CheckMag | How much PC performance can you buy for the price of a PS5 Pro?

At $699 for the console and $75 for a drive, the key specifications of the PS5 Pro are an 8 core processor with 16GB of DDR6, a 2TB SSD and a GPU that performs in line with an RTX 4070 if you read between the lines of IGN's interview with Digital Foundry (embedded below). However, speculation suggests the GPU falls somewhere between an RTX 4060 and an RTX 4070, or an RX 6650 XT, RX 7700 XT or 6800 XT depending on where you read. But is it possible to build a PC with a PS5 Pro beating specification for the same amount of money?

To get anywhere close to the PS5 Pro specification for this kind of cash, the only real option is to drop back a couple of generations and look at AM4 CPUs. This will give us a comparable 8 core processor and all the required parts to price up before we can think about how much we can spend on a GPU.

Opting for newer AMD processors or going with Intel blows our budget out of the water almost immediately, and while you could opt to reduce the core count to save money, for an apples to apples comparison, 8 cores are the minimum. With that said, the cheapest AM4 build from Amazon would consist of these parts:

All links are from Amazon.com and are correct at the time of writing.

Our total spend so far leaves us with a grand total of $192.31 to spend on a GPU, or $267.31 if comparing against the PS5 Pro with a disk drive factored in. Not much, by any stretch of the imagination.

So while one could opt for an RTX 4060, this mid-range desktop graphics card would put us somewhat over budget even with the added cost of the drive. Only the RX 6650 XT would keep us close to the price of a disk-less PS5 Pro, putting us $38 over budget. This configuration would certainly be at the lower end of the PS5 Pro’s performance potential. Similarly, this build consists of components that are already 4 years old and utilises significantly slower RAM. Whatever way you slice it, this is not a machine for playing Horizon Forbidden West at anything close to 4K without making significant compromises to the overall fidelity.

Of course, there are ways to work around this. Prices constantly fluctuate on Amazon, and you may be able to find parts cheaper if you shop around. Opting for a 6 core PC build will save money on the CPU, allowing more money to be spent on the GPU, and would likely garner better performance overall. Similarly, you could explore the second hand market and get even better bang for your buck, but that’s not the point considering any PS5 Pro purchased would be new, and come with all the associated warranties.

What this does highlight, is that one can buy a very capable PC, one that serves multiple purposes and is paired with a previous generation high-end card like the RX 6800 XT for not much more than the PS5 Pro and a disk drive, albeit without the ray tracing chops of an NVIDIA card or the much hyped PSSR upscaling tech. But if gaming is your only use case, the PS5 Pro doesn't seem to be quite as overpriced as it might first appear.