blueprint a part-by-part guide to building a better pc
THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
BUDGET
AFTER SOME DICEY CPU STOCK SITUATIONS last month, we’re pleased to report that our budget builds have returned to a (somewhat) more normal state. The Ryzen 3 3100 we promised last time is here, available for a reasonable $200. The 3100 brings us a tidy 8-thread processing solution, offering significantly boosted performance over the Ryzen 3 1200 we had to settle for last month. That thirdgen Ryzen chip means we have access to PCIe 4.0 once again, so we splashed out and upgraded our mobo for a further 20 bucks.
This MSI B550M Pro motherboard guarantees speedy transfers in the budget AMD machine; so naturally, we need a new M.2 SSD to run those speedy transfers. We opted for XPG’s Gammix S50 Lite PCIe 4.0 drive—not the fastest Gen4 M.2 SSD, but with half a terabyte of storage for 70 bucks, it’s one of the best-value options.
Unfortunately, Intel motherboards seem to be having difficulties right now. The B460M boards we’ve recommended are either jacked up in price or unavailable (stock for the Gigabyte DS3H V2 we featured ine the last issue is non-existent), so we’ve had to settle for the more expensive—albeit more visually appealing—B460M Steel Legend from ASRock. The price of the Core i3-10100 has also climbed a little, but not so much as to provoke a CPU swap.