Gasp. Did he really just say the PlayStation 5 Pro is worth $700? Immediately after Sony revealed its new addition to the PS5 family, a shockwave was sent across the internet as gamers started to come to terms with a price point that’s never been seen on a console before. I won’t disagree that the console is expensive. It is, and I don’t think you should buy it. As a seasoned PC gamer, however, Sony’s console isn’t nearly as expensive as it comes off as at first blush.
Naturally, the debate between PS5 and PC is bound to come up when we’re talking about a $700 console. Why buy a console when you can build a much more powerful PC for $700? That’s true, you can build a much more powerful gaming PC for the same price as the PS5 Pro, and you’ll be much better off as a result. You can’t buy a much more powerful gaming PC for $700, however, and that’s where Sony’s pricing starts to make a little more sense.
It’s worth $700
I’ll be generous and say you have a budget between $700 and $800, assuming you’re in the market for a PS5 Pro in the first place. For that price, the options for prebuilt gaming PCs are few and far between. For instance, you can pick up the Acer Nitro 50 for $700 with an Intel Core i5-14400F and RTX 3050 GPU. It’s a powerful budget system for 1080p gaming, but when we’re talking about modern AAA releases outputting to 4K? The PS5 Pro will undoubtedly win. That’s before factoring in the supposedly larger GPU inside the console, too.
The main problem with buying a PC for $700 is that most of them are using modern components. Even our go-to recommendation for a budget sleeper gaming PC, the Dell XPS Desktop 8960, will run you $850 with the weakest discrete GPU — the RTX 3050, but stripped down to 6GB of VRAM. If vendors like Dell and Acer offered older CPUs and GPUs, you’d probably be able to get something on par or much better than the PS5 Pro for $700. There just aren’t a ton of those options.
When buying a prebuilt desktop, you’re signing up the current or previous generation of CPUs and graphics cards, even if you don’t need the latest hardware. You’ll rarely find a desktop that goes two generations back unless you’re shopping for a refurbished machine. The PS5 Pro, on the other hand, is using a CPU that’s two generations out of date and a GPU that’s a generation behind. In a world where PC builders indefinitely stock the shelves with old hardware, you’d easily be able to buy a PC that could smash the PS5 Pro for $700. That’s just not the case.
By that logic, and factoring in the plug-and-play experience a console provides, the PS5 Pro is absolutely worth its asking price. I still don’t think you should buy it, and that’s because you can build one hell of a gaming PC for $700 if you don’t mind getting your hands a little dirty.
Building a PC is a different story
For $700, here’s the PC I’d recommend building instead of the PS5 Pro:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X — $159
- CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 — $30
- Motherboard: Gigabyte A520M K V2 — $67
- Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 DDR4-3200 — $42
- Storage: Kingston NV2 1TB — $56
- GPU: Gigabyte Windforce OC RTX 4060 — $279
- Case: Cooler Master MasterBox Q300L -- $40
- Power supply: MSI MAG A650BN -- $63
Technically this build comes out to $737, but I won’t split hairs over $37 if you won’t. This PC comes with very similar specs to the PS5 on the CPU side. The Ryzen 7 5700X comes with eight Zen 3 cores, and they’re actually clocked a bit higher than the CPU available on the PS5 Pro. On the GPU side, this PC is in a completely different league. The RTX 4060 is one of the best graphics cards you can buy, not only trouncing the raw performance of the PS5’s GPU but also coming with Nvidia’s excellent DLSS Frame Generation.
Building a PC carries some risk, but it’s probably a lost less than you think. Our own guide on how to build a PC can guide you through the process step-by-step, and once you’re done, you’ll probably wonder why you were so worried in the first place.
There’s an obvious advantage with a PC in that it’s upgradable, too. If you build a PC now instead of buying a PS5 Pro, you’ll never have to shell out $500+ at once for a performance update, at least if you’re trying to keep pace with console performance. You can add and swap components out slowly over time. And when new generations of components pop up, you won’t have to worry about if you’ll still be able to play your old games.
Sony didn’t just pull $700 out of thin air for the PS5 Pro. It’s a console that likely had Sony on the hook for millions of dollars of development costs, and the company is acutely aware of the maximum price it can ask for while still selling enough consoles. Compared to what you can get elsewhere off the shelf, the PS5 Pro is absolutely worth its asking price.
With a PC, however, you don’t need to settle for just what you can buy off the shelf. Like any DIY endeavor, you’ll have to spend more time on building a PC, and it might not all go exactly according to plan. When talking price, however, you’ll be left with a gaming PC that punches far above its weight class.
