As a PC builder with nearly 20 years of experience, I was always of the opinion that if you want to get one of the best gaming desktops, you have to build it yourself. I still stand by that opinion, but the last few years — and this year more so than any other — have shown me that sometimes, lowering your standards is a good idea.
Despite their flaws, prebuilts are finally growing on me. Here’s why I’m coming around, and why you should still be careful when shopping for one.
I blame the market
I’m not a huge fan of prebuilts, I’ll say that much. I’ve seen many of my friends and family members buy a desktop that turned out to be a complete disaster, and as such, I usually tend to stay away from such PCs.
Building your own computer is cheaper and more reliable; if you know what to do, you’ll end up with components that last you for years. Meanwhile, many prebuilts are a bit of a wild card, and you never really know what hides inside.
With all that said, I’m coming around on prebuilts. I kind of don’t have a choice.
GPU prices have been through the roof for most of the year. Although things are getting better now, many cards are still overpriced. This is especially true for AMD’s best graphics cards, the RX 9070 XT and the RX 9070 non-XT.
Seeing as a graphics card is the most expensive component in most gaming PC builds, the price of building your own rig has gone up quite a lot in the midst of this semi-GPU shortage. I say “semi,” because the cards are mostly available in stores, but again — they’re overpriced. Things aren’t as bad as a few months ago, but we’re still dealing with expensive GPUs that were pricey to begin with, and often sell above their recommended list price.
In a prebuilt PC, that price stings a little less. This largely depends on the brand, but you’ll find some prebuilts that are worthwhile, where the price of the components plus the cost of putting it all together is starting to make some sense — even to me.
Prebuilts are starting to make more sense
A solid prebuilt PC is one that doesn’t cost a whole lot more than the cost of the components, but it’s also one where all the specs work well together. If you want to buy a prebuilt gaming PC, it’s important to look at it through the lens of what’s inside it, and whether it all makes sense, both financially and on a technical level.
This is why buying a prebuilt is so tricky for people who aren’t into the whole PC building scene. Without knowing the specs, it’s easy to end up with a dud. Fortunately, some of the biggest PC brands these days are trustworthy, making it less of a guessing game.
Brands like Dell, Alienware, Lenovo, and MSI all have their own gaming PCs up for grabs. Some are expensive — you might be paying a premium for the brand name — but many are pretty cost-effective. Especially at the high-end, where the RTX 5090 and the RTX 5080 are still overpriced, you might be able to score a comparatively better deal by shopping for a prebuilt instead.
Another thing that’s making me trust prebuilts a little more is the fact that these days, system builders are a lot more transparent about what they put inside the PC. A good rule of thumb is that if you can’t get a full spec sheet, you shouldn’t be buying the PC, and these days, more often than not, you can find the full thing somewhere. Leading system builders, like CyberPowerPC or Origin PC, will give you the details on every component, from the processor to the power supply. That way, you can do your research and find out whether the computer is a good deal or not.
Of course, there are some pitfalls to watch out for.
Things to watch out for when buying a prebuilt gaming PC
As I mentioned above, buying a prebuilt PC without knowing your way around the specs is tricky. In those cases, it’s easy to end up buying something that most builders wouldn’t recommend.
While doing my research for this article, I stumbled upon an easy mistake for a gamer to make — buying a prebuilt with the wrong GPU. I found a solid deal on the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i, equipped with the RTX 5060 Ti, which I was fully going to recommend … until I peeked at the exact specs.
The card inside the PC is the 8GB version of the RTX 5060 Ti. 8GB of VRAM is not much at all in this day and age, and it’ll only feel worse as years go by. While the PC is still reasonably priced ($1,499) for the components it offers, it’s expensive given the fact that you’re getting the wrong GPU and only 16GB of system memory (RAM).
However, Lenovo has a version of this exact same PC with the RTX 5070, this time priced at $1,749. That, I can fully recommend. You could build a cheaper PC on your own, but you’re paying a premium for both the brand and the ease of use — these PCs are plug-and-play, after all. This one is a solid deal.
This is the main thing to watch out for when shopping: read the fine print. Don’t take a prebuilt PC at face value, as they all look wonderful at a glance, but may be less powerful than their price tag suggests when you look under the hood. Check out my full guide on how not to get scammed when buying a prebuilt before you shop.
