THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
WE’VE SEEN SOME price increases on components this issue, starting with a $10 hike on the Corsair 4000D Airflow case that houses both of these builds. The CV550 80+ Bronze power supply (also from Corsair) is back up to $50, so we’ve added an alternative in the same price range for the AMD system: Asus’s TUF Gaming 550W PSU, which touts its ‘military-grade’ specs. This should perform as well as the Corsair one and comes with a six-year warranty.
The Gigabyte B550 mobo in the AMD build is listed at $130 in our pa parts table, but you may be able to pick one up for less. Meanwhile, th the Intel machine gets a new B660-chipset motherboard from MSI, th the Pro B660-M, which is more expensive but offers a superior po port selection to the B660 board from ASRock we used in previous is issues. We’re sticking with the processors found in both builds as th there was little price fluctuation; we considered bringing additional in integrated graphics to the Intel build, but the i5-12400F is cheaper th than the UHD-equipped 12400, and testing has indicated a slightly be better performance in single-core workloads.
While some parts are pricier this month, budget GPUs continue to fall. Sales saw us nab an XFX Speedster SWIFT210 RX 6600 XT fo for the AMD machine and an MSI Ventus RTX 3050 for the Intel. A Although these cards are still pricey, we found both for less than $ $100 above their original RRP. We added new memory to the AMD bu build, namely Corsair’s Vengeance LPX at the budget build’s usual 16 16GB, 3600MHz, CAS latency 16 specs. At $75, it’s a great deal.
Lastly, we looked into new drives across the board in our budget bu builds this month, but having added new SSDs to both machines last time, we were already pretty comfortable with the storage in these systems. Both SSDs and the WD Blue HDD we’re using dropped in price by a small amount this month, so we’ll leave that hardware where it is. Overall, we dropped the total cost of both budget machines by a small amount, which we’re pleased with.
WE DIDN’T CHANGE the power supplies found in our mid-range systems this month because the NZXT C750 and EVGA SuperNOVA 750 GA remain the best-value PSUs available at this wattage. At the time of writing, you can buy the C750 for just $40, but only if you have all the power cables you need since this one comes without.
Both systems keep their processors for now but the AMD build gets a new motherboard, the X570 Gaming X from Gigabyte, an absolute steal at $130. The Intel rig keeps its Asus Prime mobo, thanks to an excellent sale that drops the price by more than $40 from RRP. For $3 more, you can upgrade to the WiFi-enabled version of that Asus board; a potentially savvy decision for futureproofing your build even if you currently have easy Ethernet access.
A sale on Raijintek’s Orcus 240 RBW all-in-one liquid cooler prompted us to use it in the AMD system this month, with the price dropping from $110 to $80. This cooler also has addressable RGB fans and pump block, which is a nice extra but it doesn’t have LGA 1700 socket compatibility, so wouldn’t have worked in the Intel build. Instead, that retains the Corsair H100i cooler (no longer on sale).
Joining the AMD build’s new arrivals this month is the Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 6800 XT, cheaper than the previous 6800 XT we were using last month. Prices of mid-to-high-end GPUs seem to be easing, though not as quickly as budget cards. The Intel system gets an RTX 3070 from EVGA, which is also cheaper than last month’s Asus TUF model but not as much of an expense drop as the 6800 XT.
We’re making one last big change to our midrange builds in this issue: an upgrade to 32GB of total RAM. This will increase the total price, but falling GPU prices and greater performance from current-gen CPUs with access to more memory inspired us to make the switch. The AMD system gets the discounted Kingston FURY Renegade RGB, while the Intel system sticks with the Corsair Vengeance RGB RT (while upgrading to 16GB per stick, of course).
BOTH OF OUR HIGH-END processors saw price hikes this month, though not disastrously so. We’re keeping both CPUs, although if you’re willing to sacrifice integrated graphics you could save a few bucks by opting for the i9-12900KF in the Intel build. Good Z690 motherboards remain expensive, but we were happy to see $10 shaved off the price of the MSI mobo in our Intel turbo system. Conversely, the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite WiFi rose by the same amount but remains good value for money for an X570 board.
The AMD turbo build gets a new power supply and a new CPU cooler—the Cooler Master MWE 850 V2 and NZXT Kraken X72, respectively. This PSU brings the AMD system up to 850W of total power, bringing it in line with its Intel counterpart. That NZXT AIO is on sale at the time of writing, making it cheaper than the LGA 1700-compatible MSI MAG AIO cooler we’ve added to the Intel rig this month. Neither machine got a new GPU, because both the ones we had in place dropped by over $100. The semiconductor shortage is finally easing, with graphics card stock coming home to roost.
With our bump from 16GB to 32GB of RAM in the mid-range builds, it seemed appropriate to put those GPU savings to good use here too, so both systems are getting an upgrade to a hefty 64GB of memory. The AMD build sticks with DDR4, getting G.Skill’s RGB-illuminated Trident Z Neo kit at 4,000MHz. The Intel system forgoes colored LEDs in order to keep the price down with a Corsair Vengeance kit. DDR5 is still expensive, even more so when looking at 64GB kits, so stick to 32GB if you want to save some cash.
HDD storage (particularly at lower RPMs) seems to be getting cheaper, with Western Digital’s 6TB Blue drives dropping to $80. PCIe 4.0 SSDs at higher capacities are getting cheaper too, with the excellent Samsung 980 Pro 1TB on sale for $130. The AMD build gets this M.2 drive, while the Intel turbo system enjoys a WD Black SN850 to match its hard drive. While our doubled-up RAM raised the cost of these builds, savings elsewhere meant that the overall prices totals didn’t increase much, so we’ll consider that a win.