So you want to join the PC master race but don’t feel like selling your family yacht just to hit those sweet sweet frames? Fear not, as I’ve compiled some recommendations for the best gaming PC under $1000!
First things first, you’ll notice the recommendations don’t (in most cases) include peripherals, or a monitor, but they should all include a preinstalled operating system. This will be either Windows 10 or 11, but it really doesn’t matter since once you have a license of Windows 10 (which you get with these prebuilt computers) it’s free to upgrade to Windows 11 should you choose (you might not want to). In order to get a good gaming pc under $1000 it would be impossible to include a decent monitor without severely cutting into the performance budget. Besides, a lot of you will already have these things from your old rig and can upgrade later. If you need help choosing peripherals, take a look at our list of the best mechanical keyboards for gaming or the best wireless gaming mouse.
Before we get to the list, a few things to keep in mind. I will (very soon) be doing a list of best PC components to get for less than 1000$ (total), so if you have the knowledge or bravery to learn how to assemble your own PC, there are a few advantages to that. Primarily you’ll get better price-to-performance for each dollar of your thousand, and you’ll get to chose exactly which parts you want. What I mean by that is that even though a prebuilt might have for example an RTX 4060, you have no guarantee of which RTX 4060, it could be an ASUS one, or it could be from less reputable/reliable brands.
PS: In the interest of showing you as wide a selection as is comfortable, I’ve allowed myself to select rigs that are +/- 100$ of the stated 1000$ budget. Rest assured that when it does go over or under, there are good value add/remove reasons for it.
Advanced Battlestations ABS Flux Ruby
Coming with the new RTX 4060 graphics card, a more than good enough for gaming Ryzen 5 5600, 16GB of DDR4 memory at 3200MHz and 1TB of NVME storage the exhaustively named ADVANCED BATTLESTATIONS ABS Flux Ruby High Performance Gaming PC should be a fine choice for everyone but the most demanding gamers. While the RTX 4060 is actually only slightly stronger than last generation’s RTX 3060, it comes with the advantage of a larger L2 cache and DLSS 3 frame generation support, which should boost it more on higher resolutions for games that support it (so Starfield will suffer here). This is probably the best gaming PC under $1k.
Full specs:
- CPU: Ryzen 5 5600
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 4060 (16GB)
- RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz
- Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- OS: Windows 11 Home
HP Victus
Do you love to game but also need a machine that can handle a bit of productivity as well? HP has for a while now garnered a reputation for making desktop PC’s that actually game fairly well and provide great value. In this case, you’re giving up Nvidia and DLSS in favor of the AMD Radeon RX 6600XT card, it’s slightly weaker than the 4060 from option 1, but not by much, and here you get a more powerful CPU in the Ryzen 7 5700G, and it comes with a mouse and keyboard as well. On the plus side regarding the GPU, if you want a PC for Starfield it will support FSR frame generation (which the 4060 doesn’t).
Full specs:
- CPU: Ryzen 7 5700G
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6600XT
- RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz
- Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- OS: Windows 11 Home
Thermaltake Graphite 360
Mostly known for their PC cases, coolers and power supplies, Thermaltake has recently started putting together some pretty awesome pre-builts. This one isn’t quite as powerful as the previous options, but in return you get some better fans and CPU cooler, and a pretty awesome small form-factor case ideal for dorm-rooms and those of you who want to easily take their rig on the go. Besides while it isn’t quite as powerful, you still get a AMD Ryzen5 5600X processor, RTX 3060 graphics card, 16GB of 3200MHz DDR 4 memory, and a 1TB NVMe storage drive. So all in all, not a bad deal.
Full specs:
- CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 3060
- RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz
- Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- OS: Windows 10 Home
Skytech Shiva II
Four options featuring the AMDs Ryzen 5000 series is probably enough, time for an intel option. The Skytech Shiva II has a very capable Intel Core i5 12400F, that is about 12% more powerful than the most powerful Ryzen CPU from the other options above. It also has a RTX 3060 bringing it on parity with option 3, 16GB of DDR4 3200MHz memory, and so on and so on. It’s basically the same in all other aspects, except this one is also white. So if you’d prefer clean white futuristic look to your case this is the one for you.
Full specs:
- CPU: Intel Core i5 12400F
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 3060
- RAM: 16GB DDR4 3200MHz
- Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- OS: Windows 11 Home
ViprTech Ghost 3.0
Another AMD option, and the only prebuilt PC in this list with a liquid AIO(all-in-one) CPU cooler. It’s got a lot of other advantages as well, powered by the strongest graphics card on this list in the RTX 3070, which though it is a generation behind the 4060 and thus missing DLSS3, has 20% more raw performance. The ViprTech Ghost also doubles the memory of the others featuring 32 instead of 16GB, which should help with pop-in, loading times, and the like. I know the goal of this guide is to find the best gaming pc under 1000 dollars, but as stated in the intro, I gave myself some wiggle room on the price to bring you the best possible deals, and this is by far the best possible deal, and it’s only 75$ over budget.
Full specs:
- CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X
- GPU: Nvidia RTX 3070 (8GB)
- RAM: 32GB DDR4 3200MHz
- Storage: 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD
- OS: Windows 11 Home
And that, my friends, is my list of best prebuilt gaming pc under 1000 dollars. With the recommended prebuilt PCs above, you can easily play games like PUBG, Warzone 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Even Cyberpunk 2077 in 60 or even 144 fps depending on your screen resolution and game details. If you’d like to push even more power out of every dollar spent, keep an eye out for my best gaming PC components under 1000$ article. Although, it’s worth mentioning that there is some level of skill involved when building a PC, so make sure to watch a lot of tutorials before starting to build.
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