Newegg’s ChatGPT-powered PC builder is here but it’s absolutely useless

Retailer Newegg has launched an update to its PC builder, now including ChatGPT support. It allows users to input a prompt to gather PC parts recommendations. However, it’s clear that the tool needs work.

The AI rat race developed a new wrinkle this week, as ChatGPT has begun allowing external integrations and plugins via third parties. One such integration now includes retailer Newegg’s PC builder. Building a gaming PC has been known to be complicated for newcomers. But, Newegg is seeking to correct this by making use of ChatGPT’s knowledge in order to streamline the experience for new users.

The process of building a PC can be divided pretty simply, but with a huge range of parts and compatibility issues, it can be tough to spec out a system that’s perfect for you. Eager to see what Newegg’s new tool suggests, we put it to the test.

We tried to build a PC using ChatGPT

Eager to give Newegg’s AI-powered configurator a shot, we wanted to first test out how well its recommendations scale. So, we input “Budget PC gaming system for playing CS:GO at 1080p”. Immediately, we were hit with an error, falling at the very first hurdle.

So, we attempted to simplify the prompt in an attempt to get a recommendation, and we were met with a puzzling recommendation: A 13th-generation Intel system with a Raptor Lake i7-13700k, in addition to a Z790 motherboard and middling AMD RX 6600 GPU. The build totaled $1,215 USD, with over half of that budget dedicated to the CPU and motherboard alone.

While this would play CS:GO, it’s an incredibly scalable game, and would run on much weaker hardware than what’s suggested. Meaning that while the configurator did indeed fulfill the requirements for the PC, we ended up with a fairly lopsided PC build.

We threw the configurator another prompt “Premium PC gaming system for streaming at 4K” and once again, the results confounded us even further. We ended up with a previous-generation Alder Lake recommendation, with an i9-12900K, alongside a Radeon 6800XT, which lacks Nvidia’s powerful NVENC encoders which make streaming from your PC much easier. This was an easy attempt for the tool to recommend brand-new parts. But, for whatever reason, there seems to be an aversion to it.

Eager to brute force a “brand-new” PC build, we once again attempted to engineer a prompt to force a new build, and it only got more bizarre.

We engineered the prompt “Premium 4K gaming PC with the latest parts and RGB“, which, we thought, was going to be a fairly straightforward case of recommending an Intel 13900K or AMD 7950X3D alongside an RTX 4090. Oh how wrong we were.

The first option that we were met with included a previous-gen i9-12900k, using a Z690 motherboard, and a GeForce RTX 3050. An RTX 3050 is one of the lowest-end graphics cards that Nvidia produces, and is blatantly not “premium”, as our prompt suggested.

The second option was a bit more on the nose, but this time we were greeted with a CPU that was several generations old, an Intel I9-11900F, a Z590 Motherboard, and an RTX 4090. However, the build came to around $6,000 USD. Feeling like something was not quite right, we delved deeper and found that the configurator has added a $2,400 Intel Optane PCIe SSD in there, which is simply thousands of dollars that could be better spent on a good NVMe SSD, instead.

The several-years old CPU and the expensive SSD were the final nails in the coffin during our testing. It’s clear that this PC builder just isn’t fit for purpose.

Newegg’s ChatGPT-powered PC builder is a disaster

After a short time with the AI-powered PC builder, it’s clear that it’s simply not fit for purpose, nor will it recommend a balanced PC that we actually recommend that you use. While it is still in beta, we’d suggest that this is pulled from the website entirely. Until the developers have trained the AI a bit more in order to not spit out completely bizarre PC builds, don’t use it.