APC Australia - September 2019

pcbuilder » pc blueprints

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PC blueprints

The APC team’s picks for a part-by-part perfect

PC build to suit your budget.

Some of the components in this budget build dropped in price

of their own accord, and while we briefly dabbled with the

idea of swapping over to an Intel processor, ultimately it

wasn’t worth the change. We did spot the BitFenix Nova TG

case for just $49 at CPL and MSY, which is considerably less

than the $75 most other shops sell it for, so that’s a nice

saving. The only change we did see fit to make was to switch

from the 3000MHz Patriot Viper memory to a Kingston Fury

kit. R AM pricing is in constant flux, and right now prices are

relatively high. As such we’ve taken the decision to go with a

slightly slower 2,666MHz kit, because sticking with

3,000MHz memory while prices are so high just added too

much to the overall cost, and in balance the speed drop won’t

make a substatial difference to overall performance. We’d

always encourage you to have a bit of a hunt around for good

sales when deciding which memory to go for with a new build

or upgrade.

We managed to shave $180 off our mid-range build this

month. That’s enough for a game or two (or seven, if Steam

has a sale on). Making that saving came mainly from

exchanging the Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming

motherboard for a cheaper MSI board of similar features

and capabilities, and moving to an MSI GTX 2060 graphics

card instead of last month’s more expensive Zotac

equivalent.

Elsewhere component prices remain relatively stable,

and, as with the other builds on these pages, the very low

cost of storage helps a great deal with keeping costs under

control. We only wish other segments of the industry could

be as stable as this with pricing!

PA RTSLIST PA RTSLIST

Budget Mid-range

PART PRICE

CASE BITFENIX NOVA TG $49

PSU 450W EVGA 450 BR 80+ BRONZE $113

MOBO ASROCK B450M R4.0 AM4 $95

CPU AMD RYZEN 5 2600 $229

GPU GIGABYTE GEFORCE GTX 1660 6GB $369

RAM 8GB (2X 4GB) KINGSTON HYPERX FURY @ 2,666 MHZ NEW $89

SSD 120GB CRUCIAL BX500 2.5-INCH $29

HDD 1TB WD BLUE 3.5-INCH HDD $59

OS UBUNTU DESKTOP LINUX 18.04 LTS 64-BIT $0

APPROXIMATE PRICE: $1,032

PART PRICE

CASE FRACTAL DESIGN MESHIFY C $149

PSU 550W COOLER MASTER MASTERWATT 550

80+ BRONZE NEW

$79

MOBO MSI B450-A PRO NEW $143

CPU AMD RYZEN 7 2700 $359

COOLER COOLER MASTER MASTERLIQUID LITE 240 AIO $89

GPU MSI GEFORCE RTX 2060 VENTUS 6GB $350

RAM 16GB (2X 8GB) CORSAIR VENGEANCE LPX

@ 3,200MHZ NEW

$139

SSD 250GB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2 PCIE $119

HDD 1TB WD BLUE 3.5-INCH HDD $59

OS WINDOWS 10 HOME 64-BIT OEM $140

APPROXIMATE PRICE: $1,626