This prebuilt RTX 3060 PC costs less than the sum of its parts
£1000 is a genuinely good value in a sea of inflated CPU and GPU prices
Last week we posted about a rather excellent gaming PC deal, which bundled up an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 graphics card and AMD Ryzen 5 5600X processor into a computer box with surprisingly solid components throughout, all for less than one thousand of your Earth pounds. Today, that deal makes a return of sorts, as UK system builders AWD-IT have a very similar prebuilt gaming PC, once again for a little less than £1000.
Like last week's system, this one comes with the same RTX 3060 and Ryzen 5600X, a great combo for high frame-rate 1080p gaming, but one that's almost impossible to find right now - especially the graphics card, which is meant to cost around £300 but these days normally goes for £600 and up!
The remaining components are solid too - one of the most popular B550 motherboards in the form of the Tuf Gaming B550M-Plus, giving you PCIe 4.0 support for ultra-fast storage and graphics, backed with 16GB of dual-channel memory and a good-looking (if slightly air-tight) Corsair 4000X case with a trio of (RGB optional) intake fans.
The 240GB of SSD storage is a bit meagre, but honestly you'll pay far less buying whatever drive you want and installing it yourself (a five minute exercise, if that), or just bringing any existing SSDs and HDDs from an older system. If you're not up to the task of installing a drive yourself, you can swap the 240GB stock configuration for a 480GB (£23) or 960GB SSD (£55) - not a massive increase for a £1000 PC.
Altogether, this is the sort of system that a clever nerd would build for themselves, complete with surprisingly decent box cooler that comes with the 5600X, and made entirely with the off-the-shelf components that are easy to upgrade down the line - rather than something from the likes of Dell or HP that comes with a no-name power supply and a tiny case that's impossible to add any new parts to.
Interestingly, we popped all of the parts into PCPartPicker to see how much it would cost to assemble the system yourself. We came up with a final price of £1469, making the £1000 asking price seem reasonable, to say the least.
If you take out Windows 10 and the price-inflated RTX 3060 from the calculation, you're still left with £680.32 for the rest of the build... so assuming that you value a legitimate copy of Windows 10, assembly of the system, shipment to you and a three year warranty at exactly £0, you've still got to find an RTX 3060 for £320 to come in at the same price AWD-IT is asking - and in this climate, that's pretty much a pipe dream, especially for the Asus Dual OC model that the builders are including here!
Altogether, we're quite impressed with the value of this £1000 system. If you've been jonesing for a PC upgrade for some time but have been flummoxed by the insane graphics card prices, then this is a great way to get the two most expensive and hard to find bits of the build at RRP, backed with a collection of other parts that honestly make a lot of sense.
What do you think? Can you find a better pre-built deal out there on the internets? Let us know in the comments below.