Here's an Asus gaming PC with a Rocket Lake CPU and GeForce RTX 3080 for $2,000
A high-end gaming PC that's in stock, but probably not for long.
In ancient times, even the best gaming PCs would sometimes go on sale, or so that's how the legends go. We live in a different era, and just finding a PC with a modern graphics card that is actually in stock is a feat. And that's what we have here—a decked-out Asus ROG gaming desktop with a GeForce RTX 3080 tucked inside.
It's listed at $1,999.99 at Best Buy, which isn't a sale price. But, it's available to purchase at the time of this writing. If it shows as being out of stock, you can always try again later, as the status has changed a couple of times since yesterday.
Asus ROG Gaming Desktop | Core i7 11700KF | GeForce RTX 3080 | 16GB RAM | 512GB SSD + 2TB HDD | $1,999.99 at Best Buy
The cost of this system is roughly equivalent to what the GPU alone commands on eBay right now. Except here, you can well-rounded PC wrapped around the graphics card.
Building your own PC with the same or similar parts would be a little bit cheaper, but only if you could find a graphics (and you can't) and it was priced at or close to MSRP (and they rarely are, outside of Best Buy's periodic FE restocks). Looking at the most recently sold listings on eBay, the GeForce RTX 3080 is fetching anywhere from $1,600 to $2,200. So there's your context on pricing.
You'd be paying around the same amount here, but getting an entire PC wrapped around the GPU. That includes the Core i7 11700KF, an 8-core/16-thread CPU based on Intel's Rocket Lake architecture, with a 3.6GHz base clock, 5GHz turbo clock, and 16MB of L3 cache.
Other components include 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD for primary storage chores, and a 2TB HDD for bulk storage duties. It's a well-rounded gaming PC with one of the fastest GPUs on the market.
The only real concern is cooling. User reviews are not exactly raving in that regard. If you find the temps are too toasty, however, some have suggested that swapping out the CPU cooler is a big help. The more drastic path is to gut the system and reassemble it in a different chassis. That's a hassle (and an added cost), but an option all the same.
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Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).
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