To skirt around the inflated costs of configuring DDR5 gaming PCs at the moment, a lot of brands that make prebuilt machines are selling you short. If you shop around for an RTX 5060 gaming PC at Newegg, which is typically the best pound-for-pound e-tailer when it comes to deal prices, you'll find machines that cost $200-300 more than they would have six months ago. Not only that, but they'll house DDR4 RAM inside them. Not what you want if you're shopping for the best gaming PC possible for your budget.
I'm so impressed with Asus though, because the brand is bucking that trend and offering gamers some actual value in a time of crisis. Thanks to Best Buy's Tech Fest sale, an Asus ROG G700 Gaming Desktop is seeing a saving of $200, which brings a machine with 16GB of DDR5 down to a "normal" discount price of $999.99 at Best Buy. It's almost like the RAMpocalypse isn't even happening.
If you're finding yourself asking, "What's the RAMpocalypse?", let me fill you in. AI data centers are being built all over the world right now, and in order for them to work, they need a whole lot of computing memory. That means we consumers have no supply of DDR5 to build our own computers with, and prices on all sorts of technology are going through the roof.
In terms of shopping around for a prebuilt gaming PC, that basically means you've picked the worst possible time. Prices have shot up, and as I've said, a lot of brands are resorting to selling you what they can, rather than what you should expect for your money these days.
Asus, for whatever reason, isn't joining in on that. Before the RAM shortages started, I was seeing all sorts of gaming PCs that are a 1:1 match with the G700 above on specs, going for $999.99 after getting a discount. In fact, if you bought from a budget brand, or one of the store-owned configurators like Newegg's ABS machines, you could probably get an entry-level machine for even cheaper, around $899.
But as for the well-known brands like HP, Acer, Lenovo, and Asus, their rigs would only ever tend to reach this kind of price. So yes, while you might pay for a better-known logo on the front of your PC case here, you're still getting a genuine deal over a lot of those budget brands that are now offering DDR4 systems with up-to-date graphics cards for the same money.
In all likelihood, this deal from Asus is due to the fact that its stock of these machines was already pulled together before prices skyrocketed, and we're still seeing the tail end of its supply being sold off at an appropriate cost. Either that, or it really is a treat to celebrate Best Buy's Tech Fest sale. Whatever the reason, this is a really good price to pay for a properly futureproofed machine at the moment, and I wouldn't expect to see many PC building brands offer "normal" costs like this all too often in the coming years.
The reason this is a good deal is that you actually get DDR5 RAM in your PC, but not only that, if you opt for a DDR4 system right now, you'll be locked into DDR4 memory for the rest of that PC's life. DDR4 memory isn't compatible with DDR5 motherboards, and vice versa. Grabbing a PC that has DDR5 in it, even if it's only 16GB for now, means you'll be set up for the future. This particular G700 from Asus also has an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor in it, meaning you'll have room to upgrade it later with another Intel Core Ultra processor from that generation, or one from the incoming Intel Core Ultra 200 Plus range.
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