Time's running out if you want to nab yourself a new gaming PC before the end of the year, but this deal over on the Microsoft store should just get to you in time, as Microsoft is quoting a 2-3 day delivery time. Shipping's free too. The important thing here is that it's a decent gaming system at a good price, from a name you know you can trust.
Thanks to a $250 saving, you can grab this gaming PC for just $1,750 (opens in new tab), which is pretty much exactly what you'd want to pay for an RTX 3070 (opens in new tab) at the peak of the Black Friday sales. Not bad going now we're this close to Christmas.
It isn't clear from the specs on Microsoft's site which particular brand or model the RTX 3070 is, but in these days of silicon shortages, beggars really can't be choosers, and we'll happily take whatever system builders can get their hands on. It's probably not going to be an overclocked model or anything exotic like that, but that won't stop it from being a formidable card when it comes to gaming.
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 (opens in new tab) is a great card to marry with a 1440p monitor for some seriously smooth gaming at the highest possible settings. 4K gaming isn't out of the question either, especially if you're not averse to rolling up your sleeves and diving under the settings bonnet of your game of choice. Alternatively, if you hook this up to a 1080p display, then you can expect to hit the sort of frame rates that legend speaks of.
There's more to a gaming PC than just the graphics card of course, and the good news here is that this machine has been sensibly put together, with no obvious compromises. The Core i7 11700F is a decent eight-core, 16-thread chip with a Max Boost of 4.9GHz. And while it may have been eclipsed by Alder Lake, this is still a fine chip for gaming.
There's 16GB of DDR4 3,000MHz to give your games plenty of room to breathe, and the 1TB PCIe SSD is a sensible size for a modern gaming PC. You even get a keyboard and mouse thrown into the bargain.
This is a lot of machine for the money, basically, and one that will last you for a few years without any problems. The fact that you get to enjoy ray-traced pretties and take advantage of DLSS goodness should just seal the deal.