Mid-range

Packing some punch.

We know a few components are shared between the two builds, but don’t fret – we’re going to be diversifying each pair of builds further with each coming issue. You may also have noticed that we’re pumping up the average power of the builds, so they’ll be a bit more expensive but with an increase in performance.

Processor-wise, we’ve got the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X against the Intel Core i7-9700F. Opting for the F variant rather than the more expensive i7-9700K loses us integrated graphics and a small amount of overclocking headroom, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The Ryzen 7 3700X is cheaper and manages to outperform the 9700F in some areas thanks to simultaneous multi-threading, but the Intel chip remains superior for gaming.

Both builds have powerful 1440p GPUs, the MSI Radeon RX 5700 and the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 OC. The former has additional VRAM that affords it slightly superior performance, but the 2060 is a cheaper (and in many games, more reliable) card. The 2060 also has ray-tracing capabilities, in theory a major feather in its cap against AMD, but in reality the 2060 isn’t that well equipped to handle ray tracing in most games.

The AMD system now packs a fourth-generation PCIe M.2 SSD, the

Corsair Force MP600, giving it a major advantage over the Intel build in file transfer speed thanks to its 3rd-gen Ryzen chip and X570 motherboard. The Intel build retains the more affordable Western Digital SN750 SSD. Both systems are rocking twin-fan air coolers for their respective CPUs: The Corsair A500 for the AMD build, and the Noctua NH-U12A for the Intel one.

Elsewhere, we’re pulling some components over from the budget build for now, namely the memory and hard drives. Keep an eye on these: We’re watching component prices closely, and we’ll be introducing more variety soon.

“Both builds have powerful 1440p GPUs, the MSI Radeon RX 5700 and the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 OC. The former has additional VRAM that affords it slightly superior performance, but the 2060 is a cheaper (and in many games, more reliable) card.”