Quote:
It?s been a great few months for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are literally half a dozen PCs I want to build using various processors. I?d like to build a budget PC using a Ryzen 3 1200 - an ideal PC for the parents or anyone that just needs a reasonable amount of grunt for easy tasks with the odd bit of photo editing thrown in. I?d also like to build a mini-ITX, eight-core Ryzen 7 system, which would make for a great mini dedicated rendering/video encoding rig, and I?d love to build a Threadripper system using Asus? fantastic ROG Zenith motherboard. That?s before I even start on Skylake and indeed Coffee Lake, where of course I?m itching to build a water-cooled, six-core overclocked gaming PC using a Core i7-8700K or Core i5-8600K, or maybe a monster system using Intel's 18-core Core i9-7980XE.
I simply don?t have a need or even the funds to build all those systems, of course, but another reason 2017 has been great is that it?s fantastic to have choice again when it comes to platforms and processors, and half of me wants to buy a bigger house and have several home offices just so I get to build a few PCs using some of the latest hardware.
There?s yet another great reason I?m loving 2017, and that?s that competition drives prices down, and we?re seeing this in both camps. The last few weeks have seen practically every AMD Ryzen CPU fall in price. The Ryzen 7 1700X, which had a retail price close to ?400 at launch in March now costs just ?289. Unsurprisingly, the biggest falls happened less than four weeks prior to Coffee Lake?s launch despite the CPU having been around since March. The Ryzen 5 1600 and 1600X, both costing well over ?200 at launch, now cost well under that figure as they try and counter the Core i5-8600K, which costs about ?260 - the Ryzen 5 1600, for example, can now be found for less than ?180.
