I’m looking at this deal for a prebuilt:
Lenovo LOQ 17IRR9 Tower PC — $749.99
- Intel Core i5-14400F (10 cores, 16 threads, up to 4.7GHz)
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 (8GB GDDR6)
- RAM 16GB DDR5
- 512GB SSD
- PSU 500W
For some context, my PC has a 1070 in it. I’m a budget conscious gamer, usually playing at 1080p. With ram prices skyrocketing and steam betting on steam machines with low vram going forwards, I feel like it’s an okay deal for a guy who upgrades basically never.
It seems like a nice deal to me. Anyone want to talk me out of it?
Why don’t you get some Intel Arc GPU, I think at the moment they are the best bang for your buck.
I would say this PC isn’t great on paper. The PSU is too weak and if you decide to upgrade in the future you would most likely need to change it. The 8Gb VRAM is also suboptimal, as well as the SSD size.
Not to mention that most of the pre-built PCs are cutting corners and probably this PSU would be no-name and I wouldn’t trust it.
I feel like this is not a great deal. Keep in mind that ore-builts are in general a gamble. They often advertise the parts that people might now (CPU/GPU) but fill the other parts (PSU, MoBo, RAM, computer case, fans, CPU cooler) with cheap garbage.
Now this PC is $250 short of $1000 (before tax and shipping) and you are getting a low end CPU from an old Intel generation, a mid/low end GPU from a prior generation (only +50% performance compared to the 1070), half the ram capacity you’d want, and absolutely terrible hard drive space at only 512 gb.
half the ram capacity you’d want
You don’t need more than 16GB of RAM.
The only games that list that much in their requirements 1: don’t actually need it and 2: are unoptimized slop you shouldn’t be buying anyways
In my experience it is needed if gaming isnt the only thing you do. Want spotify? Firefox and discord? Maybe another program? You’re out of luck while gaming with 16 ram
I have actually crashed my computer from running out of RAM before, and I had 16GB. Wanna know what I had open? 2 games, a dozen windows of Chrome (one of which was running a Zoom call), plus several other smaller applications. Nobody in their right mind is doing that, nor should they be mad or surprised if their computer crashes when they try.
The biggest non-gaming hit to RAM is going to be Chrome, which runs up to about 1GB of RAM per window. Not per tab, per window. And if you have dozens of windows each with dozens of tabs, Windows starts to move the oldest ones from RAM to storage to avoid using too much RAM. With that, good luck forcing Chrome to go much past 4GB total, even if all those tabs have Youtube videos loaded…
Unless you and your friends are doing a lot of screensharing, you’re probably not getting Discord much past 0.5GB, same with Spotify. Let’s be real generous and give it 2GB total between the 2.
That means there’s 16-6=10GB left for Windows and a game, if you’re doing all of these bad habits outlined above. Even then, not a lot of games use that much RAM. I actually do all of the bad habits I’ve outlined above regularly, and I very rarely go past 16GB on my system (I have 32GB total).
I repeat, nobody in their right mind needs more than 16GB of RAM.
Can you build it yourself for cheaper?
Also, IMO 16GB is bare minimum in 2026 if you are using Windows. I’d really go to 32GB.
It’s 2026. If you are on windows you should be planning your switch to Linux.
Microsoft has no interest in you owning a computer. You can buy access to stream game rentals from their data centers while AI inserts ads and micro transactions into all the games.
who has $1000 extra to spend on 32gb of RAM… (joke, but not really…)
DDR4 is still somewhat affordable (I stress “somewhat”), and it should still be plenty fast enough for gaming. You can get a 32GB kit for ≈$200, which is only double (lol) what it was a few years ago.
It’s a bit of a toss up. If I go with ddr4, I can probably build something with a similar cost, maybe just a tiny bit more. I guess it might be silly to buy now. I’m kind of anxious about the price of PC parts.
I’m on DDR4 and have no problems running the games I want, although I’m on Linux.
That’s a pretty good price for components from the future, if that includes shipping. You have to keep in mind Wormhole Post has really high fees.
You could try Blackhole Express, but they tend to always stretch things.Lol 🤣 I see the typo now. I’m ancient and old, you see!
I’m really curious about what that typo was now :D
I said 2016 instead of 2026 😬😬😬😬😬
10 cores, 16 threads. How does that work out, is it some bigLittle system?
Just curious, last intel I used was like gen 8.
Yes. Intel now splits their CPU’s with “P” cores (performance) that function like normal x86 processors with hyperthreading, and “E” cores (efficiency) that are lower clocked, less feature rich cores without HT.
Most OS and background tasks can be loaded on E cores while P cores work strictly on high performance programs. Its not bad, except for the fact that its Intel building them.
Can you wait until the current bubble crashes and prices come back down?
Regardless of how the AI bubble will behave, corporations are pushing hard to discourage private hardware ownership in favour of rented cloud-based services. It is very unlikely that availability will ever return to the situation it was prior to the current situation, they will attempt to force cloud services through artificial scarcity and high prices on hardware.
Yes; however, I’m getting the personal vibe that gaming hardware progress is massively plateauing. Still, I may hold off. Tbh, I’ve kind of been waffling on buying a new PC since 2017. My 1070 is juuuust old enough now that I’m starting to see some games I straight up can’t run at 30 fps.
This whole manufacturing crisis in the USA (that’s where I live) coupled with depressed wages and aaa games not interesting me… It’s all kind of discouraging. I’m tempted to just buy something good enough and sit for another 10 years. Perhaps I’m just being reactionary to the increasing prices and looking for a ‘deal.’
If you want to build a “New” system you might be better served picking up an intel arc discrete GPU and seeing how that does in your current system. Also if you have older RAM, you might be best served upgrading that before buying into a whole new ecosystem.
Depending on how quickly you need a PC it might be worth waiting for the Steam PC that’s not out yet and we have no idea on price or availability.
From that I can find online the steam PC will be less powerful than the desktop 4060 and probably be comparable in price to this PC. I do intend on installing Linux on this computer.
Go with AMD for the GPU, life will be easier. I regret not doing this.
Also, go with AMD for the processor. The 7800X3D is stupidly good for gaming and not THAT much more than the i5-14400F (well, okay, it’s like $150ish more, but so much better). You can also find other AMD CPUs closer in price to that one which will outperform it. Intel’s kinda gone to shit.
I do intend on installing Linux on this computer.
In that case I strongly suggest you look at an AMD GPU. Nvidia is usable on Linux, but not pleasant.
I haven’t had trouble with Debian
I’ve also used Nvidia for years without issues, that doesn’t mean there aren’t pain points. For example the open source driver is severely worse in performance than the proprietary one, but the proprietary one lacks some features used by some Wayland compositors, which is why for example sway requires a special flag to be passed if you’re using Nvidia proprietary drivers.
