The Memorial Day PC gaming deals (opens in new tab) are already starting to roll in ahead of the weekend, and I've already spotted a few gaming PC deals worth talking about at various price points. Here's one smack bang in the mid-range: an RTX 3060-powered gaming PC with an Intel Alder Lake CPU for $1,200 at Newegg (opens in new tab).
Usually I'd kick these deals off by talking about the GPU, the powerhouse of the PC gaming experience. But I'm actually going to start with the CPU here, as the Intel Core i5 12400 is one of our absolute favourite processors of this generation, and the Core i5 12400F found in this machine is as much an excellent processor, only without the onboard Xe graphics—so maybe don't sell off the GPU.
With six cores and 12 threads of Alder Lake processing power, this is a rather mean chip for gaming and more. Despite actually being one of the more entry-level chips in the Alder Lake lineup. That's just how much CPUs have come on in recent years, even the cheapest among them today are better than Core i7s from a few years back.
With an RTX 3060 12GB (opens in new tab), this PC has plenty of power to deliver high frames at 1080p and solid 1440p performance. The surprisingly large VRAM on the RTX 3060 is a nice bonus, which will see it not struggle to run the latest games like some entry-level cards with less memory might.
(opens in new tab)The memory in this machine is two sticks of 8GB 3,200MHz (effective) RAM, for a total of 16GB. A solid speed for an Intel system such as this. Also worth mentioning that there's a whole terabyte of solid state storage in this machine, which is surprising as we're used to seeing slimmer capacity SSDs in these well-priced machines.
Onwards to the less flashy but still just important details: the PSU is a 600W 80 Plus Gold unit, which results in great efficiency and a little bit of leeway for future upgrades. It also appears as though this system relies on the Intel stock cooler included with the CPU, so it might be a candidate for an upgrade down the line. There are plenty of great and affordable air coolers out there when that time comes.
Lastly, I haven't mentioned this yet but there's also an included MSI gaming keyboard, the GK20, and gaming mouse, GK08, with this machine. So that's a bit of money saved, too.
