Maximum PC - USA (2022-02)

96  FEB 2022

a part-by-part guide to building a better pc

blueprint

THE BUILDS

THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...

LAST MONTH, we gave the Intel budget build a slight upgrade from

Core i3-10100 to Core i3-10105 with Intel’s UHD Graphics 630. This

month, we’re going a step further by ditching the 10105 for the Core

i5-10400. It’s a six-core chip, so a 50 percent uptick in the core count

for just $25 is a no-brainer. We’re not sure how much longer 10th-

Approximate Price: $1,219or $1,629 Approximate Price: $1,098 or $1,492

AMD INGREDIENTS INTEL INGREDIENTS

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Corsair 4000D Airflow $80

PSU 5550W Corsair CV550 80+ Bronze $40

Mobo ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming 4/ac AM4 $100

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 3600 $280

GPU MSI Radeon RX 6700 XT 12 GB

MECH 2X NEW

$480

$890

RAM 16GB (2x8GB) G.Skill Trident Z Neo

CL 16 @ 3600MHz

$90

SSD 512GB XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite

PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD

$70

HDD 2TB WD Blue 7200 HDD $47

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Corsair 4000D Airflow $80

PSU 5550W Corsair CV550 80+ Bronze $40

Mobo MSI B460M-A PRO Micro ATX

LGA1200 NEW

$104

CPU Intel Core i3-10400 NEW $155

GPU MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 3060 12GB $490 $884

RAM 16GB (2x8GB) G.Skill Trident Z Neo

CL 16 @ 3600MHz

$90

SSD 500GB Samsung 980 NVME

M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD

$60

HDD 2TB WD Blue 7200 HDD $47

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

Gen chips such as the 10400 will be available. So, if you fancy some

cheap Intel six-core action, don’t hesitate—the 10400 may not stay

this affordable for long, and it could disappear altogether this year.

To recap from last issue, there were three parts that found their

way into both the Intel and AMD budget systems. Due to a stock

change last month, we had to change our memory around on the

AMD budget build and the Intel budget build. We swapped out the

Crucial Ballistix CL16 for GSkills Trident Z Neo CL 16 RAM. This

is the same spec as the Crucial Ballistix RAM, so was the most

suitable we could find at the price.

The next change was to the PSU’s. For the Intel build, it was

previously the 500W Aresgame AGV500 at an 80+ Bronze efficiency.

On team AMD, the 500W Evga BA was the choice, also with an 80+

Bronze efficiency rating. These were both swapped around for a

slightly more powerful 550W Corsair CV550 unit that has the same

80+ Bronze rating. Both builds also got an upgrade in HDDs from

1TB to 2TB for an increase of $8. With a sale on Newegg bringing

these down from $70 to $47, it was impossible to not make the

change. SSDs remained the same as they still perform strongly in

the rigs and the prices haven’t differed which is always good to see.

The last major change for these machines is the availability of

GPUs. It is hard to recommend graphics cards that cost nearly

double the MSRP, but they are there for anyone who doesn’t want

to wait any longer for more stock to come out. It’s annoying for

everyone else that this is the case, but at least there seems to be

some street price stock and that’s better than no stock at all.

BUDGET