To the custom PC builder, pre-built gaming PCs might sound as frightening as an unidentified bottleneck. They do have a bit of stigma associated with them — overpriced hardware, low-quality components, proprietary connectors, and underwhelming esthetics. Each of these things might have been true a few years ago, but with time, most pre-built PC vendors have significantly upped their game.
More importantly, the current PC hardware market might be the best time to pick a pre-built gaming PC over a custom-built one. Owing to the terrible GPU availability and pricing, and the slew of defective CPUs and GPUs making the news, pre-built machines might just be the easiest answer.
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The end of sub-par components
Leave your worries behind
The fear of sub-par components, such as power supplies, motherboards, RAM, and SSDs was legitimate when buying older pre-built rigs. Consumers were often at the mercy of vendors who used off-brand PSUs, cheap memory kits and SSDs, and ill-equipped motherboards. This not only dented the value offered to the consumer, but also put the safety of the components at risk.
Today, however, a PC gamer has ample high-quality options when choosing a pre-built gaming rig. Vendors like Maingear, CyberPowerPC, iBuyPower, Skytech, Dell, Lenovo, HP, MSI, and Falcon Northwest offer a wide variety of configurations with quality upgradable components, with several customization options to suit your tastes. You don’t need to worry about cheap hardware being used inside your PC anymore.
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 (2024)
The Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 is a great starter system. It provides great frame rates at both 1080p and 1440p, and despite its designation as a budget PC, the chassis looks anything but. However, it’s the little things, like messy cable arrangement and a lack of dust filters that keep this pre-built PC from perfection.
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Seamless warranty is invaluable in this market
CPU or GPU — everything seems to be failing
The one-stop warranty of pre-built PCs is one of their biggest draws, especially for folks who don’t like to mess around inside their PC or deal with individual component manufacturers. This advantage, however, becomes even more valuable in the current market when you look at reports of Intel CPUs suffering lasting damage due to a voltage bug, Nvidia GPUs missing ROPs and suffering from melting connectors, and AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs dying out of the blue.
If you’re ever at the bad end of one such fiasco, calling up your pre-built vendor is way simpler than going through the RMA process yourself. It’ll probably be much faster too, considering your vendor can replace the defective component right away, and deal with the RMA process later. This simplicity and convenience is why many gamers choose pre-built gaming PCs, and probably why more consumers will join the club soon.
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Competitive pricing
No longer the overpriced sibling
Pre-built gaming PCs had a bad reputation for being priced higher than custom PCs with the same components. Sure, factors like build fees, marketing costs, warranty, and others contribute to a small premium, but they didn’t fully account for the higher prices. Hence, many consumers opted to build their own PC to maximize value for money. In the last few years, however, pre-built vendors have brought down prices significantly.
Today, you can buy a pre-built machine for almost the same price as an equivalent custom PC, and sometimes even cheaper. Thanks to their favorable sourcing costs and economies of scale, these vendors can offer highly competitive prices. Combined with the high-quality components and seamless warranty support, this makes pre-built PCs free from almost all of their erstwhile downsides.
CyberpowerPC Gamer Master
The CyberpowerPC Gamer Master is a budget gaming PC with the Ryzen 5 7600 d GeForce RTX 4060. It also comes with 16GB of DDR5 RAM, 500GB of NVMe storage, onboard Wi-Fi, a sleek case, and a keyboard and mouse.
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Only shot at getting new GPUs
For those who can’t wait
The string of paper launches doesn’t seem to be stopping with Nvidia’s RTX 50 or AMD’s RX 90 series. Gamers who want to grab one of the current-gen graphics cards don’t have too many options — either fork over scalper prices or wait for the market to settle down in a few months. Those who need an RTX 50 or RX 90 gaming PC right now, however, might have to go with a pre-built gaming PC.
These machines seem to be the only reliable way for consumers to get a new GPU at prices close to the MSRP. For now, the easing of tariffs on electronics might have eliminated some of the price hikes, but persisting supply woes and unrealistic MSRPs continue to make it nearly impossible to find GPUs at reasonable prices. You might have to find a good deal on a pre-built rig, but it’s sure as hell not as hard as finding a graphics card without an inflated price.
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Making pre-built PCs great again
Pre-built gaming PCs have come a long way, making them perfectly viable alternatives to custom PCs. And in a market riddled with poor availability and inflated prices of GPUs, and defective components everywhere, pre-built rigs offer stability and convenience. They’re pretty much the only reliable way to get a current-gen graphics card at a reasonable price. And the one-stop warranty ensures you don’t need to panic if your CPU is crashing or your GPU is missing some internals.
