I have a Steam Deck that is connected to my TV 90% of the time. I’d like to replace this with a PC that has maybe slightly higher specs than the Steam Deck. Are there any pre-built solutions that are really affordable?
Define affordable, and also what you want out of it, 4K? High framerates? 1080p?
In general I’d say, unless you’re willing and able to spend 7-800+, the steam deck is giving you the best value to performance for “out of the box”/prebuilt.
If you want something better with any hope of approaching the price point of a steam deck you’ll have to build your own PC
Yeah, you have to define affordable. For some, that’s $300, others $3000.
Quick answer is just go to pcpartpicker.com and look at other people’s builds for your budget.
Bang for your buck… Just go midrange AMD cpu, don’t worry about core count. Most games aren’t cpu bottlenecked like they used to be.
Motherboard, just grab a reliable brand, don’t overspend.
16gb ram, speed won’t matter much and it’s not that much more than 8gb.
1tb m.2 ssd drive. You can always get more storage later
Cheap case, good quality power supply probably 600 watt would get 90% use cases.
Don’t forget to budget for windows or use Linux if you go that path, your monitor, mouse/keyboard, speakers or headphones.
After all that, than buy the highest end graphics card left in your budget.
While this is certainly in self-build territory, Logical Increments does a real good job giving balanced builds for various price points. People new to building often don’t know how much to spend on a CPU vs GPU to get the best value out of a given build cost.
Yeah, with the Intel 13th and 14th gen issues, it really shouldn’t be recommending them as much. I think part of the issue is they only have one CPU vendor per tier. If they improved that, it would probably fix the issue. That said, if we are going purely off price/power, I’m not convinced their choices are bad.
For a beginner though, I really don’t like just shoving them at PC Part Picker. It’s too easy to get overwhelmed with choices.
If you’re looking for the best bang for your buck nothing beats assembling it yourself. A pre-built is always much more expensive to pay for assembly.
You’ll need to define a budget for “really affordable”, but it’s going to be hard regardless to match the price performance of the deck. Is $700-$1000 affordable? That’s probably the ball park for a mid-tier prebuilt. You maybe be able to get lower with an Intel Arc option (HP has some of these at $600)
Everybody in a PC community is going to go to “build your own” by default, but it really isn’t the only option.
It is true you won’t match the price-to-performance on the Deck, but if you’re willing to go a bit higher you can try a few things. For one, you can try to buy used. I would like to see a PC in person before I do that, but there may be options, depending on where you live. The good news is that upgrading from a Steam Deck anything with a dedicated GPU should be a nice boost in performance, so you can go for entry level or older desktop parts. If you don’t mind a bit of bulk or have a convenient place to stash it you can also skip the whole mini-PC space, which is typically sold at a premium, and just buy a big old tower.
And then there’s laptops. Used laptops devaluate a lot, which means you can find decent entry-level laptops with 30 series GPUs that will still outperform the Deck by a lot for a few hunderd bucks. Again, I’d like to look at one of those before I buy, but if you don’t care about the screen quality or the cosmetics there are some affordable used options out there. Just… check the noise when gaming, because some of those sound like a hair dryer on high power mode.
As others have said, it depends on your budget and specific use case, but if you’re using a handheld as a console attached to a screen you should be able to cobble something more functional together. Just maybe not as hassle-free or reliable.
Definitely agree on the used idea. Ebay is full of used previous gen parts at great prices (stick with sellers with a deep history of 99% and higher feedback, avoid those with accounts less than a year old and/or single digit feedback. Avoid single digit sellers with suspiciously cheap prices for recent hardware like the plague - these are likely scammers.)
Personally, I’d avoid laptops if gaming is your primary interest. Performance does lag behind similar spec desktops, but more importantly, if something that isn’t ram or a storage drive breaks on a laptop, the whole machine is probably done. Not necessarily because the whole machine is unusable, but many if not most repair parts are model specific and can cost more than the laptop did.
Desktops can be repaired and upgraded per assembly, which makes them pretty kind to your wallet if gaming on a budget. I just scored an excellent condition 1080ti for around $150, and I know with absolute certainty that very robust off lease workstations from a few generations back can be had for $200-ish or less if you know what you’re looking for. Pair them with that 1080ti and you’ve got some decently capable hardware to play with!
I’ve got several gaming machines that I use to run everything from old stuff to heavily modded Skyrim VR and many new titles, and I pretty much only buy storage amd cables new. Everything else is purchased used on Ebay.
