Budget-busting expectations

And there you have it, one complete budget build for $900. So what was it like to build?

Well honestly, not that difficult. A lot of budget builds are actually far less complex than you’d think. Realistically, there’s a total of six separate parts that need installing in the case itself, and all of them are fairly plug-and-play. There’s nothing very difficult, and it’s a perfect opportunity for a first-time builder to stretch their legs into this hobby of ours.

Get down the line a bit, and fancy investing in a dedicated graphics card? You could easily throw in an AMD Radeon RX 570 or Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Super, both of which you can get for around $200 at this point. It’s worth noting that the Ryzen 5 3400G at the heart of this build (and in fact, all of AMD’s APU processors) only comes with 8 PCIe 3.0 lane dedicated graphics, as opposed to the 16 you’ll find on its non-integrated cousins. This is where Intel edges out a bit. Our recommendation for an Intel alternative is the Intel Core i3-8300. That’s a quad-core part, minus the hyper-threading, but it comes with integrated graphics and 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes as standard for the GPU, which oddly (given the recent announcement of AMD only supporting Ryzen 3rd gen on its X570 series motherboards going forward), makes it the more attractive long-term choice.

As for performance, our budget-busting box did fairly well. Boot times were quick and sharp thanks to that M.2 PCIe SSD, although on the big file transfers the QLC NAND struggled a bit – it was pretty good with loading programs and transferring multiple sequential stuff, but with larger file transfers it struggled after a few minutes.

For everyday use it easily meets the mark. We also tested its graphical prowess, and at 1080p on Ultra it was capable of handling AAA titles, although not by any large measure. So if you’re looking for some casual gaming on the side, the AMD Ryzen 5 3400G is king.

Ultimately, it’s a sweet little box at a nice price, and more than ideal for anyone that’s just looking for a high-spec PC to build today for a low outlay.

01 One of the nicer touches to the Asrock B450M-HDV board is the fact that the M.2 slot is situated above the PCIe 3.0 slot, meaning it won’t get hot from a graphics card sitting directly above it. 02 If you do intend to go with a dedicated GPU later on, bear in mind performance will be worse, since AMD’s APU series processors only support 8 PCIe 3.0 graphics lanes, as opposed to the 16 you’ll find elsewhere. 03 The first thing we’d do if we were to run this long term would be to install some more fans. Investing in two premium 120mm fans for the front and then moving that included one back to the rear would work a treat. 04 If you dropped down to 8GB and a smaller SSD with Intel you could likely pick up an AMD Radeon RX 570 to act as a dedicated GPU if you wanted to.