Pls help. We in the PC Gamer hardware den can’t agree on which of the gaming PC deals we spotted today is best. At Newegg, it’s $1,200 (save $500) for the Acer Predator Orion 3000, $1,650 (save $250) for the Skytech Eclipse Lite, or $930 (save $170) for the ABS Cyclone Aqua.

Just considering the deal prices, the Predator Orion 3000 has a bigger discount, of course—we’re talking a 29% off vs 13% off for the more expensive rigs. And the Orion is certainly a great deal in its own right. For just $1,200 you’re getting a veritable high-end setup featuring an RTX 4070, an Intel Core i7 13700F, and DDR5 RAM. Acer’s even throwing in a mouse and keyboard.

A natural choice, right? But, hear me out, $450 extra might well be worth it for the Eclipse Lite, primarily because it’s just such a well-rounded build. In fact, I’d argue it’s the most well-rounded high-end machine for such a reasonable price while this deal’s on.

Quick Links

• ABS Cyclone Aqua | $930 @ Newegg (save $170)
• Acer Predator Orion 3000 | $1,200 @ Newegg (save $500)
• Skytech Eclipse Lite | $1,650 @ Newegg (save $250)

Gaming PC deals

This is because it has the ultimate chef’s kiss of high-end, high-value gaming value hardware. What do I mean by this? Well, for starters, it’s running an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, which is the best CPU for gaming right now, full-stop. It’s also running an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super, which is the best graphics card in its $500-600 price bracket. The RTX 4070 Super, to be clear, is more akin to the RTX 4070 Ti than the RTX 4070, and it goes toe-to-toe with one of our favorite AMD graphics cards, the Radeon RX 7800 XT.

The Eclipse Lite also goes where most cheap RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super rigs do not, offering 32 GB of DDR5 memory that’s actually running at a reasonable speed (5,200 MT/s). It’s 2024, now, and DDR5-4400 just doesn’t quite cut it, in my books. Finally, throw in some aesthetic icing in the form of a white, windowed chassis, and you have a pretty spectacular all-rounder for $1,600. It’s exactly the kind of PC I’d buy today if I was in the market for one. (Can you tell which of the gaming PC deals I prefer, yet?)

Best CPU for gaming: The top chips from Intel and AMD.
Best gaming motherboard: The right boards.
Best graphics card: Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits.
Best SSD for gaming: Get into the game ahead of the rest.

The thing is, though, I can see where the Orion 3000 crew’s coming from. You’re saving $450 extra and getting a rig that won’t perform significantly worse in games. Its RTX 4070 will perform worse (the Eclipse Lite will probably net framerates about 10-20% higher, on average), but games will still be eminently playable at 1440p and even 4K. And $1,200 for such a desktop really is something, considering most similarly priced gaming PCs offer an RTX 4060 Ti. The only real downside is that it has just 16 GB of 4400 MT/s memory.

It seems we’re at an impasse. But, to be fair, it’s an impasse that might very well be decided by your budget. If your budget extends up to $1,650 I’d opt for the Skytech build, but if that’s a bit much, the Acer build won’t disappoint.

Speaking of budgets, though, one thing we in the hardware hovel do agree on is that the $930 (save $170) deal on the ABS Cyclone Aqua, which has been ongoing for a while, is still a cracking one.

For far less than $1,000 you’re getting a rig capable of playing modern games at 1440p on a high refresh rate monitor. The Intel Core i5 13400F is still our favorite budget gaming CPU, and the RTX 4060 Ti handily outperforms other current-gen options in its price range. Most RTX 4060 Ti rigs come in at over $1,000, so ABS is doing us a solid with this one. Oh, and did I mention it comes with 32 GB RAM? Yes, it’s DDR4, but it’s rare to see a build like this featuring 32 GB memory for less than $1,000.

Three solid deals for three different budgets, then. We’ll let you choose between them, because we’re still not having any luck deciding, over here.