Approximate Price:

$1,405

THE SPECIFICATION for our mid-range machine has remained stable this issue as well, with the only change being the graphics card, as we found the Gigabyte card for $10 less than the Zotac we used last issue. At the time of writing, the GeForce RTX 2070 is imminent, but we’re not sure how it’ll perform in ray tracing and DLSS titles, so we will hold fire on recommending it for now. Of all the RTX cards, this is the one that has the most sensible pricing, so it’s worth watching this space. As with our budget build, there’s a healthy price drop over last month’s system, and once again, it’s the AMD processor that brings the biggest saving, at a whopping $40 over last issue. The Ryzen 7 2700 is a second-generation Ryzen CPU, though, so that price drop may just be AMD trying to spoil the launch of Intel’s 9000-series chips. It will be interesting to see whether the Core i5-9600 can throw a monkey wrench in AMD’s plans next issue.