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Look, we all know that the RAMpocalypse has ruined things for PC gamers, forcing the prices of DDR5 memory kits, SSDs, and graphics cards into the realm of ridiculousness. There's nothing you or I can do about this, other than either riding out the storm and hoping things get better, or biting the bullet and handing over a lot more cash for a new gaming PC than you would have done 12 months ago.
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Yes, that's a fierce amount of money, but believe it or not, that's actually the cheapest RTX 5080 prebuild I've seen for quite a while. How has this been made possible? In two specific areas: the central processor and the amount of storage it has.
The good news is that while the CPU isn't a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, the best gaming chip around, what you are getting is the best mid-range processor at the moment: the iGPU-less version of Intel's brilliant Core Ultra 5 250K Plus. For something that 'only' has six P-cores and 12 E-cores, it packs a serious punch, and not 'just for the money' either.
Gaming performance
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus | 118 Avg FPS, 93 1% Low FPS |
| Intel Core Ultra 5 245K | 99 Avg FPS, 74 1% Low FPS |
| AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | 112 Avg FPS, 76 1% Low FPS |
| AMD Ryzen 7 9700X | 99 Avg FPS, 59 1% Low FPS |
Pitched against AMD's X3D chip, Intel's refreshed Arrow Lake CPU is notably slower in some games, but it's easily on par in others. And because the total number of threads supported by the 250KF Plus is 18, it's no slouch when it comes to multicore content creation workloads, such as offline rendering, code compiling, and file packaging.
Content creation performance
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| Intel Core Ultra 5 250K Plus | 138 Single-core index score, 1817 Multi-core index score |
| Intel Core Ultra 5 245K | 131 Single-core index score, 1455 Multi-core index score |
| AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D | 133 Single-core index score, 1307 Multi-core index score |
| AMD Ryzen 7 9700X | 131 Single-core index score, 1148 Multi-core index score |
That makes this desktop PC a near-perfect all-rounder. You've got the might of a GeForce RTX 5080 for gaming and productivity, the punch of the 250KF Plus for all tasks, plus 32 GB of fast DDR5 to avoid memory worries.
The only thing that's genuinely disappointing here is the fact that you just get 1 TB of NVMe storage. In a $2,300 system. Yeah, the RAMpocalypse really does suck. Anyway, it's not clear what the exact make and model of motherboard is inside this system, but I'd be extremely surprised if it didn't have at least one more M.2 slot to throw in another SSD, when funds permit such an upgrade.
Now, if you do want this gaming PC with the same GPU, but a bigger SSD and a 9800X3D processor, then you're in luck, because Andromedia Insights has such a configuration for $2,800 at Newegg.
Is it worth $500 more than the one I've found? For some PC gamers, sure, but I'd prefer to keep the money and just enjoy this very neat-looking 250KF+5080 combo.
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