blueprint
THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
BUDGET
IN THE LAST ISSUE, we made quite a few changes on our Intel budget build by including parts we used in that issue’s main feature machine. The biggest of them all was the GPU—no shock there! We swayed across from team Nvidia and hopped onto the new Intel GPU train with the A750. For 1080p gaming, we were more than satisfied with our results. Additionally, you can pick these up for $250. That’s not a bad little package, is it?
So we kept this GPU in place, along with our newly added Intel Core i3-13100F for this issue. This is $10 cheaper than last time thanks to a nice little discount. As for the rest of the Intel budget machine components, nothing changed other than our motherboard, the ASRock B660M-HDV Micro ATX. This went from $85 to $94, and at $95, the Pro RS B660M Micro ATX board from ASRock is a better choice, with two more DIMM slots for a larger maximum memory capacity. With some minor price fluctuations, our build went down from $771 to $766—not much, but any savings are a bonus!