http://www.reddit.com/r/PCMasterRace/wiki/builds
Tell gamespot to try again.

The point I made was the value proposition. Consoles include a fairly high quality controller while for this project they chose the cheapest keyboard and mouse they could find. So either they get proper peripherals for the PC or add a controller.

He can always get a Windows 7 key instead for like $40 and then buy another stick of ram. Also, I can guarantee you that 5 years from now an r9 270 will be able to play multiplatform games on low-medium (like the next gen consoles.) It is comparable the 8800gt (price-wise) released 6 years ago, and that card plays all games at low-medium today. This is especially true since this card is very similar to the PS4's GPU. It is an upgraded HD 7870 rather than a downgraded HD 7870 (Pitcairn), with about 35% more floating point performance (1.8 TFLOPS vs. 2.3 TFLOPS) and everything else slightly upgraded. You might argue that the PS4 will become more optimized, but any optimization in that GPU space will affect these very similar GPU's. It would be other areas where optimization is necessary, and this PC's CPU just blows the PS4's out of the water. Consoles are on familiar architecture these days, unlike Gen 7. Don't expect the same wonders and level of optimizations. 

Actually there is a way to get really powerful PC really cheap. When PCs brick there is plenty of parts to salvage, so if you gamble a bit you can get a working CPU from mobo with fried north bridge, working new mobo with something like cracked ethernet chip (put old PCIe card instead), glitchy gtx 580 which you can try cooking in oven and cheap memsticks from someone who upgraded. If you are lucky that PC will work for reasonable amount of time for a fraction of new PC cost. Gamespot just got it completely wrong though.

Kinda like how the PS4 version at 900p has framerate drops to 18fps. 

Except they aren't. Consoles have unified architecture while PCs have to continiously juggle resources between regular RAM and GPU RAM. Not to mention that even if they had exact PC architecture that would mean nothing, try looking for xbox hueg emulator, and that thing is literally a PC with custom OS.

well if you go pre-owned then it has to be compared with pre-owned console price.

Anyway, This article is outdated because its compared with the weaker console of the two which forced you to buy kinect, but now no longer does.

X86 is a thousand times easier to develop for than the Power PC (Risc) or Cell (also Risc?)architectures. Having unified memory doesn't change that. Also, the emulator comment is ridiculous. We aren't talking about emulation, which is an entirely different matter. Nor are we talking about PC ports. We're talking about how easy is it for developers to use the full system's capabilities, and it is many times easier on an X86 architecture than the unique architectures they had last generation. 

All right, expert developer in thread, I'm leaving

Nobody said I was an expert developer. This is common knowledge though. If there weren't any advantages to having both consoles use x86 why would third-parties have pushed Sony and Microsoft in that direction? They want a common architecture that allows them to take advantage of both systems at low costs. This common architecture happens to be the main hardware used in home computers since the 90's. That is why it's a thousand times easier for these developers (hyperbole.)  It is an architecture they are familiar with and it is universal for their purposes.