KitGuru’s PC Buying Guide 2020

1. Introduction2. Basic Systems: Budget £6503. Low-Mid Tier Systems: Budget £8004. Mid Tier Systems: Budget £12005. High-end Systems: Budget £20006. Extreme Systems: Budget £30007. Ultimate & 'Money's No Object' Systems8. Pre-Built Systems9. Budget Peripherals Bundle10. Mid-Tier Peripherals Bundle11. High-End Peripherals Bundle12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

AMD Mid-tier System:

• CPU –AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core
• Motherboard – Gigabyte B450 AORUS PRO ATX AM4
• Memory – 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) Crucial Ballistix RGB  DDR4-3600
• Graphics card – Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 8 GB PULSE
• CPU cooler – ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 AIO liquid cooler
• Storage:
  • SSD – 1 TB Crucial P1 M.2-2280 NVMe
  • HDD – 2 TB Seagate Barracuda Compute 3.5″ 7200RPM
• Case – Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital ATX Mid Tower
• Power Supply – SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX

With an additional £400 to spend in our mid-tier system, the focus shifts to building a system that is capable of gaming and productivity with the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU offering 8 cores and 16 threads, making it ideal for both gamers and content creators, such as Twitch streamers and YouTubers.

The addition of a Sapphire Radeon RX 5700 8 GB PULSE graphics card should allow the resolution to be pushed up to 1440p in most games and high-speed storage is doubled to 1 TB with the Crucial P1 M.2 NVMe SSD with the SeaSonic Focus GX 750 providing reliable power delivery with a fully modular cable design.

An upgrade to CPU cooling is possible in the mid-tier budget systems with the Arctic Liquid Freezer II all-in-one CPU cooler, combined with a mid-tower case that offers improved airflow so users can dabble with overclocking and fine-tuning. Both the Gigabyte B450 Aorus Pro motherboard and the Phanteks Eclipse P400A case, as well as the crucial Ballistix DDR-3600 memory offer some RGB lighting to enhance the system appearance.

Total Cost: £1183.29

Intel Mid-tier System:

• CPU – Intel Core i5-9600K 3.7 GHz 6-Core OEM/Tray
• Motherboard – Gigabyte Z390 GAMING X ATX LGA1151
• Memory – 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) Crucial Ballistix RGB DDR4-3600
• Graphics card – Gigabyte GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER 8 GB WINDFORCE OC
• CPU cooler – ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II 240 AIO liquid cooler
• Storage:
  • SSD – 1 TB Crucial P1 M.2-2280 NVMe
  • HDD – 2 TB Seagate Barracuda Compute 3.5″ 7200RPM
• Case – Phanteks Eclipse P400A Digital ATX Mid Tower
• Power Supply – SeaSonic FOCUS GX 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX

 With less choice available in terms of core count in the current generation of Intel processors compared with AMD desktop alternatives, our Intel mid-tier system is just a six-core CPU. However, the Intel Core i5-9600K processor is the perfect CPU for mid-tier gaming. Combined with a Gigabyte RTX 2060 Super graphics card will provide an excellent starter system for 1440p resolution gaming.

Even though the mid-tier Intel system may be marginally less capable for multitasking users such as Twitch streamers, the Gigabyte Z390 Gaming X motherboard platform offers overclocking scope for gamers to tune the system for the best possible performance.

We stick with the same storage options in the Intel mid-tier system, the 1 TB Crucial P1 M.2 NVMe drive can be used to store games for quick access and load times, while storage is backed up by the 2 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM HDD for storage of less critical applications/games and other content such as photos, video and documents etc.

Total Cost: £1194.97

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