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I've been checking all major retailers for gaming PC deals regularly for the past couple of years, and I'd honestly given up on the idea of seeing an RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC cheap enough to be worth the money—especially while RX 9070 XT gaming PCs seemed to be staying pretty cheap. But the tides have finally and surprisingly turned, thanks to this MSI Codex Z2 for $1,749 at Walmart.
Sub-$1,800 for an RTX 5070 Ti gaming PC is exactly what I'm looking for here, just the same as with RX 9070 XT builds, and I've not seen one anywhere near this cheap for months. I'd assumed maybe it was a stocking issue for those GPUs specifically. Whatever the case, we're back, baby.
Well, kind of. There are a couple of pretty big caveats to this build. But if you're looking to do some high-end gaming for as little money as possible, I still think this build will be worth it, regardless of its foibles.
That's because the RTX 5070 Ti offers some mean performance for this price point. It's my personal fave of this GPU generation, provided you can pick it up at a reasonable price. It isn't too far short of the RTX 5080 in performance, and it overclocks incredibly well. And compared to the RX 9070 XT, it's pretty on par, except you're also getting widespread support for the latest frame gen and upscaling tech.
Gaming performance
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| RTX 5070 Ti | 47 Avg FPS, 33 1% Low FPS |
| RX 9070 XT | 45 Avg FPS, 39 1% Low FPS |
| RTX 5080 | 55 Avg FPS, 47 1% Low FPS |
| RTX 5070 | 37 Avg FPS, 30 1% Low FPS |
In practice, all this makes for a GPU very capable of playing modern games on the highest settings at 1440p and even 4K in many cases.
We're talking a full gaming PC here, though, and moving beyond the GPU is where some of the caveats come into play. First, this build is a little light on RAM, and $1,750 is around the price point where you'd hope to start seeing 32 GB, even during a memory shortage. Nevertheless, if you keep background apps closed, this shouldn't bottleneck you for gaming too much at all. At least not on its own.
And therein lies the second caveat: You're getting what is essentially a repurposed mobile chip with the Ryzen 7 8700F. That means lower clocks and less L3 cache, which isn't great for gaming. CPU-intensive games will likely take a hit, as will gaming at lower resolutions. But for gaming at higher resolutions in GPU-limited scenarios, it won't be a massive deal.
Thankfully, it's socket AM5, meaning you should be able to upgrade to something like the stellar Ryzen 7 9800X3D down the line.
The final caveat is that this thing has a motherboard that's pretty light on I/O. So if you plan on having more than the usual couple of peripherals connected, you might want to get a USB hub hooked up to one of the two 5 Gbps ports, leaving the other free for external drive transfers. And even then, bear in mind that 5 Gbps means USB 3.2 Gen 1x1, which is far from the latest.
With all those caveats in mind, I have to return to the fact that in sheer gaming performance, you're getting a fantastic deal here thanks to that GPU. If you don't mind opting for AMD, an RX 9070 XT build like this one might give you a little more bang for your buck, but if you want the slightly better GPU and much better upscaling and frame gen support, this MSI rig is a great shout.
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