THE SEARCH FOR VALUE

IT’S ACTUALLY QUITE TRICKY in the current market to make a call on the best value gear, simply because a lot of our go-to components have seen their prices explode, meaning they’re not as attractive as they once were. Graphics cards, in particular, have had a rocky ride recently, and while we once would have reached for a GeForce GTX 1070 for a mid-range rig such as this, these days we have to set our sights a little lower, unless we want to bump into the $1,500 price bracket instead. This is why we’ve reached for a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB, although if gaming is of no interest, you can pick up a GTX 1050 instead for around $150.

For the heart of the system, we’ve elected to give the Ryzen 5 2600 a spin, and have paired it with one of the more affordable X470 motherboards around in the shape of the Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming. There are combo deals to be had with these two, so it’s worth taking a look at your retailer of choice when buying—at the time of writing, Newegg has both of these together to save $20.

In order to test StoreMI, we’ve grabbed the recently released Samsung 970 Evo 250GB M.2 and paired it with a 1TB WD Caviar Blue hard drive. Amazingly, the new 970 Evo actually retails slightly cheaper than the older 960 Evos, so that’s one of the easiest upgrades we’ve ever made. This build also showcases Cooler Master’s newest case, the MasterBox MB500, which we’re eager to build in. Finishing off the spec list, we’ve got 16GB of DDR4-2400 G.Skill RAM, and an affordable power supply from Cooler Master as well. Now that’s all done, let’s get building.