After scouring through gaming PC deals this Prime Day, this is the cheapest rig I

I’ve been keeping a keen eye on gaming PC deals from different retailers over the last few days in the lead-up to this most glorious of Prime Days, and I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think AMD builds are ruling the roost here when it comes to value (see 1, 2). Nevertheless, the cheapest build I’d actually buy this Prime Day is, I reckon, this RTX 5060 Ti one for $1,156 at Amazon (Prime members only—free 30-day trial here).

The reason why is twofold. First, going cheaper than this often means stepping down to an RTX 5060, which is substantially worse than the RTX 5060 Ti. And second, if it doesn’t mean stepping down your GPU, it usually instead means opting for DDR4 RAM or a very old CPU.

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The Cobratype Canebrake Elite, for instance, has an RX 9060 XT and is currently going for $850 at Newegg. But while I stand by this being a great gaming PC for the price, even with that GPU being the 8 GB version, its DDR4 RAM and previous-but-one generation CPU puts me off. I’d happily pay the extra $300 for a great 14th Gen CPU, a motherboard that supports DDR5 memory, and yes, 16 GB of VRAM to boot.

Plus, with Nvidia, you are getting that Multi Frame Gen magic and more extensive regular frame gen support. Improved on this front though AMD has, completely on par it is not.

If you’re trying to save as much as you can, cheaper builds will do just fine, but for peace of mind, I’ll take all of that for a bit extra. There was an AMD alternative a couple of days ago for around the same price, but that’s now out of stock.

The presence of a (28-thread!) Intel Core i7 14700F in this build secures it for any kind of basic productivity work you might want to do with it in future, or heck, maybe even just a proliferation of Chrome tabs.

The same can’t be said for the mere 16 GB of RAM, but as I said, at least here you’re getting DDR5 RAM, which means you’ll be able to swap that out for 32 GB or even 64 GB in future without having to switch your entire platform. Until then, you’ll just have to keep an eye on how many processes you have running while gaming.

And although such things are arguably superfluous in comparison to those framezz, the chassis also looks kinda neat, too. So yeah, with all these things combined (plus the free keyboard and mouse, ’cause why not), this CyberPowerPC build is probably the cheapest gaming PC I’d opt for this Prime Day.

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Jacob got his hands on a gaming PC for the first time when he was about 12 years old. He swiftly realised the local PC repair store had ripped him off with his build and vowed never to let another soul build his rig again. With this vow, Jacob the hardware junkie was born. Since then, Jacob’s led a double-life as part-hardware geek, part-philosophy nerd, first working as a Hardware Writer for PCGamesN in 2020, then working towards a PhD in Philosophy for a few years (result pending a patiently awaited viva exam) while freelancing on the side for sites such as TechRadar, Pocket-lint, and yours truly, PC Gamer. Eventually, he gave up the ruthless mercenary life to join the world’s #1 PC Gaming site full-time. It’s definitely not an ego thing, he assures us.