resolutions and quality levels at 60fps or more. It may not be the best choice for
4K monitor owners, but anyone who plays their favorite titles at 1080p and
doesn’t want to shell out for a video card should get the power they need from
the Ryzen 5 5600G.
55
MOTHERBOARD
ASUS ROG STRIX Z590-I GAMING WI-FI
$369.99
This year’s top mainboard is a compact Mini-ITX design from Asus for Intel’s 11th
Generation “Rocket Lake” CPUs. Mini-ITX motherboards have long been
constrained by their nature: their board size. But the ROG Strix Z590-I Gaming Wi-
Fi has an innovative design—with a main PCB and a small, daughterboard-like
secondary extension board—that helps to overcome the small surface area. Its
overall feature set is on par with many larger motherboards, just with slightly
fewer ports. And if you’re looking to overclock on a Mini-ITX build, this board
should give you a successful launch.
56
PC CASE
HYTE REVOLT 3
$249.00
Like our motherboard selection, our 2021 case pick goes small. The Revolt 3 from
Hyte (a new sub-brand of venerable PC maker iBuypower) doesn’t quite
revolutionize the Mini-ITX case market—we’ve seen a few compact-footprint
designs like it—but its price and helpful design elements make it a standout
option for small-system builders. Tearing down the case is exceedingly easy, with
side panels held on by magnets instead of screws, and the vertical design
supports long graphics cards. Add to that some clever cable-management
features, a built-in headphone holder, and a handy handle, and you have
one of the best small PC cases of this or any year. And it takes up almost no
desk space.
57
INTERNAL SSD
ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 BLADE
$159.99
With blazing sequential read and write speeds—the fastest of any SSD we’ve
tested—the XPG Gammix S70 Blade is a powerful PCI Express 4.0 internal SSD with
NVMe support. Unlike most of its high-performance ilk, the S70 Blade can fit into a
(PCIe 4.0-compatible) laptop’s M.2 slot, thanks to a thin but effective graphene
heat spreader. It even works with the Sony PlayStation 5. Perhaps best of all, the
S70 Blade is modestly priced for an elite performer.
EDITORS’ CHOICE
EDITORS’ CHOICE
