Maximum PC - USA (2022-03)

MAR 2022  97

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WE SPOTTED A great sale on Corsair’s RMx-series 750W PSU this
month, discounted by almost a quarter down to $98.50. The RM750x
replaces last month’s SuperNOVA power supply from EVGA,
although it’s still a solid choice if you miss the Corsair sale. A sale on
the Intel Core i5-12600K shaves $15 off the overall price of our Intel

Approximate Price: $1,978 or $2,448 Approximate Price: $1,663 or $2,182

AMD INGREDIENTS INTEL INGREDIENTS

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Lian Li PC-O11-Dynamic $150

PSU 750W Corsair RM750x 80+ Gold NEW $99

Mobo Asus AM4 TUF Gaming X570 -Plus WiFi $184

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600X $260

Cooler 280mm Cooler Master Masterliquid

ML280 Mirror ARGB NEW

$75

GPU MSI Gaming Radeon

RX 6800 XT 16 GB NEW

$899

$1,369

RAM 16GB (2x 8GB) Acer Predator Apollo

CL16 @ 3600MHz NEW

$109

SSD 500GB Samsung 980 Pro NVME

M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD

$110

HDD 4TB WD Blue 5400 HDD NEW $60

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Lian Li PC-O11-Dynamic $150

PSU 750W Corsair RM750x 80+ Gold NEW $99

Mobo ASUS Prime Z690-P LGA 1700 NEW $210

CPU Intel Core i5-12600K $285

Cooler Enermax Liqmax III 240 RGB $55

GPU MSI Ventus GeForce

RTX 3070 8 GB NEW

$570

$1,089

RAM 16GB (2x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance RGB

Pro SL RGB CL16 @ 3600MHz NEW

$109

SSD 500GB Corsair Force MP600 M.2 PCIe 4.0 $93

HDD 4TB WD Blue 5400 HDD NEW $60

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

mid-range build. We also snapped up a new Intel motherboard, the

Asus Prime Z690-P. It has DDR5 support, along with Thunderbolt 4

and PCIe 5.0 for maximum upgrade potential. There’s a Q-LED code

readout too, which makes diagnosing errors a lot easier.

We’re sticking with the same motherboard and processor in the

mid-range AMD system, but we’re giving the AIO CPU cooler a little

extra razzle-dazzle. Rather than the regular Masterliquid ML280

from Cooler Master, we’ve gone for the ML280 Mirror ARGB, on sale

for $75 (down from $135). It’s got a newly-designed pump with an

infinity mirror effect, ringed with addressable LEDs, and looks cool.

We decided to normalize things across all three builds and will

stick to using AMD GPUs with AMD CPUs. We have two new MSI

graphics cards in our midrange builds, which meant a big price hike

for the AMD system and the opposite for our Intel rig. This helped

equalize the prices by mitigating the higher cost of the CPU in the

Intel PC. Both systems pack new memory. We’ve dropped the CAS

latency from 18 to 16 for improved performance in both setups,

using Corsair’s Vengeance RGB Pro SL for the Intel system and

Acer’s Predator Apollo for the AMD build. The Acer memory is a

new arrival on the RAM scene, with RGB lighting along the sides of

each stick rather than the top edge. Both are 2x 8GB 3600MHz kits.

Our mid-range machines mirror the budget builds in the HDD

department, taking advantage of that deal on the 4TB WD Blue drive

to double our available hard drive storage. We left the SSDs alone—

the Corsair Force MP600 rose by a few dollars and Samsung’s

premium 980 Pro drive hasn’t moved an inch.

MID-RANGE