Maximum PC - USA (2022-06)

96  JUN 2022

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

blueprint

THE BUILDS

THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...

WE’VE SEEN SOME price increases on components this issue, starting

with a $10 hike on the Corsair 4000D Airflow case that houses both

of these builds. The CV550 80+ Bronze power supply (also from

Corsair) is back up to $50, so we’ve added an alternative in the same

price range for the AMD system: Asus’s TUF Gaming 550W PSU,

Approximate Price: $1,099 / $1,150 Approximate Price: $927 / $1,008

AMD INGREDIENTS INTEL INGREDIENTS

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Corsair 4000D Airflow $95

PSU 550W Asus TUF Gaming 80+ Bronze NEW $50

Mobo Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite AM4 $130

CPU AMD Ryzen 5 5600X $229

GPU XFX Speedster SWIFT210 Radeon

RX 6600 XT 8GB NEW

$379

$430

RAM 16GB (2 x 8GB) Corsair Vengeance

LPX CL16 @ 3600MHz NEW

$75

SSD 500GB MSI Spatium M450

PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD

$55

HDD 4TB WD Blue 5400 HDD $54

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

PART PRICE

STREET

PRICE

Case Corsair 4000D Airflow $95

PSU 550W Corsair CV550 80+ Bronze $41

Mobo MSI Pro B660-M NEW $130

CPU Intel Core i5-12400F $180

GPU MSI Ventus GeForce RTX 3050 8GB NEW $249 $330

RAM 16GB (2 x 8GB) Kingston FURY

Renegade CL16 @ 3600MHz

$91

SSD 500GB Team T-Force Cardea Graphene

Z44L PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD

$55

HDD 4TB WD Blue 5400 HDD $54

OS Windows 10 Home 64-bit OEM

(Windows 11 Compatible)

$32

which touts its ‘military-grade’ specs. This should perform as well

as the Corsair one and comes with a six-year warranty.

The Gigabyte B550 mobo in the AMD build is listed at $130 in our

parts table, but you may be able to pick one up for less. Meanwhile,

the Intel machine gets a new B660-chipset motherboard from MSI,

the Pro B660-M, which is more expensive but offers a superior

port selection to the B660 board from ASRock we used in previous

issues. We’re sticking with the processors found in both builds as

there was little price fluctuation; we considered bringing additional

integrated graphics to the Intel build, but the i5-12400F is cheaper

than the UHD-equipped 12400, and testing has indicated a slightly

better performance in single-core workloads.

While some parts are pricier this month, budget GPUs continue

to fall. Sales saw us nab an XFX Speedster SWIFT210 RX 6600 XT

for the AMD machine and an MSI Ventus RTX 3050 for the Intel.

Although these cards are still pricey, we found both for less than

$100 above their original RRP. We added new memory to the AMD

build, namely Corsair’s Vengeance LPX at the budget build’s usual

16GB, 3600MHz, CAS latency 16 specs. At $75, it’s a great deal.

Lastly, we looked into new drives across the board in our budget

builds this month, but having added new SSDs to both machines last

time, we were already pretty comfortable with the storage in these

systems. Both SSDs and the WD Blue HDD we’re using dropped in

price by a small amount this month, so we’ll leave that hardware

where it is. Overall, we dropped the total cost of both budget

machines by a small amount, which we’re pleased with.

BUDGET