COVID-19 Check-in Thread

[classicdrogn]

Well, if you go AMD, make sure you get a 500-series motherboard, as 400 and below won't be supporting new CPUs starting from the 3100 and 3300 that are just hitting reviewers now. You can still build a very nice machine on a B450 - I just did - but upgrade paths will be limited in the future. Unfortunately I had to work with what was available and known right away since my old machine died too, was planning on using a case that would only fit Micro-ATX not full size, and when there was any kind of comment on that it was mostly that 400 boards should be good for at least one more CPU generation and that boards with built in fans for active chipset cooling had been problematic when they appeared in the past, so I didn't go the extra eighty to a hundred bucks for an X570.

And do go with an AMD CPU. Intel's newly announced chips are barely the equal of the current Ryzen line up, let alone the next generation. The most recent AMD-based laptops have to be compared to Intel desktops to have any competition, and that's still a chip based on the current architecture, not the next gen that will be out RSN. The very top end is still Intel's in single-thread performance with overclocking included, but even if the only high-stress application you put your machine under is gaming, no video/image/3d editing or compiling, the top-end games are getting more benefit from multi-threading too, and it doesn't sound like you're shooting for a top-end budget. For the mid to low range, there's no question it's now AMD's ballpark.