maximumpc.com JAN 2020 MAXIMUMPC 97
blueprint
Sponsored by a part-by-part guide to building a better pcWE’VE HAVEN’T MANAGED TO SAVE any money on this build either.
Rats. A few minor changes were made in the name of keeping
the price down, mostly just brand changes; switching over
to Corsair Vengeance LPX memory, for example. We’ve also
swapped to an XFX model of the Radeon RX 5700 GPU, and a new
motherboard—moving away from Gigabyte, we’re now using an
ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4. We needed to keep that X570
format, because the biggest change here is a shift over to a shiny
new PCIe 4.0 M.2 drive, the FireCuda 520 500GB from Seagate,
taking advantage of the Ryzen 5 3600X’s fourth-generation NVMe
suppor t for super-fast data transfers. We also made a tiny change
to the power supply. Did you spot it? We went from an EVGA 500
BR to an EVGA 500 BT. If you can tell the difference in practical
performance, we salute you.UNFORTUNATELY, the price of our Budget build has risen a little
this issue. The BitFenix case rose by $10, and the trusty ASRock
B450M motherboard we’ve used for ages has finally dropped off
sale, so we’re swapping it out for an MSI B450M mobo at a slightly
higher price. We managed to save a little bit of money elsewhere,
snagging Patriot’s slick Blackout edition of its tried-and-true
Viper 4 memory for an absolute bargain at $33. It’s a pretty
straightforward sidegrade, keeping the capacity and speed the
same for this build, but saving us $4. We did the same thing with
the SSD, swapping the HP model for an Adata SATA drive to save
$4 again. The SU650 isn’t particularly exciting, but neither was the
part it replaced; it’s a SATA drive, it’s cheap, and it’s effective. We
looked into improving the processor, too, but the Ryzen 5 2600 is
still on sale at $120—an excellent deal.
INGREDIENTS INGREDIENTSPART PRICE
Case Fractal Design Meshify C $85
PSU 500W EVGA 500 BT 80+ Bronze NEW $50
Mobo ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 NEW $149
CPU A MD R y zen 5 360 0X $234
Cooler A MD Wr aith Spire N/A
GPU XFX Radeon RX 5700 8GB NEW $330
RAM 16GB (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance LPX
@ 3,200MT/s NEW
$60
SSD 500GB Seagate FireCuda 520 M.2
PCIe SSD NEW
$133
HDD 1TB Seagate Desktop ST1000DM003 $30
OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM $100PART PRICECase BitFenix Nova TG $70PSU Corsair CX450 80+ White 450W $50Mobo MSI B450M PRO-M2 V2 NEW $72CPU A M D R y z e n 5 2 6 0 0 $120GPU Asus GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB NEW $230
RAM 8GB (2x 4GB) Patriot Viper 4 Blackout
@ 3,000MT/s NEW
$33
SSD 120GB Adata SU650 SATA III NEW $20HDD 1TB Seagate Desktop ST1000DM003 $30OS Ubuntu Desktop Linux 18.04.3 LTS 64-bit $15Approximate Price: $640 Approximate Price: $1,171
BUDGET MID-RANGE