Have you heard? PC gaming is cool now. We’ve got shiny 4K graphics and ultrawide monitors and 240Hz and everything. Even EB Games is jumping on the PC gaming bandwagon. It’s selling $2000 pre-built gaming PCs running Windows 10, built for Overwatch and DOTA 2 and League Of Legends and the latest Call of Duty.
Built into a Thermaltake Versa 25 mid-tower, EB Games’ $1984 ‘custom built gaming PC’ — and it genuinely does look like a custom build using off-the-shelf parts, rather than anything mass produced with OEM parts and shipped from a warehouse internationally — runs an Intel i5-7500 quad-core running at 3.4GHz and boosting to 3.8GHz under load, a Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, 16GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR4 RAM (with blue LEDs! It’s just like Tron!) and a 240GB SSD and 2TB mechanical hard drive. Everything’s powered by a 600w Thermaltake PSU.
On the face of it, it’s really not a bad system at all. The combo of i5, GTX 1060 and SSD should make for smooth gameplay at 1080p resolutions in most modern games, and it’ll be more than enough for any eSports title you want to throw at it. EB says it’ll take around a week for it to build the system after you order, but it’s also worth keeping in mind that keyboard, mouse and monitor aren’t included. It is overpriced for its power and gaming performance, though.
As a point of reference, $2000 also bought you a Medion gaming PC with an i7-6600 and GeForce GTX 1070 — demonstrably more powerful and better value for money. If you’re especially keen on buying a prebuilt from a big-box retailer, this is probably still your best bet. Or, you could build a much more powerful machine — we’re talking GTX 1080 and an overclocking-friendly i7 — from your local computer store. [EB Games]