Guy Cocker
IT’S TAKEN A WHILE, but this month we’ve finally been able to build a current-gen RTX gaming PC for under $1,000! We’ve done quite a few valueoriented gaming builds over the last year, but we’ve had to use Intel’s Arc card (May 2023 issue) or the ageing RTX 3050 (November and December 2022) to hit a three-figure price point. While we might often bemoan Nvidia in these pages, we’re very aware that they still dominate the graphics card market with an 84 percent market share, so it’s the manufacturer most PC gamers care about. For the first time ever, we’ve been able to spec up and build a machine with a cutting-edge 40-series Nvidia graphics card at under a grand.
The RTX 4060 itself may not have fared as well as its 4060 Ti bigger brother in our review (which you can read on page 74)—our verdict is that it should have been called an RTX 3050. It’s the same feeling we’ve had about a lot of Nvidia’s 2023 releases—the silicon you’re paying for doesn’t really justify the category (or price) it’s advertised at. That sucks, and we as consumers should be complaining about it. But in the Lovelace generation, that doesn’t tell the whole story, as technology such as DLSS3 and Frame Generation mean that as long as you’re okay with using these AI-powered image-enhancement techniques, you can increase frame counts and/or resolution beyond what you can without them. This is what Sam was most impressed with when he spoke to me for our Story of the Build video feature (page 16)—that he was able to play games like Cyberpunk 2077 with ray tracing at 1440p at above 60 frames per second. Compared to buying a PlayStation 5 for half the price, that sounds pretty good to me. You can find the full build from page 16 onwards.
The theme of good-value gaming PCs runs through a lot of this issue, in fact. The Skytech Chronos 2, which stars in this month’s Centerfold, and the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i, which is in our reviews section, both pack a punch at $1,500 and $1,700 respectively. In fact, the pre-built Legion has a similar Intel Core i7 13700/RTX 4070 combo we used in our July 2023 cover build, but at over $600 less! Well done, Lenovo!