE: Deepcool Wave V2