Just because PCWorld couldn't do it, doesn't mean that it couldn't be done. They seamed married to the 3700X, for example, when there would have been cheaper 8 core 2000 series parts, and many games might have even run better on the faster than console clocked 6 core parts if they were intent on keeping Zen 2 parity. Though, I suspect they are fairly selective about what they consider equivalent, because they chose an nVidia GPU and not an RDNA2 part from AMD. They could have also likely saved some money on the motherboard. They chose a $180 board when AM4 boards were available under $100, sometimes as low as $50-60, at that time.
That system is massively over specified for an equal experience to the PS5 as should be obvious from their choice of RTX 3070 on the GPU side.
I mean, a $180 motherboard? I don't have a $180 motherboard in my own 5800X3D/4070Ti/32GB RAM system which will likely smoke a PS5 Pro, let alone the PS5.
Let's take the specs one at a time:
CPU
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X - $305 - A 3700X is overkill for a broadly equivalent experience, a 3600X would have saved $100 and given pretty much the same experience. Yes, slower in some games that burden the PC CPU more than the console CPU, but faster in others that don't. Reasonably equivalent on balance.
Motherboard
Asus TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) ATX - $180 - As noted above this is a ridiculous choice for a budget conscious build. Your own
link from earlier showed that an ASRock B450M could be picked up for $60 and provides all the required interfaces for a build that delivers an equivalent experience. Saving - $120.
RAM
G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB DDR4/3600 (2x8GB) - $64. The Ryzen 3xxx series doesn't even support faster that DDR4 3200 Mhz so why are we spending extra money on 3600Mhz memory? Saving ~$15
Graphics card
Nvidia RTX 3070 - $500 - And noted in my earlier post, a 3060Ti would save $100 here and is still more than fast enough to match and exceed the PS5 in almost every scenario.
Storage
Sabrent Rocket 1TB NVMe Gen 4 SSD - $200 - As noted by others, a fast Gen4 NVMe is simply not required for an equivalent to PS5 experience. There are no tangible benefits for gaming between a Gen3 and a Gen4 NVMe. And if any can be found, they would be minor and countable on one hand. Again your earlier link showed a 500MB Gen3 NVMe could have been picked up for $61. So we either get 2 of them or a 1TB equivalent for $120. A saving of $80 for more total storage albeit at a slightly slower speed.
PSU
Cooler Master MasterWatt 750W 80+ Bronze - $95 - Even the article states this overkill for their chosen system, and the changes I make here make the system even less energy hungry. Your own link from earlier showed we can get a 500w PSU which is plenty for this system for $48, saving another $47.
Case
Metallic Gear Neo Air ATX Mid-Tower (White) - $60- No issue here
OS
Windows 10 Pro license - $40 - No issues here (and feely upgradable to Windows 11)
Controller
Sony PlayStation DualSense Controller - $70 - Lol, just why? How is this in any way the optimal solution for PC gaming where the defacto control pad is Xbox for $50? Granted no K/M was included in this build though so I won't claim a saving here, but I will claim a superior control inteface because this PC will offer both gamepad and mouse/keyboard support.
Total: $1,514 - Total saving - $462 for a new total system cost of $1052 including additional control options, more storage and a faster GPU. And the cost minus the GPU? $652. Still well below your previously claimed 'more than $800'.
but my bad, I said MB rather than GB. So to clarify, a 500GB 3500MB/s NVMe SSD was $61.
