BUDGET GAMER

Approximate Price: $859

AS WE LOOKED AROUND for new parts for this build, one thing became clear: The core components have been getting a little more expensive. Sure, the price for the ASRock H170M-ITX/ac dropped by $5, but that was made up for by the $5 rise for the Core i5-6500. Nearly every other component saw a slight rise of about $5 as well, with the notable exception of the 1TB Seagate Barracuda, which holds steady at $50 for now. The biggest price change we made is the video card. By switching from AMD’s RX 480 to Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1060, we knew it was going to cost us. We still haven’t seen inventory stay up to speed for the RX 480, and prices for available cards tend to be closer to $300, which is way inflated from the MSRP of $200. The RX 480 is a deal on paper, if you can find one. Instead, we went with EVGA’s shorty GTX 1060, the 6161-KR. The card is the spiritual successor to the GTX 960 1961-KR that we’ve used so many times before.