Even though slim laptops get most of the shopping attention, discerning users know that for major power and storage, a desktop is still the way to go. For those of us who have the freedom to use whatever machine we want for our daily work, or if you don’t need a portable device for your home computing, a desktop can max out your experience for a comparatively small price.
The Best Home and Office Desktop Deals for December 2022
The Best Gaming Desktop Deals for December 2022
When it comes to desktops, many are no longer the massive plastic brick towers of yesteryear. Oftentimes they sit snugly on a bookshelf or even in a drawer if you’ve got enough airflow to keep it cool. Whether you tuck it away or sit it next to your monitor, these devices offer a flexibility that’s hard to equal with a laptop.
Want to swap your old creaky HDD for an 8TB solid-state drive? Go for it! Add in some more RAM? Plug it in. Want a wall of monitors, be they curved, vertical, or extra-wide? Still need that CD burner drive? Add away. All of these are much easier options to trick out on a desktop device.
If your desktop upgrades include a high-powered graphics processor, the best way to see those impressive graphics is with a sharp monitor. Max out your brightness and refresh rate for the strongest, sharpest response (and save a few dollars with our roundup of discounted monitors).
Home and Office Desktop Deals
Dell OptiPlex 3000 Micro 12th Generation Intel i5
Think of this tiny OptiPlex as a response to the Mac mini. Dell packed a high-powered PC into a desktop box just about 7 inches square. For most work-from-home tasks, web browsing, and video streaming, the latest 12th Generation Intel i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and the 256GB hard drive should be enough for most users. Unlike most OptiPlex deals we see, this configuration includes a Wi-Fi card. You can save some extra cash by declining the keyboard or mouse options on the page.
Dell Inspiron 3910 Intel i7 512GB SSD 16GB RAM Desktop
This Inspiron 3910 series desktop features the 12th Generation Intel Core i7 processor. This configuration also comes with a 512GB SSD and 16GB of RAM, plus it comes equipped and ready to work with Windows 11 Pro. This is a decent entry-level desktop for those who don’t need much storage space and just want something to do word processing, surf the web, and maybe some media streaming.
HP Pavilion TP01 12th Generation Intel i5 Dual Storage
The HP Pavilion TP01 is an affordable option for your everyday PC. The Intel Core i5 12th Generation processor will easily handle multitasking between web surfing, streaming music, and document editing. Plus, the dual-storage configuration is the best of both worlds: fast load times and increased storage capacity.
Dell Inspiron 27 7710 Intel i7 MX550 Dual Storage AIO Touch Desktop
A sleek All-in-One desktop is a great solution for those with limited desk space. The 27-inch display houses everything you need: A 12th generation Intel Core i7 10-core processor, a 512GB SSD and 1TB HDD dual storage combo, and 16GB of RAM. The MX550 GPU is good for some light gaming, though you may want something more powerful if you’re going to be playing more resource-intensive titles. It also has a built-in pop-up camera for video chatting, five USB ports, and Wi-Fi 6E capability. Keyboard and mouse not included.
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Gaming Desktop Deals
HP Omen 25L Intel i5 RTX 3050
The HP Omen 25L desktop PC has a 12th Gen Intel Core i5 processor and RTX 3050 graphics card. It will be fully capable of playing games at 60fps or higher at 1080p resolutions, though some of the more resource-intensive games may need lower settings. The modern case design features a glass window so you can see your PC’s inner-workings, and as an added bonus, the RGB lighting is fully customizable.
SkyTech Shadow 3.0 Ryzen 5 RTX 3060
Inside this PC is an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 6-core CPU, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 GPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. SkyTech also provides an 80 Plus Gold Certified 600 Watt power supply with a heatsink and three RGB fans. All of this is encased in a SkyTech Shadow gaming case with tempered glass.
Acer Predator Orion 5000 Intel i7 RTX 3080
The Acer Predator Orion 5000 is a powerful machine capable of high-fidelity gaming and multitasking heavier workloads like video and photo editing, plus streaming.The 12th Generation Intel Core i7 processor is a cutting-edge CPU, and coupled with a lightning-quick gen 4 1TB SSD, your programs and games have never loaded up more quickly. As an added bonus, you can customize the lighting to your liking with up to 16.7m different colors. The PredatorSense Pulsar Lightning gives you an even higher degree of creative freedom
How much should I pay for a desktop computer?
Your money goes further with desktop PCs and their components versus laptops. You can find complete mini PCs for very light work or display-signage duty for less than $400, and perfectly serviceable small towers for $400 to $600. Gaming desktops with dedicated graphics cards start at around $500 to $600. You can also find all-in-one (AIO) desktops, with the display and all of the computing components built into a single device, starting at around $400. The sky’s the limit once you get into high-end gaming PCs and business-workstation power desktops, but the prices above are the right range for most mainstream buyers.
Is it better to get an all-in-one computer or desktop?
Traditional tower desktops offer the most upgrade and power flexibility, at the cost of bulk. Most towers have generous interior space and full-size motherboards, so you can install one or more (sometimes, many more) secondary storage drives, more RAM in empty slots on the motherboard, and a video card (if the PC doesn’t come with one). PC gamers will want to stick with a traditional tower.
An all-in-one desktop’s big appeal is saving you lots of space, since the PC is built right in, with the components living behind the display. It comes down to how much you care about the desk area your PC uses up, and whether you happen to be shopping for a desktop monitor at the same time. Budget AIOs with basic feature sets are common, but spending more can gain you some combination of a touch-enabled screen, a panel with high native resolution, roomier storage, and a more muscular processor. Higher-end AIO desktops tend to cater, though, to content creators and productivity-app power users, not gamers,
Is it cheaper to build a PC or buy one right now?
It depends, largely, on the kind of desktop you are looking to buy or build. At the low end, economies of scale for the components, plus the cost of single Windows 10 or 11 licenses, tend to make buying a prebuilt PC a better deal. It’s when you get into the $1,000-and-up zone that building your own starts to make more sense, especially if you can reuse parts from an existing PC build. For the last few years, the inflated cost of graphics cards made building your own PC a lot less attractive. That price pressure has relented in 2022, though.
How much does a good budget PC cost?
Expect to pay a solid $400 to $500 for a basic, competent small tower for day-in/day-out productivity and web work. You’ll find plenty of models below $400, especially in the mini PC class, but you should insist on at least 8GB of system memory for any Windows machine, and, for anything beyond very basic productivity work, a Core i3 or Ryzen 3 processor.
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