AMD Ingredients

CPU Cooler - $0 AMD WRAITH STEALTH COOLER

There’s nothing we love more than a good deal at APC, and a free cooler is right up our street for this build, especially given the price of the Ryzen 7 5700G. As standard, it comes with the impressively robust Wraith Stealth cooler. This meaty offering packs a serious punch and makes Intel’s old and outdated included heatsink look like a paperweight in comparison. You install this little guy by removing the brackets from the motherboard and using the included mobo backplate to screw it into position. It’s not quite as fancy as the be quiet! cooler offered up by the Intel rig, but it’s free! www.amd.com

PSU - $60 450W CORSAIR CV450 80+ BRONZE

We have gone for a budget-priced PSU in this build, which is more than capable of powering our machine. With no traditional radiator AIO and no GPUs, we don’t necessarily need a huge powerhouse PSU. It’s a non modular power supply, which does hinder cable management a bit. Ideally you want to remove cables you’re not using (such as any PCIe power and of course those excess SATA cables that are going to take up space in the bottom half of the case). Another downside is if a cable gets damaged, replacing it may be a pain in the backside. Sure, the 80+ bronze efficiency rating isn’t what we would have in a more premium build, but at such a budget price tag, we can’t complain. www.corsair.com

Processor - $520 AMD RYZEN 7 5700G

The main talking point of this build is the AMD integrated graphics chip, specifically the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G CPU. This chip marks the arrival of the 7nm Cezanne Zen 3 APUs. This 65W CPU is packed with eight cores and 16 threads, a 3.8GHz base and a 4.6GHz boost clock, 16MB of L3 cache, and eight Radeon RX Vega CUs that operate at 2.0GHz. It looks pretty tasty on paper, it’s a Zen3 chip too so it steps up to a DDR4-3200 interface from DDR4-2933. This will certainly aid gaming performance with the integrated 7nm Radeon RX Vega graphics engine. It should produce solid 1080p gaming and for our battle, that’s exactly what we are aiming for. www.amd.com

Motherboard - $220 ASUS TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS (WI-FI)

There are plenty of motherboards to choose from, but Asus boards have worked well for us before and this TUF Gaming B550M-Plus Micro-ATX is a solid pick. It has upgraded power delivery and comprehensive cooling options to fuel the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs. With BIOS FLBK support, it is easy to set up and install too. The socket for this board is the AMD AM4 socket, making it ready for 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors and 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen with Radeon graphics processors. It also has next-gen connectivity with PCIe 4.0 M.2, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, Type-C, and Wi-Fi 6 support. This should go well with our AMD Ryzen 7 5700G. www.asus.com

Storage - $180 1TB WESTERN DIGITAL BLACK SN750 PCIE 3.0 M.2 SSD

This Western Digital SN750 is a sleek SSD with a design that accommodates most PC builds and the heatsink fits in nicely with our motherboard. It should cut game load times, improve overall performance and allow for a solid 1080p experience. It doubles storage density from the last generation with NAND technology. The SSD also is great when using the WD_BLACK SSD Dashboard, as it allows you to optimise performance with the gaming mode. It disables low power mode on the SSD and makes sure it is running at full power. With sequential read speeds of 3,470MB/s and sequential write speeds of 3,000MB/s, it’s no slouch. www.westerndigital.com

Memory - $130 16GB (2X8GB) CRUCIAL BALLISTIX @ 3600 CL16

There is always an abundance of RAM sticks to choose from when building a PC. RAM speed was our main priority, as this matters more for AMD CPUs than Intel chips. AMD CPUs have a cut-off speed of 3733MHz, so ideally we would have had some of those in this build. However, these Crucial Ballistix DDR4 sticks run @3600MHz. 16GB is a good amount, but this can always be increased, the price swayed us – under $150 is good for sticks of this speed. It isn’t the most interesting choice, but we weren’t going for a specific aesthetic. RGB is always an option, but if you want to tone things down a little, this allblack Crucial Ballistix memory kit is a good choice. www.crucial.com

Case - $110 PHANTEKS ECLIPSE P400A

This all-black ATX mid-tower case from Phanteks is a great choice for this build and a majority of other builds too. With an angular mesh front panel, the case looks sharp and strong with plenty of intake airflow. The front I/O contains two USB 3.0 ports, a mic and headphone jack, a reset button, and a three-speed fan controller. With the great airflow and fan controller built-in, you can tell this case has been made with airflow in mind. It comes with two 120mm fans with enough room for six 120mm fans if you need them or you want your PC to take off. It supports ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX, and E-ATX so it’s pretty darn compatible. Paired with some great cable management, there’s not much we can say that is wrong with this case. www.phanteks.com