Remix.run Logo
somenameforme 15 hours ago

In the past you could build a reasonable one for $200-$300. When "we" were growing up - consoles used to offer huge performance at a tremendous discount. For instance the video card in the original XBox was worth significantly more than the entire system's retail cost. But that era ended at the PS4. Consoles since then are sold with midrange hardware, derivative of typical retail hardware, sold for or near profit on day 1. Beyond this fact, their prices tend to stay fairly comparable to launch prices even as the price of hardware plummets. And now a days we've apparently entered the era of their prices going up relative to launch prices lol.

So the most expensive, and important, by far on both accounts part of a decent gaming PC is the video card. A PS5 is around an RX 6700 or a NVidia 2080, and that's being generous. That's a ~$300 card. You then have $300 left for case + mobo + CPU + RAM, which isn't hard. And in reality your CPU doesn't really matter (within reason) because in modern times basically 0 games are CPU limited. It's pretty much always the GPU. Work out the minimum amount you can get the non-GPU parts from, use your remaining budget on the GPU - you'll end up with a great machine for easily under $600.

There's a bunch of subreddits dedicated to this exact topic as well. /buildapcforme could be nice for more specific advice. In general I'd recommend against buying prebuilt systems. The markup they charge is unreasonably high and 'building' a PC in modern times is basically legos for adults, and there's about a million videos on YouTube showing you exactly what to do, step by step.

bhelkey 14 hours ago | parent [-]

I linked both prebuilt and do it yourself builds. Neither resulted in a comparable machine to the PS5 for $600.

Again, I think you are missing how much the price of components has increased.

16GB of DDR5 alone costs approximately $200 [1]. I challenge you to find a new case, motherboard, NVMe SSD, and PSU for the remaining $100 in the budget after $200 for ram and after your assumed $300 for a GPU.

[1] https://pcpartpicker.com/products/memory/#b=ddr5&Z=16384001,...

somenameforme 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Your comment made me go start deep diving US prices, and yeah there's something really odd. I've been abroad for sometime now in Asia, but that doesn't typically matter in these sort of discussions because the market's fairly efficient. But right now go check out prices on Alibaba for DDR5 [1] and compare that to what US retailers are charging. Those prices on Alibaba are not only very real (as I can order local stuff with ballparks around those figures), but it's also where many retailers in the US are going to be sourcing their hardware from.

So I don't really understand what's happening. Prices shouldn't be this high. That should be opening the door to huge arbs even for a drop-shipping middle man. Tariffs, shipping, something else?

[1] - https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/ddr5-ram.html