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Picking out the best gaming PC for you depends on a few important factors, and those will vary wildly between different people and what the goal is. If you're after a budget pre-built machine that won't break the bank but will be ideal for good gaming use and for college or university, then your expectations and short listed items are going to be a lot different compared to someone who has a 4K version of one of the best gaming monitors and needs a beast of a machine to drive that resolution. Either way you want to get the best bang for your buck so you're in the right place, and it always pays to at least aim high.
Generally when it comes to pre-built gaming PCs, the prices are becoming more and more aligned with DIY costs, and the rising level of competition means that quality is increasing everywhere too. The advantages of getting one of the best gaming PCs pre-built for you are clear at first: - it saves you the potential headaches and hard labor of the build. But the benefits, if you;re that way inclined, go further. Built buy a company and/or sold by a retailer means that your new machine will have warranty coverage and quite possible some extras that the DIY route doesn't provide (perhaps stuff like unique cooling solutions, cable management, or parts that aren't available anywhere else). Plus, simply put, you are allowed to not want to build one yourself, despite what some may say about it being the only 'true' way to enjoy PC gaming. Not the case, buy a pre-built if you fancy taking a slightly simper route into pc gaming.
The attraction is fair and clear, but how do you go about picking out the best gaming PC? First, you will need to make sure you have a good idea of how much you want to spend - but it pays if you can be a bit elastic on this as it won't be hard and fast. in terms of clean price-point boundaries. Then, very importantly, you'll want to consider (realistically) how you'll use your machine: if you're going to be primarily gaming on it, a powerful CPU is going to be a little less important compared to if you're doing more productivity tasks. On the opposite end of the spectrum, if you're going to use your machine for really processor intensive stuff like video rendering or editing, you'll want a mighty CPU, likely something from Intel's 9th Gen, or one of the brand new Ryzen 3000-series parts. Generally, though, if you're buying your machine primarily for PC gaming, you can save yourself some money on the processor and invest it in a better graphics card, which does most of the heavy lifting for games.
When it comes to pre-built PCs you need to find a reputable brand that will fill your new gaming rig with the best parts, in the best configurations. For us, HP's Omen range are the best gaming PCs, not because they offer incredible power, or because they're the cheapest, but because they balance everything you need from a gaming PC. Let's start with the chassis - the Obelisk is a mid-tower case, with a lovely glass panel on the side for displaying all your innards. It has tasteful lighting inside, but nothing too excessive. There is sufficient cooling for even the highest end builds, and the case isn't too massive either. It's a nice balance.
Inside, we recommend the spec with the 2080 graphics card, if you want to keep this gaming PC for the long-term. The top end of Nvidia's new Turing cards all handle ray tracing, which is very much the future of visuals in games, and while the 2080 is super expensive (probably about 40% of the cost of this whole PC), they will last. The supporting specs perfectly compliment the card - an i7-8700 6 core CPU, 16GB of 2666 RAM, and a dual storage solution with a 256GB SSD and a 2TB HDD. Ok, in a perfect world, you'd have a 500GB SSD, but this is still more than enough to make Windows booting quick and easy.
There's tool-less access to the case, so you can dive in there and swap out parts if you feel like some quicker RAM or a bigger SSD. In all, it's an impressive machine, and one that's flexible enough for easy upgrades if you need. There are few frills - custom RGB lighting aside - which is why the price is so reasonable, for a 2080 build. Thoroughly recommended.
If money is no object, then the Corsair One series is our pick of all gaming PCs. While the i140 is more than capable of handling games at 4K, we prefer the i160 for sheer power and gaming prowess. What's truly remarkable about the Corsair One PC line is that they pack in such power components into such a small, custom-built case, and still allow everything to run quiet and cool. The case itself has holes on each side, and fans under the unit to allow adequate airflow, along with several other cooling systems inside. As a result, the machine is whisper quiet and small enough to fit into a typical living room set-up without hogging too much space.
Inside, everything is thoughtfully built. There's a quick i9-9900K CPU, meaning the One is perfect for multitasking, so can handle video editing and art tools extremely well, along with gaming. The 2080 Ti GPU inside is top of the range, and will smash any game at 4K, while the 32GB of RAM keeps the whole system held together rather nicely. There's a big enough SSD / HDD combo (480GB SSD / 2TB HDD) to ensure you have plenty of storage for games, although, again we'd expect a slightly larger SSD for the money. You can swap components into the One, but that will invalidate the warranty, so you'd need to be confident about doing so. It's easy enough to do.
As small form-factor gaming PCs go, this is a monster, and thoroughly recommended for gaming. If you want to shave a few pounds off your budget, the i140 is a great performer too, but given that you'd expect this PC to last you for years, we'd definitely pick the slightly higher-spec machine.
If money really is tight, you should consider the MSI Trident 3 range of gaming PCs. While the innards won't win any awards, they're reliable pieces of kit that are well put together and often found at lofty prices, which is really good for a gaming-ready PC. They come with smartly designed cases, and decent cooling tech to prevent your components from overheating if you stress them and boost the CPU clock to 3.5Ghz.
The 1050 Ti graphics card is the weakest link here, and while you'll run most games at 1080p, you'll likely struggle to reach decent fps with top titles, and won't be able to achieve ultra settings in many cases. Does that matter to you? After all a machine like this is perfect for Fortnite and will run Apex Legends with few problems. It comes with a decent-sized 1TB HDD, and 8GB of DDR4 RAM, which is plenty for most games. The i5 processor is actually a decent one for a build of this price.
You also sacrifice things like glass side-panels on the case, and RGB lighting, but you can easily open up the Trident to add new components if you feel up to it. What's more, the Trident is quite portable, and it will operate stood up, or lying on its side, if space is a concern. It's not a powerhouse, but is a competent gaming PC for a super reasonable price.
While Intel is the biggest and best name in CPUs, AMD - its main rival - has several comparable chipsets which perform equally well, and come much cheaper. So, we've included an AMD build here, to help you save a bit of cash on a great spec gaming machine. If you're looking to use your PC primarily for gaming, with maybe a little work and other media usage, you'll be more than fine with an AMD processor powering everything.
Elsewhere inside this Fierce PC build you get some very solid components for your money. Whereas the RX 580 graphics card isn't the most powerful, it does offer great performance for games, while keeping the overall price of the unit down. It's complimented here by 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a standard 1TB HDD. For the price, that seems about right to us.
While this isn't a 4K machine by any stretch of the imagination, it's well specced for the current generation. The Crusader will easily handle the best games at 1080p, and bring decent frame-rates to most (60fps+ in most cases). Well recommended for pure gaming (and particularly if you've got a hankering to go deep in the back catalog and play some Crusader: No Remorse).
