THE BUILDS
Approximate Price:
$678
A MODEST OVERALL PRICE DROP from our last issue, thanks to some small reductions here and there, means the Budget build is in a really good place right now, so we’re not making too many changes here. A switch back to the 2x 8GB Team T-Force Vulcan Z memory kit was predicated by the GeiL Evo Potenza RAM no longer being on sale, and we also swapped back to a twin-fan GPU, specifically Zotac Gaming’s standard 6GB model of the GTX 1660 Super, which happened to be 10 dollars cheaper than the previous Asus GPU. We also made the change from Adata to Patriot’s Burst 2.5-inch SSD, sticking with the same amount of SATA storage (to keep our boot-ups nice and swift), but saving ourselves a few dollars, because the Adata SU650 is also no longer on sale at the time of writing. Patriot’s drive is super-cheap and will do everything we need it to do here.
Approximate Price:
$1,212
THE PARTS THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’. Our Mid-Range build is making the shift over to Intel this month; we’ve been all over AMD for long enough. The Core i5-9600K we’re using is a bit more expensive than the third-gen Ryzen chip it’s replacing, but it also outperforms it on average by a small amount, and removes the need for an expensive X570 motherboard. So, we’ve got ASRock’s Z390 Steel Legend coming in, too, and a powerful Corsair A500 air cooler, because we’ll be missing the free Wraith cooler AMD provides. We’re slightly increasing our available power with a new 550W CV PSU, also from Corsair. We’re making the same memory change as in the Budget build, and swapping over to MSI for the GPU, because the XFX RX 5700 was no longer on sale. Lastly replacing the SSD with a cheaper, more suitable PCIe 3.0 drive, the BarraCuda 510 from Seagate, on sale for just $80.
SAVINGS GALORE! We stripped almost $100 from the Turbo build, thanks to a sale on ASRock’s X399 Phantom Gaming 6 mobo, more price reductions on the second-gen Threadripper CPUs, and the also-reduced 1TB model of the Seagate BarraCuda 510 M.2 SSD we used in the Mid-Range build. It’s an awesome selection, and we reinvested some of our spare budget in some funky RGB RAM, in the form of G.Skill’s 32GB TridentZ RGB kit.
The EVGA RTX 2080 Super is no longer on sale at $690, so we also had to switch manufacturers on our GPU, keeping the price relatively low with the excellent-value 8GB Ventus model from MSI. We hadn’t intended to swap out our power supply, but the G+ version of the 850W EVGA SuperNOVA leapt in price by over $20, so we switched over to its GA counterpart.
Lastly, we replaced the cooler. We wanted to stick with the triple-fan setup to ensure maximum cooling for our Threadripper 2950X, but our previous 360mm Fractal Design cooler had risen in price a tad much for our liking, so we found a replacement: the EVGA CLC 360, a powerful but minimalistic AIO cooler with three low-noise nano-bearing fans, and an RGB-lit pump block. EVGA’s free Flow Control software enables you to tweak both the pump and fan speed with ease, and the combination bracket means it is fully compatible with TR4-socket Threadripper processors.
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