If you're looking to buy a reasonably priced, mid-range gaming PC, you should check out HP's Pavilion desktop. You can get one equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G APU (Zen 3) and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 (opens in new tab) graphics card (Ampere) for $1,173.24 right now.
The final tally will depend on your exact configuration, which also affects which coupon code you can use. Pricing actually starts at just $649.99, though it's worth making some upgrades before hitting the checkout screen.
(opens in new tab)HP doesn't let us link custom configurations, so you have to make changes on your own. One possible route is to bump the processor up to a 6-core/12-thread Ryzen 5 5600G, the storage to 512GB (SSD), the GPU to an RTX 3060, and the chassis/PSU combo to 400W. Then at checkout, apply coupon code 5GAMER2021 to save $61.75.
It's not the beefiest configuration around, and the we're not especially jazzed with just 8GB of RAM. If you upgrade to 16GB and double the storage again, to a 1TB SSD, the price comes to $1,454.99 before discount. This also allows you to apply a bigger coupon code—10GAMER2021—to bring the price down to $1,309.49 (save $145.50).
Our only hesitation is the limited upgrade path. Armed with just a 400W power supply, there's not a lot of headroom to swap out the GPU down the line. As is, however, either configuration would be good for gaming at 1080p, with the pricier config being better equipped to handle 1440p gaming as well.
