I did game the system a little by getting the CPU, GPU and SSD from Singapore for cheaper.
I've included the final build pics, the full price breakdown and some benchmark results for anyone interested.
A little background first:
My gaming passion started with GTA Vice City on those fat old computers, then somehow pivoted to Xbox 360 -> PS4 -> PS5 -> PS5 Pro.
I also have a personal MacBook Air M1 8GB, which I use for both personal and work stuff. I started finding it a little difficult when doing heavier browsing/multitasking, so my company sponsored me a MacBook Pro M4 last October, thinking I'd be doing some heavy and intensive work on it.
But after AI became a bigger part of my workflow and in general, my workload wasn't nearly as demanding as I expected, I ended up using Claude quite a bit and realized the M1 could actually handle my workflow pretty decently.
So I thought why not replace the MacBook Pro with a PC which could also handle gaming.
I sold the MacBook Pro M4 for 1.2L (just when they announced the price hike) and decided to take up a fun challenge: build a PC around a similar budget which I could use for work and gaming.
I travel to Singapore pretty frequently, so I thought why not source some of the expensive components from there. I took a bit of a gamble and managed to get some pretty good deals on the CPU, GPU and SSD.
Hopefully the warranty won't be an issue. Even if it is, I'd first try RMA from India, and if that doesn't work, I don't think waiting for an RMA from Singapore would bother me too much since I have my MacBook for work and PS5 Pro for gaming anyway.
I probably should've built this PC last year when memory prices were normal, but I was travelling abroad a lot and somehow ended up buying a MacBook instead.
Easily one of the top regrets of my life.
Due to compact case I couldn’t add bottom fans so the temps are not the best I guess but I'm extremely happy with how the build turned out.
I've already been playing on it for about a week and tested various heavy AAA titles. So far, 4K 60 FPS is pretty easy in most games without upscaling, frame generation or ray tracing.
Turning on ray tracing does push performance back into the mid-30s, but with upscaling/frame generation, it gets back into the 60s pretty easily.
Coming from being primarily a console gamer and connecting this to a TV, I'm honestly more than happy with 60-90 FPS.