Another Newegg combo deal has arrived, and this one is a home-run for budget-oriented PC builders. You can get a Ryzen 5 5600X, a Gigabyte B550M K motherboard, 16GB of Team T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4-3200 RAM, and a Team Group MP33 512GB PCIe 3.0 SSD (as a free gift) all for $194.48, if you enter code FTT355 at checkout on Newegg.
This bundle, representing $145 in savings, puts value builders halfway to a fully-built PC, with only a GPU, case, and power supply left to buy. Continue below for our build guides for gaming or productivity needs.
This deal hinges around the Ryzen 5 5600X, a CPU that is now two generations old. Launching in late 2020, the 5600X was the undisputed king of its price bracket for over a year after release, and remains one of the best-ever budget AM4 chips. While it is now four years old, this bundle pricing makes it an attractive pick for budget minded buyers who don't care about the newest parts. Its easy overclockability, strong gaming performance, and included CPU cooler make it easy to recommend.
Paired with the chip is a Gigabyte microATX B550M motherboard, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB NVMe SSD. For many in this price range, 16GB of RAM should be enough. But many will desire more RAM headroom, and most users will not be satisfied with only 512GB of storage for a full system. Thankfully, as it is still Prime Day, matching RAM only costs $33 more and a second hard drive won't be hard to find (for example, Crucial P3 1TB at $50), especially since the B550M K motherboard supports two M.2 SSDs.
The biggest decision point to make (beyond aesthetics) is which GPU to pick. I asked our resident GPU expert Jarred his thoughts, and we came up with two options: Nvidia's RTX 3060 or the Intel Arc A770. With the RTX 3060 available for as low as $255 on Newegg today (after a $20 mail-in rebate and $10 off code) and the ASRock Challenger Arc A770 going for $280, the choice comes down to preference more than price.
The RTX 3060 will have superior Nvidia drivers, ray tracing, and better performance in 1080p on its side. But the Arc A770 is also a solid choice, with superior productivity performance thanks to its 16GB of VRAM and better gaming performance at 1440p and high graphics settings. Those interested in playing the newest games should pick Nvidia, as its graphics driver support is worlds beyond Intel's, but productivity-minded folk who need the A770's AV1 encoding support and better productivity numbers should go Team Blue.
Since the 5600X includes its own CPU cooler, you just need to find a $50, 650W PSU and $40 case (I've built in the Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L and recommend it), and you have a computer. With the cheapest version of this advice, you could have a PC for $540 before shipping and tax. If you're comfortable bumping your budget up to $600, you should grab a $50, 1TB SSD for additional storage, or perhaps consider upgrading to the RTX 4060 for only $300.
The Newegg Ryzen 5 5600X combo deal with its free SSD gift only continues for a limited-time, as it is likely timed to end with Amazon's Prime Days Deals. For more info on the rest of the deals across the web today, check out our live-blog monitoring today's best deals.
