The ASRock B860 Challenger Wi-Fi costs just $130, yet delivers solid performance and a few surprising features despite its affordable price tag. Some corners have inevitably been cut, and spending a little more can still bring big gains, but it strikes a good balance.

The PC market at the moment is all about picking up bargains when they appear and making your money go further wherever possible. For some that means cutting back on luxuries entirely, while for others, simply opting for cheaper options can free up cash for other hardware. The ASRock B860 Challenger Wi-Fi costs just $130, but still ticks most boxes for modern features such as PCIe Gen 5 GPU and SSD support, Wi-Fi 7, SSD heatsinks and even decent numbers of fan headers and USB ports.

AMD definitely has the more future-proof upgrade path with one more generation on the way, but the current ridiculous hardware pricing means your next upgrade cycle could be stretched far enough that Intel's dead-end socket isn't as much of an issue as it would have been with lower pricing. In fact, an LGA1851 system could be worth considering, especially if you have a mixture of tasks to throw at it and the price is right.

Below $200, corners often have to be cut, but ASRock has traditionally performed well here and has not cut too deeply in any particular area. Whether it can handle our Core Ultra 9 285K, though, is another matter.