a part-by-part guide to building a better pc
THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
ANOTHER MONTH, another depressing set of GPU prices across all the major online retailers. Even worse, it seems that prices of budget CPUs are rising, too, with AMD’s Athlon 3000G rising by a small amount and Intel’s i3-10100 leaping up by more than a third. It’s dispiriting, but there aren’t many good alternatives; if you’re considering getting an i3 right now, the 10300 is only 30 or so dollars more than the 10100, and offers significantly better performance. There aren’t really any good alternatives to the AMD chip, as we’re seeing low stock on processors such as the Athlon 240GE.
Both our budget builds this month have new motherboards: Gigabyte’s wallet-friendly offerings for AMD and Intel respectively, the B450M and B460M DS3H V2. They’re straightforward mATX mobos, devoid of flashy but expensive RGB lighting or similar fancy features. They’re also some of the most affordable boards available right now, so props to Gigabyte for making them an easy choice.