I paid $1,660 for a PC built with a Gigabyte RX 9070 XT OC, AMD Ryzen 5 9600X, Phanteks AMP GH 850W Gold power supply, 1TB Kingston NV3 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD, ASUS TUF Gaming B850-PLUS motherboard, Lian Li Vector V100 case with four preinstalled 120mm fans, and a Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE ARGB cooler. However, it does not include any RAM. Based on the current prices of these components and the fact that it was assembled, did I overpay?
4 Answers
There’s disagreement because prices change quickly, but a $1,000 estimate is unrealistic for this hardware at current prices. A similar prebuilt that includes RAM could potentially offer better value, so the deal may not be optimal, but it doesn’t look like an obvious scam.
It doesn’t look like an outright scam. Current component prices put the parts roughly around $1,500 before considering assembly, so $1,660 is within the range you might expect for a completed build. The missing RAM is the main thing to account for, though you’ll still need to buy a compatible DDR5 kit.
The price is fairly normal for those exact components, although the motherboard and some other parts could have been cheaper. You might have saved a little by choosing a less expensive board or shopping around, but you probably didn’t massively overpay.
Some builders remove the memory from systems and sell it separately, so a PC being listed without RAM isn’t automatically suspicious. Still, compare the total cost after adding the RAM you need against similar prebuilt systems that already include memory.
That makes sense. I’ll price out a suitable DDR5 kit and compare the complete total with current prebuilts before deciding whether to keep it.