Best Gaming PCs for Your Best-ever Gaming Experience

With cryptocurrency mining becoming less popular these days and GPU prices getting back to normal, gaming PCs are, once again, becoming somewhat affordable. CyberpowerPC Supreme costs less than $1,500 yet this machine is able to run anything with awesome frame rates, competing with the biggest computer towers. Featuring monstrous processing power, the rig starts with the Intel Core i7-9700K CPU. It is less important to gaming than the GPU that we'll address soon enough but, with this processing unit, you'll be able to stream without secondary setup assistance.

The CPU will enable anything from 3D rendering and video encoding to scientific modeling and data mining. Its multi-threaded performance is off the charts but even the one single core can boost up to 4.9 GHz, making the CPU flexible and adaptable to most tasks. You'll be able to juggle as many demanding apps as you want, this is the processing unit that will not bottleneck the system even when you're tackling the biggest, most taxing programs. Multitasking is where it's at and this CPU can streamline multitasking ventures unlike most.

To add more, the "K" in the " i7-9700K" means that the processor is unlocked and can be overclocked. Generally speaking, overclocking is something that you do not want to experiment with when using pre-built rigs but, considering the rig's liquid cooling system, with its 120-mm aluminum radiator, pump, and copper plate, you can easily overclock the CPU ~15% without risking anything.

SkyTech Siege Mini understands what gaming is all about and what gaming desktop PCs are supposed to be packing to enable the most ambitious gaming endeavors. See, as much as the processing unit matters, the GPU is easily the biggest driving force behind gaming rigs. You can compromise many things but the graphics card is something that you're not allowed to compromise, not even a little bit.

With that mindset, the people behind this rig decided to go with GeForce RTX 2070 Super and, from where we're standing, the choice was obvious. As good as RTX 2060S and AMD's RX 5700XT are, they cost only 100 bucks less than RTX 2070S and give you around ~20-25 fewer frame rates per second, so settling for them makes very little sense, whereas RTX 2080S costs ~250 bucks more than 2070S and gives you only ~10-15 more fps, so you can see why, as impressive as it is, the RTX 2080S GPU is not that great from the price-performance ratio standpoint.

GeForce RTX 2070 Super is as superb as the name suggests. Even at 1440p, sticking with the highest graphics settings, this GPU makes it possible to run games like Apex Legends, Anthem, Far Cry New Dawn, the latest GoW and CoD installments at somewhere around 100 fps. This is the GPU that will handle any game, even the least optimized ones like Red Dead Redemption 2, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, and Metro Exodus, producing ~60 fps in these travesties. Aside from that, this GPU supports real-time ray tracing, so when the devs behind the biggest games enable those, the GPU will be rendering hyper-realistic reflections, shadows, and lighting effects unlike anything you've seen before. We cannot stress enough how much Nvidia has hit it out of the park with this GPU and why settling for anything less when you have somewhere above $1,200 to spare makes no sense at all.

The iBUYPOWER Element 9260 is probably up there with the most balanced builds around $1,000. Designed with gaming aspirations first and foremost, this machine is also pretty good at supporting and enabling most tasks. Before anything else, its multitasking prowess comes from the Intel Core i7-9700F octa-core CPU that can reach 4.7 GHz. Add to that the pretty much obligatory at this price bracket 16GB DDR4 RAM and what we have here is the rig that can easily handle juggling multiple system-intensive applications (like video editing) and ensuring the most lag-free multitasking experience. With these two, you can open 20+ Chrome tabs, Discord, Steam, virtually any game, and have the system running without noticeable hiccups.

As much as these components contribute though, they're not as important as the GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card. Now, this is that quintessential mid-range GPU that more than earns its keep, costing less than $300 yet able to produce fantastic frame rates at 1080p and even somewhat respectable fps at 1440p when the game's been optimized unlike the absolute dumpster fires that are Assassin's Creed Odyssey, NBA 2K20, DayZ, Borderlands 3, and Red Dead Redemption 2. As far as most triple-A games are concerned, GTX 1660 Ti is enough to approach 100 fps even at the ultra settings when the resolution is set to 1080p and flirt with 60 fps when you up the ante and switch the resolution to 1440p.

At this price point (~850 bucks), gaming PCs are forced to make sacrifices because less than $1,000 is not enough to pack the components you need to support the most hardware-intensive titles. That being said, there are good and bad ways to go about it and SkyTech Archangel definitely belongs to that "good" crowd. Considering the price, this machine is not as modest as one would expect.

The AMD Ryzen 5 2600 hexa-core CPU is not excellent at multitasking but we're discussing gaming rigs here, so multitasking is not the biggest priority. Its single-threaded performance is great and that's what matters most. You might face some challenges with games riddled with players and abundant NPC like MMOs and RTS games but, aside from them, the processing unit will be able to sustain most games, from MOBAs to shooters and anything in-between. As long as the unit count on the screen is not approaching 100+, the CPU will be fine.

Now, we can extend the same sentiment towards the GeForce GTX 1660 GPU. Is it the best graphics card that money can buy? Not quite. Is it good enough to reach 60 fps when running most modern-day games at 1080p and the highest graphics settings? Indubitably, old chap. From the latest Battlefield and Far Cry installments to anything that's been somewhat optimized, the GPU can produce respectable frame rates and allow you to enjoy these games without stuttering.

CyberpowerPC Gamer Xtreme is not that extreme but that's understandable considering that the machine costs ~750 bucks, which technically puts the product between budget and mid-range gaming rigs but without even approaching that mid-range segment. There are GPUs that cost as much as this entire PC and they're not even the most expensive GPUs, so we do not need to mention that this system won't be able to trade blows with the most expensive builds, right?

That being said, the machine does not cut corners as much as you'd expect from the price, primarily because the people behind this rig know what they're doing, compromising anything but the GPU. Adopting GeForce GTX 1660, this system packs enough punch to handle any game at 1080p, even when the graphics settings have been set to ultra. From the latest Assassin's Creed to CoD, GTA, Far Cry, and more, the GPU alone contributes enough to run these titles.

Sure, when you go from 1080 to 1440p, most games will start stuttering around ~40 fps but budget rigs are not designed to handle 1440p, so we're not going to hold that against this setup. We might hold the 8GB DDR4 RAM against the product even though we understand that, when you're forced to cut corners, reducing RAM makes sense since you normally do not need more than 8 to run most games, so you're only sacrificing multitasking, which's not the highest priority when it comes to gaming computers.