Photo of Elon Musk’s new gaming PC reveals odd component choices – is he rocking an RTX 4060?
Incongruously, the monitor is an awesome 49-inch Samsung Odyssey G9.
A recent photo of Elon Musk’s DOGE gaming PC at the White House is raising eyebrows. Tech reporter Kate Conger of the New York Times (h/t Polygon) shared an image of what appears to be a rather unbalanced RGB-infused build installed in the Secretary of War Suite in the Eisenhower Building.
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Pixel peeping suggests that the tower system features a compact MSI-branded GPU, likely to be an RTX 4060 or 4070 model. Yet this Wi-Fi-connected PC is hooked up to a 49-inch Samsung Odyssey G9 dual-QHD display. Some might say this is a bit like putting a lawn mower engine in a muscle car.
We don’t want to throw shade at the popular RTX 4060, or even 4070, though. Actually, these are looking like increasingly decent choices – at the right price – given the recent RTX 50 family reviews and the direction ‘Lackwell’ releases seem to be determined to follow. Rather, it is the incongruity of the richest man in the world’s gaming PC that tickles our PC DIY spider-senses. This machine has over 7.3 million pixels to push at native full-screen gaming (Samsung’s monitor packs in 5120 x 1440 pixels) and its duties as ‘the chainsaw for bureaucracy,’ so shouldn’t it be a bit beefier?
Only yesterday, we published our in-depth RTX 5070 review. This new Nvidia card represents a step up from the RTX 4070-at-best DOGE PC. We didn’t test the new RTX 5070 at 4K (about 8.3 million pixels), though, as we judged QHD (2560 x 1440) to be the performance/quality sweet spot in modern titles.
Of course, we don’t know how Musk uses this White House-situated PC to play games. He might play in windowed mode, with half of the screen dedicated to gaming, with the other featuring feeds relevant to DOGE operations – that would mean less strain on the GPU. Moreover, various reports suggest Musk favors a number of less hardware-intensive titles, like the titles he is known to play frequently, such as Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2. On the other hand, the special government employee is also known to have at least dabbled in Cyberpunk 2077, which can be very demanding at its highest quality settings.
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Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
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evdjj3j "given the recent RTX 50 family reviews and the direction ‘Lackwell’"Reply
Are you even in the same reality as the rest of Tomshardware? Your boy Jared just gave the 5070 ti 4 out of 5 stars. -
nogaard777 Reply
To be fair the 5070ti isn't necessarily a "bad" GPU, it's actually half decent compared to the 5080 and 5070. It's just all the pricing BS, scalping, and complete lack of availability ruining it. While I'll rarely defend Tom's, when you review a product you can't review it in a light that it will always be scalped, especially when they've always returned to MSRP eventually. Scalper prices are temporary but reviews stay up for years.evdjj3j said:"given the recent RTX 50 family reviews and the direction ‘Lackwell’"
Are you even in the same reality as the rest of Tomshardware? Your boy Jared just gave the 5070 ti 4 out of 5 stars. -
evdjj3j Reply
But this author is trash talking something the site gave 4 out of 5 stars to.nogaard777 said:To be fair the 5070ti isn't necessarily a "bad" GPU, it's actually half decent compared to the 5080 and 5070. It's just all the pricing BS, scalping, and complete lack of availability ruining it. While I'll rarely defend Tom's, when you review a product you can't review it in a light that it will always be scalped, especially when they've always returned to MSRP eventually. Scalper prices are temporary but reviews stay up for years. -
Elusive Ruse You don’t need a high end gaming card to fake gaming, I’m sure the guy who lets Elon use his account so he can pretend he is a gamer has a proper rig.Reply -
Barry_4 He's doing highly sensitive government work using his own PC?Reply
He plays games on the job while accusing federal employees of being lazy etc?
Different rules for the rich I guess. -
davisch Reply
Playing games at work and accessing government data on personal equipment? Musk has settled right in to being a bureaucrat! Government business as usual.Barry_4 said:He's doing highly sensitive government work using his own PC?
He plays games on the job while accusing federal employees of being lazy etc?
Different rules for the rich I guess. -
Gururu Maybe it's because the 4060/4070 can actually do the job he needs it to do? Doesn't seem like he is the Indiana Jones type.Reply -
rluker5 Doesn't he play a lot of Diablo 4 and Path of Exile 2? Those aren't particularly demanding games.Reply