Either one will work great, but the $1200 rig is where I would recommend if you can swing it. It's the best bang for your buck, and will stay a solid gaming rig for 4-5 years, longer if you like indies:
will stay a solid gaming rig for 4-5 years, longer if you like indies
Indies are often worse because they don't have the time to spend on optimization. Especially those made to be first-person 3D.
Sticking to 2D/light-3D games, older games (try !patientgamers@lemmy.ml or !patientgamers@sh.itjust.works ) and games made PC first (not console first) are my tips as someone with a not-quite-gaming laptop. The last one is the hardest, but as someone who optimized games for consoles for years I can tell you optimization for PC was always the last thing on our minds: get it to run, and raise the required specs.
I lost my account back then when the big hack happened near the end of the PS3 era. I haven’t looked back. I called, I begged, and as far as I could tell everyone else was good to go.
I only got the PS3 so I could game with my childhood friends. They eventually stopped playing together anyway after a bunch of us died off to the opioid epidemic.
Any money you spend that saves you money could be considered investing. You can get creative with considering time to be money or what you would have spent on consoles when competition doesn't exist to bring down prices long-term.