BUDGET

SATA SSD STORAGE has never been cheaper. TeamGroup has further reduced the price of its GX1 2.5-inch drive, and we couldn’t be happier about it: 120GB of SSD storage for under 20 bucks? A few years ago, that would’ve been impossible to find. Both budget builds have stuck with their drives this month, as the HDD kept its price and the SSD was cheaper. We’ve made changes elsewhere, though: A good deal on MSI’s RX 5600 XT GPU saw us making the switch from ASRock’s Challenger D model for our AMD machine, and we also swapped out the previous XPG memory for some fresh Z1 memory in bright gold, which was heavily discounted. Overall, we’ve made a modest saving on the AMD system.

The Intel build is a slightly different story. Our CPU rose in price by 10 bucks, and while we investigated the potential of upgrading to the 10600K, that would’ve meant throwing another $70 on top. The EVGA GPU we used last month is no longer on sale, so we’ve gone back to a twin-fan model-Asus’s TUF Gaming factory-overclocked version-at the baseline 1660 Super price of $230. While the single-fan EVGA Super Black model was adequate, there’s no reason to go down to a single fan unless it’s significantly better value or you’re building inside a super-compact case.