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The PS5 Pro costs $699 and as we approach Prime Day, it's available to pre-order. As outraged as people have been at the price of Sony's latest PlayStation, the go-to thought for most is that a gaming PC would still cost so much more. For the most part, that's true, but in the lead-up to one of the biggest sales of the year, I've found something that bucks the trend.
Over at Newegg right now, you can get an RTX 4060 gaming PC that will almost definitely give you better gaming performance than a PS5 Pro, and it's currently seeing a discount down to $749.99, down from $1,199.99. The RTX 4060 is probably one of the most popular graphics cards right now, because although it only sports 8GB of VRAM, it comes with Nvidia's latest architecture, and therefore has access to the brand's upscaling tech, DLSS.
I was expecting this kind of price to return for gaming PCs of this caliber during Black Friday, but I didn't think we'd see this sort of price in a few days before Prime Day PC deals are set to begin.
The value of DLSS is wild, especially for entry-level users who don't have the budget for high-end PC components, but who still want the high frame rates PC gaming promises. This fancy form of AI upscaling is what Sony is trying to chase with its "PSSR" that will come in the PS5 Pro. Putting this new software up against the established and dominant force in the industry, I know which one I'd want to get if they were similarly priced.
Should you buy a gaming PC over a PS5 Pro?
Also inside this PC is an Intel Core i5-12400F CPU, which is on the lower end of modern spec sheets, but is more than capable of matching the one found in the PS5. For folks who haven't owned a gaming PC with a full-sized desktop processor in it before, this will do perfectly.
Normally, I'd caution against people paying for one of the best gaming PCs if it doesn't come with DDR5 out of the box. For this kind of price though, I don't have any qualms about shoving this deal in the spotlight, especially since its motherboard and CPU are still DDR5 compatible. That means if you wanted to upgrade the parts inside this machine later so that you were running with the most up-to-date generation of memory, you could grab some DDR5 sticks and slot them in.
You'll get 1TB of SSD storage here, which is admittedly less than the PS5 Pro's 2TB. I hate to burst any PS5 stan's bubble, but as someone who tests SSDs for PS5 for a living, I can bet that this gaming PC's 1TB will be faster than the one in Sony's console, and that's because the motherboard and power supply here can divert power to it, which allows it to work at full speed.
Who knows what PSSR will be capable of, but to me, DLSS is a safer option. We've been testing Nvidia's frame generation in all of our PC and graphics card reviews for a while now, and we know that these things take time to develop, let alone gain support for by in the latest games.
On a more personal level, I've made PC my main gaming platform in the last year, and I haven't looked back. One of the reasons for that is the genuinely brilliant Steam sales that seem to run every single month. I get frequent discounts on games on my wishlist that bring them down to tantalizingly affordable levels. This isn't the case for PlayStation's digital store, which barely cuts the price of any game I'm interested in playing.
Not only that, but the number of accessories a PC has access to is astounding. Transferring platforms really made me realize how cut-off PlayStation is in terms of what peripherals you can use to play.
PS5 pre-orders are available now, but if you can spare an extra $50 in your budget, I'd recommend a gaming PC instead.
For more Prime Day coverage, check out Prime Day gaming deals, Prime Day PS5 deals, and Prime Day Kindle deals.
