blueprint a part-by-part guide to building a better pc
THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
BUDGET
WE’VE SEEN SOME price increases on components this issue, starting with a $10 hike on the Corsair 4000D Airflow case that houses both of these builds. The CV550 80+ Bronze power supply (also from Corsair) is back up to $50, so we’ve added an alternative in the same price range for the AMD system: Asus’s TUF Gaming 550W PSU, which touts its ‘military-grade’ specs. This should perform as well as the Corsair one and comes with a six-year warranty.
The Gigabyte B550 mobo in the AMD build is listed at $130 in our parts table, but you may be able to pick one up for less. Meanwhile, the Intel machine gets a new B660-chipset motherboard from MSI, the Pro B660-M, which is more expensive but offers a superior port selection to the B660 board from ASRock we used in previous issues. We’re sticking with the processors found in both builds as there was little price fluctuation; we considered bringing additional integrated graphics to the Intel build, but the i5-12400F is cheaper than the UHD-equipped 12400, and testing has indicated a slightly better performance in single-core workloads.