This doesn't take into account the GPUs that are just announced/being announced, but gives you an idea of how to compare the cost/benefit of many GPUs.
There are some caveats and it changes a bit if you play at 1440p+, but it's a good ballpark idea.
These are the specks for a $1000 pre built pc in South Africa, I make a fourth of that a month from my internship salary and I will have the rest of the cash in April or March
$1000 will get you a pretty solid starter PC. I paid less than for mine, likely underpaid a bit and still got something that was OK, but after a graphics card upgrade she does fairly well
Without knowing what the market is like over there (or checking part quality too much), that looks like an OK budget PC. It will play current games at decent graphics and there's room for upgrades later, like adding in another set of 2x8GB RAM and a better GPU.
You will need a monitor + KB & mouse
A couple of points about the spec you listed, it doesn't leave much in the room for future upgrades. The am4 socket is basically discontinued, so if go to upgrade the CPU, you'd need a new motherboard, ram and CPU.
If you can, an am5 platform to give more life out the system.
Hm....not gonna lie.....it is giving me red flags looking at that 😆 and by red flags I mean you may hate it if you got it. Mobo is not described well(could be an version) and the gpu also seems vague. Also I might be blind but the only fan I see is the cpu cooler. Hmmm
building your own is also nice because you can piecemeal it. get one part, then another, then another... eventually you have everything and don't have to worry about it dropping 2K in one purchase
an important thing to note when buying a pre-built tower or just any kind of laptop is you're paying for the parts. you're paying for the branding, the operating system, and for somebody to put it together. you're basically paying for the convenience of having it built for you, but it's not hard
800 would def not be bad. Just make sure you have a decent amount of memory and that your computer doesnt deem a portion “hardware reserved” for some reason. I got cheated out of 2 gb of ram for some reason, and I’m not sure how to get it fixed
If you can get your more expensive parts used or just on a great deal you can get pretty cheap, also depends what you’re wanting to use it for but if it’s modern games I’d recommend an amd gpu I got an rx 6650 xt for like $200 and it runs new stuff on mid settings pretty well
I'm just gonna buy a webcam for my Xbox and stream from it for the time being, I play all they latest multiplayer games on it like Marvel Rivals except the pc only ones like Val no problem and I only paid 200 dollars for it
About 500 actually. Newegg has resale parts, look for beat up old laptops they can get you hard drives and windows keys. Beat up old desk tops can get you parts and cables. You can also look on Amazon for refurbished work desktops, buy a used graphics card for that and that's your cheapest option.
Heavily depends on what you want it to do for you. There's just a lot of variables that go into deciding what makes a good PC for a person on a budget imo
I have only ever built my own pc's and others for them. It all depends on what you want out of it, and you will always have bottleneck somewhere if you don't spend big. I am no expert, so my knowledge is self taught, but watch out for low GPU vRam. 6 to 8Gb is a good number to hit if possible.
Decent parts will run you up at least $1000 USD, not including peripherals like mouse, keyboard, monitor. Never cheap out on the power supply. You can cut costs on storage (SSD mfg is pretty reliable now) and video card (if you're willing to learn how to play with graphics settings).
Oh? See, now I have questions... There are a billion hardware configurations now and multiple use cases. Depending on what you want out of it, 1000 USD is either pretty adequate or vastly underperforming. I see mini computers that do great for 600-800, but you can't upgrade them.
My philosophy is that turning off anti-aliasing and motion blur in PC games will literally save you hundreds of dollars in buying a video card. Killing ray tracing will save you more if you're willing to sacrificing it.
I don't know about the prices in South Africa. For digital painting you don't need nothing too sophisticated, if you are thinking about video them things might get more demanding.
got my current gaming pc for $650 at microcenter (not counting tax or accessories, just the computer) plays most games on high graphics with no stutter or lag, but if a game isnt optimized or the graphics are insane it struggles
Comments
There are some caveats and it changes a bit if you play at 1440p+, but it's a good ballpark idea.
You will need a monitor + KB & mouse
If you can, an am5 platform to give more life out the system.
the beauty of building your own PC is you can prioritise the parts you want and balance everything around them
with a pre-built if you try to get anything decent they'll milk you for every last penny
but yeah, really depends on what you're trying to do.
Depends on how good you mean