MID-RANGE BUILD

Our recommended build for playing the latest games

T O TA L $ 1 , 8 47

Z370 Tomahawk MSI $140

This is a nice-looking bit of kit at a good price. Couple that with two M.2 slots, and it’s the perfect place to house that Core i5.

Core i5-8400 Intel $180

Better default gaming performance and a lower price puts this chip ahead of the AMD Ryzen 2600X.

GTX 1070 SC Gaming ACX EVGA $460

Again, we’re making a saving this month on our choice of graphics card. This time you can expect a chunk of savings.

MasterLiquid Lite 240 CoolerMaster $45

This 240mm, dual-fan, all-in-one liquid CPU cooler is ludicrously cheap, but performs well and stays quiet, too.

Vengeance LPX 16GB (2x8GB) @2666 Corsair $178

16GB is the minimum amount of RAM we’d recommend for a system of this caliber.

RMx 650W Corsair $120

There’s nothing like having a quality power supply. Get a decent cable kit for this one and you can easily spice up your rig.

MX500 250GB Crucial $70

This is still our SSD of choice. We’ve kept the capacity the same as our cheaper build, but upgrading to 500GB would be ideal.

WD Blue 1TB 7200RPM Western Digital $44

SSDs are great, but they’re still far from cheap. This 1TB HDD will hold as many games as you can handle.

Eclipse P400S TG Phanteks $80

The clean lines, intuitive build features, and fantastic price cements the Eclipse as our midrange case of choice.

AGON AG251FZ AOC $380

Not only does this 1080p monitor have a lightning-fast 240Hz refresh rate, but it produces decent image quality, too.

MasterKeys Pro L CoolerMaster $90

This is one of the cheapest mechanical keyboards, yet it looks and feels great. It only has single-color backlighting, though.

Castor Mionix $60

Mionix’s Castor is a dream to use, supportive like a glove. With clutter-free software and an optical sensor, it’s hard to go wrong.