The PS5's Price went Up so I Built a PC that Beats it

TL;DR

A $544 secondhand PC build using an RTX 3070 and i5-12400F matches or outperforms the PS5 at its new inflated price.

Key Points

• 1.Sony's PS5 price increase is the largest in console history. The hosts speculate it may be a market-testing strategy to establish discount pricing for holidays or set expectations for the PS6's launch price.
• 2.The build centers on an Intel Core i5-12400F for $83. Despite having fewer cores than the PS5's CPU, its modern architecture and 4.4 GHz turbo speed compensate, and DDR4 support keeps RAM costs low.
• 3.Total build cost came to $544, with key components including an RTX 3070 ($215), ASUS H610M motherboard (~$50), 16GB DDR4 RAM (~$60), and a 1TB SSD (~$100). Budget was preserved by buying secondhand parts and a $10 used case.
• 4.In game testing across God of War Ragnarök, Returnal, and Death Stranding, the PC traded blows with the PS5. The PC won on character detail and DLSS sharpness, while the PS5 had superior HDR out-of-the-box and better level-of-detail handling in some scenes.
• 5.The RTX 3070's 8GB VRAM caused occasional texture LOD flickering in demanding scenes. Some settings had to be reduced to medium to maintain playable framerates, highlighting a key trade-off of the budget GPU choice.
• 6.Secondhand PS5s are not selling at the new MSRP, softening the real-world impact of Sony's price hike. The hosts note Sony is also pulling back PC ports of exclusives to protect PS5 hardware sales, and plans to extract more revenue from its existing user base.