Despite being years old, Fortnite is still just as popular as ever and many parents are probably being pestered to get a gaming PC to play the game on. The problem is that there are lots of ultra-cheap computers in the Black Friday sales right now but most of them will be absolutely useless for gaming.
So if I was looking for a desktop PC that I know could run Fortnite well enough to be enjoyed competitively and still be great at handling other tasks than just gaming, and not be hugely expensive, then this Yeyian Tanto is the one I'd pick.
Well, not quite, but I'll come to that in a moment.
For now, let's see what you're getting for your $720. The Core i5 12400F is almost two years old but it's still an ideal budget-level CPU. With six cores, 12 threads, and a boost clock of 4.4GHz, it won't have any problems dealing with Fortnite or lots of other games too.
The graphics card is an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, specifically the 12GB version. That GPU is almost three years old but it's perfectly suitable for 1080p gaming. It supports DLSS upscaling so in games that use the feature, you'll be able to crank up the graphics settings without taking a big hit in performance.
There's plenty of RAM in the system, with 16GB of DDR4-3200. That's not the fastest memory you can get for this CPU but you don't really need anything faster, as it wouldn't improve gaming speeds by very much.
What isn't so hot is the storage, as 500GB is pretty small by today's standards. At least it's an NVMe PCIe SSD so it should be more than fast enough for Fortnite, and the motherboard has a second M.2 slot for another speedy drive, if you do run out of space.
But why wouldn't I really pick it, if it was my money?
Because I would get the above system and then buy a separate graphics card and install it myself.
The Ipason gaming PC is pretty barebones inside, with just an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G handling all of the CPU and GPU duties. But it's actually very competent in the first role, thanks to having six core, 12 threads, and boost clock of 4.4GHz.
For gaming, the built-in graphics processor sports 448 shaders so don't expect miracles from it. It can handle 720p gaming just fine and even 1080p, though you'll need to drop the quality settings right down in lots of games.
There's plenty of storage on offer with a 1TB NVMe SSD but what's not so great is the RAM. Sure 16GB is more than enough for Fortnite but it's only on a single memory stick, and Ryzen processors really need two.
So here's what I would do. Buy the Ipason, rip out the memory, and then buy the following graphics card and dual channel memory kit.
That Radeon RX 6650 XT is a great 1080p graphics card and will have no problem with Fortnite, whatsoever. In fact it will be more than good enough for lots of games out there, as long as you keep the resolution down.
You're not going to be playing Cyberpunk 2077 with maximum ray tracing enabled, of course, but it's just as good as the RTX 3060 in the Yeyian Tanto. And where you'd need to dial the quality settings right back to game with the Ryzen 5 5600G, you won't need to do this on the RX 6650 XT.
As for the RAM kit, Team are a quality brand, and will work brilliantly in the Ipason gaming PC. The motherboard in the system only has two slots for RAM, so you wouldn't need to guess which ones to put the sticks into.
The total price for all three purchases comes to just under $723 and while that's a few dollars more than the Yeyian, this setup would have double the amount of storage space.
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Naturally, if you just wanted something to play Fortnite on and do nothing else, then the obvious choice is an Xbox Series S bundle. You can pick up one these on Amazon for $329, which is less than half the price of these gaming PCs.
You wouldn't need to buy a keyboard and mouse, or any other controller, as there's one already in the box. However, playing online against friends requires a subscription to Xbox Game Pass, which is currently $10 a month. The cost on a PC to do the same is zero.
And you can't do school or home office work on a console. It's the sheer flexibility of a PC that makes it worth the cost.
Make your own games, movies, and art work, or balance your finances and plan projects: A good PC can do all of these things and these two systems can do just that.
