The Best PC You Can Buy for R13,000 Today

Many buyer’s guides focus on giving someone one thing to think about, and that’s a fair way of putting one together. Line up a bunch of products that are similar to each other and in the same price range, and debate the pros and cons of each. 

But that assumes that you, dear reader, have needs satisfied by that one thing, and the trouble is that you likely do not. Diverse as a snowflake are the customers we cater to, and there’s certainly no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to computing.

So then, you have R13,000 to spend today and there’s a lot on your mind. What can you build or buy with that kind of money?

A Mac Mini M4 - R12,999

A Mac Mini M4

Apple’s move to their own in-house processors shocked the world when they first announced the Apple M1 SoC in 2020. They rapidly transitioned macOS away from Intel’s x86 processors and moved to a clean sheet design based on the ARM ISA (instruction set architecture). Apple famously had near insurmountable performance leads in the mobile space with their A-Series Bionic processors - could they do it again with M1? 

Now on its fourth generation, Apple Silicon is efficient and stunningly powerful for running most things you’d want to do on a computer. Together with the high-speed soldered memory and the fast GPU, the M4 can accelerate video production workloads, enhance AI performance, and play the occasional game or two. In a tiny footprint!

And the Mini has connectivity too. The base model has three Thunderbolt 4 ports, 10Gbps USB Type-C, WiFi and Bluetooth built-in, and a full 48Gbps HDMI 2.1 port for ultra high resolution displays. macOS might be a bit of a change compared to Windows if you’re used to that, but it’s an arguably better computing experience if you’re a developer or content creator.

If you already have a monitor, mouse and keyboard on hand, it's the closest you can get to Plug 'n Play computing.

An Entire GMKTec NucBox M6 Setup - R12,815

Here at the office we’re huge fans of GMKTec’s mini PCs. Their diminutive size matches that of the Intel NUC at five-by-five inches, but the power they pack is very unexpected. Our favourite is the NucBox M6 with the AMD Ryzen 6600H processor. It comes with six cores, beefy RDNA2 on-board graphics, and up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB SSD in our upgraded configuration. Windows 11 Pro is even pre-installed.

As a foil to the idea that computers are expensive, this machine is the perfect match for everyday needs, whether that is office productivity or casual gaming, or even some light content creation. All you need is a mouse and keyboard, a monitor, and headphones to get set up. 

Did we mention that it plays games? Most modern titles will run at low settings at 720P or 1080P resolution, and at decent framerates too. Older classics and emulation will be buttery smooth. If your needs are simple and you don’t need all the fidelity, this is a great casual gaming machine.

A Wootbook Y14 - R12,999

Our Wootbooks offer configurations you won’t find anywhere else, and with more value than bigger brands like Dell or Lenovo. The mylar touchpad feels very smooth, the keys feel solid and not at all mushy, and the monster 80Wh battery would see you through even four hours of loadshedding (fingers crossed we never mention that again).

And it has AMD’s Ryzen 7 8845HS at its core. Its eight CPU cores based on the Zen 4 architecture will do anything you ask of them, and the meaty RDNA3 on-board graphics and Ryzen AI NPU will speed up AI workloads of the future. That 120Hz IPS display is something else too, Baldur's Gate 3 looks really nice on it.

The flexibility to add your own RAM and storage and operating system makes it feel more like purchasing a desktop computer than a laptop - you get to choose the configuration that suits you. All that power is also portable. The Y14 is an excellent companion for travel, for on-site work, for light mobile gaming, for school and university, and as a content consumption device. 

If you’re brave enough, you can even install Linux on it. 

A Full Custom Build - R12,872

Our PC Builder has pretty much everything you need to assemble a custom PC, and we get under budget with labour included for our parts selection. If you'd like to play a bit more with the idea, you can even auto-generate builds suggested by our PC Builder Wizard.

The system we'd suggest comes with a Ryzen 5 5600 6-core processor, an ASUS PRIME A520M-K motherboard, and 16GB of DDR4 RAM (now the cheapest it's ever been!), for a solid starting platform. You can upgrade from here to any socket AM4 CPU, even the Ryzen 7 5700X3D if you so fancy, or casually max out the board with 64GB of RAM.

The GPU is a XFX Radeon RX 6600 SWFT 210, a nice little powerhouse for 1080p gaming. The 8GB of RAM will still be usable for most games with high texture settings, and a fluid 60fps should be possible too. Storage is affordable these days too - a 1TB solid state drive is more than enough for Call of Duty Warzone and whatever else you choose to play.

This whole system fits into an ATX chassis with a ton of room to spare. We like Antec's AX20 for the decent triple fans included at the front, and the DeepCool PF500 will afford for upgrades in the future, perhaps to an RDNA4 GPU from AMD or NVIDIA's next RTX generation.

All you need is a copy of Windows to get set up and you're off to the next Steam sale!

In Conclusion: Pre-built Mini PCs, a laptop, or a desktop tower are all on the table. We've never had this much performance on tap for this little money. It's a great time to buy into new hardware.