I can't recommend Nvidia when this AMD RX 9070 XT gaming PC is $300 off right now

Skytech Azure | Ryzen 7 7700X | RX 9070 XT | 32 GB DDR5-5200 | 2 TB SSD | $2,099.99 $1,799.99 at Newegg (save $300)
This build might be running on a previous-gen CPU, but that's an eight-core processor, and the main allure here is the RX 9070 XT. This graphics card is pretty much on par with the RTX 5070 Ti (excluding ray tracing), so you're getting a veritable high-end machine here for $1,800. And Skytech isn't even skimping with storage, here, as 2 TB should be plenty.

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Just a few days after our Nick highlighted a great deal on a different Skytech Azure gaming PC (that one with an RTX 5070 inside), I'm back highlighting another one, this one with an RX 9070 XT for $1,800 at Newegg.

The reason? No, it's not that we're being sponsored by Skytech—we're honestly not—it's that this is the gaming PC I'd actually buy right now, assuming I'm not rich enough to not have an upper end to my budget (in which case, say hello to this $4,900 beast).

And yes, there is at least a sliver of my soul that's revelling in shining the spotlight on an all-AMD rig on a day when Nvidia is black-listing us for our RTX 5060 review which our fearless leader Dave is nevertheless ploughing through. But that's just a sliver—promise. Really, this is just a great rig for a reasonable price.

That's all that seems available right now, of course—'reasonably' priced gaming PCs, not mouth-to-the-floor corkers. If you have the patience of a saint, it might be worth waiting indefinitely for prices to get better, but there's no guarantee they will. And in the meantime, this Skytech rig is rockin' some genuinely high-end hardware for well shy of $2,000.

The AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT essentially gives you RTX 5070 Ti-level performance, though it lacks the latter's Multi Frame Gen capabilities and can't quite keep up with ray tracing. It's also a very capable overclocker. With frame gen and some upscaling, you should be able to hit well over 100 fps at 1440p, even demanding games such as Black Myth: Wukong.

The rest of this build is nothing to sniff at, either. The Ryzen processor might be previous-gen, but it's still an eight-core chip that's more than capable not just of gaming but also handling productivity tasks.

The rest of the core specs are up to snuff, too, with 2 TB of storage—the amount we recommend for gaming today, given ever-increasing game installation sizes—and 32 GB of DDR5-5200 RAM. That's not the fastest DDR5 in the world, but it should get you by. You're also getting an 850 W PSU, which gives you plenty of headroom.

The fact is, to go cheaper than this right now means sacrificing either a chunk of storage and RAM or dropping down to something like an RTX 5070 or RX 9070 build that most likely comes with a less powerful six-core CPU. That's not necessarily a bad shout if you want to save some money, but if you're wanting to enter into high-end 1440p gaming, it's worth the little extra for this one, I reckon.

You could go higher-end than this, too, of course, but then you're looking to RTX 5080 builds, which go well into the $2,000+ range. So nah, I reckon an RX 9070 XT build is still the sweet spot for mainstream and high-end gaming.