How has the PC market evolved in the past few months?

For gamers and mainstream users, not much has happened: Intel's 14th-gen Core CPUs hardly deserve to be called a new generation. The mainstream graphics segment has seen one disappointment after another, with cards that are barely faster than their years-old predecessors. SSD and memory prices have reached a plateau. But, on the bright side, six months ago was a great time to build a PC and now it is, too.

For pro content creators, AMD has recreated the high-end desktop (HEDT) market with the Threadripper 7000 series, featuring up to 128 threads, quad-channel memory support and 48 direct PCIe 5.0 lanes for the "non Pro" models. Granted, the new CPUs cost a lot more per core, not to mention the requirement for more expensive motherboards and registered memory. PCIe 5.0 drives have also started to hit the market, but with current flash density and cooling solutions they aren't much faster than the best PCIe 4.0 drives in sustained workloads. For now, the Ryzen 9 7900 series remains the best value for core-heavy tasks.

As usual, the TechSpot PC Buying Guide includes four component lists and builds with recommendations for different budgets and purposes...