MIDRANGE

Approximate Price: $1,474

PRICE INCREASES STING at all levels, and the Midrange felt it just like the Budget build. However, a bigger budget provides more flexibility, and we were able to hold on to the majority of the parts we wanted. Intel’s Core i5-6600K went up by $5, while the PSU saw a slight increase as well. The Samsung 850 Evo M.2 SATA SSD did go up significantly at some retailers, but we found it for $104 by shopping around. The big change was the video card. Unlike the Budget build, we could stick with our previous GPU, but we had to get a cheaper card model. MSI’s entry here gets as close to the MSRP of $400 as we’ve seen. Most GTX 1070s fall between $420 and $450, which make the Founder’s Edition that much more appealing. Luckily, this card has a blower design, too, which will help keep temperatures low. The Founder’s Edition of the GTX 1070 is $450 pretty much across the board, so if you’re willing to shell out a few extra dollars for the reference blower, go for it.