It’s time for me to buy a new PC and I’m hoping to find a good deal as prices drop in the leadup to Prime Day. I keep thinking about getting a laptop but, realistically, it’ll just end up tied to a dock 99% of the time. I’d rather spend the same dollars for a better PC.
It seems like there are exponentially more CPUs and GPUs to parse since the last time I did this. Epecially since every model of RTX has different manufacturers. Then there’s the performance overlap between 30x and 40x cards to make things even more difficult.
And I don’t even know which prebuilt brands are reliable! I know that Alienware is just Dell with fancy logos but that’s about it.
Anyway, my budget is fairly open but I want good value. I’d probably be willing to spend up to 2k on a really excellent deal. I don’t care about aesthetics but future-proofing in terms of the motherboard and case size is important. I’m not building my own but I don’t mind doing some minor upgrading after purchase if it means saving money.
Any advice, general or specific, would be appreciated.
Here’s the machine I would build right now if I were buying a new machine, which can serve as a basis of comparison for prebuilts.
Note that I cannot stand RGB, I dislike tempered glass, and I’m very invested in low power / low noise. I don’t think this would necessarily be a silence build, but it would be very quiet.
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total
$1779.89
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-07-09 09:13 EDT-0400
1 TB system drive, 2 TB games drive, peppy DDR5 memory, bequiet all around, happy happy joy joy. (I would pull all the stock fans out, putting the two bequiet 140s in the front as intake and the 120 in the back as exhaust.)
I’m currently infatuated with the 4070 because it’s only 200W. And now having used my machine for a couple years, instead of the 10400 I would rather have gotten the 10600, so I penciled in the 13600. Googling around turns up people talking about cooling a 13600 with a dark rock pro 4 and saying that it works just fine.
EDIT: I picked the pop air case with the solid side panel in pcpartpicker, but when I click the link above it shows tempered glass. I would get the solid side panel version, which is either the same price or $10 cheaper.
EDIT 2: I’m practically salivating at how much I want to just go ahead and buy this system as written right now…too bad I don’t have any money budgeted for it. I would also spend $300 on an LG Ultragear 144 Hz 27" 1440p monitor.
Here’s a prebuilt on sale for the next 16 hours for $1800. ($2100 normally.) I have no idea whether it’s any good or not, but it’s a 13700 with a 4070 TI, so right out of the gate it’s one step up on both CPU and GPU compared to my parts list above.
Brand reliability. If there’s a problem do they stonewall you? That kind of thing. I’ve never heard of ABS before, but I wouldn’t have so that doesn’t really mean anything.
So I am not up on the latest in PC hardware anymore but I’ve always found that Logical Increments is a good resource. I personally usually use it to make sure my important parts are generally evenly matched.
One thing I think that the site misses is that your case, PSU, and cooler will last you several builds if you buy quality, use an actual UPS or line conditioner and not a wimpy surge protector, and keep things clean.
My latest PC was a series of impulse purchases and while it’s zippy I def got the lowest value out of any machine I’ve ever bought. Still I was able to reuse my cooler and PSU
ABS is the Newegg house brand for prebuilts. A different system by ABS got a qualified recommendation from GamersNexus in the past in that it didn’t have any egregious defects or terrible choices (which was more than you could say for many prebuilts). They’re also using off the shelf parts so it’d be easy to upgrade in the future or replace a part.
The actual CPU upgrade path is about none since it’s a 13th gen Intel and I’m sure the 14th gen will be on a new board. On the other hand, it’s an i7 13700K chip so it’ll last a good long while before it feel creaky. I’m using the same CPU, having upgraded from an i7-9700K and even that was still fine but I just got itchy for some PC tinkering.
The board looks like an MSI B760-P Pro which is a pretty decent board for a prebuilt. The 4070Ti is obviously nice. Would like another 16GB of DDR5 but that’s the easiest possible upgrade you can make. Plus the memory it has is actually two sticks in dual-channel so that’s a definite plus. It has an AIO which some people might gripe about (I have no problem with AIOs and run two in my system) but at least you don’t have to worry as much about the usual bane of prebuilts – poor airflow. Though the airflow on this looks fine with three front fans and a mesh panel. Corsair 750W Gold PSU is solid.
Honestly, the two minor complaints I’d make is wanting another 16GB RAM and that a single 1TB drive feels a little chintzy but, again, storage prices are so low these days that you can easily get another 1TB for around $50-$60 these days.
People rightfully complain about Newegg’s customer support but every prebuilt place has pretty crap support from what I’ve seen when various tech Youtubers do some “secret shopper” thing. And, provided it’s put together correctly, you’ll hopefully not have to use them.
Pretty much everything I’ve seen at this price point was an i5 with a 4070Ti or an i7 with a 4070 so this build is probably better in specs than the average. Oh, and previous ABS models I saw reviewed didn’t come with XMP turned on by default so I’d make sure that’s active.
That all sounds good to me, or at least not bad. Sucks that it’s so time sensitive; if you were the OP would you pull the trigger? Based on what you’re saying, if I were the OP I think I might.
(Googling around, I see indications that that motherboard has two M.2 slots. I think I might get a 2 TB drive for the second slot soon after buying it, then replace the RAM entirely a couple months later.)
Probably give you a zotac, but unless you’re anal about the noise profile (like me) they’re all pretty much the same. End result is that the worst brand 4070 TI is significantly better than the best brand 4070, y’know?
EDIT: It’s worth pointing out that the video card I’m currently using was really loud and whiny for my tastes. So I run afterburner and jack the power down all the way, sacrificing like 5 FPS but now I don’t hear the fans at all. So even if you get a loud card that annoys you, that’s fixable.
I’m skeptical that anything significantly better will pop up but… who knows? I’m a bit cynical about “Prime Day” anyway and find it’s more marketing than unique opportunities these days.
Doubtful. Most GPUs are basically the same aside from ones with premium cooling solutions. The chips themselves are all made by Nvidia and most of the card is to a standardized spec. I assume the “may vary” is mainly just to allow them to put together systems without being boxed in by running out of a specific model. I’d expect what you’ll get is a standard issue Nvidia card versus one by an AIB partner (Asus, Gigabyte, etc)
I looked around for lower historical prices on similar systems and the closest I found was a Cyberpower PC with an i5-13600 for $1,650 but with worse motherboard and PSU. Bought direct from Cyberpower with a coupon code.
I’d strongly consider this one unless you’re price sensitive to another $50 or so and want to risk it. One thing I like about this one is the off the shelf components compared to something like an Alienware where the motherboard, PSU and case are all proprietary and potential upgrades to the RAM, cooling and GPU are locked down by the BIOS. You potentially might find a better deal on the Alienware but… not for me, anyway.
Looks as though it has a 30-Day return in case you DID find a “OMG why didn’t I wait??” deal on the 11th though returning and getting a refund on a shipped $1,800 item would be a pain in the ass.
This is a big point in its favor. For me, the biggest negative with pre-builts is the proprietary hardware. The proprietary hardware on my old pre-built from 2013 is why I built my own in 2021. Trying to upgrade that 2013 rig was a nightmare.
My system is an i7-13700K and 3080Ti. Looking at some benchmarks, you’ll probably get another 10-15fps over me with the 4070Ti. I’m very happy with my PC and expect you’ll be quite happy with yours as well if you go that route.
If you want to take advantage of Prime Day, keep your eyes open for another 16GB RAM kit. One in the system is Kingston Fury RGB 16GB DDR5 5600MHz (2x8GB) but another similar 5600 MHz kit would be fine as well.
I wouldn’t even try and salvage the memory it comes with. It’s fine for now, but by Halloween I’d pull it out and replace it with the $100 worth of RAM in my parts list above. 32 GB of 6000 MHz CL30 is yum!
Plus I’ve occasionally read where you want to avoid filling all four ram slots with DDR5. I don’t know what that’s about, but I just like the idea of having two 16 GB sticks.
