96 MAXIMUMPC HOL 2021
a part-by-part guide to building a better pc
blueprint
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
SO INTEL’S BUDGET BUILD this issue has seen quite the shakeup.
With props to some recent sales, we see three initial swaps. Thanks
again to a Samsung sale, we can slot in a Samsung 980 500GB SSD
into the budget machine here, which is always a nice sight. At just
an extra $6 from last time, we feel it’s certainly worth it at this price.Approximate Price: $1,1 77 or $1,53 7 Approximate Price: $931 or $1,3 01AMD INGREDIENTS INTEL INGREDIENTS
PART PRICE
STREET
PRICE
Case Corsair 400 0D Airflow $95PSU 500W EVGA BA 80 + Bronze $50Mobo ASRock B5 50 Phantom Gaming
4/ac AM4 NEW
$100CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 NEW $225GPU AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT 12GB NO STOCK $480 $840RAM 16GB (2x8GB) Crucial Ballistix CL1 6
@ 360 0MHz NEW
$85SSD 512GB XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite
PCIe 4 .0 M.2 SSD
$70HDD 1TB WD Blue 1 TB 7200 $40OS Windows 10 Home 64 -bit OEM $32PART PRICE
STREET
PRICE
Case Corsair 400 0D Airflow $95PSU 500W ARESGAME AVG500 80 + Bronze $50Mobo MSI B460M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro
ATX LGA1 200 NEW
$109CPU Intel Core i3-1 0100 $130GPU Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 12 GB NO STOCK $330 $700RAM 16GB (2x8GB) Crucial Ballistix CL1 6
@ 360 0MHz NEW
$85SSD 500GB Samsung 980 NVME
M.2 PCIe 3 .0 SSD NEW
$60HDD 1TB WD Blue 1 TB 7200 $40OS Windows 10 Home 64 -bit OEM $32Another change is our mobo, we switched this out from ASRock’s
B460M Steel Legend to MSI’s B460M PRO-VDH WIFI model. This
change is a whole $1 more, but because the ASRocks B460M Steel
Legend is back up to $119, it is still technically cheaper.
CPU stocks for Intel are more stable so, thankfully, we have no
shortage for our budget Intel build again. The Intel Core i3- 10100 still
sticks here for now but is $3 0 cheaper on a Newegg sale. Sure, it’s
almost two generations old, with the imminent release of the 12 th-
gen Alder Lake chips but, for a budget machine, the performance is
all that you will need. Another slight performance increase, though,
for the Intel side is the 16 GB of Crucial Ballistix CL1 6 RAM. This has
a speed of 3 600MHz, so 4 00MHz greater than the previous Crucial
Ballistix sticks we had, and for just an extra $10.
These RAM sticks also find their way into the AMD build, taking
the speed up from 32 00MHz to 36 00MHz. Along with this change,
a new chip is introduced to the AMD side, the Ryzen 5 3 600. Our
previous Ryzen 3 3100 is out of stock and, at just $20 more, this is a
great upgrade. With six cores instead of four and also an extra four
threads, this CPU seems like a worthwhile swap on paper.
With this 3 rd-gen chip and motherboard supporting PCIe 4 ,
the SSD remains the same on the AMD build. We thought about
swapping it out for the Samsung 980 found on the Intel side, but that
is only PCIe 3.0. The standard hard drive storage and PSUs on both
budget builds for this issue. One last thing to mention is the dreaded
GPUs. Yep, still overpriced on the second-hand market and near
enough impossible to buy new. Same BS, different day.