ZAK STOREY, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.

SAM LEWIS, STAFF WRITER

LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS

LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY

THE CONCEPT

THERE’S NOTHING WE ENJOY more at Maximum PC than a good old-fashioned build-off challenge. In the world of absent GPUs and crypto-currency madness, however, the traditional Intel vs AMD “who can build a better productivity machine” argument just didn’t hold much water. It’s hard to recommend building a workstation PC if you can’t buy the workstation parts.

So with that in mind, we decided to try a different take on that age-old fight. This issue, we pit the best of integrated graphics against one another: AMD vs Intel; Red vs Blue; Market Leader vs Underdog. And, with Christian out of the office, young rookie Sam will take on old man Zak in a build-off battle for the ages.

Is this an unfair fight? Absolutely. In one corner you have Zak Storey, Maximum PC’s long-time team member and editorin-chief, complete with 19 years of PC building experience, and no less than 81 individual PCs built under his careful eye. In the other corner, Sam Lewis, relative newcomer and Maximum PC staff writer, complete with a total of two PCs built in his short time on this prestigious title.

But arguably the far more important question is who will win the battle of the builds, and take the crown of integratedbudget-PC-that-doesn’t-cost-as-muchas-a-full-GPU-these-days champion? Read on to find out.

AMD BEHEMOTH

ALTHOUGH THE PHANTEKS P400A is a pretty slick-looking case, the build’s attention isn’t strictly focused on this or the machine’s looks for that matter. We’re sorry people, there is no off-the-wall flashy RGB here. The battle’s main focus is on which is the better chip to side with for an integrated graphics rig, AMD or Intel? Yes, it’s an age-old debate between AMD or Intel, much like the great PlayStation or Xbox wars of yesteryear.

We get it, it’s not always a clear-cut verdict either. There may be many pros and cons of both and that’s what we are hopefully going to explore with this build-off. We are hoping to show that you can get a decent gaming experience without the need for GPUs or hefty AIO coolers—and demonstrate the differences between an AMD or Intel build with this format applied. Of course, we aren’t expecting 4K with the sliders on full whack here, but we should get Full HD gameplay with steady decent frames.

The AMD Ryzen 7 5700G chip we have should put up a good fight in this battle, it’s probably one of the best choices for an AMD chip without the use of discrete graphics. This eight-core 16-thread chip is AMD’s first 7nm ‘Cezanne’ Zen 3 APU (accelerated processing unit). It comes with a 3.8GHz base and a 4.6GHz boost clock. Like all Zen3 chips, the interface steps up from DDR4-2933 to DDR4-3200. With the integrated GPU, this will help boost gaming performance. For AMD processors, RAM speed matters.