I Bought a Gaming PC at Best Buy… Am I Dumb?

[James]

Buy a Rog Strix G10CE Gaming PC: https://howl.me/ciLpg5ILSFr

Buy an Intel Core i5 11400F: https://geni.us/1jD8aaH

Buy an Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti: https://geni.us/pKG0BT

Buy a 600W LiteOn PSU: https://geni.us/AqJO

Asus ROG B560M Plus: https://geni.us/GVy7

Buy a kit of SK Hynix DDR4: https://geni.us/Hi0Bg1

Buy a Western Digital 512GB SSD: https://geni.us/ICZG

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X: https://geni.us/rdeP5

MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX:https://geni.us/11buGAs

Buy a kit of Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB DDR4 RAM: https://geni.us/iLhyBJX

Buy an Intel 670p 1TB SSD: https://geni.us/RplFr67

Buy an MSI Mech 2X Radeon RX 6650 XT:https://geni.us/PaI52PB

Buy an ASUS Tuf Gaming 750 W 80+ Bronze PSU: https://geni.us/wu25Zf

Buy Fractal Design Focus G Mid-Tower Case: https://geni.us/zDEh

 

We were pleasantly surprised in 2016, and again in 2020, but can we still get a decent Gaming PC by wandering into a Best Buy and taking whatever the sales rep recommends? Our secret shopper finds out!

 

[dogwitch]

i have the case. its alright.

[bluehawk]

I had to get my family some computers, too lazy to find parts and build them, and I went with best buy but avoided just dealing with the reps instead going through the website. Managed to find a Zenbook with 12th Gen Intel and 8GB LPDDR5 4800mhz for about $600 which I think is a good deal. And I got an HP Victus Desktop for about $700, has a 12th gen intel processor and RTX 2060. All I did for that was replace the 8GB of RAM with 32GB. Think those were pretty good deals, glad I didn't deal with a rep that wasn't properly trained.  

[sub68]

Man that 12GB of ram is something I will not understand, but I think its a cost saving.

My current PC dell optiplex 5050 came with 8GB and I chucked a 12GB  (8GB+4GB 2133) kit from a random HP prebuilt from 2016.

[Chinsoup]

best buy once scammed me

[bluehawk]

13 hours ago, sub68 said:

Man that 12GB of ram is something I will not understand, but I think its a cost saving.

My current PC dell optiplex 5050 came with 8GB and I chucked a 12GB  (8GB+4GB 2133) kit from a random HP prebuilt from 2016.

 

It still confuses me because RAM isn't that expensive now. And it's just ridiculous that pre-builts still do 8GB standard when they should be doing 16GB. Yeah Windows 11 and soon 12 say 4GB is needed at minimum but there are still a lot of other programs that need resources too. It just leads to less tech savvy people  coming to their more tech savvy friends or family or going to a repair store and saying why is my computer slow, make it fast. Then they might e-waste it because they think it's outdated or something when just putting some more RAM in is sufficient. 

[sub68]

1 hour ago, bluehawk said:

And it's just ridiculous that pre-builts still do 8GB standard

I will say this is a refurb from dell that was dirt cheap for what it offered and I knew I had ram and bought it.

 

[Modred189]

Honestly, didn't agree with the vibe of this video too much. The sales person got the buyer a competent gaming machine for ~$200 under their budget. COULD they have maxed that budget out? Sure. But the vast majority of customers will love you as a sales person for that.

 

I worked at Best Buy back during the XP-Vista years. This was definitely my MO: ID the customer's wants, offer the best thing we had as a "nice to have" but then offer the machine that did what they needed just not QUITE as fast, for a substantial discount. Left the choice to them, and they ALWAYS picked up the latter. And loved me for it and became repeat customers. 

 

I think the better question would have been, could you match the purchased machine's price as a DIY box?