What matters (and what doesn’t) when buying a gaming desktop | Gaming

Origin Millenium 2014 review inside 2

a gaming can be overwhelming with all the configuration options. Yhere’s more to the equation than raw horsepower. Upgradability, storage, and add-on cards also deserve thought.

This guide will help you cut through the confusion and buy an amazing gaming desktop computer that matches what you need.

One size doesn’t fit all

falcon northwest tiki 2018 open
Tomas Patlan

Most gamers start with the hardware inside a computer. We’ll cover that soon enough, but, before we get there, let’s talk about the exterior.

Gaming computers now come in many shapes and sizes. There are small systems like the Falcon Northwest Tiki, mid-size towers like the Acer Predator G1, and monoliths like the Origin Millenium.

Small systems are, well, small. They are unobtrusive and fit where larger systems simply can’t. They’re ideal for gamers who lack a large desk or want to use the desktop in a home theater. Going small can limit future upgrade options, however, and some pint-sized PCs make a lot of noise.

Mid towers are a good compromise and are ideal for most people. They’re small enough to fit under, on, or in a typical desk, yet large enough to offer upgradability and acceptable cooling. Flair, or lack thereof, is the only flaw. Most mid towers look like any other ho-hum desktop.

origin millenium desktop review angle
Dan Baker/Digital Trends

Finally, we come to the monoliths known as full towers. These are often so large that they won’t fit on top of a desk without hanging off the front or rear, and a few full towers are so tall they won’t even fit under a desk. A full tower system may carry a slight price premium over a mid tower. However, full towers are easy to upgrade and can handle hardware that won’t fit in smaller PCs.

Some custom manufacturers, like Origin and CyberPower, offer a selection of cases during customization. We recommend the full tower if you can find room for it, but make sure you understand the size before buying. Otherwise, a mid tower is best. Smaller systems can be great, but are also a niche solution. You should only buy one if space is at a premium or you’re dead set on a small system for aesthetic reasons.

Start with the heart: The processor

laptop-processor

When you buy a gaming desktop, be it a customized model from a boutique or a pre-made model from Dell or HP, the processor will be the first specification you see – and for good reason. The processor determines how a system will perform in most software.

Your first choice will be between two-, four-, or six-core processors. We recommend a six-core unless your budget is extremely low ($600 or less). A two-core processor is often fine, but some modern games make use of additional cores and can be crippled by a dual-core CPU.

Gamers with a lot of money may be lured in by Intel’s eight-core processors and higher. These Core X-Series chips are priced at a premium and not worthwhile for gaming. We only recommend them to buyers who have absolutely no concern about a rig’s final price. This series can run up to 18 cores, such as the Core i9-7980XE, costing up to a hefty not-so-wallet-friendly $1,975.

Overall, Intel is the way to go unless your budget is below $1,000 — and even then, Intel may still be the better choice. Though AMD is competitive at a few price points, all of the company’s processors fail to offer solid single-thread performance. They’re a great way to pick up an eight-core (or better) chip on a tight budget, but Intel’s four- and six-core chips are a better pick for games if you can afford them.

A great GPU makes a great gaming PC

GTX 1070 Ti

As a gamer, you’ll want to stay away from low-end cards. In Nvidia’s stable, the lower the model number, the lower the performance. At the bottom of the company’s current portfolio is the GT 1030, a low-end budget entry-level graphics card. The series increases in performance as the model numbers grow higher, with the GTX 1060 serving as a great starting point for VR experiences.

On the AMD front, you should shy away from the Radeon RX 400 series, as they were replaced by the mainstream gamer-friendly RX 500 Series in 2017. With both families, AMD set out to provide high-performance graphics for every budget. And as with Nvidia’s batch, the lower the model number, the lower the performance. But if you’re after an AMD-based graphics powerhouse, look no further than its two Radeon RX Vega cards.

The price-performance sweet spot usually sits with mid-range cards like the Nvidia GTX 1060 and AMD Radeon RX 580. These cards can handle almost any game in 1080p with full detail. If you want to make sure that games run well, or you want to play at an even higher resolution, like 2,560 x 1,440 or 4K, you should move up to an even more powerful card like Nvidia’s GTX 1080 and AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 56.

AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 and 64 review
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

While shopping, you may sometimes find yourself with a choice between two cards that are similar but offer different memory. More memory does not have a significant impact on overall performance by itself, but more memory does allow a video card to handle more data before choking.

We recommend at least 1GB of memory if you have a display below 1080p resolution, and at least 2GB of memory if your display is 1080p. If your monitor’s resolution exceeds 1080p, you should buy a card with at least 3GB of memory, and 4GB is better still. Most cards include at least 4GB of on-board memory anyway so you should be golden in that aspect.

Nvidia and AMD remain in tight contention at most price points. The former has a slight advantage on the whole, but it’s close. If you don’t have a preference, the choice between the brands may come down to what’s on sale the day you choose to buy a new card.

We don’t recommend multiple video cards. Though potentially quick, multi-card configurations often run into driver or game support issues that prevent them from unlocking their full potential. Multiple cards are also louder and hotter than a single card.

Don’t waste money on unnecessary RAM

RAM

Our review unit of the Alienware Area-51 R5 came with 64GB of RAM, but most people won’t need half that much.

RAM is relatively inexpensive, so adding more makes a system seem powerful to uneducated consumers at minimal cost. Don’t fall for it. The majority of games sold today will run well on a computer with only 8GB of RAM. For a serious gaming rig, however, 16GB is our recommendation. Anything over that is is a little overkill.

Here’s the current memory requirement landscape for five popular games to give you an idea of what you really need in a desktop:

  • Prey – 8GB minimum / 16GB recommended
  • Far Cry 5 – 8GB minimum / 16GB recommended for 4K 60FPS
  • Destiny 2 – 6GB minimum / 8GB recommended
  • PUBG – 8GB minimum / 16GB recommended
  • Overwatch – 4GB minimum / 6GB recommended

That said, additional memory doesn’t make a game run more quickly; it merely sits unused. Any money that might be spent on RAM beyond 16GB should instead be put towards a component that has a bigger impact on performance.

Solid-state drives are fast and now more affordable

Most computers sold today come with at least a 500GB mechanical hard drive and, in most cases, a 750GB or 1TB model. More space is better, but unused space isn’t needed, so our recommendation is simple: buy as much space as you need.

Whether or not you should buy a computer with a solid-state drive is a more difficult question. SSDs are many times more expensive than mechanical drives when measured by gigabyte-per-dollar. They also have no impact on in-game performance. Still, we recommend that you buy an SSD if you can afford one that offers over 200GB of storage. Why? Load times.

ssd vs hdd samsung 970 evo sticks 2 1500x1001

A solid-state drive is many times quicker than a mechanical drive. For games, this means a level that could take 30 seconds to load on a normal drive instead loads in 5 to 10 seconds. Games with short load times may sometimes load almost instantly.

If you do choose a solid-state drive, try to select the stick-shaped models versus the hard drive-like versions. These smaller stick-shaped drives are faster than their cartridge-style counterparts due to how/where they connect to the parent computer. Still, the bulkier SSDs are loads faster than your standard hard drive of the same size.

Also make sure the SSD you choose as your primary storage device contains the operating system. You’ll gain the benefit of quick boot times and fast operation in day-to-day use. This is also why we don’t recommend an SSD with less than 200GB of space. With Windows installed, a small drive can only contain a handful of games.

Finally, if you need lots of space for your games, your best bet would be to install multiple drives if your wallet allows. For instance, you could choose a stick-shaped SSD to host your operating system and most-demanding games. A secondary SSD or hard drive could serve as your “data” storage for additional games and other files you want to keep on-hand.

Don’t lose money on the kitchen sink

asrock killed overclocking intel skylake nonk gaming motherboard

After you’ve nailed down the processor, video card, RAM and hard drive you’ll start to browse through a wide selection of extras including sound cards, Ethernet adapters, additional USB ports, and more.

These extras aren’t required. Today’s motherboards ship with a built-in sound card, Ethernet adapter, and gobs of connectivity. Some even come with standard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. These have made peripheral cards far less of a necessity.

That doesn’t mean they’re useless, but skip it if you don’t already know that you need a certain add-on card for a specific reason.

Conclusion

As you browse computers and choose custom hardware, you should always return to one question: Does this make games look and play better?

A gaming desktop is a balancing act. No one component should dominate without bringing the others up to par, and unnecessary hardware should be axed to keep the price down. For example, a system with 32GB of RAM and a dual-core processor doesn’t make sense. The money spent on memory could be far better spent on a fast quad-core.

Restraint is required to perfect the balance. When you buy a gaming desktop, you’ll be bombarded by ads, both on manufacturer websites and elsewhere, that insist what you really want is a fancy Ethernet card that allegedly improves multiplayer games, or a triple-GPU rig, or a computer the size of a cat.

As you browse computers and choose custom hardware, you should always return to one question: “Does this make games look and play better?” The information in this guide will help you answer that question, and if the answer is no, you don’t need it.










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