The new reports coming out of Konami, of all companies, has some major potential for PC gaming. No, there’s not a new PC game coming from the legendary company. Many fans have long suspected that Konami would pull out of gaming entirely, and they have some support for this idea. The lack of action outside of gambling and tie-in products has been well-noted at this point.
As reported by Tom’s Hardware, the Japanese company now has a new plan to break into an entirely new market. The company has announced that they’re using their experience with Pachinko Machines to develop a line of gaming PCs called the Konami Arespear line. As of now, there are 3 choices within the line, each with their own specs and pricepoints. Pre-orders are already being accepted in some markets, and Konami expects to begin shipping PCs in September 2020.
So what’s under the hood?
The new Konami Arespear line is the direct product of the Konami Amusements division, and they will sport price ranges from $1750 to $3200 USD. For those prices, even for pre-built systems, one would expect a pretty beefy rig. So what components do the various configurations sport?
The cheapest model, the Arespear C300, comes with an Intel i5-9400F processor, an Nvidia GTX 1650, and 8GB of DDR4-2666 memory. For context, that same configuration would cost about $800 to $900 USD if you were to build it yourself using the cheapest equivalent parts out right now. And that includes a monitor and a bit of wiggle room for extra peripherals.
As for the Konami Arespear C700 and C700+, we are looking at a water-cooled i7-9700, an Nvidia RTX 2070 Super, and 16GB DDR4-2666 memory. And yes, that’s the same config for both models. Both models sport a 512GB NVME M.2 PCIe SSD for an OS drive, with a mass storage 1 TB SATA HDD.
The biggest difference between the C700 and C700+ is that the overall style of the build will vary a bit. The more expensive of the two will also sport a customized RGB solution for the case. The cases on all three appear very similar, and have a front panel design very reminiscent of the “cheese grater” design of certain premium Apple computers. All three Konami Arespear models will house an Asus Xonar AE discrete sound card as well, for added audio power.
Pre-orders in Japan are open now, although there has been no announcement that these units would ship outside of Japan. And frankly, there are better SIs out there. So if you’re looking for a new prebuilt gaming PC, there are other options outside of Japan.
