MID-RANGE

Approximate Price: $1,413

NO MAJOR CHANGES THIS ISSUE for our mid-range system. We did swap out MSI’s Gaming M3 series motherboard for the SLI Pro, though, which comes in a slick black finish, and with all the major features that its slightly more expensive brother offers. We also swapped out the EVGA GPU for a Zotac GTX 1070.

Although Ryzen would probably be the best contender for this midrange build, the 5-series chips haven’t launched yet, and we’re still seeing teething problems in games with these chips and memory frequencies. Expect the bugs to be ironed out quickly, but for now, it’s a waiting game to see what effect AMD has on the industry.

Interestingly, the memory price hike has slowed, while spinning platters are still on the rise. We’re seeing small price increases across the board, bumping up our total, but thanks to swapping out the MSI Gaming M3, we can negate those rises, even if it’s only by $4.