{"id":642437,"date":"2026-04-24T07:07:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T05:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=642437"},"modified":"2026-04-24T08:03:06","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T06:03:06","slug":"most-popular-pc-sold-online-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/642437-most-popular-pc-sold-online-in-south-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"Most popular PC sold online in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

South Africa’s top online hardware retailers, Evetech and Wootware, have revealed the most popular PCs in the country, as well as trends among local enthusiasts amid high market prices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both retailers told MyBroadband that overall, they see a lot of interest from local PC enthusiasts towards custom-built solutions, but one particular off-the-shelf item is flying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Wootware, the Apple Mac Mini M4<\/strong> is its top seller outside of custom builds currently, a surprise for a company that cut its teeth on gaming hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wootware CEO Rory Magee told MyBroadband that the company was seeing a new customer category emerge alongside the growing popularity of generative AI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Since OpenClaw and Hermes Agent have taken off internationally, there’s been a huge increase in people buying computers like this for setting up their own agentic systems,” he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Apple Mac Mini M4 launched internationally in October 2024, offering increased CPU performance over the previous generation in an even smaller case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Ternus, Apple’s then-senior vice president of Hardware Engineering and now CEO designate, said the Mac Mini M4 also delivered power efficiency, thanks to a novel thermal architecture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wootware lists only two versions of the M4 Mac Mini on its website as in stock, with other versions available through special order. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first model starts at R12,999 and offers 10 cores and 10 threads, with a 16-core neural engine for AI workloads. It features a 10-core GPU, 16GB of unified memory, and 256GB of storage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A more expensive version of the Mac Mini is available, starting at R19,458 and featuring 24GB of unified memory and 512 GB of storage. Both come with one-year warranties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alongside this demand for off-the-shelf PCs, Wootware has also been helping customers with custom builds designed solely for running AI models on-device. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Growing demand for AI PCs in South Africa<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Apple’s Mac Mini M4<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“The demand for purpose-built AI workstations is growing fast,” he said, adding that the new demand played to Wootware’s strengths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magee said that his company was now building these machines for clients, optimised for AI with the right VRAM requirements, and the right balance of CPU, memory, and storage for inferences and training. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Magee suggested another reason for the Mac Mini’s popularity in South Africa was its affordability, especially amid the global memory shortage that is driving up hardware prices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Apple products have also been relatively less impacted at retail by NAND and DRAM cost increases,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entire hardware market in South Africa, from retailers to distributors to global manufacturers, was expecting continued price pressure in the coming months, with an end only expected beyond 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evetech, one of Wootware’s major competitors and South Africa’s largest online hardware retailer, told MyBroadband that it was still seeing significant demand for gaming PCs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, as the memory crunch increased drive costs, local enthusiasts were spending less on extremely high-end components, instead looking towards “mid-range” deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The sweet spot right now is mid-range builds, think Ryzen 5\/7 or Intel Ultra 5 paired with an RTX 5060 or RTX 5070,” said Khalid Mirza, Evetech marketing manager. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evetech offered 8GB RTX 5060 GPUs from brands like MSI for R6,999, while RTX 5070 GPUs started at R11,899. The company also offered a selection of affordable pre-built gaming PCs at a discount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Customers want solid 1080p or 1440p gaming performance without breaking the bank, especially with current component pricing.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

South African enthusiasts opt for more modest PC builds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DDR4 RAM sticks<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mirza said Evetech had seen a noticeable shift towards more sensible specs over the past year, compared to a few years ago, when flagship components were popular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said customers were now more calculated and asked themselves what they actually needed in their machines, rather than jumping at what looked best on paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The memory crisis has definitely played into that. When RAM costs what it does, you think twice about speccing 64GB just because.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Custom builds still dominated over pre-configured systems in South Africa, with local enthusiasts still preferring to choose their own components. “It’s part of the experience,” he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evetech also saw entry-level builds picking up, with first-time buyers and even parents buying modest setups so they can upgrade later \u2014 a smart strategy in the current market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local enthusiasts were also actively avoiding extremely high prices on certain components, as Evetech reported seeing an increase in the purchase of DDR4 RAM platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Customers were looking to avoid spending on DDR5, as some 32GB RAM sticks were now priced up to R7,000 each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A year ago, that would’ve seemed like a step backwards; now it’s just practical.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa’s top hardware retailers Evetech and Wootware have revealed the country’s most popular PCs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341213,"featured_media":638952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[605,23581,40456,104729,2162,13401,75862,104730,28388],"class_list":["post-642437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hardware","tag-apple","tag-evetech","tag-hardware","tag-mac-mini-m4","tag-msi","tag-pcs","tag-rory-magee","tag-rtx-5060","tag-wootware"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642437"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642719,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642437\/revisions\/642719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}