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If budget is a major concern, I'd just get the upcoming xBox Series X. If that launches anywhere remotely near $500 current PCs can't even get close to that for $1,000. RTX 3000 and upcoming big navi potentially could change that but they'd have to be huge increases in performance per dollar that we haven't seen recently.
Take the GTX 1080 to RTX 2080 series of cards. Even with over three years between releases, the improvement between the GTX 1080 and an RTX 2080 were pretty modest ones, roughly 20%. On top of that, the value wasn't there at all. The RTX 2080 cost as much as the GTX 1080 Ti and was marginally faster. Three plus years for a whole lot of nothing burger was what you got. Not entirely true, you had the useless stuff like ray tracing and DLSS 1.0 which no one cared about. At the lower end things were better. The GTX 1660 and 1650 cards were pretty decent replacements that actually did offer some real improvement for dollar. In order to get anything close to PS5/xBox Series X performance around $500 you'll need somewhere close to RTX 2080 performance from a $200 video card. I can't see that happening. Next Gen consoles might cost more than $500, maybe the on paper performance won't be as great on them as it sounds, but value is definitely looking to be solidly in favor of consoles this time around.
I can’t see flying with an Xbox controller though. I need a yoke, do they work with the Xbox?
When I bought my system, I was looking at Alienware but I wasn't buying it just for gaming. I wanted something suitable for office/business work, home theater and a somewhat capable gaming machine if I decided to delve in that. I am not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination. I also thought of Flight Simulator when I got it. The specs for it were announced months ago. I just did not like the look of the Alienware cases. Just not my cup of tea. I do like the look and feel of the XPS. Overclocking was not something I wanted anyway, that will sometimes present cooling problems although I do believe you can get an OC version of the XPS for an extra $50. I spent around $1k basically. I went with Windows 10 pro, the 1660 GTX, 16gb RAM and a combo 256 SSD/ 1TB HDD. I am very happy with it. It's quiet and fast, way better than what I was replacing.
This is the base version of it. The only thing I added was RAM and I went to Windows 10 pro.
When I bought my system, I was looking at Alienware but I wasn't buying it just for gaming. I wanted something suitable for office/business work, home theater and a somewhat capable gaming machine if I decided to delve in that. I am not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination. I also thought of Flight Simulator when I got it. The specs for it were announced months ago. I just did not like the look of the Alienware cases. Just not my cup of tea. I do like the look and feel of the XPS. Overclocking was not something I wanted anyway, that will sometimes present cooling problems although I do believe you can get an OC version of the XPS for an extra $50. I spent around $1k basically. I went with Windows 10 pro, the 1660 GTX, 16gb RAM and a combo 256 SSD/ 1TB HDD. I am very happy with it. It's quiet and fast, way better than what I was replacing.
This is the base version of it. The only thing I added was RAM and I went to Windows 10 pro.
When I bought my system, I was looking at Alienware but I wasn't buying it just for gaming. I wanted something suitable for office/business work, home theater and a somewhat capable gaming machine if I decided to delve in that. I am not a gamer by any stretch of the imagination. I also thought of Flight Simulator when I got it. The specs for it were announced months ago. I just did not like the look of the Alienware cases. Just not my cup of tea. I do like the look and feel of the XPS. Overclocking was not something I wanted anyway, that will sometimes present cooling problems although I do believe you can get an OC version of the XPS for an extra $50. I spent around $1k basically. I went with Windows 10 pro, the 1660 GTX, 16gb RAM and a combo 256 SSD/ 1TB HDD. I am very happy with it. It's quiet and fast, way better than what I was replacing.
This is the base version of it. The only thing I added was RAM and I went to Windows 10 pro.
I wanted it future proof to a point so I decided to buy something a little better than a "budget" system. You get what you pay for.
I’d spec it just a bit higher - slightly better CPU, video card and 8GB more RAM. I’d also switch to a 512GB NVMe SSD instead of a boot 256 SSD with 1TB HDD.
I’d spec it just a bit higher - slightly better CPU, video card and 8GB more RAM. I’d also switch to a 512GB NVMe SSD instead of a boot 256 SSD with 1TB HDD.
512 is not enough for me so I found a balance on price/value. I store a lot of large files especially video and audio like MKVs and FLACs and that hogs up space pretty quick.
I could spec it WAY higher as well if the sky was the limit on cost. Core i9, 32gb RAM, 512 SSD/2TB, 8GB GPU HDD etc. I only use it a couple of days as week and is more like a hobby machine for me.
512 is not enough for me so I found a balance on price/value. I store a lot of large files especially video and audio like MKVs and FLACs and that hogs up space pretty quick.
I could spec it WAY higher as well if the sky was the limit on cost. Core i9, 32gb RAM, 512 SSD/2TB, 8GB GPU HDD etc. I only use it a couple of days as week and is more like a hobby machine for me.
For me, it was business related. Remote Desktop to be exact among a few other things.
Remote Desktop is available in Home.
The 2 things PRO provides that HOME does not is really only BitLocker and being able to join a domain. Nothing a typical home user needs.
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