There’s a couple of problems to overcome when building a new gaming rig. The first is figuring out which components work together for your budget, and the second is actually finding a good graphics card that’s both in stock and not grossly over-priced (thanks crypto miners!). AMD believes it has a solution to both those problems, though, and that solution is called the AMD Combat Crate.
AMD decided to bundle together a processor, motherboard, and graphics card to “equip your gaming rig for battle.” The end result is an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 processor, MSI Radeon RX 580 graphics card, and MSI B350 Tomahawk AM4 motherboard in a box for just $549. If you purchased those components separately, you’d spend $595, so there is a good saving.
Unless cryptocurrency miners are really desperate, they wouldn’t consider purchasing one of these Combat Crates just to gain access to the graphics card. So it’s likely these bundles will remain highly available and without any sudden price hikes. You’ll still have to supply everything else required to build a rig (case, RAM, storage, operating system, display), but the Crate should help keep costs down.
As Engadget reports, if this Combat Crate isn’t good enough for you in terms of performance, don’t worry, AMD is planning another. We can expect to see a second Combat Crate appearing soon with a Ryzen 5 1700 processor included. Expect a better graphics card, too.
