Next Wednesday, ALDI is selling a gaming PC. Yeah, ALDI. And it’s not the no-brand junk that you’d expect to get at your local big-box electronics retailer, either. It’s a fire-breathing quad-core Core i7 with a solid-state drive, 16GB of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card.
This article originally appeared on Gizmodo.
Going on sale for $1999 on Wednesday 2 November, the Medion Gaming PC is specced pretty damn identically to the mid- to high-end gaming PC that I’d build if I was putting one together right about now.
With a quad-core Intel Core i7-6700 that can run at up to 4.0GHz running the show, along with 16GB of DDR4 RAM, a 2TB hard drive and 256GB M.2 solid-state drive, you’ve got a solid foundation for a fast and powerful PC for a bunch of different productivity tasks.
The inclusion of that 8GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card changes the game entirely. Well, it changes the game in that it means the Medion Gaming PC can actually play games. The GTX 1070, paired with a good CPU and enough RAM like this Medion has, is more than capable of 1080p60 gameplay in modern titles and should even handle 1440p60 as long as you’re not playing everything on Ultra.
Of course, you’re not getting a brand name motherboard or GPU from a reputable tier one manufacturer like Asus or MSI or Gigabyte. And your non-K Intel CPU won’t be any good for overclocking. They’re really the only shortcomings of the Medion Gaming PC, to be honest. We can’t speak to the quality of the CPU or GPU cooling or case fans, but what you do get is warranty.
For shits and giggles, I priced up an equivalent PC from my local store, IJK. With a Cooler-Master case and no-brand 420W PSU, the i7-6700, 16GB of RAM, hard drive and SSD and the cheapest GTX 1070, a motherboard with 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and a DVD/CD writer, I got to about $1750. With the annoyance of putting it together, guaranteed compatibility and so on, the Medion is actually pretty decent value.
It even comes with a keyboard and mouse. And USB 3.0, “the data turbo”. My computer doesn’t even have the data turbo.
Comments
8 responses to “ALDI’s $2000 Medion Gaming PC Is Surprisingly Good”
I’m imagine that warranty would be getting a fair workout if it was a 6700K.
Will Kotaku take the proverbial bullet and go road-test this?
Nice specs.
But dear lord, I can only imagine the sh*t show it’s going to be of people fighting to get one of these.
Yeah, any big ticket item like this each Aldi gets maybe 2 or 3? If I had the spare $2,000 I’d be lining up myself, of course I’d need to go get a 4K monitor as well.
It actually is quite good. Cheapest 1070 system from PC case gear is $1900 but it has 8gb less ram and add shipping, $100+, to the price and it comes out a lot more. Will always be cheaper to build your own but unless you can do that, or have someone build it for you for free you will be hard pressed to get a better deal. Well worth it.
Aldi baffles me some times. (in a good way)
Specs are good, price is fair and QC from Medion has really stepped up over the past 7+ years.
As im a power user / tinkerer this wouldn’t suit me at all but for my muggle friend it would be a contender as a pre-built system since he’s not too technical but places like MWAVE or PCCG have some really good pre-built systems that fall into similar price ranges just using higher quality parts.
Im not a fan of generic power supplies as they are the heart of the system pumping power thorough your computers internal organs, strong heart make a strong build but apart from that it looks good.
My uncle has had two PCs and three laptops. They have mostly been fine, despite the generic/cheap components.
Did have an issue with the mobo/PSU using an non standard power connector. And the doco/manuals couldn’t be found online.
honestly for the money you are better of building yourself, even those that say they cant? better quality parts for less cant complain about that
Yeah, I’d be worried the generic mobo would cause some bottle necking. There is no mention of what type of board this is. Think I’d rather build a system with a more appropriate MOBO to tie all these quality parts together.