AMD Budget Gaming PC Build Guide: Summer 2020 Edition

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AMD Budget Gaming PC Build: RAM: Hard Drive (SSD)

While all of the components we are selecting here today are what we would go with, and priced from vendors we trust, it is always a good idea to shop around as deals on these, or other good options, pop up from other reliable vendors all the time. With that said, let’s dive right into the next order of business.

XPG Logo

Hard Drive (SSD)

ADATA XPG SX8100 SSD

ADATA XPG SX8100 512GB $76.66

60 FPS

  • Excellent Performance In General
  • Realtek Controller
  • Excellent Advertised Support

30 FPS

  • Not Quite The Best At Everything, But Still Good
  • Digital Pack-rats May Fret

We would love to shoehorn in here a top of the line NVMe based SSD today, or even a 1TB drive. However, to do so would require us to trim back on other options in the build that would impact performance even more. So, our choice today tries to strike a decent balance by sticking with the NVMe interface but trimming back to a 500GB option.

Thus, the ADATA XPG SX8100 500GB nets us all of the performance benefits of NVMe drives, in general, while still being cheap enough to fit in our tight budget window. Sure, you won’t get Samsung 970 EVO type of performance or build with this option, but you aren’t so far off that it will be obvious in day to day usage. That said, when we reviewed the 2TB version recently it was a damn impressive product so there is definitely a pedigree here even if it is not a Samsung 970 EVO pedigree.

We are slashing the capacity, though. That is sure to make some people question the choice and, of course, require some disk space management (seriously, only install the games you are actually playing and remember you can only play one at any given moment) or the use of a secondary drive. Remember though, you are getting a good NVMe drive in a Budget Gaming PC build. That has to be worth something.

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