Mid-range

Punching above its weight.

Again, we have small savings on both mid-range systems this month. An excellent deal on the Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR43200 has given the memory in the AMD build a minor speed bump (of 200MHz, with no change in CAS latency) and knocking a few bucks off the price too.

Meanwhile, the Intel system has adopted the same memory as its budget counterpart: Performance is basically unchanged, but we’ve saved a few dollars. Since memory speed has little to no impact on Intel CPU performance, there’s no need to splash out – capacity and latency are all that matter.

A price hike on the Corsair CX650 made us opt for new 650W power supplies. Both the AMD and the Intel machine get the MasterWatt 650 from Cooler Master, equipped with a low-noise Silencio fan. Speaking of fans, we saved a bit more cash by swapping to the Noctua NH-U12S CPU cooler for our AMD build. This is a slight downgrade – the NH-U12S only has one fan as opposed to the previous Corsair A500’s two – but Noctua’s coolers are always a good choice.

The Ryzen 7 3700X isn’t going anywhere, but the Intel Core i7-9700 is actually now cheaper than the i7-9700F. It’s a strange turn of events, since the chips are near-identical, save for the 9700F’s lack of integrated graphics. The i7-9700 is joined by a new motherboard too, the MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Edge AC, saving us $60. The AMD build also scored a new motherboard: The Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus, which is excellent value at $429.

We shopped around for different Radeon GPUs, but the MSI RX 5700 remains excellent value right now. Our previous RTX 2060 rose by the same amount, so we’ve shifted over to Gigabyte’s factory-overclocked model to keep our price level. Elsewhere, small savings made us stick with the parts we had already. Fractal Design’s Meshify C case remains a great choice.

“The Intel Core i7-9700 is actually now cheaper than the i7-9700F. It’s a strange turn of events, since the chips are near-identical.”