It’s been well over 2 years since Sony released the PS5, and fans have been treated to plenty of compelling experiences on the platform including but not limited to Horizon Forbidden West which also serve as a solid showcase for the power of current-gen hardware. That said, Sony has also been making some big moves when it comes to porting many of its exclusives over to the PC platform, and it seems safe to assume that almost every PlayStation exclusive is bound to come over to PC at some point in the future.
As such, many fans are going to be rightfully confused between investing in a PS5 or going the PC route this generation. Of course, each of these options has its own set of advantages and disadvantages – but owning a decent gaming PC makes a ton more sense from both a functional and financial perspective now than it did when the PS5 was relatively new. To that end, we came up with PC gaming hardware that would match the performance levels of Sony’s current-gen console offerings – and see how much it would cost for an end consumer.
Before starting out with the feature, it’s important to mention that we have only used off-the-shelf prices for brand-new components – and building out a comparable PC with used components will undoubtedly come at a much cheaper cost. Also, we have tried to include components that were close to the PS5’s hardware as it’s not feasible to have a 1:1 component list. And finally, the prices for these parts may change in the near future.
With that out of the way, let’s begin!
The CPU
The PS5 uses a custom Zen 2 based CPU consisting of 8 cores and 16 threads, and the chip can run at frequencies up to 3.5 GHz. It’s a pretty powerful CPU, and many current gen have been using the increased power budget on the new platform to push for higher frame rates up to 120 Hz.
For our PC rig, we went with the Ryzen 5 5600 which is a 6-core 12-thread processor based on the new AM4 architecture. Sure, we might be 4 threads short in a head-to-head battle with the PS5’s chip but the Ryzen chip makes up for it with a markedly higher operating frequency of 4.4 GHz.
You see, most current-gen games are still not properly optimized for splitting CPU workloads across different threads – so we’re not really losing out on gaming performance with this choice. Also, the reason we went with the Ryzen 5600 over the 5600G or 5600X is the added Wraith Stealth cooler that you get in the box – which should do a good job of keeping heat levels in check provided you stick to factory settings.
The Ryzen 5 3600 can be found for around $140 on various shopping sites.
The GPU
The GPU is undoubtedly the heart and soul of any gaming machine, and this is where the majority of our spending will be going towards. To compete with the PS5’s RDNA 2 GPU, we will be using an Nvidia RTX 4060 which is the latest in the line of middling-budget video cards which is based on the new Ada Lovelace architecture.
The 3072 CUDA Cores running at a frequency of 2475 MHz should be enough to match the performance figures of the 10 TFLOPS GPU that Sony’s console is packing. The memory bandwidth on the RTX 4060 is certainly lower which might pose problems for rendering at high resolutions, but with DLSS and FSR upscaling options being commonplace in modern AAA releases – these issues might not stick out too much with the right optimizations and graphics settings.
Furthermore, the new architecture also brings with it plenty of improvements to ray tracing performance – which can be really nice to have on such a tight budget. The RTX 4060 is priced at $299, and we are going with the card from ZOTAC for this build.
Motherboard
While one could certainly spring up a good amount of money for an AM4 motherboard for better features or just plain aesthetics, we are going to be choosing the cheapest option for our build that comes with all the essential features that one would want out of this particular component.
We are going with the Gigabyte B450 AORUS Elite motherboard, which not only runs Ryzen 5000 CPUs without requiring any BIOS updates but also has support for high-speed memory and M.2 SSD which we will be coming in handy for our other components.
While there’s certainly some scope for improvements, the aesthetics on this motherboard aren’t bad for the asking price of $130.
SSD
Sony made a big deal out of the PS5’s SSD and how it had the potential to change games, and while some of those claims might be over-exaggerated – loading times have certainly reduced by a huge margin when compared to eighth-generation games. While we could have gone with a cheap SATA-based SSD or even an HDD for that matter, we are going with a PCI e 4.0 SSD to match the playing experience of a PS5.
For this build, we went with a 1 TB SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD which offers read and write speeds of up to 5000 MB/s. It’s still shy of the PS5’s impressive 7000 MB/s disk speed, but you can be sure that loading times will be snappy on our rig and games will also be able to take advantage of Windows 11’s DirectStorage API as well. SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD is readily available for $60.
RAM
Ryzen CPUs generally perform well when paired with high speed RAM, and that’s no different with our Ryzen 5 3600. As such, we are going with a 16 GB kit of Corsair Vengeance DDR4X memory that runs at 3600 MHz. Going any higher wouldn’t make much sense since our motherboard of choice only supports RAM up to 3600 MHz, and it also ensures that our CPU is working at its full potential without any memory-related bottlenecks. This kit is priced at $40.
PSU
Having a quality PSU is absolutely essential for ensuring that your components get the optimum power draw, and also keeping system stability levels in check. As such, we want a power supply that has an 80+ certification and comes from a reputable brand – so we went with the Thermaltake Smart 700W 80+ Certified PSU for our build. It’s functional, ticks all the required boxes, and comes at a price of just $55. A sweet deal in our opinion.
Case
When building out a PC on a budget, getting a fancy case isn’t the most financially viable option – so we’ll be going with something that gets the job done and is as cheap as possible. As such, we went with the Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L Micro-ATX Tower which comes with a tempered glass side and ample room for managing cables. Again, it’s a very functional piece of equipment but it’s definitely worth the asking price of just $40.
Total Budget And Conclusion
Adding up everything that we discussed in this feature brings the total up to roughly $770. We covered the same topic roughly two years ago, and our PC of choice back then for the same performance target cost above $1100 – which makes the current budget a rather surprising revelation. A point to note here is that we haven’t included a Blu-Ray drive, a copy of Windows 10, and peripherals, and all of this can bump the price higher. But again, compared to our 2021 edition build, the price is still on the lower side.
So in conclusion, the price of our 2023 build is higher than the PS5 which comes at $500. All things said, owning a PC is an expensive affair – but it’s bound to get cheaper as we get deeper into the generation and more affordable hardware is able to keep up the pace with consoles. It will be interesting to see how things change in this regard over the next couple of years, so stay tuned for that.
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