The truth is that gaming PC ‘is’ expensive, particularly when you want console-equivalent performance for a console-equivalent price. But since most consoles hit the wall before they can reach enthusiast-grade performance, enthusiast gamers opt for a more powerful machine that consists of a powerful CPU-GPU combo and components that are far superior you can currently have on the consoles.
However, this particular category is small, and the majority of gamers cannot spend thousands of dollars on a single gaming PC, and the reason why gaming consoles exist in the market. Both gaming PCs and consoles have been evolving for decades and the current peak performance you can get on a console is the PlayStation 5 Pro. However, that costs $700 and the majority of the mid-range consoles cost between $300-$500, including PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series S/X, and the like.
Can Intel Arc B580 make a difference?
Now the reason why a lot of gamers simply opt for consoles is their cost-effectiveness and the ability to get powerful performance for a couple hundred bucks, which usually is much higher when you try to build an equivalent gaming PC. A complete gaming setup requires various accessories and peripherals that add up to $100-$200 but the result is definitely much more multi-purpose than a gaming console.
But with the Intel Arc B580 release, much of it looks in favor of PC gaming. It’s not necessarily due to its performance as we already have some good-performing Radeon and NVIDIA GPUs for $250 but it’s because of its specifications, which include higher VRAM and somewhat better raster performance out of the box than the competitors. At $a 250 price tag, the total system cost tends to remain under $1000, giving users a choice to build a powerful yet affordable gaming system that can outperform a powerful gaming console.
Since the $1000 price point is still twice the amount you would spend on a console like PlayStation 5, we have to try to reduce the total cost of the PC to around $500-$700. It may take some compromises but the result will be a more powerful system than the PlayStation 5 that can replace your console for the next few years.
Why the Intel Arc B580 is different?
Let me get straight to the point: It’s because of the strong performance and the VRAM capacity. The Arc B580 not only outperforms the more expensive RTX 4060 but also offers 4GB higher memory that does pretty well in modern titles as well as higher resolutions such as 1440p. This alone makes a big difference since there isn’t any $250 GPU with 12 GB VRAM except for Arc B580 from the latest AMD and NVIDIA lineups
This enhances its capability to run games much more smoothly than PlayStation 5 as the latter uses a shared 16 GB RAM for CPU and GPU usage. Nonetheless, if we compare it with the PlayStation 5 Pro, things are a bit different as the PS5 Pro has dedicated 16 GB of GDDR6 memory plus a 2 GB DDR5 dedicated system memory.
At the end of the day, the Arc B580 is almost as good as the GPU on the PS5 Pro but will have an edge once it is coupled with a more powerful CPU than present on the PS5 and Pro versions. These consoles still rock the several-year-old Zen 2-based 8-core processor, which gets decimated even by the Zen 3 lineup, particularly by the X3D chips. Moreover, there isn’t any limitation to how much system memory you can have and the overclocking ability, which gives you free performance just by some tweaks.
How much do you have to spend on a gaming PC to get console-equivalent gaming performance?
The total expense will depend on your requirements but it’s best to decide on the budget beforehand. However, as we want to replace console gaming, the budget should be anywhere between $500-$800, considering you want to outperform the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and the PlayStation 5 Pro. Each of these consoles has a performance equivalent to RTX 3060 Ti, RX 6700 XT, RX 7600 XT, RTX 4060, etc.
While it’s going to be easier to select the components if your budget is between $700-$800, it’s going to be a bit difficult when the budget range is $600-$700 and even more difficult in the $500-$600 range. As for the $700-$800 range, we have already created a nearly $700 gaming build with Arc B580 that can easily own PS5 and Pro versions.
To reduce the cost by $100-$200, we will need to choose a slower CPU, possibly a Ryzen 5600X instead of the Ryzen 5700X3D we used in the $700 gaming build. Now we will no longer need an aftermarket CPU cooler and it’s also possible to save some cost on the motherboard by replacing the B450 chipset motherboard with an A520 chipset one. This should make the total cost somewhere around $550-$600, which is a solid configuration that the consoles can’t compete against when the price-to-performance ratio is considered.
$600 console-killer build with Intel Arc B580
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
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| AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core, 12-Thread Unlocked... | $124.99 $112.99 | Order On Amazon | |
| ASUS Prime B450M-A II AMD AM4 (Ryzen 5000,... | $89.99 $79.99 | Order On Amazon | |
| CORSAIR VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 RAM 16GB (2x8GB)... | $32.99 | Order On Amazon | |
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Advantages of Arc B580 and gaming PC over consoles
Gaming consoles have definitely come a long way in upgrading their technologies and features but discrete desktop GPUs are still one step ahead. While PS5 and PS5 Pro do support other than just rasterization but are still limited in many areas like upscaling and various APIs. These do have the ray tracing potential, but the Arc B580 is more mature in ray tracing, plus, it supports additional technologies such as Vulkan, OpenCL, OpenGL, etc., making them highly beneficial for a variety of games using these APIs.
That said, one can use a variety of GPU-oriented applications on the Arc B580 for content creation and even game development, which usually consoles aren’t capable of. Gaming PCs are generally superior to consoles as they can support a lot of applications as they ship with operating systems like Windows or Linux-based OS and have the ability to execute more complex operations.
While this post isn’t entirely about Gaming PC vs Console, one should keep these points before making the purchase. Of course, there are instances where a console might seem more convenient than the Arc B580 and gaming PC as a whole but it can’t compensate for the missing features.
So, can the Arc B580 replace your console GPU?
This depends on the situation. If you are already playing on a gaming console, you would have to spend at least $600 to build a PC like the one we listed above. But if you haven’t decided yet, the Arc B580 can definitely replace any modern gaming console efficiently, allowing you to do and explore much more than what is possible on the consoles.
While game optimizations are certainly better on the consoles, there are a limited number of games each console can support and the PC games library is quite bigger than what you can have there. At the end of the day, this is about the raw performance and we showed you how the Arc B580 can take over even the PS5 Pro with our listed configuration.
