EE sells pre-built gaming PCs now, including a SFF Lenovo with 24 months Game Pass Ultimate for £812
Plus graphics cards and other PC components.
You may remember that EE sold PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X consoles to their mobile customers during the pandemic, and they've now expanded their range to include PC gaming hardware - including graphics cards and prebuilt desktop PCs.
This option on a pre-built Lenovo LOQ tower PC is the pick of the bunch, with a total cost of £812: £20 upfront and £33 per month for the full 24 month term. You also get 24 months of Xbox Live Ultimate and 24 months of free video and game data on your EE plan (details below), which makes the price a little more reasonable for an entry-level spec that includes an RTX 3050 graphics card and Core i5 13400F processor.
The caveat here is that you do need to be an EE customer to access these options on the gaming bundles section on their website and they add on to an existing monthly plan.
This entry-level desktop PC is decently well-appointed for 1080p gaming, with a Core i5 13400F processor that is powerful enough to drive high frame-rates in esports titles like Counter-Strike and Deadlock, with room for more content creation workloads thanks to its 10-core and 16-thread design. The graphics card is an entry-level RTX 3050 8GB card; in our 2022 review we noted it was a decent performer at RRP for 1080p gaming, eclipsing the significantly weaker RX 6500 XT and older GTX 1660 Super, while offering nearly as good performance as the RTX 2060 while costing less.
Besides this, you also get 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM to hit the price-to-performance sweet spot, as well as a 512GB SSD for storage. Both RAM and storage seem to be upgradeable too. Front I/O is solid here, with a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C, and a pair of USB-A ports alongside a 3.5mm combo jack. You get the benefit of speedy networking with Wifi 6E, too, and Bluetooth 5.1 is here as well. Rear I/O is reasonable too, with four USB 2.0 Type-A ports, an HDMI 1.4 port, a 3.5mm audio out, as well as a 2.5-gig Ethernet.
This is also a smaller PC with a 17L internal capacity and a solid grey chassis, complete with small teal accent for a little bit of flair. However, this small size does impact future upgradeability, so we'd recommend a larger pre-built if you want something you can upgrade with a bigger graphics card down the line.
It's certainly possible to buy cheaper pre-built PCs from traditional retailers, but the extras here make up for that. The headline inclusion is 24 months of Xbox Game Pass which is £15 a month on its own. For 24 months, that's £360. You also get 24 months of the Gamer's Data Pass and Video Pass, which exempts certain games and apps from consuming your mobile data. The current EE list includes Pokémon Go, FIFA Mobile, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and streaming content on Twitch. You also get 24 months of EE's Video Data Pass, which allows you to stream video content from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, MTV Play, YouTube, YouTube Kids, BBC iPlayer, BBC iPlayer Kids, Twisted Mirror, TV Player, TNT Sports on Discovery and BritBox outside of your normal data allowance.
It's an interesting offer then, and one that could make sense for new or existing EE customers that are looking to get into PC gaming. We'll have more guides in the future for folks that want to build their own PCs, but in the meantime, have a look at our guide to building a trendy white-coloured gaming PC.