blueprint a part-by-part guide to building a better pc
THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
BUDGET
WE’RE FINALLY INTRODUCING
new processors into our Blueprints mix. A lot has happened over the last month. We’ve had Intel dealing with massive stability issues, both at a physical and a software level, along with AMD launching new flagship chips riddled with latency and Windows bugs. But it finally feels like things are calming down, and everything’s going back to normal. The latest microcode updates are now available for both AMD and Intel, with AMD’s significantly reducing latency on its 9000 series, and Intel massively curtailing power draw, without sacrificing too much on the performance front. With that, we’ve decided to include new chips across a swathe of our builds.
First up is the budget end of the spectrum. Both systems below clock in at around the $900 mark. We’ve gone back to the Core i5-14400F for Intel, which has bumped the CPU price up by $4, although it’s worth pointing out that our last-gen pick featured a CPU cooler bundled in with that price. Still, the 14400F does pack in 10 cores, six of them performance and the other four efficient cores as standard, along with 16 threads, and a comfortable 65W TDP to back it all up. Plus it comes with a fairly basic stock cooler.