Market Watch

A sampling of PC systems available this month.

Aftershock Zeal $2,437 – TINYURL.COM/APC480AFT

In what appears to be a Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic chassis, but is actually a ‘clone’ design of one, this build offers unobstructed views through the front and side tempered glass windows.

The image shown also showcases a glimpse of the customisation possible beyond the recommended configuration we’re showcasing, with RGB fans and a different graphics card shown but it should help illustrate how good looking a system is possible if you start piling on the RGB add-on options at checkout.

The specs all around are quite solid, offering a well-matched CPU and GPU combination with a good storage configuration and perfect memory speed choice. A well specced out system for 1440p gaming.

KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, COOLER: Aftershock Spectra Glacier 240 AIO, MOTHERBOARD: Asus B450 TUF Gaming Plus, GRAPHICS: Zotac RTX 2070 Super AMP 8GB, MEMORY: 16GB Apacer Zadak Moab RGB 3600MHz, STORAGE: 512GB M.2 NVME SSD, 2TB 7200RPM HDD, POWER SUPPLY: 600W FSP / EVGA, CASE: Zeal Tempered Glass Showcase Edition.

JW Computers Ready to Go Office PC

$588 – TINYURL.COM/APC480JWC

Need to work from home and just need a barebones minimalistic PC to let you browse the web, remotely connect to work and do basic computing tasks with? It doesn’t get much cheaper than this!

Being so cheap, there are plenty of compromises made. Interestingly, memory and storage weren’t one of them with a nice 8GB of system RAM which is enough for most office work situations, and a SATA SSD which is sizeable enough and will keep the system snappy.

The two biggest compromises are the CPU and the motherboard. The CPU is good enough for general office work, remote desktop connection and web browsing, but don’t expect much beyond that.

KEY SPECS: CPU: Intel Pentium Processor G4560, COOLER: OEM, MOTHERBOARD: Asus B250 Mining Expert, GRAPHICS: iGPU, MEMORY: Crucial 8GB DDR4 2666MHz, STORAGE: Crucial BX500 240GB 2.5in Sata SSD, POWER SUPPLY: Tsunami Power Supply Unit, CASE: Tsunami P43.

PLE Vital Home $749 – TINYURL.COM/APC480PLE

Costing quite a bit more than the circa 2017 JW system, if you’re wanting something a bit more modern to work from home with this is ideally what you should be aiming at. Although we would suggest at checkout opting for the AMD 3000G CPU instead for an extra $6, which will net you an extra 300MHz (3.5GHz) of CPU clock speed and an unlocked multiplier if you’re into that sort of thing.

The motherboard and the SSD is this systems’ biggest assets over the JW system. Double the SSD storage capacity is always welcome, but the motherboard gives you the entry level experience of AMD’s current platform, giving you more IO to play with like M.2 expansion and upgrade paths down the track.

KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Athlon 200GE, COOLER: OEM, MOTHERBOARD: Asus Prime A320M-K, GRAPHICS: iGPU, MEMORY: GeIL 8GB DDR4 Pristine C19 2666MHz, STORAGE: Kingston SSDNow A400 480GB 2.5in SSD, POWER SUPPLY: eVGA GD Series 600W, CASE: Fixita Essent E103.

Scorptec Ryzen 3200G Office PC

$799 – TINYURL.COM/APC480SCP

The most expensive of the home office PC’s this month, this system earns its stripes thanks to a superior CPU offering. The star of the show in this build is AMD’s 3200G, which compared to the PLE and JW systems offers up base and boost clocks of 3.6GHz and 4.0GHz respectively based on the slightly enhanced Zen+ architecture. Combined with the fact that is has double the core and thread count, it means you can expect upwards of 25% better computing performance over the others.

Where this build slightly falls down is the 2400MHz memory, which is slower than what the PLE system has and is less than the CPU’s supported 2933MHz, meaning there’ll be a small performance loss. Also, the 240GB SSD while M.2, is not NVMe, so not only is it not faster than a SATA SSD, it also occupies a potential upgrade slot.

KEY SPECS: CPU: AMD Ryzen 3 3200G, COOLER: OEM, MOTHERBOARD: Gigabyte A320M-S2H V2, GRAPHICS: iGPU, MEMORY: Kingston ValueRAM 8GB 2400MHz DDR4, STORAGE: Western Digital WD Green 240GB M.2 SSD, POWER SUPPLY: Thermaltake 500W, CASE: Thermaltake Versa H21.