Mid-range
Right on the sweet spot.
Right off the bat, we saved $40 on both systems thanks to a discount on the Meshify C case from Fractal Design. We’d hoped to refresh all the cases earlier this year (and shoot them in our studio), but the specter of COVID-19 hanging over us precluded that from happening. It still will, though – hopefully soon!
PSU prices are on the move, and this month we’ve opted to give both mid-range systems the same power supply: The reliable Corsair CX650, which should provide more than enough juice. We upgraded the Intel motherboard, sticking with MSI but opting for the slightly higher-end Z390 Gaming Plus model. The AMD build didn’t warrant a new motherboard, but we did see an appreciated fall of $50 on the price of MSI’s Radeon RX 5700. There are a few cheaper options available, sure, but we’re not downgrading to a single-fan GPU for anything less than a $50 saving.
Really, there wasn’t much else to change in the AMD build this month. A few handy price drops here and there were a welcome sight, and the Corsair Force MP600 SSD remains the best-priced 500GB drive that supports PCIe 4.0 transfer speeds.
We had more work to do on the Intel system; saving ourselves a few dollars by swapping to a different dual-fan air cooler was a start, but we were curious about upgrading the SSD too. Upon inspection, however, we found that the 500GB WD Black SN750 benefitted from an even bigger discount, now costing just $159 for half a terabyte of speedy M.2 storage. For reference, that’s the version of the SN750 that comes without a heatsink – you may want to spring for the more expensive heatsink-included version to reduce heat buildup, since the Z390 motherboard we’re using doesn’t have its own thermal solution for M.2 drives.
On top of that we saw price drops across several components which led to an impressive $345 saving over last month for the Intel system and $185 for our AMD PC.
“We upgraded the Intel motherboard, sticking with MSI but opting for the slightly higher-end Z390 Gaming Plus model. The AMD build didn’t warrant a new motherboard, but we did see an appreciated fall of $50 on the price of MSI’s Radeon RX 5700.”