maximumpc.com DEC 2019 MAXIMUMPC 97
blueprint
Sponsored by a part-by-part guide to building a better pcAMD IS KILLING IT with the game deals right now. There’s no
price drop this month on the Ryzen 5 3600X, but orders now
come with a copy of either Borderlands 3 or The Outer Worlds,
both great new titles. Sapphire’s Radeon RX 5700 has some
deals tied to it, too, including Xbox Game Pass and Ghost Recon:
Breakpoint. It’s also $20 cheaper than last month, which frees up
a bit of cash for us to play around with. The first order of business
was to upgrade the motherboard, because last month we chose
the most budget X570 mobo we could find. This time around, we’re
going with MSI’s MPG X570 Gaming Plus, an extra $10 netting
us a heat shield for the M.2 drive. A slight price rise in said M.2
drive—the Samsung 970 Evo Plus—wasn’t enough to persuade us
to switch it out, but we did replace the memory, going for G.Skill’s
Ripjaws V series this month.IF YOU’RE ASSEMBLING a budget gaming PC, grab a Ryzen 5 2600
right away. Not only is it on sale for a paltry $120, but it comes
packaged with three months of Xbox Game Pass on PC, which
includes access to recent releases such as Gears 5, Blair Witch,
and Metro Exodus. We’ve made some small savings elsewhere in
this build, too. Swapping our Gigabyte GTX 1660 GPU for the same
card from Zotac Gaming saved us $10, and price fluctuations in
8GB memory kits spurred us to head back to America and trade
our Team T-Force RAM for the Patriot Viper 4 kit—functionally
identical with the same latencies and speed, but a few dollars
cheaper. Lastly, the Corsair VS450 is no longer on sale, but the
CX450 is—a simple enough swap to keep our price down. We made
a saving of $33 dollars against last month, with minimal change in
performance; certainly a win.
INGREDIENTS INGREDIENTSPART PRICE
Case Fractal Design Meshify C $95
PSU 500W EVGA 500 BR 80+ Bronze $50
Mobo MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus NEW $170
CPU A MD R y zen 5 360 0X $240
Cooler AMD Wraith Spire N/A
GPU Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 8GB $330
RAM 16GB (2x 8GB) G.Skill Ripjaws V
@ 3,200MT/s NEW
$68
SSD 250GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus M.2 PCIe $75
HDD 1TB Seagate Desktop ST1000DM003 $34
OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM $100PART PRICECase BitFenix Nova TG $55PSU Corsair CX450 80+ White 450W NEW $50Mobo ASRock B450M R4.0 AM4 $70CPU A M D R y z e n 5 2 6 0 0 $120GPU Zotac Gaming GeForce GTX 1660 6GB NEW $220RAM 8GB (2x 4GB) Patriot Viper 4 @ 3,000MT/s NEW $39SSD 120GB Crucial BX500 2.5-inch $23HDD 1TB Seagate Desktop ST1000DM003 $34OS Ubuntu Desktop Linux 18.04 LTS 64-bit $15Approximate Price: $626 Approximate Price: $1,162
BUDGET MID-RANGE