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Dell’s budget gaming PC won’t be budget by the time you spec it out

Dell’s budget gaming PC won’t be budget by the time you spec it out

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Dell Inspiron Gaming Desktop

Dell is trying to offer more affordable ways into PC gaming than its high-end Alienware line. Its latest attempt is the Inspiron Gaming Desktop, a very entry-level desktop PC that starts at $600 but can be upgraded into a much more capable — and expensive — machine.

At its base configuration, the Inspiron Gaming Desktop has an AMD A10 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and an AMD Radeon RX560, which itself sells for $99 and is one of the lower-end models in AMD’s line of affordable graphics cards.

Dell is building this thing to be upgraded

All of that can be upgraded quite a bit. The machine can be configured with a Ryzen 7 processor, 32GB of RAM, a GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card, and an SSD boot drive. The case can also be set up with liquid cooling, lights, and a transparent side so you can see the internal components.

But not all of that is going to be available at launch. And Dell wasn’t able to provide us with pricing on those upgrades. During a briefing, we were told to expect pricing as high as $2,000, which is a long way away from the Inspiron Gaming Desktop’s $600 starting price.

Dell Inspiron Gaming Desktop

There isn’t really one super coherent story behind this PC. Instead, it’s just a very scalable machine that gives Dell a lot of options to sell, so it can target gamers at different price points.

Earlier this year, Dell also introduced the Inspiron 14 and 15 to begin offering less expensive gaming laptops. It seems likely we’ll continue to see the Inspiron line expand to give Dell a way to appeal to gamers who aren’t ready to pay Alienware’s higher prices.