CPU COOLER
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240
£60 i n c VAT
scan.co.uk
Whether you plan on overclocking the
Ryzen 5 3600 or running it at stock speed,
AMD has ensured that its 7nm Zen 2
microarchitecture is relatively easy to cool.
As such, you don’t need monstrous cooling
to keep it your 6-core CPU in check at
reasonable noise levels, even under load.
AMD includes its tiny Wraith Stealth cooler in
the box, but you can get much better cooling
and far lower noise levels by opting for a
decent third-party cooler.
We’ve managed to stretch to ARCTIC’s
Liquid Freezer II 240 liquid cooler within
our sub-£1,000 budget this month. It costs
£60 inc VAT, but offers decent cooling at low
noise levels, and will handle an overclocked
Ryzen 5 3600 with ease. It sports a large
240mm radiator, two 120mm fans and it
even has a third small fan directed at your
motherboard to cool the VRMs. It’s also a
perfect fit with our chosen case this month.
Alternatives
Even a decent air cooler will offer much
better results than the included stock
cooler, so if you want to save around
£30, Deepcool’s Gammax GT cooler is an
excellent choice. It coped easily with our
8-core AMD Ryzen CPU in our last CPU air
cooler Labs test, it looks great and sports
RGB lighting, all for just £35 inc VAT. If you
need to save as much cash as possible then
AMD includes its Wraith Stealth cooler in
the box with the Ryzen 5 3600. It won’t
give you much overclocking headroom,
though, and under heavy loads you may
see a small reduction in peak boost speed,
as well as significantly higher noise levels.
PSU
Corsair
CX550M
£59 i n c VAT
ebuyer.com
Even when
overclocked, our Ryzen 5
3600 test system barely
drew more than 200W
from the mains, and with a
mid-range graphics card, it’s unlikely our
system will ever be able to pull more than
350W from the wall. However, it’s sensible
to build in some redundancy for future
upgrades, as well as cutting the load you put
on your PSU, because overcapacity can also
mean lower PSU fan speeds. We’ve opted
for Corsair’s CX550M, which offers 550W of
power and semi-modular cables, allowing
you to disconnect unused ones to make
cable tidying easier.STORAGE
WD Blue SN500
500GB
£69 i n c VAT
ebuyer.com
It’s now the case that PCI-E
M.2 SSDs are barely any
more expensive than their
slower, SATA-controlled 2.5in
counterparts. This means that
for under £70, you can bag
500GB of super-speedy PCI-E
NVMe storage, which can shift
your data at up to 1,700MB/
sec – that’s three times faster
than a SATA SSD. Even better,
an M.2 SSD requires no power
or data cables, so it cuts down
on cable clutter too. We’vechosen the 500GB version of WD’s Blue
SN500, which offers space for Windows
anda decenthelpingofthelatestgames
andothersoftware.Alternatives
If you need a little more space, but want to
stick with super-fast PCI-E NVMe storage,
WD’s new SN550 SSD comes in capacities
up to 1TB and only costs another £30 or so.
If you need storage space for photos and
videos then it’s also worth investing in a
hard disk – a 2TB Seagate BarraCuda will
currently set you back an extra £51 inc VAT
from scan.co.ukTOTAL
£993 inc VAT