Can you build a $500 gaming PC to match the Xbox One X

Microsoft's Xbox One X got an official price tag at E3 last week. At $499, it is coming at the same price of the original Xbox One made its debut. In this case, the additional cost was directly spent on the game power of the platform rather than on its unintended Kinect 2 device.

There is a lively debate going on between the computer and the console gamers on which the platforms offer the best power for your game dollar. Every time a new console hits, it's interesting to compare what it packs with what you can buy in equivalent PC components.

The Xbox One x is intended to target widely 30 fps @ 4 K, although some games, such as Forza Motorsport 7 will have a 60 image rate. For our purposes of comparison, we have targeted the 30 FPS brand. But if you can match the Xbox One x with a PC equivalent build is not only on power; It's also about how you define the word "match."

Definition of certain basic rules

The first thing I want to do is recognize that there will never be a 100%-clean clash between a console and a PC. Not only are the two machines destined for different environments and have different use cases, but people perceive these advantages differently. For a buyer, spending more money on a PC is always common sense, because this system is also the main way they access the Internet, work from home, or use social media. Another buyer can manipulate their browsing from a tablet or smartphone, and find little extra value in the flexibility of a PC.

These are not factors that we can put a dollar value on, or neatly estimate for any PC against the console clash. Even if we only limit ourselves to the question of gambling, the relative value of the ecosystem of each platform varies depending on how you are invested. If you have tons of games on Steam, Xbox Live, or PSN, that will change the way you weigh each platform.

There is also the question of peripherals and displays. If you have a nice game keyboard, mouse, and 4 K monitor, that will push you to the PC side of the equation. If you have already purchased a 4 K HDR TV, you may not be interested in buying a separate monitor. Conversely, if you already have a really nice monitor, you might not want to buy an expensive 4 K TV.

If you have a bunch of friends who already own Xbox ones or PS4s, then paying a monthly fee for online services may not seem important, especially when you can get gift cards that reduce the cost. If you are looking at this issue on the PC side, where non-MMO's tend to be free (and even most MMO's have adopted  F2P model), then you may feel differently.

In short, there will always be specific and particular factors that can tilt a gamer to the consoles or to the PCs. I'm not going to pretend that we can answer these questions simply by comparing PC and pricing the console.

Build new

The next topic I want to address is the question of how we compare PCs with consoles. Thanks to sheer size, Microsoft can get offers on Xbox One X components that you and I just can't touch the purchase of Newegg or Amazon. Part of what complicates this is that Microsoft does not make money on the Xbox One X, which means there is no markup on the parts. Remember, our goal here is to hit the same overall visual quality and frame rate as the Xbox an X should offer. This means that you need more high-end components than what it takes to deliver 1080 p.

For my first PC-versus-console comparison, I put on a PC that would duplicate all the capabilities of the Xbox One, with the exception of UHD Blu-ray playback. Although this first version contains a Blu-ray optical drive, UHD Blu-ray players for PCs are still extremely expensive.

Opting for Intel on AMD may be controversial with some fans, but it's a choice that I stand by if the goal is to squeeze in an Xbox One x comparison. AMD's Ryzen chips are a non-starter; The cheapest Ryzen 5 cores are still $169. There is no room in our budget for such an expensive chip. In the meantime, AMD's FX-class processors are outdated, power-hungry, and often lag behind Intel processors in minimum rate times. The average FPS rates show less difference, but the high minimum frame rates are essential to make a game feel smooth. Also, if you opt for the FX family, you will also be limited to DDR3 and have no upgrade path whatsoever. Ryzen 3 could give an AMD leg in this kind of budget builds, but we'll have to wait for these processors to become available before we know it.

The core i3-7350K is not a quad core, and a quad-core is what we prefer. But it supports two cores, four threads, offering to overclock if paired with a compatible motherboard, and has a high speed of 4.2 GHz. We have an ASRock Z270M to pair it with overclocking.

There is an alternative solution if you want an Intel PC with a slightly lower price point. Falling to an Asrock H270M pulls the price to $85 for the motherboard, while the Intel Pentium G4560 processor also offers hyper-threading, but at a lower frequency of 3.5 GHz. Replacing these two parts for the Core i3-7350K + Asrock Z270M will save you $25 on the motherboard and $25 on the CPU, for a final all-in-cost $850.

The Thermaltake case chassis is not the cheapest you can buy. But larger cases are usually easier to work with and the Thermaltake we have chosen gives you the ability to build with a full ATX motherboard instead of being limited to the MATX options. We opted for a GeForce 1060 6 GB because none of the AMD Rx 500-series cards are selling their supposed MSRP.

There is also some possibility of saving money on the Windows 10 OEM license. I have seen other Windows 10 home key sales companies for less than $100 (typically in the $20-30 $ range) but I am wary of this kind of transactions without insurance the product keys are guaranteed at work. $100 reflects the price of Newegg for the operating system. Obviously, people who don't care about running authentic software can save money there.

But even if we hit $50 off the CPU + motherboard combo, ditch the Blu-ray, and do not count OS cost at all, the PC is still coming to $704.55. The answer is simple: You can not match the power of the Xbox One x in a budget $500 when building your own PC. This will probably change 2-3 years from now. Today, the Xbox One X is a tough case to beat.

What about the upgrade?

I'd be careless, though, if I haven't recognized most PC players have been PC players for years, and already have the existing hardware that can be repurposed in a new build. Again, I can't account for every eventuality – it's possible that your 2012 game platform has enough CPU power and RAM already that the only thing you need is a new GPU (meaning, yes, you can easily beat the Xbox One X at the price point $500). For the sake of simplicity, we have considered a scenario where you need a new processor, GPU, motherboard, and DDR4 RAM, but can source the rest of your components from a previous version.

Here you are on a much stronger ground. In fact, drop to the Pentium G4560 and the Asrock H270M, and you arrived at a final price of only $518. If you have a sand Bridge, Ivy Bridge, or Haswell CPU, you may be able to waive the upgrade of your motherboard and RAM at all, which certainly means you can provide a cost-effective upgrade to the performance level of Xbox One X. For more information on the GTX 1060 and why we chose this particular GPU.

Conclusion: The Xbox One X is technologically hard to beat

Keeping in mind that we are talking strictly about performance, rather than evaluating the TCO with the service costs included online, the Xbox One X is impossible to beat if you build your own system from scratch. Upgrades, however, can be much more fortunate, especially if your system has been high-end in the last five years. Processors and motherboards have not aged the way they used, and a lot of first-order game performance is available from components that would have been far too old to be useful if it was the early 2000s.

But these comparisons will eventually be anchored in personal value issues that no spec sheet can match. If you want to build a Blu-ray UHD collection, Xbox One support for this standard is worth several hundred dollars on an equivalent PC right now. If you have friends who play Xbox One games, being able to play with them is a value that you may not be able to reproduce on the PC until and unless the cross game becomes much more frequent than it is now. If you already have a 4 K TV, you may not want to buy a 4 K monitor (or vice versa). In short, the different ways people perceive this issue will continue to feed many fanboy arguments for the indefinite future.