THE ULTIMATE BUDGET PC
ZAK STOREY GETS HIS HANDS DIRT Y AND BUILDS THE CHEAPEST RIG POSSIBLE
IT SAYS A LOT that when we first priced this system up a month ago, it was about $295—four weeks later, and the thing sits at $387. Honestly, we feel like a broken record at this point, but the market is absolutely volatile right now, as unscrupulous folk and miners snap up every piece of hardware they can find. Even the budget end is suffering, sadly. We’re finally starting to see some companies take action against this (namely Nvidia with its RTX 3060 plans), but it might just be too little, too late.
Our opinion? It’s not likely to stabilize for another year, if that. Similar to the memory-shortage crisis three years back (when a set of 32GB memory would cost you nearly $500), there’s just not enough fab time out there to cater for the entire market. Nonetheless, this got us thinking: what exactly is the cheapest system you can buy today, with new parts and decent performance, and get the most bang for your buck?