Maximum PC - USA (2022-02)

FEB 2022  97

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WE MADE SOME BIG CHANGES to the mid-range builds last time, so
this month, it’s minor tweaks. Inevitably, any reasonably priced GPU
sells out, so both our builds have been revised. The AMD rig gets a
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB GAMING OC board that maintains
the performance for slightly more cash. That’s just the way it goes

Approximate Price: $1,585 or $2,214 Approximate Price: $1,984 or $2,414

AMD INGREDIENTS INTEL INGREDIENTS

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Lian Li PC-O11-Dynamic $150

PSU 750W EVGA SuperNOVA GA 80+ Gold $108

Mobo Asus AM4 TUF Gaming X570 -Plus WiFi $190

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600X $260

Cooler 280mm Cooler Master

Masterliquid ML280 RGB

$55

GPU Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070

8 GB GAMING OC NEW

$570

$1,199

RAM 16GB (2x 8GB) Team Vulcan Z CL18

@ 3600MHz

$63

SSD 500GB Samsung 980 Pro NVME

M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD

$110

HDD 2TB WD Blue 7200 HDD $47

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Lian Li PC-O11-Dynamic $150

PSU 750W EVGA SuperNOVA GA 80+ Gold $108

Mobo MSI PRO Z690-A LGA1700 $209

CPU Intel Core i5-12600K $300

Cooler Enermax Liqmax III 240 RGB $50

GPU Sapphire Radeon RX 6800 XT

16GB PULSE NEW

$899

$1,329

RAM 16GB (2 x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance

RGB Pro SL RGB CL18 @ 3600MHz

$99

SSD 500GB Corsair Force MP600 M.2 PCIe 4.0 $90

HDD 2TB WD Blue 7200 HDD $47

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

right now. There’s better news on the Intel side with the Sapphire

Radeon RX 6800 XT 16 GB PULSE arriving with a near $200 saving

over the 6800XT board from last month. With a street price of $1,329,

it’s over double the 6800 XT’s $649 launch price. Dare we dream of

normalized graphics card prices later in 2022? Here’s hoping.

Anyway, Intel’s new Alder Lake 12th-Gen chips are in the builds,

specifically the i5-12600K, which is a pretty sweet CPU. It comes

with 10 cores combined with Intel’s new hybrid architecture. This is

split into two types of cores; performance cores (six) and efficient

cores (four). Foreground tasks are allocated to the performance

cores while background tasks are set to the efficient cores in Intel’s

biggest architectural shift in a decade. The Alder Lake chips also

integrate a one-click overclocking feature to the BIOS that helps

users get more out of their systems. The max turbo frequency of

this new chip is at 4.90GHz too, which is decent considering this chip

is around $50 cheaper than the previous Intel Core i7-11700K.

Talking of the BIOS, the motherboard has to change to support

the new CPU. MSI’s PRO Z690 board supports this with its LGA1700

socket. It’s a decent board, but to make things compatible, the

budget had to be stretched—an extra $80 is the best we could do

with the new chips. The EVGA SuperNOVA GA PSU was new last

month and sticks around this issue.

GPU aside, things are pretty much as they were for the AMD

build apart from a few price tweaks. The AMD Ryzen 5600X is $20

cheaper, for instance, which doesn’t hurt. We’ve also kept the 750W

EVGA SuperNOVA PSU for another month.

MID-RANGE