This Gateway laptop with a GTX 2060 and 120Hz screen is back down to $799 again

This one pops up on sale every so often, and each time it does, I feel compelled to let you know about it, because $799 is a fantastic price for the hardware. The star of the show, of course, is the GeForce RTX 2060. It's slightly less interesting now that Nvidia has launched its GeForce RTX 30 series in mobile form, but still an exciting option in this price range.

To put the price into perspective, the least expensive laptop with an RTX 2060 at Best Buy (non open box/refurbished, that is) is the MSI GS66 10SE, currently discounted from $1,500 to $1,100. It's a beefier config all around, though it should be, at $300 more than the Gateway Creator model highlighted here.

The GPU is flanked by an Intel Core i5 10300H 'Comet Lake' processor (4C/8T, 2.5GHz to 4.5GHz, 8MB L3 cache), 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD.

I'd recommend adding another 8GB of RAM and upgrading the SSD. Doing those things takes a little bit away from the baseline value proposition, but it will be money well spent—dropping another 8GB of RAM inside and swapping out the 256GB SSD for a 512GB model should only run about $100, or about $150 if you jump to 1TB.

Upgrading those components on this laptop is easy, too—just remove a few screws to pop off the bottom panel, and you're in. It's not absolutely necessary, depending on what games you play. But should you go that route, you'll end up with a Core i3 10300H, GeForce RTX 2060, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD for around $899. That's an excellent value.

If you want to spend less and are willing to trade ray-traced gaming for a cheaper price tag, there's another Gateway Creator laptop on sale, for $599 (save $200) . It includes a Ryzen 5 4600H, GeForce GTX 1650, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB. Both models also sport an IPS display with a 1920x1080 resolution and 120Hz refresh rate.

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).