GPU prices started going up (roughly) in March of 2020 when all hardware went up in price or went out-of-stock. It happened slowly at first, then faster and faster, until widespread unavailability became the norm!
During the worst of the worst, it was so bad that you could not buy most graphics cards, no matter what price you were willing to pay! I am very glad that the worst is over.
But we aren’t out of the woods just yet.
After the past year, it really is a different world out there. So it should come as no surprise that the old, time-tested PC Shopping Wisdom doesn’t really apply today like it did even a few years ago. Gaming laptops? A good deal? Arguably, yes, they are now. Lack of component availability due to chip shortages, scalping, cryptocurrency mining, and more has made building a capable desktop PC for a reasonable price (or at all) close-to-impossible.
There are also, however, the inherent benefits of laptops: portability, peripherals being included with the part purchase, smaller form factor, and the device coming fully pre-assembled. These are just a handful of the most prominent areas where laptops have always come out on top.
With the GPU shortages continuing, some people are turning to prebuilt computers. These are pre-assembled PCs, usually sold at a slightly elevated price over buying the parts separately; thus, building your system yourself would normally be cheaper. However, prebuilt prices have generally not increased as much as GPU prices have, and because of that prebuilt PCs are suddenly an interesting option.
And even in situations where the prices of these pre-made computers have kept pace with the rest of the market, they are sometimes nevertheless one of the few reliable ways to obtain certain GPU models that are frequently out-of-stock when sought directly. So, as wild as it may seem coming from this particular website, in this article I will discuss 5 prebuilt computers that are currently worth the money (1 budget choice, 3 midrange choices, and 1 premium choice).
Being the latest in the ever-expanding line of GPUs from NVIDIA, here comes the GTX 1650 Super! The GTX 1650 Super sits in a very specific spot in an already stacked line-up. So, where does it fit into all of this? And what would it look like to build a balanced 1080p gaming system with it?
nVidia’s Turing architecture has been fantastic, with almost every card in the 16xx and 20xx range being recommended on our charts. The cards perform well and are power-efficient, so you typically get a card that hits all the main points: high performance, lower power draw, low temperatures, and low noise. Pricing is an issue for the flagship cards (2080 and 2080 Ti) where lack of competition lets nVidia showcase its pricing creativity with $1200 cards. Oil tycoons buy graphics cards too, you know! But for all the other Turing cards, the prices are fine at launch. Well, almost all.
The sole Turing card that was a thoroughly bad launch was the GTX 1650, which was weak and quite overpriced. Even today, half a year after its launch, it remains overpriced at $150, easily beaten by cheaper ~$120 cards. Today, nVidia is updating the lineup with the GTX 1650 Super, for $160.
Today we’re looking at a power-efficient build with the shiny new AMD Ryzen 5 3600. Settle in as we take a look at what a low-power-draw midrange gaming PC build looks like with this CPU!
Unlike some of the recent NVIDIA launches, the GTX 1650 arrived with… well, not a whole lot of fanfare. However, there’s still a few building benefits, so of course we’re going to look at the prospect of building a PC with one!
nVidia’s recent run has been amazing! The four RTX 20xx cards, followed by the GTX 1660 Ti and 1660 non-Ti, have all been winners. These cards have had great power consumption, great temperatures, and low noise levels. More importantly, nVidia gave you the ultimate reason to buy them: They beat the competition in terms of power. If new cards came out and performed worse than old cards… who would buy them? Right?