Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! Also: Greetings.

The topic of this month has been the Coronavirus epidemic, so you are probably expecting some sage advice in this update. We will not give you any medical advice, because… we are not qualified to give medical advice. We research computer parts, not medicine! So please visit the official website of the Ministry of Health (or Department of Medicine, or Center of Disease Control, or etc) of your country, and follow their advice. They are professionals, and they know the best ways to deal with this.

As for us: We are professionals too, we know the best ways to buy PC parts! And this update brings changes to our main chart, mostly in the CPU column.

Old News First:

In case you missed it, we added the AMD Ryzen 5 1600 AF to the US charts a few weeks ago. The old R5 1600 has the model number YD1600BBAEBOX, and the new alternative is the YD1600BBAFBOX. This is why it is called the R5 1600 AF, despite being sold as simply an R5 1600 in most retail locations. It is a better CPU, cheaper in price, but with a worse stock cooler. It is not available in all countries.

Unlike the R5 1600 AF, a change we made recently in the US chart that is now likely to come to all chart versions is AMD’s R5 3600 replacing the R7 2700.

We also added the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 NVMe SSD to replace the Samsung 970 Pro at the high-end tiers. The Sabrent 4.0 is cheaper, with slightly better performance.

New News Second:

We are waiting for news on other hardware releases:

Intel’s Next-Lake CPUs have been hovering just over the horizon for about 2 years. They will definitely, surely, absolutely, truly, 100%, guaranteed, bet-all-your-horses-on-it, trust me bro, launch this year. Maybe.

AMD’s 4000-series CPUs are expected in the middle of 2020. Let us hope AMD does not join the delay-it-more brigade.

nVidia’s next GPUs (Ampere, 3000 series) are expected sometime in 2020.

AMD’s “Big” Navi rumours are circulating. No expected dates so far, just rumours.

All those updates have no confirmed release dates, so that means that there will probably not be anything significant in the next few months. If there is, we will update our charts accordingly.

Going forward:

In summation, here are the changes we have made, or will be making soon:

• We’re adding the R5 1600 AF as an alternative to the R5 1600 in Entry and Modest, in countries where it is available
• We’re changing the stock heatsink in Entry and Modest to the Stealth, in countries where the R5 1600 AF is cheaper
• We’re changing the CPU from the R7 2700 to the R5 3600 for Very Good and Great
• We’re adding the Sabrent Rocket 4.0 to Enthusiast, Extremist, and Monstrous

We will be working from home (no medical reason, we just feel like it, really) for the next few weeks to take those updates live in the countries where they are applicable.