THE BUILDS
THIS MONTH’S STREET PRICES...
BUDGET
AFTER A RECENT OVERHAUL, our budget Intel build sees only two changes to its lineup this issue. A change in price on the previous Seagate Constellation ES 7200 HDD meant that we exchanged it for the Seagate ST4000NM0024 on both builds. With the same 7200rpm and 4TB of capacity, it is a close match but it has a $20 hike over the price from the previous issue. There’s a $5 increase on the 500GB MSI Spatium M450 SSD, which now features in both PCs—it’s not an ideal start, but both are solid components.
The G.Skill Ripjaws V sticks marginally rise in price too, but thankfully, there is one price difference on the Intel budget machine that works in our favor—a $20 drop from the previous $140 price tag on the ASRock B660 Pro RS mobo. This LGA1700 board is a great pick-up at this price. Our Gigabyte Eagle OC has stayed at the same $330 mark, which is a pleasant surprise— we’re as shocked as you are to see steady GPU prices!
On team AMD, there are a few more changes than on the Intel side. The biggest is the switch from our previous MSI Mech Radeon RX 6600 XT to Gigabyte’s Radeon RX 6650 XT EAGLE card.