We’re getting back to the basics with this classic sub-$1200 gaming PC

ZAK STOREY, EDITOR

LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY

THE CONCEPT

WITH AMD’S RYZEN 3300X FINALLY LANDING on our shores, we just knew we had to throw it into a full-on system build to get the most out of it, and its accompanying new chipset, B550. It’s not every day that AMD launches a brand-new budget chipset quite like this series, and certainly not with such fanfare, so we decided to put together a little budget(ish) build to see exactly what we could get out of this fledgling quad-core, eight-thread processor.

So yes, at its heart we have the Ryzen 3 3300X processor. Compared to today’s many-threaded monsters littering the consumer ecosphere, a quad-core processor certainly does look small-fry in comparison, especially as we’ve already had the 3200G from AMD as well. However, there’s some significant differences between the 3300X and its iGPU cousins that are well worth mentioning. First and foremost, it is in fact based on the Zen 2 7nm architecture, unlike the iGPU variants that are secretly 2nd-gen Ryzen in disguise on 12nm. Additionally, it features the full complement of 24 PCIe lanes (16 for graphics, four for the DMI, and four for a direct M.2 SSD interconnect), unlike the iGPUs, which only have half the number of graphics lanes. Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, it also comes with support for PCIe 4.0 straight out of the gate. The only downside? No integrated graphics of course. Oh and then there’s the price-$127. Yup, Go back three years, and to get something similar you’d be paying near three times the cost.

So the question is: Is this the new affordability king of the gaming ecosystem? Time to find out.

AUDIO READY

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE, and what a challenge it is to get system parts in, that’s for sure. Our regular press contacts are struggling to get inventory across the sea for us to build with, and as such it has been near-impossible for us to get exactly the right GPU that we wanted. We’re actually running a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 Gaming 8G in this build, but sadly there aren’t any available across the US right now. However, you can pick up a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2070 8GB Windforce 2X, with an identical clock speed, cooling, and power-delivery solution for just $400, albeit it has slightly tweaked visuals compared to the card we are using here.

Aside from our frustratingly annoying GPU situation, we’ve gone with one Asus’s latest B550-F Gaming motherboards, which is surprisingly expensive for a B550 board, at $210, although more on that later. We’ve paired that with 16GB (2x8GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory at 3600 MHz, one of be quiet!’s latest Pure Rock 2 Black CPU coolers, a 1TB Intel 665P M.2 PCIe 3.0 SSD, a Corsair 110R chassis, and a fully modular Fractal Design Ion+ 760W PSU as well, to round out our build price at $1,183.