March 5, 2024 -

If you don't know much about modern gaming PC hardware and you're looking to buy a prebuilt computer, you've come to the right place! Buying a prebuilt gaming PC can be very confusing if you're unfamiliar, I was there once too. Without wasting anymore of your time, let's get right into it!

General Brand Info / Brand FAQ / Intel vs AMD vs Nvidia

Intel CPUs

Intel CPUs offer great single thread, multi thread, and gaming performance. They're very good all-rounder CPUs, and that's why they're very common in prebuilt gaming PCs. Ultimately the company building the gaming PC doesn't know what you're going to use it for beyond gaming, and so their best bet is to put an intel CPU in it. This versatility may be of interest to you if you record and edit or stream your gameplay or do other CPU intensive tasks.

The 13th and 14th generation intel processors are very similar, the 14th generation CPUs have slightly higher clock speeds making them a touch faster. The 13th and 14th generation i5, i7, and i9 are all very capable gaming processors, don't skip a prebuilt PC because it has an i5, the i5-13600K and i5-14600K are right up there with the most powerful gaming CPUs.

AMD CPUs

AMD CPUs are generally cheaper and are typically found in some budget prebuilt PCs. It's important to note that their CPUs that end with a G perform a good chunk worse than the models that don't. For example the Ryzen 5 5600 and Ryzen 5 5600X perform much better in gaming than the Ryzen 5 5600G. This is because the "G" CPU features on board graphics, meaning you can display stuff to your monitor without a graphics card. This feature holds back AMD CPUs, and also isn't necessary for a gaming PC because we will have a dedicated GPU.

The AMD CPUs that are powerful for gaming end with X3D, and they're kind of rare to find in prebuilt gaming PCs, but they're out there. They work much better for gaming because of the CPU's L3 cache, it has a ton of it, and while it isn't necessarily important for you to know why, it is important for you to know that it does mean that the X3D chips are very powerful for gaming specifically. Here's a quick chart stolen from Tom's Hardware that shows average FPS for each modern CPU at 1080p:

This chart is kind of busy, but it can give you an idea of how important it is to have a powerful gaming CPU in your system. Up at the top are AMD's latest X3D chips, followed by intel's latest performance chips. It's important, but not quite as important as your GPU...

NVIDIA GPUs

NVIDIA has been the king of gaming GPUs for quite some time. They offer quite a few features that AMD cards don't. If having ray tracing in your games is important to you, you want to stream or record your gameplay, if you like artificial frame generation, or you want to use CUDA cores for something like deep learning neural network training, or you use other applications that take advantage of NVIDIA GPU architecture, then get an NVIDIA GPU.

The FPS per dollar typically isn't as good as AMD, but with the above features in mind, you may consider getting an NVIDIA card if you want some of the features that come with one.

AMD GPUs

AMD has made some amazing strides in its last two generations of GPUs, starting to compete with the long-time king of gaming GPUs, NVIDIA. While they're not good at high performance ray tracing, and lack the features I mentioned above, they do generally offer great FPS per dollar for gaming. If an NVIDIA card and an AMD card get the same FPS at the same resolution in a game, typically the AMD card is cheaper, and if you don't care about the NVIDIA bells and whistles, ultimately the AMD card offers a better deal.

Here's a quick chart stolen from Tom's Hardware that shows average gaming performance at 1440p Ultra:

The latest GPUs are shown on the left, and older generations go towards the right. You can see how AMD has put up quite a fight with NVIDIA the last two rounds of GPU generations.

But what about Intel Arc GPUs? If you're new to the gaming PC space, I'd suggest staying away from Intel Arc GPUs, they have many driver issues. While these issues are getting better each time intel releases a new driver update, many games still run poorly or not at all. To avoid these issues entirely, go with an AMD or NVIDIA GPU.

Brand Conclusion

The vast majority of prebuilt gaming PCs are going to come with an Intel CPU and an NVIDIA GPU, and this is fine, but just be aware of the potential performance per dollar benefits of AMD and weigh these in your considerations. For a gaming PC that's capable of recording and streaming as well as getting good performance in games, the Intel and NVIDIA combo is the way to go.

Where Do We Get Started?

You'll want to find a prebuilt gaming PC retailer, in the United States newegg.com is a great example. For this example, we'll be using newegg, but you can use other websites just the same. It's also important to try multiple websites to compare deals. From a couple previous projects I've done, I can tell you that Lenovo, MSI, iBUYPOWER, NZXT, and HP Omen / Victus offer decent performance per dollar for prebuilt gaming PCs on their own websites. Be warned though, that deals vary massively even within one company, some are good deals, some are terrible deals. But those that I've listed generally offer some of the best performance per dollar.

On Newegg's home page, click the bars in the top left, Computer Systems > Desktop Computers > Gaming Desktops. Now on this page, you'll want to click Power Search on the left.

Now, the theory here to maximize our performance per dollar is to get the best GPU possible for the cheapest. It's kind of rare that a poorly performing CPU is put with a good GPU, but it is fairly common for a good CPU to be paired with a poor performing GPU. Refer back to the Tom's Hardware GPU Hierarchy picture, and select a modern GPU that you think you might be able to afford in a gaming PC. This first search can be sort of a shot in the dark, but that's okay.

For this example, let's say that I have a decent budget, but nothing crazy, and I want to be able to stream. I have referred to the Tom's Hardware GPU Hierarchy and see that the RTX 4070 gets about 100FPS on average at 1440p Ultra and that's exactly what I want. In this case, I'll use Power Search (search filter) to look for gaming PCs that have an RTX 4070.

Then hit the search box at the bottom of the page. This brings you back to the Gaming Desktop list, but it should only be gaming PCs with an RTX 4070 in them. However, the default sort is "Featured Items" which isn't what we want, we want to change it to Lowest Price to look for some good deals on prebuilt PCs with an RTX 4070.

Now, we have all Gaming Desktops on newegg that have an RTX 4070 in them, sorted by price low to high.

The cheapest prebuilt gaming PC with an RTX 4070 will be displayed first. In my case, it is $1,159 and features an i5-13400F Intel CPU. The 13400F appears on the Tom's Hardware CPU Hierarchy for modern gaming CPUs, it's towards the middle of the pack for modern gaming performance, but so is the RTX 4070, making this a decently balanced gaming PC.

Other things to consider may include things like if the CPU is powerful enough for any CPU intensive tasks you're going to throw at it, 16GB of RAM is plenty for most people but maybe you need more if you want to have a lot of applications open at the same time. If you want to store a lot of large files or games you may want a larger storage drive. If any of these types of things are important to you beyond gaming capabilities, you may want to refine your "power search" (search filter) and include these things in it.

Now what?

If my budget is comfortably more than $1,200 and I shot too low and I'm looking for more performance, I'd try the same thing again with an RTX 4070 Ti or RTX 4070 Ti Super, etc. until I found a PC that is more suited for my allocated budget and performance goals. If I shot too high, and my budget is lower than $1,200 then I'll try my search again with an RTX 4060 Ti or RTX 4060.

Change the GPU in the search filter to be higher or lower tier depending on your budget. If your budget is on the lower side and you're having difficulty finding a gaming PC with a modern card that fits your budget, you might consider looking for one that has a GPU from last generation, i.e. RTX 3000 or RX 6000 series.

The end goal is to get the best GPU you can without getting an outdated or weak CPU in the process. The bulk of your gaming performance comes from your GPU and the second most important part is your CPU.

Why don't we just simply look at prebuilts that fit my budget?

The reason we don't just simply search for gaming PCs and sort by price is because not every $1,200 prebuilt PC is created equal. Some will have parts from a couple generations ago, some will have weak modern parts, some will be good deals like the one that we found by searching for the GPU first.

For example, I'll navigate back to the Gaming Desktops page, and only put a price filter for $1,100 to $1,250 and see what comes up. The first result has a Ryzen 5 5600X and an RTX 4060, both of which are weaker than the PC we just looked at.

Weaker components at the same price point

Or this one, which while looking a little cooler, it also has significantly weaker parts than the first PC we looked at while being more expensive. Compare an RTX 4070 to an RTX 3060 back on the GPU hierarchy graph.

Even weaker components at about the same price point

This is why it is important to search for the GPU first, and look for the most affordable options for prebuilt PCs with the GPU we are looking for.

And just for fun, here's an example of how bad performance per dollar can get, a PC that costs enough to buy a prebuilt gaming PC with an RTX 4090 (the most powerful gaming GPU at the moment) that has an RTX 3050 in it, again, refer to the GPU Hierarchy graph and compare an RTX 4090 to an RTX 3050...

It's just baffling that someone somewhere entered that price and hit submit with a straight face.

Conclusion / TL;DR

I hope this has been informative for some people who are new to the PC space. If you don't want to build yourself and want to make sure you're getting a good deal on a prebuilt gaming PC, this is how you should go about it. Search for the GPU first under gaming desktops, then sort by price. There are absolutely laughably terrible deals on every prebuilt PC retailer, and there are decent ones as well. It's important to be able to distinguish them and find the good deals where they are.