IN A SIMILAR VEIN as last issue, we wanted to tackle the same MO but switch from Team Blue to Team Red. That’s right, we’re moving to the AMD side of the fence with this build, but sticking with the sub-$1,000 budget. This gives you the latest AMD GPU, a very competent budget friendly AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU, and plenty of RGB lighting. The latter is the least important, especially if you’re sticking to a budget, but it’s a good way of adding to a room’s theme. You can change the lighting to suit your needs, and if you aren’t a fan of the Rainbow Road from Mario Kart aesthetic, don’t worry—we aren’t either. We prefer keeping the lights to a static color or, if feeling adventurous, we might push the boat out and apply a breathing effect. How fancy!
Lighting aside, we’re pushing for similar, or if not better, performance as last month’s budget Intel machine. We’re still aiming for solid 1080p gaming, but with the help of AMD’s latest tricks, we may be able to push our frame rate up and enter the QHD domain. Elsewhere in the build, we’re using a microATX motherboard. Last time, we avoided any motherboards other than standard ATX for future-proofing reasons, but microATX still offers enough room to add more components going forward, and is more versatile than a Mini-ITX board. We’ve gone with the Asus TUF Gaming B560M Plus Wi-Fi—at under $150, it fits the rest of the machine and sticks within our budget, too.
We save some extra bucks on our RAM by going down the DDR4 route, specifically with some Kingston Fury RGB sticks. Running at 3,600MHz and with a capacity of 16GB, they’re fast enough for a system at this level, and come in at a wallet-friendly $60. For our primary storage, we were very impressed with Lexar’s NM790 drive that we reviewed last month, so much so that we wanted to include it here, too. It comes in at under $100, and has incredibly fast read and write speeds—what more could you want when building on a budget? All of this will be housed within BitFenix’s Saber case, a budget chassis that offers easy access and some RGB lighting, too.
So, how will this AMD machine compare to our budget Intel build? Will the Intel PC win out or should you be rooting for the red team? Let’s find out…
SPECIFICATIONS
THE COMPONENTS
CPU
AMD RYZEN 5 5600X
This chip has been a strong budget-end competitor for a while now, and although it isn’t the newest kid on the block, it holds up strong. Boasting six cores, 12 threads, and a max boost clock of up to 4.6GHz, it’s an excellent pickup for around $160. $160, www.amd.com
GPU
AMD RADEON RX 7600 8GB
This reference card sits at the bottom of the latest GPU offerings
