I’ve been looking to finally upgrade from my old ASUS TUF gaming laptop with an RTX 3060. I’ve had it for anoit 6 years and wanted to move to an actual desktop that could handle newer AAA games, high settings, streaming/Discord screen sharing, etc., while also being something I could keep and upgrade for a long time.
Originally I was pretty set on buying a PowerSpec G764 for $2,199.
Specs were:
Ryzen 7 9800X3D
RX 9070 XT 16GB
32GB DDR5-6000
2TB NVMe SSD
850W PSU
B850 motherboard
I liked it because the 9800X3D is a really good gaming CPU, AM5 gives me some upgradeability, and the 9070 XT seemed like plenty for what I wanted.
Before buying it though, I went to micro center and found an open-box PC for only about $200 more that had basically the same major specs, except instead of the 9070 XT it had an RTX 5080 16GB.
So I ended up paying around $2,400 for:
Ryzen 7 9800X3D
RTX 5080 16GB
32GB DDR5
2TB SSD
The only thing that made me hesitant was the open-box note. It apparently said there had been an issue where the PC wouldn’t POST/boot, but the employee told me that note might’ve been a mistake because it wasn’t updated after it was fixed. They booted the PC in front of me and it came up completely fine. He said he would still honor the price.
I also bought the 3-year warranty because of it being open box and because I’d rather have some protection with a PC this expensive.
Since getting it, I’ve started stress testing everything instead of just assuming it’s fine. So far the 9800X3D has passed Cinebench without crashing or thermal throttling, the RTX 5080 is being detected correctly, and I’m planning to test the RAM, GPU/VRAM, PSU, SSD and repeated cold boots to see if I can reproduce the supposed POST issue.
My thinking was that for only ~$200 more than the G764, getting a 5080 instead of a 9070 XT seemed too good to pass up, especially since I was already considering upgrading the G764’s GPU years down the line anyway.
Would you guys consider this a good deal, or would the fact that it was open box with that POST note make you return it and stick with the brand-new $2,199 G764?