Market Watch
A sampling of PC systems available this month.
PLE Adrenaline $1,749 – TINYURL.COM/APC477PLE
Keeping it simple to win. This system isn’t the most expensive in this issue, however, it will easily dominate any gaming performance metrics thanks to its RX 5700, which puts it up into RTX class performance territory – well above the GTX cards of the other systems this issue.
To cater for this more expensive but worthwhile card, PLE has taken a sensible approach to cutting corners in other places. The non-X Ryzen 5 3600 is still a perfect pairing, the motherboard is a little barebones but enough to cover the basics. Memory capacity is great but at 2666MHz is a tad slow for Ryzen’s megahertz-loving memory controller.
As an out of the box experience, PLE has done well to maximise gaming performance with only minor hits in other areas. Well done PLE.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, COOLER: OEM, MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte B450M-S2H,
GRAPHICS: HIS Radeon RX 5700, MEMORY: Geil 16GB 2666MHz, STORAGE: Kingston 240GB NVMe SSD, WD 2TB HDD, POWER SUPPLY: Corsair 650W, CASE: Thermaltake H100.
Scorptec Phantom GTX 1660 Ti $1,699 – TINYURL.COM/APC477SCO
This is the system one would expect to see at this price point without any thought or attempt at differentiation being made to the system. It all feels rather normal. The factory overclocked Ti variant of the GTX 1660 should be noted, the highest of Nvidia’s entrylevel GPU lineup making it solid for most 1080p situations at higher details. A solid CPU pairing coupled with a reasonable motherboard is good too but not outstanding.
The 500GB SSD plus 2TB HDD storage solution is the largest of the systems and should be commended. A wellrounded build and a solid choice for any gamer.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, COOLER: OEM, MOTHERBOARD: Asus TUF B450M-PLUS, GRAPHICS: Asus TUF GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC 6GB, MEMORY: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3000MHz DDR4, STORAGE: Western Digital Blue SN500 500GB M.2 SSD, Seagate BarraCuda 2TB HDD, POWER SUPPLY: SilverStone Essential 550W, CASE: Antec Dark Phantom DP301M Black mATX.
JW Computers GMR Matrexx 1660 Super $1,799 – TINYURL.COM/APC477JWC
As the most expensive system in this issue, one would expect to have something to show for it. In many respects this does. Most of the extra costs for this build relative to the others were sunk into the Ryzen 5 3600X (note the X suffix denoting higher stock speed) and a quite fancier and dearer motherboard. Unfortunately, the GPU is ‘only’ a Super Edition GTX 1660, not the highest end Ti variant, but the newer Super version is less than 5% off in performance generally anyway so that’s ok given all the other benefits.
The lack of a HDD is something to note, however there is a sizeable 512GB SSD included to compensate. If initial storage capacity isn’t a problem for you, this would be a great system to upgrade over time thanks to that higher-grade motherboard.
KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, COOLER: OEM, MOTHERBOARD: Asus ROG B450-F, GRAPHICS: Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super 6GB, MEMORY: Adata D60G 16GB 3200MHz, STORAGE: Intel 660P 512GB M.2 NVME SSD, POWER SUPPLY: CoolerMaster MWE 650W, CASE: Deepcool Matrexx 55 Mid-Tower Black RGB.
PC Case Gear Hellfire 1660 Ti $1,649 – TINYURL.COM/APC477PCC
This is a decent system for the price. Being the cheapest of the bunch it manages to hold up against all the others in terms of GPU, memory, and storage, however the PSU is the lowest wattage of the bunch at just 500W. It’s a good quality 500W unit and will certainly be enough for this build, but may hamper future upgrade attempts. The biggest negative against this system is the CPU. At just 12-months old it’s not all that old really but AMD’s new line-up and Intel’s lack of a 10th gen desktop refresh is making this look extremely long in the tooth with not great clock speeds and lack of hyper-threading. It’ll be fine and do the job, but you might find yourself being CPU-limited with this system in tasks/games sooner than other offerings currently. Best avoid.
KEY SPECS: CPU: Intel Core i5 9400F, COOLER: OEM, MOTHERBOARD: MSI B360M Bazooka, GRAPHICS: MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Gaming X 6GB, MEMORY: Team T-Force Delta RGB 3200MHz 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 Black, STORAGE: ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro M.2 NVMe SSD 256GB, Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD, POWER SUPPLY: Be quiet! Pure Power 11 500W, CASE: Phanteks Eclipse P300 Tempered Glass Black.