Get an AMD Ryzen 7 1700X and MSI X370 Gaming M7 motherboard for $400
Bundle and save.
More Ryzen processors and new motherboards are on the horizon, and as such, expect vendors to try and clear out existing inventories to make room for the new stuff. It seems Newegg has already started to some degree—it's selling a Ryzen 7 1700X processor bundled with MSI's X370 Gaming M7 Ack motherboard for $400 (after $30 mail-in-rebate).
That's not a bad foundation, assuming you're interested in Ryzen. In this case, the Ryzen 7 1700X is an 8-core/16-thread processor with a 3.4GHz base clock and 3.8GHz boost clock, and 16MB of L3 cache. Clock for clock, Intel still has the advantage, but there is plenty of processing grunt here to work with.
As for the motherboard, it offers a host of amenities, including reinforced PCIe slots, two M.2 ports, a U.2 port, six SATA 6Gbps ports, onboard Killer 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and a collection of USB 3.1 Type-A, USB 3.1 Type-C, and USB 2.0 ports.
You can find this combo deal here.
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Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).
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