Market Watch
A sampling of PC systems available this month.
Mwave AMD Ryzen X570 Custom Gaming PC $2,504 TINYURL.COM/APC471MWV
The new R5 3600X is a great CPU, but here it’s paired with an equally new X570 chipset – yet with no PCIe 4.0 SSD to capitalise on the platform’s most compelling current drawcard – you’re paying a large premium for a feature that you can’t use out of the box. If you plan on upgrading down the track however, this system begins to make more sense, with good water cooling, beefy VRMs and a higher wattage PSU, upgrading later to more powerful CPUs or GPUs will be no problem. This system is a good starter’s build, but if you’re looking to just buy a system and not mess around with it, you will find better deals elsewhere. Good system for an upgrader.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen R5 3600X COOLER: Cooler Master MasterLiquid ML240R ARGB AIO MOTHERBOARD: MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus GRAPHICS: MSI GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming Z 8GB MEMORY: ADATA XPG Spectrix D60G 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 RGB STORAGE: Intel 660p 512GB M.2 SSD, Seagate 2TB BarraCuda HDD POWER SUPPLY: SilverStone Strider Gold S ST75F-GS V3 CASE: Phanteks Eclipse P300.
PC Case Gear Creation 2080 Ti Gaming System $5,499 TINYURL.COM/APC471PCG
MSI has focused on content creators needs with this motherboard, and while it’ll game and overclock just as well as most other boards they won’t have such a high level of IO and expandability available to them. With seven PCIe expansion slots, out of the box support for up to four M.2 drives and a staggering 13 USB ports out the back, this thing is capable of workstation levels of productivity. If you crave high speed storage and lots of IO, this will not disappoint. Paired with the new 24-thread R9 3900X, this system will chew through any heavy workload in a snap.
The RTX 2080 Ti is the cherry on top that also makes this system one of the best gaming machines around.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X COOLER: Nzxt Kraken X52 240mm AIO MOTHERBOARD: MSI Prestige X570 Creation GRAPHICS: MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming X Trio 11GB MEMORY: Team T-Force Night Hawk RGB 3200MHz 16GB DDR4 STORAGE: Adata XPG SX8200 Pro M.2 SSD 1TB, Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD POWER SUPPLY: Phanteks Revolt Pro 850W CASE: Phanteks Enthoo Evolv X.
TI Computers Winning Gaming AMD3600 $1,595 TINYURL.COM/APC471TIC
The R5 3600 CPU is the new mainstream price/performance king. With that at the centre of this system it’s a great start and sets the tone for the rest of the build. Coupled with a B450 motherboard we save money over X570 with no performance losses to speak of. It just means no PCIe 4.0 is available, if that’s of concern to you. Fast RAM and an NVMe SSD paired with a now superseded (and thus cheaper) RTX 2060 equal an astonishing amount of performance for not much coin. Thoroughly recommended for those wanting to game at 1080p at high frame rates.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 COOLER: OEM MOTHERBOARD: Asus Prime B450M GRAPHICS: Asus 6G DDR6 Geforce RTX2060 MEMORY: Kingston Hyper X 16GB DDR4 3200MHz STORAGE: 500G NVMe M.2 SSD HDD, 2TB Seagate HDD POWER SUPPLY: Cooler Master Masterwatt 700W CASE: Cooler Master MasterBox Lite 3.