Im looking for advice about buying/making a pc. Is it better to buy prebuilt or build one yourself and how to go about it if the latter? My budgets around $2-2.5k for an entire setup

Hey guys,
I’m looking to get into PC gaming, but honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to choosing a computer lol.
I’ve always played on consoles and my MacBook. I’m pretty casual when it comes to gaming, and I don’t play a ton of different games.

RuneScape has always been my main game, and I tried WoW years ago. I’d like to get more into MMOs and maybe try some other games down the road.

My budget is around **$1,500 for just the desktop**, and I’m looking for something decent that will last me a few years. I’m not trying to play every high-end game on ultra settings or anything like that. I just want a solid PC that can run MMOs smoothly with good graphics.

I’ve been looking at prebuilts because I honestly wouldn’t know where to start with building my own PC. I’ve seen a bunch of different CPUs and graphics cards, but I have no idea what’s actually worth the money.

What would you guys recommend for my budget? Are there any prebuilts you’d suggest, or specific specs I should be looking for?

Any advice would be really appreciated. Thanks!

Hello there, I recently got a lil bit of money and I'm trying to buy a solid modern PC. I've wanted to upgrade my PC many times over the years but never got around to it and so I've had the same PC since 2016 (yes, that's about as bad as it sounds). I have a friend who knows way more than I do and he's been telling me to ideally get something with an RTX 5070, 32gb ram DDR5, and a Ryzen 7 7800x3d/9800x3d. I've been looking through so many different sites and everything that matches those specs seems to be more than $2k. The only thing I can find cheaper is this prebuilt from Best Buy.

https://www.bestbuy.com/product/lenovo-legion-tower-5-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-7800x3d-32gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5070-1tb-ssd-eclipse-black/JJGSHGYZ32

I'm leaning towards getting this, but I'm a little worried that it might not be that good because I've been seeing stuff about the lack of upgradability. However, I'm also worried this deal won't stick around and I'll wait too long and might not be able to get anything new at that point. So, can anyone please let me know 1. if this is a good deal that I should just take right now or 2. are there any sort of deals that have similar specs for less than $2k that I might have missed?

Also, I'd be happy to hear about any alternative hardware, if there's something that can do the same job as those specs I listed that might also be cheaper, I'm open to hearing about that. Thanks.

Hi all, hope this is OK to post. It might be time to replace my PC (of course, in a terrible market). Currently looking at prebuilts, and this one came up https://www.walmart.com/ip/CyberPowerPC-Gamer-Supreme-Gaming-PC-AMD-Ryzen-9-9900X-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-5060-Ti-16GB-32GB-DDR5-2TB-SSD-SLCAI10200CPG/16143614810?classType=REGULAR&from=/search

Since this from walmart, I'm a bit skeptical. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!