a part-by-part guide to building a better pc
THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
OUT OF ALL THE BUILDS, the budget models may be seen as the least exciting, but we enjoy trying to crunch down the prices here while keeping these machines current. In the last issue, for the Intel machine, we introduced a new motherboard, ASRock B660M-HDV Micro ATX. As it still costs $95, we’ve decided to keep this in place, as it’s a great little mobo that supports the rest of the machine comfortably with its LGA1700 socket, plus up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM (still perfectly fine for a budget machine).
Speaking of RAM, we’ve upgraded this for an extra $5, taking our speeds from 3200MHz to 3600MHz. This is the same PNY XLR8 Gaming EPIC-X RGB 16 GB Kit—just a slightly faster model. For the price of a nondescript overinflated iced coffee, this isn’t a bad upgrade. The Intel and AMD machines contained the same previous sticks of RAM, so we’ve made the same change on both systems. As for our CPU/GPU combo, we’re happy to keep the Intel Core i3-13100F and Intel Arc A750 8GB. Although the CPU has increased by $10, our GPU decreased in price by $20, so it more than evens out. As for the rest of the machine, pricing didn’t alter too much, so we kept the backbones of the machine the same. With all the small price changes, our build increases this month, but only by a tiny $12 to $778.