Today's big news the other side that a tweaked PS5 Pro is on the way, and a base-spec model without a Blu-ray drive will cost you £700 ($700 in Ameridollars).
That’s a lot of cheddar for a living room games box, and while we Windows folks can’t quite claim the privilege of pointing and laughing – buying a 4K-capable, DIY desktop for seven hundred quid is absolutely inconceivable to me – the fact remains that you can get a pretty slick PC set up for less, let’s not forget the fact that you can still play most of the PS5’s best games. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone at Sony’s PC division tried to pull Astro Bot under a cardboard box held up by a stick.
An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super
Yes, we all miss the time when Nvidia's XX70 graphics cards weren't more expensive than the rest of a PC build. But the RTX 4070 Super remains the current generation's best-value 'run anything, at any resolution' GPU, and in the process writes off the faults of the original (and underwhelming) RTX 4070. You can have it for £570/$600.
One and a few Steam Deck OLEDs
Could you stop halfway up a mountain in North Wales and play a PS5 Pro on the side of the road? Checkmate, Sony. What the Steam Deck OLED lacks in terafloppies, it makes up for in portability, a beautiful screen (not at all well photographed here) and the fact that its top spec can cost just £569/$649.
4K gaming monitor (and a good one at that)
The idea that quality 4K monitors have to lead to financial disaster is a lie likely perpetuated by the Big 1080p. Get the most pixels for the least money with the MSI MAG 274UPF, a £400/$370 UHD display with all the adaptive sync and high refresh rate features you could want from a proper gaming monitor. Good colour and brightness performance too.
A gaming laptop with the latest DLSS trick
Since our budget from PlayStation won’t allow for an RTX 4060 laptop, how about this RTX 4050-powered MSI Thin 15 for a single penny less? True to its name, it’s a relatively thin gaming machine, and its support for DLSS 3 frame rates should help it achieve a surprisingly high frame rate. And just like the PS5 Pro, does it have vents? No disc drive?
Two 4TB NVMe SSDs, swap with a few extra 1TB SSDs
The recent launch of the WD Blue SN5000 SSD has made it easier than ever to pack a PC full of high-capacity solid state drives. It’s one of precious few budget-focused drives with a 4TB option, enough to double the capacity of a PS5 Pro on a single stick, and at £240/$300 you could easily pick up another one. And there’s at least a 1TB model on the side too. It’s a lot, really.
11 of the PS5 Pro's own controllers
Show your disdain for Sony's cynical Dualsense pad price hike (it's now up to £60/$75) by contributing to an embarrassing stock shortage. But the downside, obviously, is that you'll also need to budget to buy ten new pairs of hands.
One of those crazy “gaming” routers that looks like a dead robot spider
I wanted to say, someone You should be paying £644 for these.
A ten-year RPS supporter subscription
Well, it's worth a try.