Although several generations out of date now, GTX 1660Ti builds like this one are still very relevant for 1080p gaming in 2023 and if you’re trying to jump into PC gaming on a budget, this would be a great option. Gaming Workstations & Services is no stranger to my weekly newsletter as they’re back with another build that checks off all my boxes. Let’s take a look.
Favorite Features
- GTX 1660Ti – Let’s talk about this GPU first as it may have fallen off your radar lately. Compared to more recent cards, the 1660Ti is sitting just under the RTX 3050 and also in between the 6500XT and RX 6600 in terms of performance. Basically, it can still handle any game in 1080p if you tweak the settings a bit, and works perfectly in a budget build like this.
- Ryzen 5 1600AF – Pretty much the same exact concept at the 1660Ti. This is a CPU that is slightly “outdated” these days, but can still handle 1080p gaming without a problem. The AF version is very close to the Ryzen 5 2600 in terms of performance, and it’s still a very capable 6 core and 12 threaded chip. Pairing it with the 3600MHz RAM kit that’s in this build also unlocks it’s performance so it’s not bottlenecked by RAM speed.
- Aesthetics – This is obvious coming from me, but the aesthetics department is just as important as performance when it comes to gaming PCs in my world. For under $700, I love how on-point the design of this build is, and it can also be customized to whatever color scheme you want. I do think purple is a great choice as you can see in the pictures, but the all black parts with white accents will pair very nicely with any color that you set the RGB fans to. I’m also loving the attention to detail with painting the stock AMD CPU cooler (and rotating it), as well as it matching the cable extensions and RAM sticks.
Price to Performance Value
There’s actually a ton of gaming PCs currently listed on Jawa for the $650-$700 price range. In my opinion this one is the best looking out of all of them (which is why it got my attention) and the performance specs are competitive but not the absolute best. For the absolute best price to performance in this price category, I’d be searching for an RX 5700XT build, and I do see some of those available on our platform right now. (The 5700XT beats the 1660Ti by about 20-40 FPS in most games)
First Upgrades
You can upgrade literally anywhere you want to with this build, but no individual component is in dire need at its current state. The 1600AF, 16GB at 3600MHz, and GTX 1660Ti are all balanced very well with each other, and the support components are good enough as well. The weakest point of this build is probably the Silicon Power 1TB SSD because it’s a 2.5” SATA drive, so upgrading this to a 1TB NVMe option would give you a significant read/write speed boost if you need it.
Conclusion
This kind of caught me off guard a bit, but the $650-$700 gaming PC market is really hot on Jawa right now, especially with builds like this one on the scene. This isn’t the absolute highest price to performance package available in this price range, but if you’re willing to sacrifice a tiny bit of performance in order to get a minimal and clean aesthetic design, then this is the best combination. Be sure to check out the plethora of other options Gaming Workstations & Services has available, they’ve sold over 140 products on Jawa so far!
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