The 5 best desktop gaming PCs in 2021

Prices are accurate at the time of publication.

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Collage of Best gaming PCs, including Aurora R10, Corsair Vengence, and HP Omen — Dell; Corsair; Alyssa Powell/Insider

While many gaming enthusiasts choose to build their own gaming PCs, an international chip shortage has made it difficult to find crucial parts, like processors and graphics cards, needed for a custom computer. Even the potential savings that come with building your own PC have also been impacted by tariffs and scalpers re-selling parts.

For most gamers, a pre-built gaming PC will meet their needs without the added effort of finding parts at competitive prices and putting everything together correctly in a neat package. There are also more options than ever, letting PC shoppers choose between a wide range of budget and premium machines.

Below is our list of picks for the best gaming PCs from pre-built manufacturers based on our personal and industry experience as well as research into stock availability and the best prices. After that, we’ll explain what to look for when buying a gaming PC and cut through the common jargon to help you make the most informed buying decision possible.

Here are the best gaming PCs:

Best gaming PC for beginners: Dell XPS Special Edition, $881.99 on Dell
The Dell XPS Special Edition offers solid performance and essential features for a low price.

Best gaming desktop under $1,500: HP Omen, $879.99 on HP
The HP Omen features the latest parts and plenty of ways to upgrade.

Best gaming desktop under $2,000: Dell Aurora R10, $1,577.79 on Dell
The Dell Aurora R10 offers great customization with flexible pricing.

Best gaming PC overall: Corsair Vengeance a7200, $4,199.99 on Corsair
The Corsair Vengeance a7200 provides the best parts available with no compromises.

Best gaming PC for beginners

A black rectangular Dell XPS Special Edition computer — Dell

$881.99 FROM DELL

Originally ~~$1059.98~~ | Save 17%

The Dell XPS Special Edition offers solid performance and essential features for a low price.

Pros: Affordable, extra features like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are great at this price point

Cons: Older processor and graphics card

This special edition Dell XPS is our recommendation for gamers who are looking to pick up their first gaming PC. For around $1,000, you’ll get one of Intel’s latest processors and a graphics card that’s capable of handling most games at 1080p resolution with medium settings. It also offers dual drive support with a 256GB M.2 solid state drive for loading games quickly and a standard HDD with 1TB storage providing tons of space for music, movies and other games you’re not actively playing.

The XPS also offers built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, and a disc drive for reading and burning CDs and DVDs. More expensive gaming PCs often skip a disc drive to reduce costs, assuming gamers will be downloading their games and programs rather than installing from a disc.

Best gaming desktop under $1,500

A black rectangular HP OMEN 30L Gaming Desktop — HP

$879.99 FROM HP

Originally ~~$979.99~~ | Save 10%

The HP Omen features the latest parts and plenty of ways to upgrade.

Pros: Plays games comfortably at 1080p with high settings, Lots of customization choices

Cons: No AMD graphics cards offered, keeping prices slightly higher than the competition

The HP Omen series is heavily customizable, allowing you to choose between the latest AMD or Intel processors as well as the most recent graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD. While you can certainly design an Omen that costs much more than $1,500, we found that the configurations sold by HP at this price point offer a bit more value than those at competitors like Alienware and Lenovo.

Starting with a $1,399 configuration, you can get an AMD 5600X processor and RTX 3060 graphics card, both of which debuted in 2020. You can spend $100 more to add 8GB of RAM for more memory intensive games like Grand Theft Auto V and Microsoft Flight Simulator, double the solid state drive space for $40, or add a second 1TB hard drive for $50.

This PC should be capable of playing the latest games with high settings at 1080p, but may struggle a bit when pushed to 1440p or 4K resolution or ultra settings.

Best gaming desktop under $2,000

A black cylindrical Aurora R10 Gaming PC — Dell

$1577.79 FROM DELL

Originally ~~$1619.98~~ | Save 3%

The Dell Aurora R10 offers great customization with flexible pricing.

Pros: Choice of AMD graphics cards, should play games at 1440p

Cons: Rounded case design is a bit more flamboyant than other PCs.

Like the HP Omen, the Dell Aurora series offers customization options to choose different processors and graphics cards, and specifically more choice from AMD. The Aurora R12 uses Intel processors while the Aurora R10 are AMD-based machines. We recommend starting with the R10 model with a Ryzen 5 processor and $1,640 starting price, upgrading to a 1TB M.2 boot drive for $100, and upgrading to either the RTX 3060Ti graphics card for $100 or an RTX 6800XT card for $300 more.

The RTX 3060 is capable of playing most games at high settings at 1080p, but with an RTX 3080Ti or AMD 6800XT you can play at 1440p or 4K resolution and push your games to higher frame rates for monitors with high or variable refresh rates. The comparable R12 model uses an Intel i7-11700F processor and 3060Ti for $1,879 to start.

Best gaming PC overall

A black rectangular desktop computer with blue, purple, and yellow lights from the inside of the computer — Corsair

$4199.99 FROM CORSAIR

The Corsair Vengeance a7200 provides the best parts available with no compromises.

Pros: Corsair packs the best CPU, GPU and SSD into a no-frills package.

Cons: Quite expensive compared to a home built machine

The Corsair Vengeance line of pre-built PCs may break the bank in terms of price, but they offer all the latest parts in an impressive looking package with few compromises. You won’t find the same level of customization available from HP and Dell with these computers, but Corsair’s pricing is competitive if you’re looking for the best possible parts.

The Vengeance a7200 offers an AMD Ryzen 5900X processor and Nvidia’s flagship 3080 Ti graphics card, making it capable of playing just about any game at 4K with max settings. The 2TB m.2 drive is huge and great for streamers who want to play and record their gameplay at the same time.

A Vengeance a7200 with an AMD 6800 XT graphics card instead of the 3080 Ti and is also available for $3,600, and should still be capable of playing most games at 4K and 1440p with high settings. That version has dual drives with a 1TB HDD and a 1TB m.2 drive instead of a single 2TB m.2 drive.

What to look for when shopping for a gaming PC

Pre-built gaming PCs offer multiple configurations, allowing gamers to spend more to upgrade certain parts of the computer. A more expensive processor or graphics card can bring big improvements in performance, and different types of hard drives can store more data, help you load games faster, or both. Check out our glossary of terms below for a breakdown of common gaming PC features and what to look out for within each category.

What specs should a gaming PC have?

What you need ultimately depends on what kind of games you’d like to play, and the overall quality you want to see. For example, you can spend more than $3,000 on a pre-built PC that can play any game at 4K quality, or you could spend under $1,000 for a gaming PC with comparable power to a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One X.

In terms of manufacturers, you should pay the most attention to the companies that make your computer’s processor and graphic card. Intel and AMD are the leading creators of gaming processors, while AMD and Nvidia are the leading competitors in the graphics card market.

Glossary of terms

Processor (CPU): The processor is essentially the brain of your gaming PC, executing the complex commands that control each part of the computer. Gaming PCs require strong CPUs to process large amounts of data during gameplay, impacting load times and frame rates. Some CPUs have built-in graphics processors that allow you to play basic games without a dedicated GPU to handle graphics output.

AMD processors are generally more affordable and energy efficient than Intel processors, but the latest 12th series Intel processors will outperform AMD in some games based on benchmarks from Digital Foundry. Ultimately both brands make great CPUs and the choice comes down to price and personal preference.

Graphics Process Unit (GPU): If the CPU is the brain of your computer, the GPU is the heart. Your GPU is dedicated to handling the constant computations needed to produce quality visuals while gaming. Like the CPU, graphically intensive games will put more stress on the GPU, as will increasing the resolution you play at.

Your GPU will ultimately determine what level of performance you can expect from your gaming PC, with prices ranging from $300 to $1,800. We primarily recommend Nvidia’s 30 series GPUs thanks to their impressive software support, but AMD GPUs are slightly more affordable and can see performance boosts when paired with an AMD CPU.

Random-access Memory (RAM): RAM helps determine how many tasks your computer can keep immediately accessible simultaneously, which is especially important when gaming. Typically, a minimum amount of RAM (8GB) is needed just to load the complex worlds you see in games like Grand Theft Auto, but having additional RAM (16GB ~ 32GB) can also improve your overall load times.

Refresh rate: A term used to describe how often a display updates the picture on screen. Monitors with higher refresh rates will be able to display more unique images per second, which means gaming PCs that output high frame rates of 60 per second or more will have even smoother looking animation on a high refresh rate display.

Storage (HD, SSD, M.2): Quite literally, storage describes how much space you have to store data on your PC, and what type of drive it will be stored on. There are three types of storage drive available: hard disk drives, solid state drives, and M.2 drives.

Hard disk drive (HDD) is an older, slower storage type that uses a spinning disk encased in a magnetic material, but usually offers the most space for the least money. Solid state drives (SSD) don’t have a physical disk inside and are capable of faster speeds than HDD

M.2 and NVMe are new formats for solid state formats with even faster speeds and smaller sizes, but they’re significantly more expensive than standard SSDs and HDDs for now.

Wi-Fi: A wireless network protocol using radio waves, often used to connect portable devices to the internet. In 2018 the group that owns the Wi-Fi trademark began identifying new versions of Wi-Fi numerically, and the latest format, Wi-Fi 6 was approved in February 2021. All of the PCs we recommend support Wi-Fi 6 meaning they are compatible with the widest possible range of devices.

Bluetooth: A relatively short range wireless format used to connect devices locally. Devices with the latest features are certified as Bluetooth 5.0 compatible to reflect the signal’s improvements, but new devices remain downward compatible with older versions of Bluetooth.

The best deals on gaming PCs recommended in this guide

Gaming PCs have been in a strange place for what feels like more than two years economically speaking. Gaming PCs themselves, at least pre-built machines from the big manufacturers, tend to also go on sale mostly around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Here are the best deals on our favorite pre-built gaming PCs.