Earlier on, while checking out all the best Cyber Monday gaming PC deals, I noticed that sub-$1000 systems seemed to have one of two common themes: 16 GB of system RAM or a processor that essentially can’t be upgraded very much.
Let’s get the negatives out of the way first. There are cheaper RTX 5060 gaming PCs to be found, such as this $780 rig at Best Buy, and the Ryzen 5 8400F isn’t exactly the best gaming CPU around. While it does have six cores and 12 threads, and is based on AMD’s Zen 4 architecture, it only has a boost clock of 4.7 GHz and just 16 MB of L3 cache.
Then there’s the RTX 5060 itself. It’s not a bad graphics card, but if I wanted one with 8 GB of VRAM, I’d be getting the Radeon RX 9060 XT. It’s a lot faster than Nvidia’s second-from-the-bottom Blackwell card, even when ray tracing is involved.
However, what this Yeiyan gaming PC does offer is RAM. Lots of RAM. Lots of fast RAM. Specifically, 32 GB of DDR5-6000. Just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have considered this to be worth making any kind of a fuss over, but now that memory is so expensive, finding this much in an $880 gaming PC is very nice indeed.
Put it like this, the RAM alone is worth over $250. That’s almost the same price as the rig’s graphics card.
Something else I rather like is the fact that the Ryzen 5 8400F. No, not the chip itself, but that it uses an AM5 socket. This means that the motherboard will be able to take any Ryzen 7000, 8000, or 9000-series processor. This is ideal if you like the idea of being able to drop a much better gaming CPU into your PC when funds permit.
You’ll probably need to upgrade the cooler, and maybe the power supply unit too (especially if you get a better GPU), but at least both of these items are more than affordable.
Where other budget-level gaming PCs are skimping on RAM or sport an AMD/Intel processor that uses an end-of-life socket, this little Yeiyan is an ideal base to expand upon. It’s not perfect, but few things are in the world of PC gaming these days.
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