Pre-built gaming PCs continue to provide some of the best value for gamers, especially if they're discounted. With that in mind, you can pick up this ABS Stratos II Ruby gaming PC for $2,549.99 right now at Newegg. You'll be saving $450 on a machine fitted with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, and 32GB of fast DDR5 RAM.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

ABS builds are all over Newegg, which is no surprise, as the tech retailer owns the brand. As specs go, this is a rig that'll sit pretty near the top as far as performance goes. That's due to the combination of the 9800X3D, still one of the best CPUs available for gaming right now, with the RTX 5070 Ti. That GPU is current-gen and high-end, giving you a machine that'll give you high frame rates in the best games for years to come.

You'll see from our 9800X3D review why this eight-core AMD X3D chip is a formidable option for any gamer. AMD's 3D V-cache sets the scene, as this game-changing tech boosts the available L3 cache capacity to 96MB. Doesn't sound like much, but it means that your CPU doesn't have to fall back to the slower system RAM as often. That reduces latency, giving you better, more stable frame rates while you game.

The 9800X3D isn't at the very top in our CPU benchmarks anymore, but it's damn close, and it's still the top recommendation for most gamers. There isn't an Intel alternative that can truly rival the performance of an X3D chip like the 9800X3D, either. If 4K gaming with high, stable frame rates is your goal, then the 9800X3D will give you that in spades.

Alongside the 9800X3D is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. This Nvidia Blackwell GPU has 8,960 CUDA cores and 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM. This is a GPU that leaves 1080p in the dust, as this mid- to high-tier option is a 1440p and 4K powerhouse. It has the latest Nvidia tech baked in, too, including DLSS with multi-frame generation.

4K with ray tracing, supported by MFG if necessary, means you'll get high frame rates in current-gen games. Expect to use the best graphics presets, but you might need to tweak them for the most demanding games if you're playing at 4K. Luckily, 16GB of VRAM means you've got plenty of breathing room, especially compared to the lower-end RTX 5060 or RTX 5050 with 8GB of VRAM.

There aren't any compromises elsewhere in this build. You've got 32GB of G.Skill Ripjaws M5 Neo RGB DDR5 memory, split across two 16GB modules, with speeds of 6,000 MT/s. There's also a 2TB Team Group NV5000 M.2 SSD included here, offering Gen 4 speeds, with enough space for several big game installations. There's also Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 wireless connectivity, along with Ethernet, and the CPU is liquid cooled with a Bitspower 240mm AIO liquid cooler.

This $2,549.99 ABS Stratos II Ruby gaming PC is a great deal in the current market, especially fitted with the formidable combination of the 9800X3D and RTX 5070 Ti. Buying it now means you're saving $450 on its list price, but it's also the cheapest RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC you're able to buy on Newegg right now. Expect a deal this good to sell out fast.

Right now, the best way to pick up a gaming PC is to buy a pre-built, with hardware prices shooting through the roof. Luckily, the big tech retailers continue to throw out deals for gamers to take advantage of. For instance, you can pick up this ABS Cyclone Aqua machine with an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU, giving you 1440-capable performance for $1,499.99.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

If you took these specs and tried to build a matching PC yourself, you'd struggle to beat this price. Front and center here is the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti with 16GB of VRAM: a formidable option for a budget-friendly gaming PC. You're also getting a 20-core Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

With the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti at your disposal, you're getting one of Nvidia’s latest-generation mid-tier graphics cards. It has 4,608 CUDA cores and a boost clock speed of 2,527MHz. Unlike the more power-hungry top-end RTX 50-series cards, you only need one eight-pin PCIe connector to deliver power here, so you can banish those worries about burning GPU cables.

Our RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB review makes clear how good the performance is with this Blackwell GPU for gamers, especially at 1080p and 1440p. The charts you'll see below show that, especially with ray tracing in the mix, compared to rival cards at this level. Full DLSS support is included, too, so you can add multi-frame generation as a backstop. That'll give you a nice frame rate boost in the most resource-heavy games if you're pushing up to the highest resolutions.

You can also count on 16GB of GDD7 VRAM with this GPU. That makes it a much more appealing option than 8GB variants you might have to settle for in other rigs at this price point. 16GB gives you more headroom, as far as performance goes, for the most resource-heavy games at 1440p.

For the CPU, you're getting the Intel Core i7-14700F. This continues to be a popular CPU option for gaming, despite being a little older. This Raptor Lake Refresh CPU has 20 cores, with eight performance cores, which are the ones you'll want for gaming, along with 12 efficient cores for multi-threaded work. It also has a maximum turbo clock speed of 5.4 GHz, along with a 65W TDP. At 1080p or 1440p, you won't see much of a bottleneck with the 14700F at your disposal in modern games.

No risk of settling for slower DDR4 RAM here, either. You get fast DDR5 instead, with 16GB of G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5 memory included with speeds of 6,000 MT/s. You aren't getting 32GB, which is a compromise, but you do have room to upgrade later, and DDR5 ensures some extra longevity.

Storage-wise, you're also getting a 1TB Patriot P410 SSD. It has Gen 4 speeds, with that 1TB of storage ensuring you get space for a couple of the big AAA games alongside your Windows installation. This ABS build also comes with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity, along with gigabit Ethernet for a wired connection to your local network.

The $1,499.99 sale price for this ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC makes it an affordable option for gamers who want a 1440p-ready rig right now, especially with prices rising elsewhere. The RTX 5060 Ti 16GB is the standout component, but there's no guarantee that this price will last for very long.

Right now, you can grab a budget-friendly, entry-level gaming PC at Best Buy for a very low price, especially given the current economic climate for anything gaming PC-related. On sale at Best Buy is the iBuypower Slate Gaming PC with Intel Arc B570 graphics for just $899. With $300 off its $1,199.99 list price, this is a superb deal for a 1080p gaming machine with DDR5 memory and 10GB of graphics VRAM.

● Check out this deal at Best Buy

This iBuypower's Slate gaming PC comes with a 10-core, 10-thread Intel Core Ultra 5 225F processor, an Intel Arc B570 graphics card with 10GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage. You will be able to play games in 1440p also with this rig, but you will have to tune individual game settings to get the best frame rates and performance. Ideally, this configuration supports 1080p gaming on higher settings.

The graphics card used in this prebuilt iBuypower gaming PC is the Intel B570 graphics card, which comes with a generous amount of VRAM considering the card's price. 10GB of VRAM is fantastic for 1080p gaming; it is more than ample to handle the textures and shaders on high and ultra settings, offering a great gaming experience at this resolution.

At 1440p resolutions with higher settings, this GPU may begin to struggle when that 10GB of VRAM gets used up and starts to rely on the CPU to compensate. The B570 is a budget graphics card from Intel and has come a long way since its launch performance, thanks to driver optimizations and compatibility with more game titles.

In the chart below, the B570 sits in the middle of the pack, competing with the Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB. You can also check out our Intel Arc B570 review for more detailed information on this GPU's performance.

This prebuilt gaming PC deal from Best Buy is one of the easiest ways to currently jump into the world of desktop PC gaming. The prices of individual components are very high currently, and with that comes the stress and added risk of messing something up trying to build the rig yourself. If you're not confident or familiar with building your own PC, buying a prebuilt comes with the added bonus of an easier warranty situation. Should anything go wrong with your computer, the whole system is covered, and you don't have to troubleshoot individual parts and manufacturers for an RMA.

At the moment, the best value for money when you're thinking about a new gaming PC is to pick a pre-built, especially a discounted one. With that in mind, Newegg has slashed the price of this ABS Flux II Aqua gaming PC with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 by $500, bringing it down to just $1,799.99.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

The core components in this build include the Intel Core I7-14700F, still a popular choice in pre-builts, along with that powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070. The RTX 5070 is a solid, mid- to high-tier option for gaming that'll ensure you'll be able to hit high frame rates at 1440p, with the potential for 4K, too. You're also getting 32GB of DDR5 RAM here, along with a 1TB SSD for storage.

Our RTX 5070 review makes clear what a good performer this mid-tier GPU is for gamers in this current generation. It's on our best GPU list as the best all-rounder option for gamers right now, too. This is a solid 1440p card, but with Nvidia DLSS features at your disposal, including multi-frame generation to boost your frame rates, you'll be helped to push it even further.

With the RTX 5070, you're getting 6,144 CUDA cores and 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM, operating on a 192-bit memory bus. Performance-wise, you can expect the highest frame rates at 1080p, along with 1440p, even at Ultra. 4K will push it harder, and you might need to drop down a preset or two for stability, or make use of multi-frame gen to cover the gaps.

Coupled with the RTX 5070 is the Intel Core i7-14700F. This Raptor Lake Refresh CPU is getting older, but it's still popular and powerful, too. It has 20 cores, 12 of which are efficient cores for multi-threaded work, with the final eight performance cores giving you the power you'll need for gaming. With the RTX 5070 alongside it, there isn't much of a bottleneck here for gaming with the 14700F, and it'll handle 1440p with little trouble.

Elsewhere, you're getting 32GB of G.Skill Flare X5 RAM, split dual-channel across two 16GB modules, with speeds of 6,000 MT/s, leaving slower DDR4 memory far behind. You're also getting a 1TB Kingston SNV3S SSD here, offering Gen 4 speeds, with enough space for a couple of big AAA games alongside Windows.

The $1,799.99 sale price for this ABS Flux II Aqua gaming PC is a good one in the current market. ABS is Newegg's own brand, and the specs you're getting here are formidable for the price, especially for under $1,800.

Recent news and rumours have been flooding the tech space about the apparent discontinuation of Nvidia's flagship graphics card. With no new Nvidia 5090 GPU replacement anticipated before at least 2028, this could well be your last opportunity to get your hands on a very powerful GPU for gaming.

The RTX 5090 not only dominates benchmarking charts in performance, but it also dominates price charts, with the cost of purchasing a standalone RTX 5090 rising from its MSRP of $1,999 to currently over $7,500. The cheapest way to previously capture an RTX 5090 in the wild has been from either Micro Centre (who apparently is soon to be no longer stocking them), or picking one up in a prebuilt gaming PC build.

● Check out this RTX 5090 deal at Dell

● RTX 5090 Prebuilt PCs available at Newegg

We've highlighted many RTX 5090 prebuilt PC's over the last couple of years, with models from Dell, HP, MSI, Skytech, and others. And there are still some PCs out there that can be bought for around the same price as buying the graphics card alone. But with the available pool of RTX 5090s soon starting to dry up, prices will start to climb even higher, much like what happened when the previous generation RTX 4090 ceased production.

The RTX 5090 is the most powerful consumer GPU that you can buy. It sports 21,760 CUDA cores, over double the RTX 5080's 10,752 count, and provides a massive 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM. Using a 512-bit memory bus, with a memory bandwidth of up to 1,792 GB/s, the RTX 5090 is the top choice for any gaming PC. When you look at our benchmarking results in our review of the RTX 5090, it's easy to see that this super-powerful GPU dominates the competition in all performance metrics.

Dell is selling this powerful PC with an AMD 9950X3D processor for $7,499.99, around the same price as buying the GPU separately, so, ignoring the insane price of the GPU for a second, that makes the rest of this PC build, including the monstrous 16-core gaming processor, 32GB of RAM, and 2TB SSD, free.

For an example of some of the RTX 5090 prebuilt PCs that you can still get your hands on, we have another discounted MSI Infinite ZS PC that's available from Best Buy, plus an example of a Skytech RTX 5090 gaming PC available at Newegg. I've also included a link to RTX 5090 gaming PCs that are in stock at Newegg, so you can get a further idea of pricing and what is available.

● RTX 5090 Prebuilt PCs available at Newegg

If you have the money and want the best GPU that said money can buy, then you need to think about pulling the trigger before it's too late and the GPU either disappears or the prices inevitably rise even higher.

As RAM and SSD price hikes and shortages continue to bite PC builders, a pre-built rig remains one of the best ways to avoid some of the very worst in price inflation. Prices are still higher than they were a few months back, but there are still deals to be found. Newegg has slashed $260 off this Cyberpower Gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and a Radeon RX 9070 XT, now just $2,299.

• Check out this deal on Newegg

This is the Holy Grail of gaming CPUs, combined with AMD's top graphics card, a 4K gaming combination that would cost you over $1,200 to buy the two parts separately if you were putting this build together yourself.

As mentioned, the beating heart of this build is the excellent 9800X3D CPU. This 8-core, 16-thread beast is not quite the fastest gaming CPU on the market (it was recently dethroned by the 9850X3D), but thanks to its much more modest power draw, it remains our top pick for the best CPU for gaming on the market. As you can see, it shines in our benchmark testing as one of the fastest chips on the market, perfect for any 4K title you can think of.

The standout feature of the 9800X3D is the 3D V-cache, the 96MB of which reduces how often your CPU has to fall back on your system's RAM, drastically improving frame rates.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT is AMD's flagship GPU, featuring 64 RDNA 4 compute units and a generous 16GB of VRAM, specs akin to Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, with performance to match. As you can see in our 4K testing suite, the RX 9070 XT performs significantly better than the RX 9070 and Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5070, lagging behind the 5070 Ti and the 4080. While you won't get access to Nvidia's popular DLSS technologies, this is still a very capable and popular graphics card, currently worth $800 in the current market.

The supporting cast of this build is also quite generous in the circumstances. You get 32GB of DDR5 RAM worth at least $400-$450, and a 2TB Gen 4 NVMe SSD worth $250. To keep everything running, there's a 1000W power supply and ARGB liquid cooling to keep your processor nice and cool. The motherboard is a mid-range B850 model.

For your troubles, you'll also get a free copy of Onimusha to play on your new rig, a freebie with a list price value of $69.99 at Newegg.

There's no denying this PC would have been cheaper even just a few months ago, but this is a very respectable build in the current market.

The rising costs of components have led to a crisis in the consumer PC market. Prices on standard kits of DDR5 are through the roof, NVMe SSD prices are higher than ever, and worst of all, GPUs are also affected by the AI-driven onslaught. But when shopping around for reasonable prices, there might be a better solution than Newegg, Amazon, and Best Buy if you’re lucky enough to live near (or are willing to drive to) one of Micro Center’s 30 U.S. locations.

In the current climate, choice has been severely limited when it comes to upgrading or building a new PC. You can’t just pick the best components to build a high-powered gaming rig, as many components are out of stock or at eye-watering prices. The same goes for trying to construct a budget PC build, as there just aren’t any cheap components anymore, apart from certain parts like AM4 CPUs, which are tied to limited upgrade paths. Just take a look at the price and availability of Nvidia’s RTX 5090, for example; at the time of writing, the cheapest RTX 5090 gaming GPU available online is $6,549.99, and that’s from a third-party seller on Amazon, not directly from a large first-party retailer or manufacturer. There are even reports that the RTX 5090 has been effectively discontinued in favor of making AI GPUs, which means pricing will only get worse over the coming months.

If you’re anything like me, when I’m even remotely considering spending that kind of money, I’m not willing to risk buying from a suspicious retailer or a seller that can’t refund or replace the product should there be a fault, or if it gets damaged in transit. The original MSRP for the RTX 5090 at launch was just $1999.99. I remember balking at that price; now I wish I’d made the leap, as the next generation of GPUs is likely not coming before 2028, discounting pricing and availability.

So, where does that leave us, in a climate that feels actively hostile to enthusiasts? There is one place that seems to be a small bastion of defiance amongst the doom and gloom of the price-rising apocalypse, and that’s Micro Center. Should you be lucky enough to live near a store, or at least within driving distance, then you have another option open to you for finding PC components at prices that are often much cheaper than both Amazon and Newegg. Unfortunately, apart from a small marketplace storefront on Amazon, Micro Center does not do business online.

Having a quick look at some in-store offerings at one particular store location, I can find several RTX 5090s: the Asus GeForce RTX 5090 ROG Astral and MSI GeForce RTX 5090 Suprim, both priced at $5,029.99, over $1,500 cheaper than the cheapest available RTX 5090 found online at Amazon. That’s a considerable difference, but again, these prices are only available to those willing to make the trek to their local Micro Center store, and that’s a major caveat for the majority of Americans.

It’s not just the RTX 5090 either. I check for the best prices and deals on tech products daily, often finding some of the best value in component bundles from Newegg, where the high prices of RAM and SSD storage can be offset against the savings you typically make from bundling a bunch of deals together. Micro Center often undercuts these bundles with similar offerings at a significantly reduced price, but the issue is the ability to take advantage of the deal. The reason I don’t just highlight Micro Center deals more often is the limited availability to the majority of our readers.

Bundle breakdown

Let’s break down an example of one of Micro Center’s DDR5 component bundles. This gaming-oriented bundle features an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, an MSI B850 Gaming Pro WiFi6E AM5 motherboard, and 32GB of G.Skill Flare X5 Series DDR5-6000 memory. The total for these three components in a bundle is $899.99, with the cheapest price listed on PC Part Picker for the 9800X3D at $449, the MSI B850 Gaming Pro WiFi6E listed as $189, and the 32GB of G.Skill RAM costing $479 for a combined total of $1,117.

How much is a similar component bundle from Newegg? Well, the closest comparable combo bundle on offer features the same 9800X3D processor, a slightly better Asus TUF Gaming X870E-Plus WIFI7 motherboard, and the same amount of memory with very similar speeds from Corsair. The total for this bundle is $1,109.

Comparing the two bundles directly, even with a slight difference in components, there is a large $200 price difference. Some of that is tied up in the higher-tier motherboard, but even taking that into account, Micro Center's price is still lower. So it’s definitely worth exploring the idea of heading to a brick-and-mortar store over simply buying online. Just remember to factor in the price of the gas, and your time, on your way there.

Micro Center

Newegg

Even with Micro Center managing to offer consumers another choice in the PC component landscape and undercutting the pricing of the bigger retailers, the underlying problem of PC component prices skyrocketing remains. Memory and NAND prices continue to rise with no end in sight; major component manufacturers like Micron, which owns the Crucial brand, have pulled out of the consumer market, meaning even less choice in stores and ending any ongoing support for consumers who have purchased products previously. Stock is running low or has expired on the best-value products, and consumer choice is being strangled.

If you currently own a DDR4 system, the cost of upgrading to DDR5 is astronomical; the same goes for upgrading your graphics card to the latest Nvidia 50-series GPUs. Nothing is available anywhere near the original MSRP launch prices, and the more affordable budget-to mid-range card SKUs only offer 8GB of VRAM, which is not great for modern gaming, as resolutions over 1080p can easily demand more. So, if you’re near a Micro Center location and you want an upgrade, they are more than likely going to offer you the best value for money in the current market. For the rest of us who don’t live near a Micro Center, keep checking our coverage for the best possible prices on PC components.

Redditor u/cal93 had the used PC they bought for $650 from an unnamed seller suddenly blocked from working by a remote trigger. According to their post, they bought the computer a few months ago on OfferUp, but downloading a Windows update last month led to the situation. Fragile, which is NZXT’s partner that runs the Flex subscription program, commented on the thread, saying that the PC they bought was a rental and that the seller had no right to sell it. We spoke with the Redditor, and documents reviewed by Tom's Hardware confirm that they were sent an entirely new PC by Fragile, free of charge, to replace the stolen PC they originally purchased, with the requirement that the stolen PC be turned in to the police.

“We’re sorry you’ve been put in this situation. The PC you purchased was being rented through NZXT Flex, and the person who sold it to you did not own it or have the right to sell it. We understand you paid for what you believed was a legitimate purchase, and we want to help,” the company said. “Please email us or call/text with a link to this thread so we can connect with you directly. You can also DM us here on reddit. In situations like this, we typically work with the buyer and local law enforcement to help pursue the seller. Please keep any messages, the original listing, and proof of payment.”

This response was great news for u/cal93, who said that they were using the computer for school. They added to the thread that they were happy with the proposal and would provide more details once the company gave them the green light. u/cal93_’s latest Reddit update gave us more details about the transaction. They said that the seller sold the PC to them, which appears to be an NZXT Flex One unit worth around $1,500, for $650. When Fragile saw the post and reached out, the company asked for proof — receipts, chats, and seller information — after which it agreed to replace the “bricked” PC. The Redditor is just waiting for the shipping label and instructions to drop off the device at FedEx and then hopefully get their replacement soon after.

NZXT’s PC rental program started back in 2024 and is one solution for a person who needs a computer right now but can’t afford the upfront spend requirement of buying one. However, the program faced issues a little over a year in, resulting in a RICO lawsuit in California. This ended with the company paying a settlement earlier this year, totaling $3.45 million, to affected customers. Because of this, some commenters call this move a “rare” win for the user, while also earning NZXT and Fragile some positive feedback.

Whatever the case, the Redditor said that they got the best possible scenario, as they will get a new PC to replace the one they were scammed on. Fragile also said that it will pursue the person who sold the rental NZXT PC, so they’re not getting away scot-free either.

While Amazon's big sale has finished, Walmart and Best Buy are delivering the goods with huge deals on two different gaming PCs. Right now, you can pick up the ABS Cyclone M Aqua with an RTX 5060 for $999 at Walmart, or go for a CyberPowerPC rig with an RX 9060 for $999.99 at Best Buy instead.

● Grab the ABS machine at Walmart here

● Grab the CyberPowerPC machine at Best Buy here

These are budget-focused machines, and while some compromises do have to be made, the specs are pretty formidable for their price point. The ABS machine is fitted with an Intel Core i5-14400F, still a popular choice in lower-end machines like this one, along with 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory, a 1TB SSD, and most importantly, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 8GB.

The RTX 5060 means you're getting high frame rates at 1080p, even with the highest graphics presets. DLSS support, meanwhile, gives you full access to Nvidia's bag of tricks, including multi-frame generation, which'll prove useful if you decide to go for 1440p or need an AI-generated push.

You also get an additional 2TB SSD with this deal, a Verbatim 2TB Vi7000 offering Gen 4 speeds. It's unclear whether or not this comes pre-installed, but installing an M.2 drive is an easy process, even for a beginner.

On the flip side, you could go for the CyberPowerPC machine at Best Buy instead. It'll cost you 99c more, but instead you get a rig that includes the AMD Ryzen 7 8700F. This is an AM5 CPU, so you are better future-proofed here than the LGA 1700 socket used for the 14400F should you decide to upgrade the CPU later. It's also a newer, faster CPU, running with a 4.1 GHz base clock speed, boosting up to 5 GHz.

You also get the AMD Radeon RX 9060 here, also with 8GB VRAM. The RTX 5060 is faster, but this GPU isn't far off it in terms of raw power, and it'll still work well at the 1080p range you'll be focusing on with these specs. You're also getting faster DDR5 RAM here, also 16GB, with a 1TB SSD for Windows and any games.

These are both good machines for 1080p gaming, with a price that puts them below $1,000. Given the current market, finding any rig priced this low with modern components is a struggle. The ABS Cyclone M Aqua for $999 is a good option with the RTX 5060, with DLSS support giving you an additional edge in-game, along with that extra 2TB SSD.

That said, the CyberPowerPC rig for $999.99 is a solid alternative, with newer components and better options for upgrades into the future. Either one will suit you fine for modern gaming, but these prices aren't likely to stick around for very long.

Nvidia's RTX 5090 now costs $7,000. Or so near to it that it makes no difference. So if you were hoping to buy one in the quest to build a PC, you're out of luck. You're much better off just grabbing a pre-built PC with one inside. Alienware normally commands a massive premium over other desktops because of its brand name, but the PC market is so out of whack right now that this is actually a much better value option than some alternatives. Right now, you can get an RTX 5090 PC with AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D for $7,499.

● Check out this deal at Dell

That's obviously a lot more than you'd have paid for this rig even a month ago, but prices are only moving in one direction, and that is up. This PC altogether costs less than the standalone cost of buying an RTX 5090 and AMD's $690 CPU alone, a much better option than trying to build one yourself.

The RTX 5090 is the headline of the build here for obvious reasons. It's the best consumer GPU on the market thanks to its massive 32GB VRAM pool, which will chew through any title in 4K.

The CPU from AMD is an absolute juggernaut, dominating our testing benchmarks for multi-threaded performance while excelling at gaming. Paired with the aforementioned RTX 5090, it beats even the 9800X3D in our testing.

To complement the potent GPU and CPU combo, you get 32GB of DDR5 and a 2TB SSD. That's less RAM than you'd like at this price, but you can get 64GB in the higher-spec config, also on sale. Other specs include a 1500W power supply and Wi-Fi 7, as well as liquid cooling for the hefty CPU, making this a well-rounded and potent gaming rig.

The PC gaming industry has been decimated by AI. This is a great example of a product that has drastically increased in price in just a few short months, but prices continue to rise, and the window to buy a gaming rig is closing fast.

We've seen some sweet deals on entry-level and high-end prebuilts during this Prime Day event, but a great midrange system has been a little harder to find. We've uncovered some treasure, though, in the form of Skytech Gaming's Harpy prebuilt. This PC pairs a Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU with a powerful GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card and 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory, all for just $1799 right now.

• Check out the Skytech Harpy gaming PC for $1799 at Walmart

The Ryzen 7 7800X3D isn't AMD's latest and greatest gaming champ any longer, but its 3D V-Cache still lets it land in fifth place in our demanding CPU hierarchy game testing.

You'll want that cutting-edge tech at hand because the RTX 5070 has enough juice to power enviable high-refresh-rate gaming experiences at 1080p and 1440p even before you start dialing in DLSS 4.5 upscaling and Multi Frame Generation. It's ready to deliver great performance in demanding RT and path-traced titles like Gears of War: E-Day and Control Resonant.

This system only includes a 1TB SSD, but given its otherwise excellent specs for the price, we think it's worth having to live with the possibility that you might have to shuffle games around occasionally. And if you have an older drive from another build, you can probably find space to bring it over without much trouble.

Skytech rounds out this system with a 360mm liquid cooler, an 850W 80 Plus Gold PSU, and a fancy case with a wraparound tempered glass panel to show off the components inside.

Our GPU hierarchy testing proves that whether you're gaming at 1080p or 1440p, the RTX 5070 in this PC stands ready to deliver a great experience across both raster and RT titles. Check it out:

GPU Benchmarks — 1080p

GPU Benchmarks — 1440p

And if you run into a game that's too tough for the RTX 5070 to conquer at native resolution, you have superior DLSS 4.5 upscaling and frame generation at your disposal with this system to get the optimal experience. The 12GB frame buffer gives you plenty of room for Multi Frame Generation, as well.

If you're looking for a midrange AMD X3D-powered gaming upgrade for a surprisingly low price in today's wild and crazy PC market, get on this deal quick, because it surely won't last long with these specs.

Anything with memory or a GPU is tough to find at a good price right now, even on Prime Day. But over at HP, there's a desktop deal that's at a surprisingly good price given the components inside.

The Omen 35L with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080, AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 32GB of memory, and 2TB of storage is $2,799.99, down from an MSRP of $4,999.99.

• Check out the HP Omen 35L at HP

Given that the RTX 5080 on its own is typically going for anywhere between $1,600 and $2,000, this is a significant deal if you're willing to buy a PC rather than build one.

The system also comes equipped with a 1,000-watt, fully modular, 80-Plus Gold power supply; Wi-Fi 7; and a 240 mm AIO cooler for the CPU. The 35-liter chassis should be small enough for many desks, but will still be fine on the floor.

We haven't reviewed this model, but HP typically uses standardized parts, allowing for easy upgrades down the line.

Whether you're gaming at high refresh rates at 1440p or chasing the highest image quality possible at 4K, this system is, at least on paper, built for the job. The Ryzen 7 9800X3D is one of the fastest gaming CPUs available today, and the RTX 5080 is the fastest gaming graphics card around short of an RTX 5090.

Prices on these high-end components are only going to keep going up, especially the storage and RAM, so if you're looking for an awesome upgrade for yourself or a loved one, grab this deal before it's gone.

German utility provider and energy retailer SWK Energie just launched a new marketing strategy targeting gamers. According to ComputerBase [machine translated], meinGAMING has a lot of gamer-focused marketing, like comparing its reliability to “your favorite server” and influencer marketing by game streamers like Limcube. However, this doesn’t mean that the company infused its power grid with some magic gaming juice to let gamers squeeze extra FPS from the outlets. Instead, it offers an electricity plan designed for high-consumption households, whether you’re running four RTX 5090 gaming PCs or charging four EVs simultaneously every day.

The company says this in its FAQ section — the plan is worthwhile for households with a consumption of over 2,500 kWh annually, either “through gaming, streaming, or simply because many devices are running.” Even though it claims to be cheaper than the competition, meinGAMING has a higher base price, so it does not recommend the service if you do not hit the minimum recommended power use. But even if you’re a Germany-based gamer who uses a lot of electricity, that doesn’t mean that you should switch to this service right now. Instead, you should compare your current rates with what the company is offering, as the tariff may vary depending on your location.

Many companies have been targeting gamers in their marketing material, from computer components, peripherals, and furniture to food and beverages, promising to improve their performance and reaction times to gain an edge over their opponents. While some of these gamer-branded things do offer an item or service that’s a little better compared to the average consumer item, a lot more are unfortunately snake oil with RGB slapped on and prices afflicted by “gamer tax.” Still, many buy them because gamer branding and marketing are quite eye-catching.

Even government agencies have dived onto the gamer marketing bandwagon — the U.S. Army has targeted gamers in its recruitment drives while the FAA’s last hiring campaign focused on gamers and hit 94% of its hiring goal. Even the Royal Navy has recognized gaming as one of the hobbies of its sailors, with its latest ship hosting eight high-end gaming PCs for LAN parties on the high seas.

While meinGAMING won’t make you a better gamer, it could potentially help you save on electricity costs if you consume a relatively high amount of electricity. As an additional bonus, the company says that its power is 100% sourced from renewable energy, reducing the load on your wallet and conscience as you spend hours in front of your gaming PC. However, how it ensures the power used actually comes from renewable sources remains an open question.

When a PC gamer's GPU with a 12VHPWR or 12V-2x6 power connector melts, it's often in a computer they built by hand, and they typically only have one chance at recourse — hoping their GPU is under warranty and making a claim.

But it ends up that when someone else built your PC, it could open up a can of worms that has two companies pointing the blame at each other while a customer sits with a burned-up RTX 5090, power supply, and power cords.

That's what happened to Tom's Hardware reader Anthony DeMarco, whose father purchased a Digital Storm Corsa for him ahead of his first job after graduating from college. DeMarco says he suggested his father purchase the system before RAM prices went up. The system was delivered in May of 2025. DeMarco says he tested the system, then packed it up for when he got a job. That jealousy-inducing system included an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X, 2TB Crucial T700 Pro SSD, 64GB of Kingston Fury RGB RAM, and, crucially, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 from PNY. The computer cost $5,245.00 before tax.

DeMarco says he got the computer from his father in August 2026, upon starting his job. He says the problems started two weeks later.

"I noticed a strange burning smell from near my computer," he recalled to Tom's Hardware, wondering if it was an issue with dust from another PC he owned. "The next day I noticed my monitor screen kept flickering. I then used Claude to try to figure out the issue and it pointed to the GPU, and then I checked the wires and noticed them very melted and burned. I immediately powered off my computer so hopefully my GPU is still functional."

But that's hard for him to tell. The cable was "fused" into the connector, and while he managed to separate the pieces, some of the connectors are still stuck together.

The damage went beyond the GPU, with the "most severe" damage at the power supply, a 1,000-watt semi-modular model from Digital Storm with an 80-Plus Gold rating. This is the cheapest, default option you get when you pick an RTX 5090 on the Corsa configurator, though his PSU cables are an upgrade with custom blue sleeving. "The cable into the power supply is completely melted and the cable head is completely fused into the power supply with bare wires exposed at both ends of the cable," he said.

DeMarco claims that he checked that all the cabling was in place after his father formally gave him the PC.

Pictures of the damage

The photos that DeMarco sent us are brutal. Perhaps the worst are the photos of the ends of the power cable, which are wrecked on both ends. But there's burns on the cable itself, too. The part going into the GPU appears to have some sort of bend, though we don't have many photos to judge perspective.

Who do you go to for help?

DeMarco had two options to go to for help. Digital Storm, which built the PC, and PNY which made the GPU.

This is where buying the system early bit DeMarco. Digital Storm offers a one-year warranty on parts and three years on its labor, and that one-year warranty on parts was up. But the components are separately supported by manufacturers, and PNY warranties its GeForce RTX gaming GPUs for three years.

He went first to Digital Storm, raising a support ticket under his father's name on Aug. 26, according to records Tom's Hardware reviewed. He later uploaded photos. That ticket was closed on Aug. 31 following a phone call, a summary of which explains that while there is a "faulty 12VHPWR cable that melted" that DeMarco would attempt to RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) with PNY, the GPU vendor, due to being "Due to being far out of warranty." DeMarco also claimed on the call that he could get the GPU fixed at a repair center to replace the power connector on the GPU.

On Sept. 8, DeMarco had a back and forth email chain with PNY, requesting an RMA of the GPU and highlighting the 3-year warranty. He also inquired if PNY offered a repair service for his existing GPU. Following supplying the receipt and photos of the damage, a PNY service representative said there was an issue with the fact that Digital Storm had used its own cables.

"We want to clarify an important part of the warranty regarding the power connection to the GPU. All PNY GPUs that require a 16-pin (12VHPWR / 12V-2x6) input include a PNY-approved power cable or adapter in the box. This cable is the only configuration covered under warranty," the PNY support rep wrote. "If a third-party power cable, adapter, or PSU cable is used and damage occurs — including melting, burning, overheating, or deformation of the connector — PNY cannot accept the product under warranty. Damage caused by non-PNY cables falls under the responsibility of the manufacturer of that cable or power supply."

"We are always happy to help with any PNY-related issues," they added, "but in cases where the damage was caused by unsupported cabling, we are unable to process an RMA."

DeMarco responded with a series of questions. Does PNY publish a list of approved cables? Is the bundled adapter the only supported configuration, and not an ATX cable included with a PSU? Are system builders covered when they use PNY's cables?

The answers to the first two (no, and not automatically) don't change much. On the third, PNY's rep wrote that machines from authorized system builders are covered, it doesn't mean their cabling is.

Without knowing what else to do, on Sept. 16, DeMarco filed a report on the Consumer Product Safety Commission SaferProducts.gov database.

"PNY stands behind its GeForce RTX graphics cards, including those sold through our authorized system builder partners," the company wrote in a statement to Tom's Hardware when asked about its policies. "We are presently reviewing this case and will be engaging the customer directly. PNY’s ongoing commitment to its customers includes providing clear terms, policies and processes, and making adjustments where appropriate."

Digital Storm did not respond to requests for comment.

DeMarco then asked if PNY has a repair service he could pay for out of pocket (they do not), and then came to Tom's Hardware with his plight. He had seen another story of PNY rejecting an RMA for using a cable that came with their power supply — an ASRock rated for 1,600 watts.

In Digital Storm's warranty, it says that "After the first year, Digital Storm will help replace any defective parts for the customer as long as those parts are still under warranty with the manufacture [sic]." DeMarco says Digital Storm said that because PNY had denied him, there was no use getting involved, but there is no corroborating record of this.

What does he want? What should he get?

If it were up to DeMarco, he wouldn't get another GPU. He'd get a refund for the component:

"In an ideal situation I would get a refund for my PNY RTX 5090 instead of [having] it replaced because I do not feel safe leaving my computer to run anymore without me if it has a PNY RTX 5090 in it."

In his email, DeMarco writes that there is a "a known problem with the PNY RTX 5090 power connector melting that is happening to many people."

In this area, he's incorrect, at least when it comes to PNY. There have been plenty of reports over the years of GPUs with a 12VHPWR connector that have melted across both RTX 4090 and RTX 5090 graphics cards, and many of those are other brands. This is a widely known issue with the connector, which is standardized by the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group, or PCI-SIG. In 2022, PCI-SIG sent a notice to members about the connector, ensuring they test for safety and help avoid user error.

If DeMarco were to get a refund and turn around and buy an RTX 5090 from another manufacturer, it's possible he could see the same fate. Digital Storm doesn't guarantee a PNY RTX 5090. "Digital Storm will use a top brand name graphics card from the likes of ASUS, PNY, MSI, etc... An example would be the ASUS TURBO series," the website reads.

One could say that either company could step up and help DeMarco out as a way of engendering goodwill. PNY's warranty isn't specific about which power cable you can use, though reviewing other GPU vendors' policies leads to an equally mixed bag. MSI's is more specific, stating that the warranty can be voided based on "any breakdown or damage caused by the use of parts or software not authorized or recommended by MSI[.]" Asus' warranty has similar vague language to PNY's. PC building is often a hobby where parts from various manufacturers are used.

In most cases, going to Digital Storm would be the obvious answer. But DeMarco and his father let the expensive system sit in a box for over a year. While he was right to test it out of the box to make sure it worked, a gesture of goodwill buying in advance ultimately backfired when it ran out the clock on the warranty, and the system builder doesn't seem to have any further obligation here.

What should you do if you buy prebuilt?

When you build your own PC, it's up to you which power cables you use. When you buy one elsewhere, that's on them.

Reviewing the warranty for every single component in a system (if you even know it — DeMarco didn't know which GPU he was getting here) is onerous. But reviewing the single warranty from any system builder could give you an understanding of how much support you might get in the future.

Alternatively, if you're really worried, you could buy a system from the company that makes the GPU and PSU, like Asus or MSI sometimes do. It's hard to blame the cabling when they chose it.

If you're buying a gift, buying it in time for the recipient to get most of the warranty is the best idea, especially on an expensive purchase where parts can fail. Or, at the very least, you may want to purchase extended coverage.

DeMarco says he checked all the connections. That's a good idea. You shouldn't have to do it, but better safe than sorry. While you're at it, you can also make sure the RAM and GPU are properly seated.

What if I'm building my own PC?

If you're building your own PC, you're handling each warranty individually. In theory, if you want to be extremely conservative, you could be sure to only use the PSU adapter that comes with most RTX 4090 and 5090 graphics cards: a 16-pin power connector that connects to four standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors, from the power supply.

But that also eliminates a lot of cables that come from perfectly good power supplies that might eschew the need for adapters, making for cleaner, simpler builds.

While DeMarco is out of warranty with Digital Storm, PNY's policies could be more representative of what PC building is really like. And so can Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and anyone else who makes a GPU, including Nvidia itself. Perhaps, with the most expensive GPUs, it's time for companies to be putting both adapters and full on 16-pin ATX cables in the box.

PC building is all about customization. And it seems the more custom you get, the less likely companies selling the most expensive GPUs are going to be flexible about helping to replace those parts if there's a problem, even, if, like the 16-pin connector, it's a possibility that could strike almost anyone.

American custom and prebuilt computer seller Maingear has launched a new instant trade-in program in partnership with SELLIT9. The new collab gives customers instant credit on any new Maingear desktop or laptop PC. A broad range of used tech can swiftly be exchanged for Maingear gift cards, including laptops, phones, tablets, smartwatches, headphones, cameras, lenses, and microphones. Instant trade-ins are live today, and until October 14, all those taking advantage of this low-friction old-for-new plan can earn an extra 5% on their traded-in products using the code EXTRA5.

In a press release sent to Tom’s Hardware, Maingear says that it knows that “Memory prices are up. Component prices are up. Meanwhile, perfectly good tech is collecting dust in drawers across the country.” This old and neglected tech can help you get your next hand-built gaming rig, suggests the company.

Naturally, Maingear sings the praises of its collab with SELLIT9’s recycling and refurbishment business. The New Jersey-based PC firm says the quotes its customers can get through SELLIT9 are truly instant. For example, it says that you will get a quote in minutes, and a Maingear gift card on the spot. That means you won’t have to wait for a shipping carton for your used gear to arrive, then make its way to SELLIT9, and subsequently pass inspections. However, we note some wording indicates that there’s “a temporary hold on the shopper’s card” until any traded-in gear “checks out.”

We have no experience of Maingear’s chosen partner SELLIT9, but its 4.6/5 score on TrustPilot looks pretty good for such a service, which can easily attract ire. SELLIT9 is a Canadian business that recently raised $4.1 million to expand across North America. Perhaps this Maingear partnership is its first foray into the U.S. We’ll have to see what else happens on Oct 1.

I checked some CAD prices for various used tech stuff on SELLIT9 and converted them to USD, suggesting you could get the following sums for used tech in the U.S.:

• Ryzen 7 9800X3D – up to $141
• Core i7-14700K – up to $120
• RTX 4080 Super – up to $530
• GTX 1080 Ti – up to $71
• 32GB desktop DDR4 RAM – up to $42
• iPhone 14 Pro 128GB – up to $278
• PS5 Slim (Digital Edition) – up to $160

We aren’t sure if these prices are directly translatable to the U.S. market, but they should give you a rough idea. Maingear also highlights that using its new trade-in service offers minimal friction for customers. That means “no listings, no lowball offers, and no meeting strangers in parking lots.”

When this article goes live, the new instant trade-in service goes live. Make sure to nose around the offers and let us know what you think.

The $1,999 iBuyPower Slate arrives with a formula that's hard to argue with: an RTX 5070, a Ryzen 7 7700X3D, a 360mm liquid cooler, and a tempered-glass chassis with plenty of RGB lighting. It even goes beyond expectations by including gaming peripherals that don't feel like afterthoughts.

But in an increasingly competitive mid-range desktop market, attractive extras and gaming prowess alone aren't always enough. The question is whether the Slate's gaming-first focus justifies its price when rivals offer stronger all-around performance for similar money.

Design of the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

There’s no mistaking the Slate for anything but a gaming machine. It’s designed to be seen inside and out, with a full-view tempered glass side panel. The front panel’s triangle glass partially shows off a trio of 120 mm RGB fans. The tower sits firmly in mid-tower territory, at 8.7 x 19.3 x 19.5 inches.

The mesh covering the rest of the front and top permits airflow and should do a decent job of blocking dust, though the case’s only removable air filter is under the bottom-mounted power supply.

Inside, the Slate’s blacked-out interior offers an RGB light strip running along the power supply compartment and up the front panel. Additional lighting comes from the two memory DIMMs. The GPU, an Asus Dual RTX 5070 in our review unit, lacks illumination. The lighting can be controlled via the Hyte Nexus app, though not on a per-component basis. (See the Software section later in this review.)

iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop Specifications

Ports and Upgradeability on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

Mid-tower desktops tend to include lots of ports, and iBuyPower’s Slate doesn’t disappoint. The top-mounted front connectivity includes one USB-C and two USB-A (all 5 Gbps) plus separate headphone and microphone jacks. The positioning of these ports works best if the desktop is placed on the floor; it’s less ideal on a desk.

Rear connectivity on the ASRock B650M-CX motherboard includes one USB-C 3.2 (10 Gbps), one USB-A 3.2 (10 Gbps), two USB-A 3.2 (5 Gbps), four USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, and audio jacks. Though there are no truly high-speed ports, they aren’t expected outside of high-end towers with pricier motherboards. The desktop also includes Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth – the antennas must be connected as shown here for meaningful range.

The side panels come off with a tug at the top rear, hinging outward and away. Seven 120 mm fans – three front, three on the top-mounted 360 mm CPU cooling radiator, and one rear – provide plentiful airflow. Cabling is reasonably tidy, though the bundle of unused cables from the non-modular 750-watt power supply is a bit of a mess.

The CPU cooler is more than a basic model, with an LED screen showing CPU temperature, frequency, and load. The display can’t be customized, though it can be toggled off in the Hyte Nexus app.

The Slate’s expansion options include one open PCIe x16 slot and four DIMM slots, two of which are unpopulated. The motherboard offers two M.2 2280 drive slots. There are two 2.5-inch drive sleds behind the motherboard, but no room for a 3.5-inch drive.

Gaming and Graphics on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

We are testing the iBuyPower Slate with a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, GeForce RTX 5070 GPU, and 32GB of RAM.

Playing 007 First Light, at 3840 x 2160 with High settings and DLSS enabled, I observed between 60 and 70 frames per second (FPS) in outdoor scenes and closer to 80 FPS indoors. Using DLSS was required for smooth gameplay, as I saw roughly half the FPS without it.

Our comparison desktops include the Asus ROG G700 (Core Ultra 7 265KF, RTX 5070, $2,029.99 when reviewed) and the CyberPowerPC Gaming Desktop GXi3800BSTV2 (Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, RTX 5070, $2,309.99), both mid-tower systems with the same GPU but Intel processors.

At 1080p, iBuyPower’s Slate proved competitive overall, matching the Asus and CyberPowerPC in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest settings), Cyberpunk 2077 (Ray Tracing Ultra), and Black Myth: Wukong (Cinematic). However, its Ryzen 7 7700X3D paid dividends in Far Cry 6 (Ultra), where its 185 FPS was well ahead of the Asus (110 FPS) and CyberPowerPC (141 FPS). It led by a similar amount in Red Dead Redemption 2, with 145 FPS against the Asus’ 120 FPS and the CyberPowerPC’s 126 FPS.

The Slate generally didn’t differentiate itself from the other desktops at the 4K resolution, an expected result since that resolution is almost always GPU-limited and these systems all rely on an RTX 5070. The exception was Far Cry 6, where the Slate’s 97 FPS greatly outperformed the 80 and 81 FPS produced by the Asus and CyberPowerPC, respectively.

Overall, despite its Ryzen 7 7700X3D not being nearly as powerful for general use as the Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus featured in our competing systems, it can outperform both chips in games.

We stress-test gaming desktops running 15 loops of the Metro: Exodus benchmark at RTX settings. The iBuyPower desktop posted highly stable performance, averaging 145.7 FPS across all runs with less than a one frame variance across all runs. The Ryzen 7 7700X3D’s average temperature was 43 degrees Celsius and its average clock was 4.29 GHz. The RTX 5070 ran at 64 C and had an average core clock of 2.64 GHz.

I noticed a decent amount of fan noise from the Slate particularly when the CPU was stressed, causing the triple-fan CPU cooler to quickly ramp up to high speed. The fan noise was hardly noticeable for daily use and was relatively low while gaming as well.

Productivity Performance on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

We tested the iBuyPower Slate gaming desktop featuring a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, 32GB of dual-channel DDR5-5200 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 solid-state drive (a Patriot P410 as tested).

Productivity performance isn’t a strong point for this Slate configuration. Though its Ryzen 7 7700X3D remains potent for gaming, its previous generation eight-core architecture is outmuscled by the Core Ultra 7 K-class chips in both the Asus and CyberPowerPC systems, particularly the latter with its refreshed Core Ultra 7 270K Plus. The delta was significant: iBuyPower's system scored 14,222 in Geekbench multi-core versus 22,485 for CyberPowerPC, and took 3:35 to complete our 4K to 1080p Handbrake transcoding test versus just 2:03 for the Asus and 1:45 for the CyberPowerPC. The iBuyPower system does, however, include a decent storage drive, proving competitive in our 25GB file transfer test.

Despite the Slate’s performance delta versus the Core Ultra 7 systems, this PC is still highly capable for daily productivity and moderate content creation, such as video editing. Only those squeezing every last drop of performance out of their CPU will find it compelling to go with a more powerful chip than the Ryzen 7 7700X3D.

Keyboard and Mouse with the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

The Slate includes much better than average peripherals. The mechanical keyboard is the standout. Though not stated in the specs, it feels like it uses linear switches favored by gamers for their predictability. It felt rock solid in my testing and wasn’t overly loud. The keyboard supports RGB backlighting, though not per-key – the lighting can be set in the included Hyte Nexus app for various colors and patterns. You can also control the lighting through keyboard shortcuts – Fn+Ctrl cycles colors, Fn+Left/Right arrows alter brightness, Fn+Space Bar disables lighting, and Fn+Alt cycles through 16 backlighting patterns, such as breathing, pulsing, and steady. It’s also nice to see that the keyboard uses a detachable USB-C cable.

The mouse is also better than average, though it’s only for right handers. The standard buttons offer a solid feel, with two side buttons and a notched scroll wheel. The DPI button behind the scroll wheel switches between 1,200, 2,400, 3,500, 5,500, and 7,200 DPI, which are visually indicated by the DPI button illuminating in red, blue, green, purple, and yellow, respectively. The mouse fits my medium-size hand well. It’s internally backlit in RGB color, which can be configured in Hyte Nexus or toggled through 10 modes pressing the button on the underside. Patterns include color streaming, steady, and breathing, to name a few.

Software and Warranty on the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop

Besides the usual preinstalled Windows 11 apps, iBuyPower only preloads one app – Hyte Nexus. It provides basic component temperature and frequency monitoring, but its real focus is RGB lighting control.

The menu is confusing – there are tiles for different components, such as the case, but these have no effect since the particular case used in the Slate isn’t recognized. Instead, all the action happens in the Lighting section. Many preset lighting recipes are included, such as Rainbow, Aurora, Ice, Fireplace, and Forest, which even apply to the keyboard and mouse. There are also options for screen mirroring, audio visualization, and static colors. You can save your settings in profiles.

That said, there’s no way to control lighting on a per-component basis – colors and patterns apply to all components at once since they are all connected to ARGB header 1. Confusingly, the app lets you change settings for the other headers, but this has no effect since nothing is connected to them. If the app indicated that those headers aren’t connected, this would have been more straightforward. The Slate nonetheless allows a decent amount of lighting customization despite lacking an advanced lighting controller, which would have increased the cost.

iBuyPower covers the Slate with a one-year parts and labor warranty.

iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop Configurations

We tested the iBuyPower Slate Gaming Desktop with a Ryzen 7 7700X3D processor, GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card, 32GB (2x 16GB) of DDR5-5200 RAM, and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. A mechanical backlit gaming keyboard and mouse are included in the box.

Best Buy offers several other variations of the Slate. A $1,679.99 starter model included a Core i7-14700F and RTX 5060 while a $1,799.99 model stepped up to a Core Ultra 7 265F and RTX 5060 Ti. Above our test model, a $2,299.99 variant included a Ryzen 9 9900X3D, while a range-topping $2,999.99 model offered a Ryzen 9 7900X, an RTX 5080, and a 2TB SSD.

Bottom Line

iBuyPower’s Slate gets the mid-tier gaming desktop formula almost exactly right. Visually, its RGB lighting is attractive and reasonably configurable even if it lacks per-component control, and its RTX 5070 and Ryzen 7 7700X3D comfortably power through today’s games at 1080p and 1440p, with 4K possible using dialed-down visual quality or DLSS. iBuyPower goes above expectations by including a liquid CPU cooler with a built-in screen and by including a mechanical RGB keyboard and gaming mouse.

Where the Slate stumbles, as least in our reviewed configuration, is processing power. Though the Ryzen 7 7700X3D remains potent for gaming, it’s outclassed by Core Ultra 7 K-class chips for general use, which can be had in systems costing similar money. But for pure gamers, this Slate is a standup performer.

There's a real advantage right now to buying a pre-built gaming PC. The RAMpocalypse has made it difficult, from a budget point of view, to build new gaming PCs. Instead, the real value is to buy a rig with the specs that'll allow you to game for the next few years. This ABS Cyclone Aqua machine with an RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU is the perfect example, giving you 1440-capable performance for just $1,399.99.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

You're getting a spec sheet that would be tricky to put together if you were building a rig yourself. The RTX 5060 Ti is the star of this particular show, but the rest of the build includes 16GB of DDR5 RAM, a 1TB SSD, and a 20-core Intel Core i7-14700F processor. We're still seeing the 14700F in pre-builts as an affordable option that can still deliver great gaming performance.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti means you're getting one of Nvidia’s latest-generation cards, with this GPU sitting in the mid-tier. You're getting 4,608 CUDA cores and a boost clock speed of 2,527MHz here. You only need a single eight-pin PCIe connector to deliver power, unlike the RTX 5090, so you don't need to worry about this PC requiring huge amounts of power to run.

As our RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB review explains, you're getting an impressive set of performance with this Blackwell GPU for 1080p and 1440p gaming. The charts below show how great it is for ray tracing for its price, especially compared to rival cards. You're also getting full Nvidia DLSS support here, giving you the full set of Nvidia's software capabilities for improving performance in-game, including multi-frame generation. MFG will give your games a frame rate boost, inserting AI-generated frames to help deliver performance in the most resource-heavy games at higher resolutions.

16GB of GDDR7 VRAM, meanwhile, makes this GPU a far better option than the 8GB variants you could pick up at this price. That gives you far more headroom, performance-wise, in games that are resource-heavy, especially for 1440p gaming.

Meanwhile, the Intel Core i7-14700F is still a good, if older, CPU option for gaming. This Raptor Lake Refresh CPU comes with 20 cores, split across eight performance cores, which are the good ones for gaming, along with 12 efficient cores for multi-threaded work. You also get a max turbo clock speed of 5.4 GHz and a 65W TDP. At 1080p or 1440p, you aren't going to see the 14700F as a bottleneck in modern gaming.

Some builds at this price are sticking with older specs, including DDR4 RAM, but luckily, you're getting faster DDR5 here. 16GB of G.Skill Flare X5 DDR5 RAM is included, rated for speeds of 6,000 MT/s. Given how pricey RAM is becoming, it's a compromise that it isn't a higher capacity like 32GB, but it could be worse. DDR5 does add to the longevity of this build, however, and you do have scope to upgrade at a later date.

You also get a 1TB Patriot P410 SSD here. It offers Gen 4 speeds, along with space for a couple of the biggest AAA games alongside Windows. There's also Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity included here, along with gigabit Ethernet for a wired connection to your local network.

The $1,399.99 sale price for this ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC is a good option in the current market. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB ensures you've got a rig for 1080p and 1440p gaming, but given how fast prices are rising across the PC hardware market, there's no guarantee that it'll be around for long.

Developers of SharpEmu — an experimental, open-source PS5 emulator — have successfully run PS5 games at a playable 60 FPS on the emulator. According to an X post on September 25, the developers reached this milestone for six of 55 titles tested, with 12 — including the six playable — reaching gameplay. According to the developer, the six games are yet to be tested from start to finish; the “playable” designation means the games currently run without issues, although minor graphical or audio issues may persist in some.

The six 60 FPS titles are Dreaming Sarah, Void Terrarium, New Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninja, Tetris Forever, Hoa, and Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered. The breakthrough was achieved with SharpEmu v0.0.4-release.2, the emulator’s latest public build released on September 25. According to developers, the build includes upgrades such as improved SPIR-V shader translation and updated Vulkan API support.

Developed in C#, the SharpEmu PS5 emulator supports Windows, Linux, and macOS and uses Vulkan and MoltenVK for graphics API calls. PlayStation 5 relies on an AMD Zen 2 x86-64 CPU architecture; therefore, SharpEmu can execute the console's CPU instructions natively on a standard PC rather than translating them from an unfamiliar instruction set. The emulator focuses on loading a game's eboot.bin executable and required system modules, partially handling kernel functions, and processing the game's shader, resource, and AGC graphics submissions.

For now, SharpEmu is still far from handling demanding 3D titles, with only 12 of 55 tested titles reaching a game ready state. Of those 12, only six performed cleanly enough to be designated as “playable” at a full 60 FPS. The developers stress that SharpEmu is still in its early stages, noting that “SharpEmu is an experimental emulator intended for research and educational purposes. This project does not contain any copyrighted system firmware, game data, or proprietary PlayStation assets.” Meanwhile, another emulator, KytyPS5, recently ran the PS5 version of GTA V at roughly 40 to 60 FPS on a high-end Ryzen 9 9950X3D and Radeon RX 7900 XT system, crashing after the game's opening mission.

There's a brilliant price right now on a top-end gaming PC, thanks to Walmart. You can pick up this HP Omen 35L rig with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $1,899.99. That's an unbelievable price for a rig with this spec in the current market, one that makes it hundreds of dollars cheaper than many of its rivals. If you bought the same machine on HP's website with the same configuration, it would set you back $3,639.99, over $1,700 more than you'd pay here.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

This version of the HP Omen 35L is a recent refresh, with a modern set of specs that'll keep you gaming for years into the future. It ships with a 35-liter case, so it's a more manageable option for your desk compared to the HP Omen Max 45L. It's a fairly understated design, though, with a minimal black colorway, although some RGB lighting is available through the cooling fans.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti is the focal point in this PC. You're getting one of Nvidia's current-gen mid- to high-tier powerhouses here, featuring the best of Nvidia's latest tech, including DLSS with multi-frame generation at your disposal.

Specs-wise, it has 8,960 CUDA cores, along with 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM on a 256-bit memory bus, as our RTX 5070 Ti review explains. The boost in VRAM compared to the cheaper 8GB GPUs on sale is important here if you want to hit the highest frame rates at 1440p and 4K. For 4K, you'll probably need to tweak your graphics settings a little, especially in the most graphically-intensive games. Luckily, multi-frame generation will give you an AI-generated frame rate boost if you run into any difficulties.

1440p will be much more solid, though. As the GPU benchmarks from our review show, you'll manage 1440p above 60fps on average pretty consistently with the highest ultra graphics settings.

You're also getting the Intel Core i7-14700F in this HP build. This Raptor Lake Refresh CPU is a little old now, but it's still a popular choice in pre-built systems, and it still delivers good performance for gaming. You're getting 20 cores with the 14700F, eight of which are performance cores for gaming, along with 12 efficient cores which will prove useful for multi-threaded work.

Other specs include support for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity. You're also getting a 1TB NVMe SSD with Gen 4 speeds here, so you'll manage to install at least a few of the newest and biggest games. 32GB of DDR5 RAM means you're not forced to compromise on memory, even at this price, insulating you from the RAMpocalypse affecting industry pricing at the moment.

The $1,899.99 price for this HP Omen 35L gaming PC isn't being listed as a deal on Walmart's website, but don't be fooled. This kind of spec is usually priced well above $2,000 in the current market, so we'd expect the price to jump up soon or stock to run out. If you want a 4K-capable RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC for less than $1,900 from a trusted brand, you'll want to grab this one while you can.

With RAMageddon, the storage apocalypse, GPU stagnation, and GPU price increases all happening more or less simultaneously, this is the worst time to build a PC that I can remember — and I built my first PC in the previous century (powered by an AMD K6-2). If you have a rig that meets your needs at the moment (even if just barely), current prices probably make you more interested in keeping it running than in considering major upgrades or, even more daunting, starting over from scratch with a new build.

But fret as we might about the future of our much-beloved component-swapping hobby, a few articles and experiences in recent weeks have given me glimpses of the PC-building future, and I don’t think it’s all bad — at least so long as you have time to research and tinker, you can live without the highest-end components, or you have enough of a build budget that price doesn’t matter much.

Old parts get a new life, with some patient tweaking

First off, we recently tested AMD’s BC-250, a 2021-era APU that started off as defective or cut-down PS5 silicon, repurposed as a cryptomining card. But more recently, a community-developed BIOS and drivers have turned this custom hardware into a Linux-based competitor to Valve’s much-hyped Steam Machine, while costing roughly half the price of a similarly configured system, once you source the power supply and other necessary parts. It even comes with 16GB of shared GDDR6, sidestepping the current RAM pricing issue altogether.

Now, this is more of a project than a PC. You have to source the card (from places like AliExpress, eBay, or Etsy), then research and figure out how to flash the board so that it will even boot, followed by getting Linux and the requisite drivers installed, before you can even think about playing games. But depending on your sample, you might also be able to unlock extra CPU cores and compute units for even better performance.

It’s far from a simple setup. But this kind of community-led hardware repurposing and enhancement reminds me of two distinct hardware eras: The very early days of PC kits (which I wasn’t really around for), and the early 2000s, when you could unlock AMD Athlon and Duron multipliers with a pencil (or later, conductive silver lacquer). Unlocking higher clocks and extra performance without paying for a much pricier chip is exactly the kind of achievable dream that the PC enthusiast hobby was founded on, and it’s good to see it making a comeback – even if it’s with this one very specific piece of hardware.

But as AI hardware development continues — and especially if (or when) specific areas of the hardware bubble pop or deflate – I expect to see more situations where communities of tinkerers figure out how to get discarded hardware to run games and other compute tasks, giving budget buyers hope for acceptable performance at reasonable prices. Ironically, AI tools like Claude Code will almost certainly make breakthroughs in hardware repurposing much easier.

To boldly go (to price brackets) where no PC has gone before

On the other end of the PC price spectrum, I recently assembled a PC using parts from Asus’ ROG Edition 20 line. The anniversary hardware, which debuted earlier this year at Computex, ignores affordability concerns entirely. Asus instead opted to celebrate two decades of its Republic of Gamers sub-brand by taking several of its already expensive parts and peripherals, adding a few (mostly aesthetic) features and some gold accents, and charging even more for them.

How much more? The finished PC, with about $2,000 worth of peripherals, a $3,300 motherboard and cooler combo, and a $6,000 RTX 5090, costs roughly $15,000 – and that’s with a modest 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. If you opt for a more fitting 128GB kit with tight timings and 8TB of solid-state storage, you could easily spend $20,000 on a build like this.

As tough as it is for many of us to swallow, there’s likely a large enough customer base of gamers and PC enthusiasts who can and will pay whatever it takes to own high-end, high-performance PCs to keep options like this afloat. Because while the cost of individual parts has certainly increased, the luxury PC market has existed for decades. I know because in the years before I joined Tom’s Hardware, I reviewed several PCs with custom cooling loops and multiple graphics cards (up to quad-SLI) from the likes of Digital Storm and Maingear. That market isn’t going away; it’s just getting more expensive.

The murky future of mainstream desktop gaming PCs

So what about the mainstream PC gaming market? Things are tougher there, and I suspect that space will continue to shrink due to, well, everything I linked to up top. Those looking for gaming options in the sub-$2,000 range that “just work” without much tinkering are more likely to make do with consoles (which are, of course, also getting more expensive), gaming laptops or handhelds, or console-like PCs like Valve’s Steam Machine.

Intel and AMD are reviving or extending the lifespan of chips and platforms that support last-gen DDR4, but older memory isn’t getting any cheaper either. And our own testing has shown that DDR4 is increasingly holding back gaming performance.

There was a brief hope that Chinese memory makers like CXMT might help bring down DDR5 prices. But U.S. approval for that seems unlikely, especially as the FCC is busy banning humanoid robots and robot vacuum cleaners built overseas. And, of course, companies like CXMT aren’t looking to be PC saviors. They want to sell their RAM to AI hyperscalers for the same high prices as SK hynix, Micron, and Samsung. And even if DDR5 somehow suddenly became more affordable, GPU prices are also continuing to climb, and storage (SSDs and hard drives) faces similar pricing issues.

Can software save the day?

Like it or not, we’ll certainly see further advancements in AI upscaling and other VRAM tweaks and tricks that make modern gaming possible on older and current-gen cards with 8GB or even 4GB of VRAM before the price of RAM, storage, and GPUs drop significantly.

Will it be enough to keep PC gaming enticing and affordable enough to prop up the mainstream PC gaming market? That’s tough to say with any certainty at this point, but if being a PC enthusiast since the 1990s (and a PC gamer since the late 1980s) has taught me one thing, it’s that this hobby is resilient. Some will pay what they need to pay for high-end hardware. Some will find suitable solutions by tinkering with repurposed silicon. And others will forge a middle ground that works for them.

I transitioned from a PC enthusiast to a full-time professional covering the PC and related hardware space in 2008. Even back then, people were telling me that the desktop was dead or dying. Instead, it has evolved and survived for nearly 20 years, through the smartphone revolution, past soldered-on laptop components, through two cycles of Steam Machines, and the death of physical game media. Meanwhile, game stores like Steam rake in record profits, indicating that the demand for PC gaming remains high. All this tells me that PC building and PC gaming will need to continue to evolve, but it’s not quite on the endangered hardware list yet.

Bundle deals are often the best way to sidestep today's inflated pricing of memory, SSDs, and GPUs. However, a well-configured prebuilt can be even more compelling, offering compatible components and the convenience of a fully assembled system out-of-the-box. One such prebuilt is the ABS Cyclone Aqua that is currently listed on Newegg for $1,299.99, down from its original price of $1,699.99, resulting in savings of $400. Customers can get an additional $100 discount using the promo code SSF73826 during checkout, bringing the final cost down to $1,199.99 for the Cyclone Aqua and an overall saving of $500.

• Check out this deal on Newegg

The ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC features hardware suitable for modern AAA gaming at 1080p. It is powered by an Intel Core i7-14700F, which is a solid 20-core (8 P-cores + 12 E-cores) processor with 28 threads and boost clock speeds of up to 5.4 GHz. The CPU is paired with an ASRock B760M-C/D4 motherboard with 32GB (2 x 16GB) of DDR4 3200 MT/s memory from G.Skill (Ripjaws V). The motherboard also comes with onboard Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth. For storage, the system includes a 1TB Patriot P410 M.2 2280 PCIe 4.0 SSD offering read speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 4,500 MB/s.

Graphics duties are handled by the Zotac Gaming RTX 5060 Solo with 8GB VRAM, which is essentially Nvidia’s latest entry-level 1080p card. While it may not be ideal for high-end AAA gaming, it's good enough for less demanding titles, especially if you are into competitive FPS shooters. The rest of the features include a Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU air cooler, a 650W 80+ Gold power supply unit, and a decent ABS Cyclone Micro ATX mid-tower case with a glass side panel, as well as two 120mm ARGB fans at the front and one at the rear.

If you've been holding off on a new gaming PC due to high component prices, this deal at $1,199.99 is definitely worth your attention. Considering that sourcing comparable components individually would likely push the total cost beyond $1,500, this prebuilt offers excellent value for the money.

Powered by a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and a GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition, the $2,299 CyberPowerPC SLC8500WST is one of the best gaming prebuilt deals on the market right now. A custom GeForce RTX 5080, which starts at $1,579, and the $449 Ryzen 7 9800X3D already add up to $2,028. In today’s market, there is no way you will find 32GB of DDR5 memory and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD for $271, much less put together an entire system.

• Check out the CyberPowerPC gaming PC deals at Walmart

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D needs no introduction. The octa-core Zen 5 chip with 96MB of L3 cache has been on the market for two years now and still reigns as the best CPU for gaming. Although Intel and AMD have released many processors, nothing comes close to the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in terms of performance and gaming value that the Zen 5 processor offers.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition, one of the best graphics cards, joins the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in the SLC8500WST to deliver strong 4K (3840x2160) performance and exceptional frame rates at lower resolutions. It is worth noting that it is the Founders Edition, a coveted model that is rarely available on the market anymore, even if you are willing to overpay for it. It comes with DLSS 5 support, as well, and we've found solid DLSS 5 performance on the RTX 5080 in our testing.

Sometimes prebuilt systems are a mixed bag, pairing high-end hardware with weaker components to cut corners. However, the SLC8500WST makes no compromises. The gaming system comes equipped with 32GB of DDR5-6000 memory to ensure seamless gaming and future-proofing of your system.

While the Walmart page does not list the exact specifications of the kit used in the SLC8500WST, it is worth noting that the most affordable 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000 C30 memory kit on the market currently sells for $429.

On the storage side, the SLC8500WST has a spacious 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD. It provides ample room for your games and loads them instantly. The capacity is a good starting point given current storage prices due to the AI-induced shortage. Again, we do not know the SSD model. However, a budget 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD typically starts at $149 nowadays.

You do not see offers like the CyberPowerPC SLC8500WST every day, especially at the $2,299 price point. If you have been holding off on upgrading your gaming system or buying a new one, this SLC8500WST deal is definitely one you should consider.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

There's a powerful gaming rig from Newegg with the power you'd need for 4K gaming with a discount right now. This Newegg-built ABS Stratos II Ruby gaming PC features specs that include an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti for $2,599.99 right now, saving you $300.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

ABS is Newegg's own brand, so you've got the quality and assurance from the big tech retailer to fall back on. This is a rig that sits near the top of the food chain for performance, with the 9800X3D still one of the best CPUs available for gaming right now. Couple that with this current-gen, high-end RTX 5070 Ti and you've got yourself a machine that'll deliver for years to come.

Our 9800X3D review makes clear that this eight-core AMD X3D chip is such a powerhouse for gamers. 3D V-cache is the reason why, as this game-changing tech boosts the amount of L3 cache to 96MB. This means that the CPU doesn't have to fall back on using the slower system RAM as often, which reduces latency, giving you much better and more stable frame rates for gaming.

While the 9800X3D isn't the fastest in our CPU benchmarks now, it still sits near the top of the tree, and is still our top recommendation for most gamers. Intel hasn't provided an option that can truly rival these X3D chips, so if you want 4K gaming with stable frame rates, a chip like the 9800X3D will give you the best performance to do so.

The 9800X3D is well coupled in this ABS rig with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti. It has 8,960 CUDA cores, as well as 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM. You get to leave 1080p well and truly behind with this GPU, as this is a mid- to high-tier option that can handle 1440p and 4K. You've also got the latest Nvidia tech to take advantage of, including DLSS with multi-frame generation. 4K with all the trimmings, like ray tracing, will be helped by MFG, as it'll ensure you can hit the highest frame rates in the most demanding games.

High and ultra graphics presets will come as standard with the RTX 5070 Ti, especially 1440p, but you'll probably need to adjust your settings for the most intensive games at 4K. 16GB of VRAM leaves you with plenty of breathing room for those higher frame rates, though, especially compared to the budget-grade 8GB models like the RTX 5060.

The 9800X3D and RTX 5070 Ti are a good match, but you're getting a well-rounded rig all round with few compromises. 32GB of DDR5 memory, rated at 6,000 MT/s, is about the standard we'd hope for at this price point, and shouldn't be a bottleneck. A 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD means you aren't compromising on storage, either, and it'll give you enough room for a set of big games alongside Windows.

You'll be saving $300 if you pick up this $2,599.99 ABS Stratos II Ruby gaming PC on paper, but the RAMpocalypse is pushing prices up all of the time. 4K-focused gaming rigs are getting more and more expensive, and you may struggle to find specs this good, this cheap, next year.

With new gaming PCs continuing to rise in price, it's worth grabbing a discount or a deal where you can. This MSI Codex gaming PC features a 10-core Intel CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB SSD for storage, all for just $1,429, thanks to a $270 saving.

● Grab this gaming PC deal at Newegg

These are all the specs you'll want for a machine that will comfortably play games at 1080p. The current-gen Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 is top of the list, though, with features like DLSS that mean you'll be able to take advantage of both upscaling and multi-frame generation, making games smoother to play if you decide to boost up to higher resolutions or better graphics settings.

The RTX 5060 will be a significant improvement over an older graphics card or integrated GPU, too. It has 3,840 CUDA cores, along with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM. With DLSS enabled, this'll let you run most games at 1080p with high graphics presets enabled.

You're also getting the best value GPU in our GPU hierarchy when looking at FPS per dollar at 1080p with the RTX 5060. The 8GB of VRAM isn't as limiting as you'd think with a build like this, because you're not going to be hitting 4K here. It has more than enough power for modern games, but you'll need to occasionally optimize for the mos demanding ones. 1440p is possible in some games, too, especially with MFG switched on.

As far as the CPU goes, the Intel Core i5-14400F processor is a little older these days, but still a well-sold and solid option in pre-builts at this price point. You get 10 cores, with six performance cores that offer the best performance for gaming. The other four are efficiency cores for multi-threaded work, with a clock speed that can boost up to 4.7 GHz in total.

You'd expect compromises elsewhere, especially with RAM and SSD prices flying through the roof at the minute, but you don't see that here. 32GB of DDR5 RAM is a good amount for a rig at this price, while a 2TB SSD with Gen 4 speeds leaves plenty of space for a growing games collection. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support gives you good wireless connectivity, with gigabit Ethernet for a faster wired hook-up to your network.

You won't really see many PCs priced as well as this $1,429 MSI Codex R2 gaming PC at the moment. Yes, this spec is pricier than it was a year ago, but you could easily pay more for less in the current market. If 1080p gaming, with DLSS-supported 1440p upscaling, is all you want and need, this is the rig you'll want to buy before the $270 discount disappears.

We've reviewed Asus' ROG Edition 20 anniversary kit. We've built a PC with it. It's about as premium as a gaming PC build can get. Right now, you can pick up the same kit for a whopping $10,849.96 on Newegg in a combo deal. To put it mildly, this is one expensive deal, but it's actually hiding a secret gem: it's the cheapest RTX 5090 graphics card on sale right now.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

Writing up a near-$11,000 combo set as a deal might seem silly, but one of the core components here is the Asus ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 Edition 20 that is priced as part of this deal at $5,999. You can't buy this Astral card on sale individually right now. In fact, you can barely buy an RTX 5090 anywhere. RTX 5090 stock has almost completely disappeared in the United States, with only sketchy third-party sellers offering it at prices approaching $10,000.

This premium GPU is now ultra premium and, for the time being, ultra rare. Does that make this $10,849.96 Newegg combo deal a good option? If money is no object, you're perversely getting some value for your money, as long as you don't think too hard about the RTX 5090's original $1,999 MSRP.

Yes, the GPU is an unstoppable force for any gamer. Our GPU benchmarks make that very clear. The RTX 5090 is the best GPU you can buy, and no other consumer GPU is going to beat it. It has 21,760 CUDA cores and 22GB of GDDR7 VRAM, with a 512-bit memory bus and bandwidth speeds of up to 1,792 GB/s.

This Astral is a world-beater of its own, though. It features an upgraded design, with a second BTF power connector to pull up to 800 watts, a glass backplate, and a curved OLED screen. It has faster clocks, hitting 2,750 MHz, with a 4.7-slot design. Performance-wise, the OG Astral is beating world records, so this is a card that you can really push to its limits (if you're not scared of charred power cables).

The $6,000 GPU aside, you're also getting a $3,299 Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Edition 20 motherboard. Asus has a few variants of this, but the Edition 20 board here has (alongside some beautiful gold accents) supports for up to nine M.2 SSDs, with five slots on the board and more via add-in cards. There are six USB-C ports, plus two 20 Gbps front-panel connectors. Large copper VRM heatsinks work with its integrated AIO cooler, with a curved 6.7-inch AMOLE screen and a huge copper heatsink. Probably overkill, but for $3,299, you want it all.

You're also getting a $899.99 Asus ROG Thor Titanium III 3000W Edition 20 power supply. It's a PSU, but 3000W isn't to be sniffed at, and it'll certainly provide enough power for the monstruous Astral RTX 5090. It’s fully modular, with another OLED display (magnetic, this time) which you can mount either side, or extend with a cable.

Finally, you get the Asus ROG GR20 open-frame EATX PC case, set at $649.99. This is a totally new design from Asus, supporting large EATX motherboards, and you can stand it vertically or horizontally. There's a crossflow fan to blow cool air onto the GPU, RGB light strips, and several fast USB ports. It's mostly aluminum, with some plastic, magnetically attached cosmetic covers around the sides.

$10,849.96 for this Asus combo kit is so much money for anyone to spend on a gaming PC build, but, unfortunately, we are where we are. As our Asus ROG Edition 20 build write-up mentions, this is a kit that few will buy and own. AI is pushing gaming PCs to new heights, and it's a real shame that we're now seeing current-gen flagship GPUs like the RTX 5090 becoming so rare to buy that combo offers like this are, perversely, almost good value. If you're spending $6K or more on a GPU, though, then it might make sense. You won't find an RTX 5090 cheaper (or, probably, at all, at least for some time) so if you want the best gaming PC build that you can find, this is the kit you'll want. For once, we don't imagine this will sell out soon, but Newegg might pull the deal at any point.

A pre-built gaming PC with one of AMD's top X3D chips inside is always going to be a formidable option, especially if it's coupled with a current-gen Nvidia GeForce GPU. That's exactly what you're getting with this all-white CyberPowerPC machine, down to $1,859.99 thanks to a $560 discount, that ships with a 9800X3D, RTX 5060 Ti, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

That's a serious set of specs with few compromises to think about in a market that's seen huge price rises over the last 12 months. Building a new gaming PC has become far more expensive than buying a good pre-built, and the specs you're getting here set you up with a rig that'll let you play games at 1440p at high frame rates and the best graphics presets for years to come. This particular rig scored 4 stars in our CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme review, with praise for its performance and room for upgrades later.

Featured in this rig is one of Nvidia’s current mid-tier graphics cards in the RTX 5060 Ti. It ships with 4,608 CUDA cores and a boost clock speed of 2,527MHz, along with that all-important 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM. Unlike the RTX 5090, this RTX 5060 Ti only requires a single eight-pin PCIe connector to deliver power, so you won't need a huge amount of electricity to run it.

Our RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB review is clear that this GPU is a very good option for mid-tier builds, with ray tracing performance proving to be much better than its rivals. You've also got the full support of Nvidia DLSS 4, giving you access to functionality like multi-frame generation to give your rig a frame rate boost in the most resource-heavy games, especially if you want to try and push to 4K.

At this price point, though, 16GB of VRAM is the serious winner. You're giving yourself much more headroom for better performance than the budget-friendly 8GB GPUs that you'd otherwise have to switch to. That'll mean that stable gaming at 1440p will be easier to achieve.

Couple that with the eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. This continues to be the best CPU overall for gamers, even if AMD has launched faster models since, because of its price-to-performance value. It continues to offer outstanding gaming performance, as the CPU benchmarks show, with 1% low frame rates that ensure the smoothest possible gameplay. The power of AMD 3D V-Cache, stacking extra L3 cache (96MB in total) so that games don't need to drop down to the slower system RAM, gives you a serious performance boost.

You won't see much compromise elsewhere, either. 32GB of DDR5 RAM means you won't face memory bottlenecks, and a 2TB Gen 4 SSD gives you good storage capacity for several big game installations alongside Windows. You're also getting Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless connectivity, along with Gigabit Ethernet for a wired setup.

The $1,859.99 sale price for the CyberPowerPC Gamer Supreme rig on sale here is a good price given its performance potential. You're getting a solid 1440p-capable gaming PC, with the best CPU and a formidable GPU to match, with plenty of room to upgrade in the future, and a lot of longevity until then. Don't expect this $560 discount to be around for long.

As building a PC becomes prohibitively more expensive, buying a pre-built option continues to look like a much better way to get started with PC gaming in 2026. Right now at Newegg, you can score this ABS Cyclone gaming PC with a 20-core Intel CPU, RTX 5060 8GB, and 32GB of DDR5 RAM for just $1,379. That's $420 off a 1440p-ready rig that should see you through the next few years of the RAMpocalypse.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

The DDR5-6000 RAM in this PC is currently worth $400 alone, making this build a good value proposition over buying the parts yourself. Likewise, the GPU is worth $450, meaning that more than half your build cost is covered by just these two parts. This PC would be perfect as a beginner gaming rig or mid-range replacement for a DDR4 gaming PC. With a Raptor Lake refresh CPU and Nvidia's latest GPU technology, it's the perfect stepping stone into modern PC gaming without breaking the bank.

As you can see, without frame generation, the RTX 5060 can put out a respectable 41 frames per second across our 1440p test suite, and easily manages 60 frames per second at 1080p in our other testing. Using Nvidia's DLSS technology, you'll be able to bump that up no problem and enjoy high-fidelity gaming with good frame rates. With just 8GB of VRAM, this card won't be useful for 4K gaming but would make a great upgrade for someone on an older RTX 30-series card or integrated graphics.

The GPU is complemented by the excellent Intel Core i7-14700F CPU, with 20 cores (eight performance and 12 efficiency), perfect for productivity and gaming workloads. The Raptor Lake Refresh CPU offers boost clocks of up to 5.4GHz.

This is a great all-round build at the price point, as evidenced by the strong supporting cast of components. You're getting that all-important 32GB of DDR5-6000 RAM for multitasking and gaming, as well as a 1TB Gen 4 SSD — specifically Kingston's SNV3S — for storage.

The motherboard is an ASRock B760M-CX with room for M.2 expansion should storage prices settle down in the future. You also get a very capable Cooler Master Hyper 212 air cooler, more than enough for this CPU, as well as a 650W 80 PLUS Gold PSU.

It also features Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, as well as a copy of Windows 11. For the price, this is a really good PC in the current market. You're getting a $300 discount, plus a further $120 off when you use the promo code SSF73457, for a $420 discount total. Thanks to the Intel's Gamer Days sale, you'll also get two free games to enjoy on your new PC: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Star Wars: Galactic Racer, due to be released in February 2027 and October 2026, respectively. That's $120 of free upcoming new releases to enjoy on your new PC.

It's Labor Day, and if you're quick, you might be lucky enough to grab a bargain on a new gaming PC. The sales have been running thick all weekend, and with just hours to go before the day ends, these discounts are running out. You can save over $1,200 on a new gaming PC right now, with some prices dropping back to levels we've not seen since earlier in the year.

● Check out these gaming PC deals at Best Buy
● Last minute Labor Day deals on Walmart for gaming PCs
● Newegg gaming PC deals for Labor Day

There's no guarantee that we'll see prices this good for a while. The PC hardware market has seen prices for parts, from SSDs to RAM, skyrocket since last year. Deals continue to be the best way to upgrade you rig, especially if you're buying a pre-built, but each week and month brings further price increases. Today might have been the best time to buy, because we just don't know how the market is going to be in six weeks or months' time.

These deals are the best way to pick up a gaming PC right now, unless you want to pay prices at the very top, and give you an opportunity to bag a bargain before that happens. With Labor Day deals nearly over, here are some of the biggest and best discounts you'll find on a gaming PC from all the big retailers, including Best Buy, Newegg, and Walmart.

Best Labor Day Gaming PC Deals

The price of PC parts continues to rise on a daily basis, so finding a monstrous gaming PC cheaper than it was in April is no small feat. Right now at Newegg, you can score an RTX 5080 gaming PC with a 9800X3D CPU, the ultimate in 4K gaming performance, for $2,999. A $500 saving that makes it cheaper than when we covered this same deal back in April.

● Check out this deal on Newegg's website

The individual cost of some of these components makes this a pretty remarkable deal in Fall 2026. The RTX 5080 GPU in this rig alone will set you back more than $1,500 in today's market. The CPU is nearly $500, bringing the cost of just those two components to 2/3 of the build's entire price.

RAM and SSD prices are heavily inflated, which means 32GB of DDR5 would normally set you back $400 right now. Add the storage to the bill of materials, and you've covered nearly the entire cost of this PC before you've added the case, fans, cooler, motherboard, and PSU. With the best CPU for gaming on the market and a huge GPU, this PC is no slouch either.

While the 9800X3D is not quite the fastest gaming CPU on the market these days, it is still the best all-rounder by some distance thanks to its combination of power efficiency and performance compared to the 9850X3D. This 8-core, 16-thread CPU chews through gaming titles, even at 4K, thanks to its 3D V-cache. Reducing reliance on slower RAM, this industry-leading tech makes AMD's X3D CPUs the best gaming chips on the market, as you can see from our testing data.

The RTX 5080 likewise needs no introduction. This behemoth features 16GB of GDDR7 VRAM and 10,752 CUDA cores. As you can see from our GPU hierarchy, that translates into average frames per second of 60 even at 4K, performance eclipsed only by the extremely powerful and expensive 5090. At 1440p, we clocked average fps of over 100. The 5080 will also unlock Nvidia's powerful DLSS 4.5 and new DLSS 5 technology for frame generation and neural rendering.

Headline components aside, this build features 32GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 6400 RAM, a fantastic addition considering it's easy to hide cheap, slow RAM inside a pre-built PC. The SSD is Team Group's NV5000 2TB Gen 4 drive, giving you plenty of storage and gaming performance. The motherboard is a Gigabyte B850 with Wi-Fi 6, giving you plenty of power and performance as well as room for expansion in the future. The build also features a 360mm AIO cooler for the CPU, Windows 11, and a 1000W 80 Plus Gold to keep everything running.

Best Buy is throwing a huge sale for Labor Day, meaning you can grab a big discount on tech right now. In fact, you can save up to $900 on select gaming laptops, along with $500 off a new MacBook. Gaming PCs are on sale, too, with up to $600 knocked off big-brand tech, along with monitor savings of up to $500 also available.

● Check out Best Buy's tech sales

It's the end of the summer break, and with back-to-school deals all around us, now could be the best opportunity to pick up a bargain before the prices go up again. The PC hardware market is running super hot right now, with RAM and SSD costs pushing prices up, and a deal from a big retailer like Best Buy is a great way to treat yourself without breaking the bank.

We've put together some of the biggest and best discounts on offer from Best Buy below. You better be quick, though, as these deals are set to run out in less than 24 hours, and could sell out before then.

Best Buy Labor Day Gaming Laptop and Handheld Deals

Best Buy Labor Day Gaming PC Deals

Best Buy Labor Day Monitor Deals

It's officially Labor Day, and Amazon has been hosting its Labor Day sales event with discounts of up to 46% on tech products all weekend. If you're on the hunt for some great bargains, then take a look at the list of our favorite deals that are still available, but you don't have much time left.

Amazon has a little bit of everything on sale, from QD OLED gaming monitors to SSDs to gaming headsets, keyboards, mice, and webcams. There are also some great prices on networking gear, from mesh network routers to switches and even some gaming-oriented routers.

These sales are set to finish tonight (Monday, September 7, 2026) so, if you see anything you like, you'll need to act fast before the deals run out.

• See Amazon's Labor Day sales

Walmart is currently offering a 21% discount on an impressive all-rounder prebuilt system from CyberPowerPC. The Gamer Supreme desktop gaming PC is now $1,399, a saving of $370.99 from the original listed price of $1,769.99. With this component selection, you get both a gaming PC and an incredible computer for everyday work and productivity applications.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

Inside the glistening glass panel case is Intel's Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti graphics card with 8GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB SSD for storage. This selection of components makes for a complete and competent gaming and productivity PC, with plenty of room for upgrades in the future.

One of the standout component choices in this prebuilt gaming PC is Intel's Core Ultra 7 270K Plus processor. It's currently Intel's best value-for-money CPU on the market with impressive gaming performance, and even more impressive multi-threaded productivity performance. The 270K Plus can go toe-to-toe with AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X in productivity workloads — all while costing half the price.

You can see from our benchmarking charts below that the Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus isn't as fast as AMD's purely gaming-focused X3D offerings, but when it comes to single-threaded and multi-threaded workloads, it's a monster and is only superseded by a much more expensive chip. Not only that, but the 270K Plus is fully unlocked for overclocking.

Prebuilt gaming PCs have risen to the forefront when it comes to value these days, thanks to the ever-rising component prices of memory, graphics cards, and storage, which have driven the self-build enthusiast market to the edge. This CyberPowerPC build uses all current parts, including DDR5 memory and the impressive Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, giving you plenty of power and performance for the money you spend on this system.

Best Buy has stepped onto the stage with a huge selection of deals in its seasonal Labor Day sales, with decent price cuts on computers and tech. A standout budget-friendly offering is the iBuypower Slate Gaming PC with Intel Arc B570 graphics at just $899. Much cheaper than a Steam Machine and a perfect starter gaming PC for 1080p gaming, this cheap gaming PC deal gives you $300 off its $1,199.99 list price.

● Check out this deal at Best Buy

iBuypower's Slate gaming PC comes with a 10-core, 10-thread Intel Core Ultra 5 225F processor, an Intel Arc B570 graphics card with 10GB of VRAM, 16GB of DDR5 memory, and a 1TB NVMe SSD for storage. This is a great combination of parts for a 1080p gaming rig, and at just $899, it defies the current economic climate when it comes to PC pricing.

The heart of this PC is the Intel B570 graphics card, which comes with a generous amount of VRAM. For 1080p gaming, 10GB of VRAM is more than ample to handle the textures and shaders on high and ultra settings, but as with any other GPU, it will start to struggle in 1440p gaming when that VRAM gets swallowed up and starts using the CPU to compensate. The B570 is a budget graphics card, but it has come a long way since launching, thanks to driver optimizations and compatibility with more games.

You can see in our below chart from our rasterization benchmarking game suite that the B570 sits in the middle of the pack, competing with the Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB. You can check out our Intel Arc B570 review for more detailed information on this GPU's performance, where we put it through its paces in our suite of benchmarking tests.

Buying a prebuilt gaming PC is currently much cheaper than trying to construct your own gaming PC, thanks to the skyrocketing price of memory and storage. PC builders are able to grab these parts much cheaper than normal consumers can and have managed to offset the price rises with their stocks of components. This, however, cannot last, so you're definitely better off grabbing something soon, before the inevitable increase in prices.

Prebuilt gaming PCs also come with the added bonus of an easier warranty situation. Should anything go wrong with your computer, the whole system is covered, and you don't have to troubleshoot individual parts and manufacturers for an RMA, either.

For just $899, this is a superb deal for a starter gaming PC if you're just getting into PC gaming, or feel like stepping away from the higher prices on game consoles and digital game prices. PC gaming is currently much cheaper for game purchases, too.

Kicking off the Labor Day sales event in style, iBuypower has dropped the pricing on a number of PC builds and added a special LABORDAY coupon to enjoy up to an extra $350 discount (depending on the value of your PC choice) on one of their specced-out gaming PCs. You have until September 8th, 2026, to take advantage of any of these discounts, as that's when the sale ends.

For anyone interested in the iBuypower RDY Y50 R01 PC build, there's a bonus bundle that includes peripherals and even a monitor.

• Save up to $400 on gaming PCs at iBuyPower

Here are some of the current best deals iBuypower have going during the Labor Day sales event. There's a selection of PCs with differing component choices to cater to overall price and gaming performance. Remember to add the code at checkout to get the full discount, with up to $350 off on top of the discounted prices.

Ahead of the Labor Day weekend, HP is hosting its Labor Day sales event with discounts of up to 65% on HP gaming PCs, desktop computers, gaming and productivity laptops, and HyperX peripherals. If you're on the hunt for some great bargains, then take a look at our list of some of our favorite available deals.

With Labor Day looming, it also heralds the end of the summer break and the return to school, so taking advantage of a sales event like this is a great opportunity to pick up some essential pieces of tech at a discount ahead of the new semester, or just as a new gaming system; there doesn't need to be a reason to treat yourself.

Gaming PC building is getting more expensive by the minute, but price hikes on RAM, SSDs, and GPUs are filtering down more slowly to pre-built gaming desktops, making them better value than DIY in this economy. Best Buy has slashed $300 off this CyberPowerPC, which gets you a very potent 9800X3D CPU, RTX 5070 GPU, 32GB of DDR5, and a 2TB SSD for $1,999.

● Check out this deal at Best Buy

This gets you the best gaming CPU on the market, a mid-range GPU perfect for 1440p gaming, and ample RAM and storage in an economy where all of those commodities are increasingly hard to find. The 32GB of DDR5 RAM will cost you $400 alone, while a Gen 4 2TB SSD is around $250 minimum. The GPU in this build is also now $800, which means that on those three components alone, you'd be spending nearly $1,500. That's before you factor in the $464 CPU, accounting for nearly the entire price of this build before you've considered a motherboard, PSU, case, cooling, and the build cost.

The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best gaming CPU on the market thanks to its 8-core, 16-thread power with boost clocks of up to 5.2 GHz. The standout feature is its 3D cache technology, which drastically improves fram rates, as you can see from our gaming benchmark data below.

The RTX 5070 is an excellent pairing; with 12GB of VRAM, it's an ample card for 1440p gaming, or 4K at a push if you use Nvidia DLSS. As you can see, the 5070 averages 74 frames per second in our 19-game testing suite at 1440p.

The rest of this PC's specs are also pretty positive. 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD Gen 4 storage are considered generous in today's market, so you've got enough RAM for multitasking and gaming as well as plenty of storage. Liquid cooling is more than enough for this processor, and the B850 motherboard will provide plenty of ports for connectivity as well as headroom for expansion.

Ultimately, the selling point of this PC is the price; given the current market cost of its components, you're saving a small fortune versus building a PC like this yourself. As mentioned, the $800 GPU, $464 CPU, $400 RAM, and $250 SSD make it a worthwhile purchase.

Buying a pre-built gaming PC remains one of the surest ways to skirt exorbitant RAM and SSD pricing, as AI drives up the cost of DIY components. Right now at Best Buy, you can get an HP Omen 35L Gaming Desktop with an RTX 5080, a graphics card selling for $1,500 right now, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, 1TB SSD, and an Intel Core i7 CPU for just $2,349, a $750 saving.

Get this deal at Best Buy

Thanks to a slightly older but no less capable processor, this is a bit of a sleeper deal that is really good value in the current market. As noted, the GPU alone now costs around $1,500 to buy. 32GB of DDR5 RAM is $400, so you've almost spent $1,900 on just two components, before you factor in the SSD, CPU, motherboard, cooler, PSU, and case.

As you can see, this PC doesn't contain a benchmark-busting X3D CPU from AMD; however, the Core i7-14700F is a capable 20-core Raptor Lake Refresh. It features eight performance cores and 12 efficiency cores, with boost speeds of up to 5.4GHz. Despite being a couple of years old, it still averages 150 frames per second in our 16-game testing suite at 1080p, and, thanks to its price, it offers the best value (FPS/$) of any CPU we've tested.

The RTX 5080 is the headline component here, as the second-best graphics card on the market, only behind the RTX 5090, which will cost you around $4,800 these days.

With 10,752 CUDA cores and 16GB of VRAM, this will chew through any title, even providing a solid base for 4K gaming, not to mention access to Nvidia's DLSS technology for even more frames.

The RTX 5080 makes the raw power of this gaming PC extremely appealing, and more than makes up for a slightly older CPU, a compromise worth taking in the current economy.

Other specs include a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, 32GB of DDR5 6000 RAM, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth, an 850W PSU, and liquid cooling.

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.

● Grab this MSI gaming PC deal at Walmart

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 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.

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.

A simply incredible discount from HP means you could pick up an RTX 5090 gaming PC for less money than it'd cost you to buy the graphics card on its own, without the rest of the machine to power it. The $2,200 discount on this HP Omen Max 45L gaming PC brings the price down to just $4,799.99 right now.

For contrast, the cheapest available RTX 5090 GPU that you can buy, in stock, from a reputable retailer costs $4,829 right now. You're spending $30 less for the entire rig here, including 64GB of DDR5 RAM and a 2TB SSD for a fully spec'd, fully powerful gaming PC that'll handle high-end 4K gaming with good frame rates. Trying to build a comparable PC on your own would set you back thousands of dollars more at current market rates: you simply can't beat this deal right now.

● Check out this RTX 5090 gaming PC deal on HP's website

● Pick it up from Best Buy for the same price

Price aside, this isn't a budget build, but a machine made with serious gaming in mind. The HP Omen Max 45L is one of HP's flagship builds and, as our HP Omen Max 45L review shows, it's a seriously high-quality one. The case it ships with is huge, with three 120mm fans at the front. The model we reviewed had slightly different specs, but the design matches up completely.

While the hefty RAM and SSD storage are great for gamers, it's the graphics card that you're going to be wowed by. Our GPU benchmark data below confirms that the RTX 5090 is the best consumer graphics card you can buy. No other consumer GPU is able to match it. The RTX 5080 is its next current-gen rival, but the RTX 5090 has more than double its CUDA count (hitting 21,760) and has a massive 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM, using a 512-bit memory bus with bandwidth speeds of up to 1,792 GB/s.

The CPU in this machine is the Intel Core 9 Ultra 285K. This is a 24-core CPU, shipping with eight performance cores, which are typically best for the high-performance gaming you'll want to perform on this machine. You also get 16 additional efficient cores for multi-threaded tasks. The 285K is a fully unlocked and overclockable CPU, and the performance cores come with a standard clock speed of 3.7 GHz, which will boost up to 5.7 GHz.

Intel Arrow Lake CPUs like the 285K didn't really excite for gaming when they launched, trailing behind AMD powerhouses like the 9800X3D. That isn't a huge problem here, though, as the raw performance offered by the RTX 5090 is a significant counterweight against any deficiencies in the 285K, and will easily offset and heavily compensate for its shortcomings here. It also helps that updates since launch have improved the 285K's gaming performance to close some of the gap.

For gaming, thanks to the RTX 5090, you can expect to manage high frame rates at 4K and with ray tracing enabled using Ultra graphics presets. Nvidia DLSS 4 support means that, if you ever did hit a performance issue, multi-frame generation can give you a frame rate lift, using AI to boost frame rates in any intensive (or more likely, poorly optimized) games.

The 64GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 RAM is a good uplift to help keep performance high, too, and is worth around $700 in today's market. The RAM offers speeds of 5,600 MT/s and is split across four 16GB modules. You're also getting a 2TB NVMe M.2 SSD with this PC, offering Gen 4 speeds, which should give you a good amount of space to install a couple of big AAA games.

All in all, though, it's the price that makes this HP pre-built a must-buy for gamers. The RTX 5090 itself costs more than this PC does, and that's before you consider that you're getting 64GB of DDR5 RAM and 2TB of SSD storage in a world where AI has forced memory prices to skyrocket.

You won't beat the $4,799 sale price for this HP Omen Max 45L gaming PC, so if you want it, get it fast. You can pick it up from HP directly or, if it sells out, HP is selling it through Best Buy for the same price, too. Either way, you're getting a formidable machine, but don't expect that $2,200 saving to be around for very long.

With the RAMpocalypse in full swing and little relief in sight, we need to look at combo deals to take some of the sting out of these ridiculous prices. Newegg’s latest combo pairs the ‘new’ Ryzen 7 7700X3D gaming chip, a quality Asus ROG Strix B650-A Gaming Wifi motherboard, and 16GB (2x8GB) of Corsair Vengeance DDR5 RAM, plus a free Cooler Master 240mm AIO, for only $609.99. A savings of $124 (not including the freebie), which, when applied to the RAM, brings it down to a reasonable-for-the-times price (~$136), making this an inexpensive entry into the AM5 platform.

• Check out this deal on Newegg

While the Ryzen 7 7700X3D isn’t quite as fast as the 9800X3D, the 8-core 16-thread Zen 4 processor is still one of the top gaming chips and is well ahead of the recently re-released (and expensive, $349.99 at Newegg) Ryzen 7 5800X3D. Performance-wise, the 7700X3D is squarely between the faster 7800X3D and slower 7600X3D, and it clearly holds its own among its peers and is a great 1080p/144 0p gaming chip while not paying for the more expensive 9000 series X3D chips. Newegg also throws in a free Cooler Master Elite Liquid 240 AIO ($80 value), which pairs nicely with the processor.

Along with the processor is a 16GB (2x8GB) kit of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 CL36 RAM in white to match the motherboard. This kit features a frosted RGB light bar that runs the length of the sticks, drawing attention inside your case. Or, if RGB lighting isn’t your thing and you prefer a stealthy appearance, you can turn it off. The DDR5-6000 speed lands in the sweet spot for the AM5 platform and is a worthwhile, good-looking option. The SK Hynix ICs under the heatsink pair nicely with the board and offer plenty of overclocking headroom if you choose.

Asus’ ROG Strix B650-A Gaming Wifi is a mid-range motherboard with a black PCB, silver/white heatsinks, and ROG RGB, providing a stark contrast of colors inside your chassis. The board offers capable power delivery, three M.2 sockets (one PCIe 5.0) and four SATA ports for storage, fast networking with integrated Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5 GbE, ample USB ports on the rear I/O including 20 Gbps Type-C port on the rear IO (8 other Type-A ports), a quality audio solution with the Realtek ALC4080 chip and Savitech SV3H712 combo, and finally, it offers a DIY-friendly design to help building your PC easier.

Together, this three-item combo can turn your AM5 upgrade dreams into reality without breaking the bank. At only $609.99, it’s a serious option for building or upgrading your gaming PC. And since it’s AM5, you can drop-in-upgrade to a 9000-series processor, AMD’s latest and greatest, like the Ryzen 7 9800X3D in the future.

Building a PC is more expensive and thereby more stressful than ever in 2026. A good old-fashioned pre-built is a great way to save yourself some time and a ton of cash on parts, with exorbitant RAM, SSD, and GPU pricing yet to fully filter down to the pre-built market. As such, you can score this Intel Core Ultra 9 285-powered CyberPowerPC with an AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, a 2TB SSD, and more for just $1,849, a $500 discount.

● Check out this deal at Walmart

Considering 32GB of DDR5 RAM alone costs $400 right now, stacking up the cost of parts in this build reveals its value pretty quickly. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285 is around $700 at the moment, with the 285K retailing at $514. A 2TB M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive will set you back around $250, and the GPU in this build is $460. That's nearly the entire cost before you've factored in a case, motherboard, PSU, and cooler, not to mention the build cost.

The spec of this PC is admittedly a slightly strange combination of GPU and CPU. Intel's 285 Arrow Lake CPU is the company's current-gen 24-core flagship. With eight performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, it performs extremely well in multi-threaded Windows 11 testing. While it can't match AMD's potent X3D Ryzen chips in gaming, it was still more than enough to average 153 frames per second in our 1080p testing suite of 17 games.

As you can see from our GPU testing data, the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB is on par with the RTX 5060 Ti 8GB, but lags behind the RX 9070 and RTX 5070, as is to be expected. With its 2048 shares and 16GB of VRAM, this card sustained averages of nearly 60 frames per second in our 1440p Ultra tests, making it a great mid-range card. You'll likely struggle at 4K without some compromise, but this is a great card for middle-of-the-road performance.

If you're not convinced, you could spend a little more for this slightly different spec, which gets you a less potent Core Ultra 7 265KF but the superior AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, again with 16GB of VRAM. You still get the same 32GB of DDR5 and 2TB SSD for $1,999. This is a trade-off that might get you some more FPS in gaming at the expense of general productivity performance for other tasks.

Thanks to Intel's Gamer Days promo, both come with two free games: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Star Wars Galactic Racer.

The cheapest Nvidia RTX 5090 in stock and available to buy right now costs at least $4,799, and even then, you won't be buying one from a reputable vendor. That makes this Dell Alienware desktop discount all the more enticing. Right now you can save $1,550 off the potent Alienware Area-51 Gaming Desktop, and score one for $4,779, cheaper than the standalone cost of the GPU.

● Check out this deal at Dell

With graphics card prices continuing to rise, the bar for selling a 5090 PC for less than the cost of the card is admittedly a little lower than it used to be, but this is still a crazy deal. For less than the cost of a 5090, you get the card, plus a 20-core Intel Ultra 7 265K processor, 32GB of DDR5 7200 RAM, 1TB M.2 Gen 5 SSD, and a 1500W power supply, all housed inside a sleek Alienware case. Other bonuses include a copy of Windows 11 and a 240mm AIO CPU cooler.

The standout of this build, as you've probably guessed, is the absolutely monstrous RTX 5090. The best graphics card on the market by some distance, its massive 32GB GDDR7 VRAM pool and 21,760 CUDA cores mean it will chew through any title at 4K, or a local AI workload without breaking a sweat.

The rest of this PC, while not the most premium spec, is definitely not to be sniffed at either. The Intel Core Ultra 7 265K is arguably a little underpowered at this level, but the RTX 5090 will more than make up for any shortcomings. The Arrow Lake CPU has excellent single-threaded performance, and when paired with a 5090 in our CPU testing data, can pump out 150 frames per second at 1080p on average across our 17-game test suite. That being said, if you'd like a bit of a CPU boost, you could opt to configure a Core Ultra 9 285, with more cores, cache, and a higher boost clock speed.

While we'd have previously hoped for 64GB of RAM in a build of this magnitude, the AI-induced component crisis means that is no longer a reality. Fortunately, you can upgrade the DDR5 6400 to DDR5 7200 with Intel 200S boost — which our testing shows can boost gaming performance by 7% — for free in this particular deal. You also get a 1TB Gen 5 SSD and a 1500W power supply.

While it might not feature AMD's benchmark-busting X3D CPU range under the hood, buying any PC for less than the going rate of the 5090 is not to be sniffed at in the current PC market. Indeed, CPUs and motherboards remain some of the only PC components with healthy discounts in the current climate, so buying this rig and doing a bit of surgery to the processor isn't out of the question either.

Prebuilt PCs usually get a bad rep but during these difficult times, they're actually a beacon of light as we navigate the component crisis. We've found a great deal on one such system — the Acer Nitro 85. It comes with an RTX 5070 graphics card and a 20-core Core Ultra 7 265F processor for just $1,499 on Walmart right now. That's $600 less than it usually retails for, and you get 16GB of DDR5 RAM along with a 1TB Gen4 SSD on top.

• Check out this deal on Walmart

The Acer Nitro 85 is perfect for 1440p gaming at the highest settings, and even a bit of 4K gaming with upscaling tricks thanks to Nvidia's rich software suite. You get features like DLSS, multi-frame gen and RTX HDR which all contribute to a better gaming experience. The RTX 5070 is third on our list of the very best gaming GPUs you can buy because of its exceptional value proposition, and this deal only enhances that. The 12GB of VRAM, while not a lot, is enough for demanding titles today.

Alongside the 5070, you also get an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F with 8 P-cores and 12 E-cores and a max clock speed of 5.3 GHz. This is a high-end chip capable of driving even faster GPUs, so you're set for both gaming and professional workloads. It's cooled by a 240mm AIO liquid cooler. Talking to the CPU is 16GB of DDR5 RGB RAM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD slotted inside a standard motherboard that supports Wi-Fi 7 and has a 2.5 Gbps ethernet port.

The whole system is powered by a 600W PSU and enclosed inside a sleek-looking panoramic case with RGB accents and three RGB fans. In terms of front panel I/O, you get 1x USB 3.2 5 Gbps Type-C Port, 2x USB 3.2 5 Gbps Type A Ports and 1x 3.5mm audio jack on the top. The entire system is also covered by a 1-year warranty, and you have plenty of room onboard to upgrade the PC beyond that when things normalize.

The Acer Nitro 85 is a powerful prebuilt that can easily cruise through whatever task you throw at it. We kitted out a very similar system on PCPartPicker and the total cost came out to over $2,000 and that's without a Windows 11 license. So, for just $1,499 on Walmart right now, you're really getting your money's worth. With no foreseeable end to the ongoing RAMpocalypse, don't miss out on a stellar deal like this.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

If you need a top-tier gaming system that delivers on performance and aesthetics, the Predator Orion 6000 (PO6-605-UR15W) should do the trick. While Acer's prebuilt gaming beast usually retails for $2,799.99 at U.S. retailers, Walmart is currently offering a massive 25% discount, bringing the price down to $2,099 for a limited time. That is savings of up to $700 that you can put toward a new gaming monitor or other gaming accessories.

• Check out the Acer Predator Orion 6000 deal on Walmart

The Predator Orion 6000 is an exceptional choice of gaming system for demanding gamers. It features a powerful Core Ultra 7 265KF processor, liquid-cooled by a 240mm AIO cooler. The chip has 20 cores and a boost clock speed of up to 5.5 GHz. Paired with 32GB (2x16GB) of DDR5 memory, the Orion 6000 easily exceeds the requirements of today’s AAA games and is fully prepared for future releases.

The system doesn’t cheap out on storage, either. It comes equipped with a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD that delivers lightning-fast load times and ample space to build your gaming library. In today’s market, with memory and SSD prices continuing to surge, a gaming system with 32GB of memory and a 1TB SSD is a rare sight.

While the Predator Orion 6000 is clearly a powerful gaming system, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, one of the best graphics cards, is undoubtedly the component that draws the most attention. Powered by Nvidia’s latest Blackwell architecture, the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti delivers great gaming performance at 1440p (2560x1440) resolution. Not only does it dominate at 1440p, but it is also an extremely competent performer at 4K (3840x2160) resolutions.

The Predator Orion 6000 is eligible for Intel’s Gamer Days campaign, running from August 10 through September 13. When you buy the Orion 6000, you’ll receive free digital copies of Star Wars: Galactic Racer and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, launching October 6, 2026, and February 12, 2027, respectively.

With prices for memory, SSDs, and graphics cards always fluctuating, building a custom PC may not always be the best route. Sometimes buying a prebuilt system is not just convenient; it can also offer big savings. When you factor in a significant discount, like the current deal that brings the price down to just $2,099, the Predator Orion 6000 is just hard to ignore.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, gaming chair, or CPU Deals pages.

For a budget-priced 1080p gaming rig with decent enough specs, you're going to need over $1,000 in the current market. Right now, one of the best specs at this price point is this ABS Cyclone Aqua gaming PC for $1,099.99 at Newegg. You're saving $300 on its usual price, and you're getting a machine that will deliver enough juice for solid 1080p gameplay.

● Check out this deal at Newegg

This system features an Intel Core i5-14400F processor, along with a current-gen Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 GPU, 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory, and a 1TB SSD. Right now, you'll struggle to find a competitor that offers similar performance for this machine at a lower price. The current state of the market has pushed 1080p budget machines like this above $1,000, with AI forcing RAM, SSDs, and GPUs to rapidly increase in price. ABS, a brand that Newegg owns and operates itself, is delivering good specs here for a price that still remains affordable.

This is inescapably a machine for 1080p gaming. First, the GPU, with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 shipping with 3,840 CUDA cores, along with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM. This is an entry-level GPU that sits above the RTX 5050, with Nvidia DLSS 4 support giving it the latest Nvidia software enhancements in-game. Multi-frame generation is the key DLSS 4 feature for gamers on this rig, as it'll give you a decent AI-generated frame rate boost in any resource-heavy games.

You're also getting the Intel Core i5-14400F with this ABS machine, and this Intel Raptor Lake Refresh CPU continues to be an option for gamers in budget pre-builts this year. It has 10 cores, six of which are the performance cores that you'll want for gaming, along with four efficiency cores for multi-threaded work, and a clock speed that can boost up to 4.7 GHz. Yes, the Intel i5-14400F falls behind its AMD rivals for performance these days, but at 1080p on a budget rig, the gap doesn't make much difference.

You're also getting 32GB of GSkill Ripjaws V Series DDR4-3200 memory in this rig. DDR4 is an unfortunate compromise at this price point, so no DDR5 here, but with RAM costs continuing to be as high as they are, we'll be expecting an extended lifespan for DDR4 machines anyway. You also get 1TB of SSD storage, thanks to the Kingston SNV3S M.2 2280, offering Gen 4 speeds and giving you enough storage for a couple of big game installations, at least.

RAM and SSD pricing means that even budget PCs are getting more expensive, but the $1,099 sale price for this ABS Cyclone Aqua RTX 5060 rig isn't a bad one in the current market. These specs will give you enough power for 1080p gaming for the next few years, at least, while the price makes it a competitive option that few other pre-built machines on sale can beat right now.

If you're a content creator or a gamer that needs to have a whopping 32GB of VRAM to power either your software applications or run your favorite games on extreme fidelity settings, then you're looking to own an RTX 5090 graphics card. Unfortunately, these GPUs do not come cheap, with the current lowest price on an available-to-buy 5090 sitting at an eye-watering $4,399.99. However, with this amazing Dell deal on an Alienware Area-51 gaming rig for $4,779.99, you can bag a whole gaming PC that includes the RTX 5090 for just $380 more than purchasing the standalone graphics card.

● Check out this deal at Dell

The Alienware Area-51 gaming PC in question comes packed with the aforementioned Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, but also includes the 20-core Intel Core Ultra 7 265K processor, 32GB of high-speed DDR5 7200 MT/s memory, and a 1TB SSD for the operating system and game storage.

All of the above components are packed into Dell's own Alienware case with a tempered glass side panel to show off the internals of the system. A 240mm liquid AIO cools the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, and a beefy 1,500W 80 Plus Platinum-certified power supply has all the juice needed to run the RTX 5090. The Area-51 does away with Dell's old proprietary parts ecosystem and lets you add upgrades more easily, so you're able to add more memory or a bigger SSD down the line.

The RTX 5090 is the most powerful consumer GPU on the market right now. It comes with 21,760 CUDA cores, over double the RTX 5080's 10,752 count, along with a massive 32GB of GDDR7 VRAM, using a 512-bit memory bus with memory bandwidth up to 1,792 GB/s. In our benchmarking results from our review of the RTX 5090 we can see that this super powerful GPU dominates the competition in all performance metrics.

The Alienware Area-51 gaming PC in this deal has the ability to play any game at extreme frame rates and power high-refresh-rate gaming monitors, even at 4K resolutions. It's the best GPU to experience ray-traced graphics without severely compromising in-game graphics settings, and with the extreme pricing of the RTX 5090 at the moment, it's one of the best value ways to purchase an RTX 5090-powered gaming PC if you can afford one.

Yes, it should be $2000 cheaper, but thanks to the AI-boom ruining PC component prices for us enthusiasts, this is one of the best deals you will find on an RTX 5090 prebuilt gaming PC right now.

If you're looking for more savings, check out our Best PC Hardware deals for a range of products, or dive deeper into our specialized SSD and Storage Deals, Hard Drive Deals, Gaming Monitor Deals, Graphics Card Deals, Gaming Chair, Best Wi-Fi Routers, Best Motherboard, or CPU Deals pages.