Market watch
An overview of typical systems in today’s market.
A sampling of PC systems available this month
JW Computers GMR TUF 1660
It is a sign of the times when something as entry level as this system is approaching two thousand dollars. The global silicon shortages are making it tough to stick to pre-COVID pricing, this system however is still around two hundred dollars overpriced. Similar builds from other system builders can be had for less. So, shop around if looking for a similar grade of PC. Having said that, the quad core CPU will be enough for most general tasks. Playing eSport games should be ok too, but it will struggle with more recent CPU heavy titles and will end up being a bottleneck for the GPU longer term. The B450 chipset will keep your options wide open for future drop in CPU upgrades though and helps to keep the price down. A good starting point for eSports fans.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3500X Cooler: Cooler Master Masterliquid ML120R RGB Motherboard: Asus B450 Chipset Graphics: GeForce GTX 1660 Super Memory: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz Storage:
WD Black 500GB Power Supply: 550W Case:
Asus GT301 TUF RGB.
Scorptec Phantom RTX 3070
Ah, the sweet spot. Not too much of an asking price and just enough performance to play everything. This system sports the venerable and still quite capable Ryzen 5 3600. A respectable gaming CPU, though it has recently come to light that Nvidia graphics card drivers can bottleneck at 1080p on slower CPUs, including this one. It’s not by a large enough margin to worry about too much. However, if you’re planning to play at 1440p or higher the problem disappears. The B450 motherboard will give you the capability of moving up to a Ryzen 5000 series processor later which could be handy. The graphics card is well suited to 1440p and ultra-wide monitor resolutions at above 100Hz frame rates. It is good all-around this system.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Cooler: OEM Motherboard: Gigabyte B450M S2H Graphics:
Zotac Twin Edge GeForce RTX 3070 OC 8GB Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3200MHz DDR4 Storage: Western Digital WD Blue SN550 500GB M.2 SSD, Seagate BarraCuda 2TB HDD Power Supply: SilverStone Strider 650W Case: Antec Dark Phantom DP301M.
PLE Computers Gen 11 Valiant
One of the first pre-builts on sale featuring a new Intel 11th Gen CPU. If you’re an Intel fan and are wanting Intel’s latest and greatest this system is certainly a place to start. However, going off early 11th Gen benchmarks it appears to not be that great of an upgrade over 10th Gen parts, let alone a Zen3-powered system by AMD. Combined with the hefty price the i9 commands over the almost similarly performant 11700K, this system doesn’t exactly represent good value at the moment. The rest of the system is rather nice with Samsung’s new PCIe Gen4 enabled SSD included and the best graphics card available this system won’t leave you wanting for much. With no clear CPU upgrade paths to speak of and stagnant CPU performance gains, think carefully before deciding on this pricey system.
CPU: Intel Core i9 11900K Cooler: ID-Cooling ZoomFlow 360X RGB AIO Motherboard: Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Pro AX Graphics: Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming OC 24GB Memory: Thermaltake 16GB DDR4 ToughRAM Z-One RGB C18 3600MHz Storage: Samsung 980 Pro 500GB, WD Blue WD20EZAZ 3.5” 2TB Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850W Case: Thermaltake S300.
Aftershock PC Asus TUF White Extreme Edition
With so much compute power under the hood in this beastly system, you need to be sure you’re capable of fully utilising it all, as it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense if all your going to be doing is gaming. The sixteen core CPU powering this monster will be left mostly idle during gaming and will be better utilised in creative or more professional tasks. Sporting a rare as hens’ teeth RTX 3080 is quite an achievement, though given the productivity bent of this system it’s a wonder an RTX 3090 isn’t used instead for its extra VRAM. The storage is quite noteworthy too, again pointing to the heavy compute tasks. A powerful system for those that can properly leverage it.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Cooler: Asus ROG Strix 240mm AIO (White) Motherboard: Asus ROG X570 Crosshair VIII Dark Hero (WIFI) Graphics: Asus ROG Strix RTX 3080 (White) Memory: 32GB DDR4 G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 3600MHz Storage: 2TB Gen4 M.2 SSD, 2TB Gen4 M.2 SSD, Tertiary Drive: 8TB HDD Power Supply: Asus ROG Strix 850W Case: Asus TUF GT501 (White).