Nineteen builds is a lot to sort through. But the decision is actually simple. Tell us what you’re going to do with the machine, and we’ll line up the builds that match—cheapest first, flagship last. Pick the one that fits your budget. That’s it.
Every build in this list ships with gaming drivers (AMD Adrenaline or Nvidia GeForce) for maximum frame rates. Pick the rung that matches your budget—every machine above it plays every game smoother, and every machine below it still plays every game well. There is no wrong choice on this ladder. Just different amounts of headroom.
Video editing, 3D rendering, CAD, photo work, audio production. These workloads need cores, RAM, and VRAM—and they need silicon that holds its clocks through a 4-hour export without throttling. Every build on this ladder ships with workstation-class configurations (ISV-certified Pro drivers where applicable). Each rung shows its PassMark CPU Mark score and dollars-per-point so you can see exactly what your budget buys in raw multi-threaded compute. Mac Studio prices anchor the price tier. The real comparison is total workstation capability—RAM, VRAM, upgradeability, CUDA—not raw CPU throughput alone.
You game on the weekends and edit YouTube videos Sunday nights. You stream Warzone while your browser has forty tabs open. You’re in Photoshop all afternoon, then Fortnite all evening. These builds keep gaming drivers active—because Pro drivers cost frames, and every frame matters at the bottom end of this ladder—but pair them with real cores and real RAM. You get the gaming FPS of our dedicated gaming ladder with the cores and memory capacity to handle real productivity work.
We’re a nonprofit, not a storefront. Send us what you’re going to do with the machine—specific software, specific games, specific workflow—and we’ll tell you which build actually fits. No upsells. No “but have you considered.” If the $499 Relic is right for you, that’s what we’ll say.