Graphics cards are hard to come by these days, though in my daily hunt for deals, I'm seeing several prebuilt desktops sporting the latest generation GPUs from Nvidia (GeForce RTX 30 series). Most are grossly overpriced, save for this Alienware Aurora R12—it's in stock (at the time of this writing) at Best Buy for $1,899.99.
It's not on sale, but it does have that elusive 'Add to Cart' button lit up, at least for now. Part for part (including the cost of Windows), you're looking at a markup of a few hundred bucks, at least in normal times—at the heart of this system is a GeForce RTX 3070, which commands around $1,400 on eBay.
The system also rocks an 11th Gen Core i7 11700F, which is one step above the Core i5 11600K, one of the best CPUs for gaming. It is an 8-core/16-thread CPU based on Intel's latest generation Rocket Lake architecture, with a 2.5GHz base clock, 4.9GHz max turbo frequency, and 16MB of L3 cache.
It also has 16GB of RAM, which is the sweet spot, and a 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD for storage chores. The storage allotment is a buzzkill, in that a 256GB SSD is not the least bit exciting, but it's something you can upgrade easy enough if the need arises.
What about those other GeForce RTX 30 series PCs I mentioned? Here they are:
- CLX (i7 10700K, RTX 3090, 16GB RAM, 480GB SSD + 2TB HDD)—$4,797.99 at Best Buy
- ABS Legend (i7 11700K, RTX 3090, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD)—$4,099.99 at Newegg (save $100)
- CLX (i9 10900K, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, 960GB SSD + 4TB SSD)—$3,229.99 at Best Buy
- CLX (i9 10900K, RTX 3070, 16GB RAM, 480GB SSD + 2TB SSD)—$2,979.99 at Best Buy
- CLX (i7 9700KF, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, 960GB SSD + 4TB HDD)—$2,959.99 at Best Buy
- CLX (i9 10850K, RTX 3070, 16GB RAM, 480GB SSD + 2TB HDD)—$2,889.99 at Best Buy
- CLX (i7 10700K, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, 480GB SSD + 3TB HDD)—$2,889.99 at Best Buy
- CLX (i7 10700, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM, 480GB SSD + 3TB HDD)—$2,739.99 at Best Buy
- ABS Gladiator (i7 10700KF, RTX 3080, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD)—$2,699.99 at Newegg
None of these are very compelling, given the high markups across the board. But hey, if want a modern GPU bad enough and are not interested in the Alienware, these are the options right now.
