Save $500 on this 1440p-ready gaming PC with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 right now — MSI Codex R2 pre-built drops below $1,500 with a 20-core Intel CPU, 16GB DDR5, and a 1TB SSD
A budget pre-built rig for gaming at 1440p
This RTX 5070 gaming PC is a real bargain right now, delivering performance for steady 1440p gameplay. You can pick up this MSI Codex R2 AI rig with an RTX 5070 for just $1,499 right now, a discount that knocks $500.99 off its usual price.
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The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 is the best component in this build, and it delivers the power you'll need to game at 1440p. It's helped by current-gen Nvidia features like DLSS 4, which give you upscaling and multi-frame generation, powered by AI, to help make games even smoother to play.
As our RTX 5070 review explains, this mid-tier GPU is a solid performer, one that makes our best GPU list as the best all-round Nvidia GPU for gamers from its current generation.
The MSI Codex R2 gaming desktop comes with Intel Core Ultra 7 265F, RTX 5070 12GB, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD, as well as Wi-Fi 6E support.
The RTX 5070 ships with 6,144 CUDA cores and 12GB of GDDR7 VRAM, which operates on a 192-bit memory bus. For gamers, that means you've got a card that can deliver high frame rates at 1080p, even on Ultra graphics presets. 1440p is possible, too, although the most demanding games will require you to drop down a graphics preset or two. Our GPU benchmarks below confirm the RTX 5070's place compared to its rivals, offering modestly better performance compared to its predecessor, the RTX 4070.
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This Intel-powered build comes with the Intel Core Ultra 7 265F. This Intel Arrow Lake CPU has 20 cores, eight of which are the performance cores, which work well for gaming. An additional 12 are efficiency cores, which are good for multitasking work. Arrow Lake didn't light up the gaming world for performance compared to AMD X3D chips like the 9800X3D, but it's a solid-enough performer when coupled with the RTX 5070.
A compromise that you'll have to make is on RAM. It's DDR5, so you're not dropping to cheaper, slower DDR4, but you're only getting 16GB here, although there's room to upgrade later. Storage, however, is covered by 1TB of SSD storage, which should leave enough space for a few big game installations.
The $1,499 sale price for this MSI Codex R2 AI gaming PC is a good deal in the current market. You'll be able to hit 1440p with decent frame rates in games with this rig, while giving you longevity for gaming into the future.
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Ben Stockton is a deals writer at Tom’s Hardware. He's been writing about technology since 2018, with bylines at PCGamesN, How-To Geek, and Tom’s Guide, among others. When he’s not hunting down the best bargains, he’s busy tinkering with his homelab or watching old Star Trek episodes.