How Much Does Gaming PC Cost In South Africa

A gaming computer, also known as a gaming PC, is a specialized personal computer designed for playing video games at very high standards. Gaming PCs typically differ from mainstream personal computers by using high-performance video cards and high core-count central processing units with raw performance.

How Much Does Gaming PC Cost In South Africa

It operates on a Windows 10 Home operating system and has a RAM of 32GB DDR4-2666. The Corsair One i164 has a Corsair SF600 power supply and supports Gigabit Ethernet and Bluetooth for networking. Its average market price in South Africa is R54,000.

How much it costs to build a 4K gaming PC in South Africa

Thanks to the ever-improving range of gaming hardware components, it is possible to build a PC that can run games reliably at a resolution of 4K (3,840 x 2,160).

Games are also becoming larger and more demanding, however, with improved textures, new graphics and lighting features, and functionality for new technology such as ray-tracing demanding more powerful GPUs, better CPUs, and more storage space.

This, in turn, requires high-end PC gamers to upgrade their hardware, equip their gaming rigs with more powerful GPUs, better CPUs, and more storage space.

Building a 4K gaming machine is undeniably expensive, as only the most powerful components can deliver the performance required to drive acceptable frame rates at this resolution.

It is even more expensive now, however, due to the increased price of tech components – a phenomenon that has been attributed to the devaluation of the South African rand against the US dollar.

4K PC build

To see how much a 4K-ready gaming PC costs in South Africa in 2020, we put together a build on paper.

The build includes an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super, which can meet the demands of many 4K titles on the market while being considerably less expensive than the more powerful RTX 2080 Ti.

It also includes a powerful, multi-core processor to reduce potential bottlenecks and a chassis/motherboard combination large enough to accommodate upgrades.

An SSD and mechanical hard disk are both included in the build to reduce boot times while offering large storage for games.

4K BuildComponentPrice
MotherboardASRock B450 ATX motherboardR2,099
ProcessorAMD Ryzen 5 3600R4,399
RAM2x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3,200MHzR1,369
StorageSamsung 860 Evo 500GB SSDR1,999
WD Blue 1TB HDDR849
GraphicsPalit GeForce RTX 2080 SuperR14,799
Power SupplyCorsair CS750M 750W PSUR2,299
ChassisGamdias Argus E4R649
Total PriceR28,462

Monitors

The build above sports powerful hardware, including the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Super, which can drive all but the most demanding games at 60 frames per second.

The SSD in the build will reduce boot times for the operating system and if you want to speed up your load times, you can always purchase a bigger SSD to store your games on.

The AMD Ryzen CPU boasts six cores with 12 threads and is overclockable, making it a future-proof choice for a 4K gaming build.

A 4K gaming machine requires a UHD monitor, and preferably one with a variable refresh rate, and this adds a substantial amount to the total build price.

Several 4K monitor options for South African gamers, ranging from entry-level to high-end, are detailed below.

  • Samsung 32-inch UHD Space Monitor – R8,499
  • Samsung 28-inch QLED UHD Monitor (FreeSync) – R12,853
  • Dell 43-inch UHD IPS Monitor – R12,999

Thes election of UHD gaming monitors in South Africa is currently relatively limited, but this is expected to improve going forward.

Driving a resolution of 3,840 x 2,160 generally requires expensive firepower, but the build above should have no problem delivering good framerates in most titles at this resolution.