The Best Gaming PCs for 2025

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While some hard-core gamers prefer to assemble gaming PCs themselves, many of you seek the convenience and warranty support of a prebuilt desktop. At PCMag, we've been testing desktops for 40-plus years, benchmarking gaming models since they rose to prominence in the 1990s. Our analysts and editors apply collective decades of experience to evaluating gaming desktops, using repeatable, standardized benchmark tests and a host of modern games to gauge raw performance. We also assess each system on design, usability, connectivity, upgradability, and value to identify the best gaming desktops for the money. Our current pick for the best gaming PC for mainstream play (at 1440p) is the HP Omen 35L, and our favorite budget gaming PC is the MSI Codex R2. Read on for additional vetted picks across different budgets and power needs, a handy spec comparison, and plenty of detailed buying advice.

What Are the Best Gaming PC Specs for 2025?

Gaming PCs live and die by their graphics cards (or graphics chips, in the case of gaming laptops), the most critical PC component for determining your gaming performance ceiling. Most gaming systems will come preinstalled with a single midrange or high-end graphics card; higher-priced systems will naturally have better cards, since purchase price typically correlates with animation performance and visual quality. AMD and Nvidia make the graphics processors, or GPUs, that go into these cards, which are made by third parties such as Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, PowerColor, Sapphire, and XFX (to name just a few).

Gone are the days of complicated dual-card setups: Today's top-end GPUs, like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, GeForce RTX 4090, and GeForce RTX 5090 are more than powerful enough on their own. Games are increasingly developed to take advantage of the cutting-edge features available in single GPUs like these, but these premium cards will cost you.

Still, you should divert as much of your budget to the best GPU you can afford; the most pivotal decision you'll make when purchasing a gaming desktop is which card you get. Of course, one option is opting for no card at all; the integrated graphics silicon on some modern Intel Core and AMD Ryzen processors is adequate for casual 2D and very light 3D gaming. However, to reliably play 3D AAA titles, you need a discrete graphics card, and these cards are what distinguish a gaming desktop from "just a desktop."

Whether you go with an AMD- or- Nvidia-based card is based partly on price and performance. Some games are optimized for one type of card or another, but for the most part, you should choose the card that best fits within your budget. If you're buying a complete gaming desktop, you (of course) don't have to pay for a card in isolation, but this should help you understand how the card factors into the total price. You also have to know what you're shopping for.

How to Choose the Right Graphics Card in 2025

For some time now, Nvidia has dominated the high end of the GPU battlefield. The current era of Nvidia dominance has come through the GeForce RTX 40 series, which launched in 2022 and is based on the "Ada Lovelace" architecture. However, Nvidia's RTX 50 series "Blackwell" graphics cards are starting to show up in PCs here in early 2025. The first two releases are the RTX 5090 referenced earlier and the GeForce RTX 5080, with the RTX 5070 and 5070 Ti soon to follow.

In general, for both Nvidia and AMD GPUs, the first number in a model name denotes the GPU generation—40 series and 50 series for Nvidia, while AMD is up to the Radeon RX 7000 line—while the last two numbers indicate the hierarchy within that generation. For example, the RTX 4080 is superior to the RTX 4070, and both replaced their RTX 3080 and RTX 3070 predecessors, respectively. And yes, you guessed right: The RTX 5090, 5080, and 5070 supplant their 40-series predecessors.

Looking back to the late 2010s, the RTX 20-series GeForce cards were the first to feature ray tracing (putting the "RT" in "RTX"), a fancy real-time feature that only cards with the RTX moniker are capable of running, replacing the previous "GTX" branding. (See our primer on ray tracing and what it means for PC gaming.) On rare occasions, you can still buy products from the 30-series line of GPUs and thoroughly enjoy 1080p and 1440p gaming if you're building or upgrading your PC. Otherwise, virtually all prebuilt PCs have moved on to the 40 series, with the 50 series now showing up in some high-end models early in 2025. (Supplies of the 50 series so far have been short.)

However, the RTX 30 series won't be so quickly forgotten because of its pricing legacy. Though the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 showed tremendous power in our review, it is incredibly pricey at $1,599 to start, and the RTX 4080 wasn't much better at $1,199. This is largely thanks to Nvidia pushing the envelope with its 30-series cards' steeper debut prices.

The RTX 40 series carried on this new normal, and (unfortunately) the RTX 50 series is not reversing this trend: The RTX 5090 costs a whopping $1,999, while the RTX 5080 is $999. Lower-end 40-series GPUs launched behind their top-end siblings to provide more options: The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Founders Edition are effective 1080p cards for $299 and $399. We know the RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 are priced at $749 and $549, respectively, but we'll have to wait a while longer to find out where the lower-end GPUs will land.

During the pandemic and a bit before, it was hard to acquire then-current GPUs at retail price or sometimes even at any reasonable price. The rolling debuts of the RTX 40-series cards helped improve availability, but the list prices are also much higher than for the same relative classes of cards in the 2010s. Hefty base prices make today's new cards a significant investment. Nvidia somewhat remedied this in early 2024 by introducing GeForce "Super"-class GPUs, as it did with the GeForce RTX 20 series. The Super cards are upgraded versions of the original GeForce RTX 40-series models, bringing outright better performance while maintaining or reducing prices—an improvement for new shoppers. For example, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super is a better-performing model of the original RTX 4070, while the latter received a modest $50 price drop.

All of these pricing changes, generational differences, and availability are why buying a prebuilt gaming desktop, like the desktops in our list here, makes a lot of sense: You get parts that complement each other well. Pre-built PCs from major manufacturers or boutique vendors are one of the most accessible ways to acquire a top GPU in 2025 because they acquire GPU stock for you to buy in their systems, which can save you some money. They have economies of scale that you don't.

If you've held out this long on upgrading from Nvidia's GTX 10-series or RTX 20-series GPUs, we can fully recommend that enthusiasts make the jump if they can find any newer-generation GPU on a decent deal. We recommend the newest GPUs even more emphatically if you play (or plan on playing) on a faster 1440p or sharper 4K monitor.

Budget Cards and Nvidia Graphics Alternatives: Don't Forget AMD and Intel

Even in budget systems, Nvidia's previous Turing GPUs (the GeForce GTX 1650, GTX 1660, and GTX 1660 Ti, and their variants) option are largely no longer available. The same goes for the RTX 20 series, too. All of these have been mostly supplanted by GeForce RTX 30-series and 40-series cards, even in low-cost gaming PCs.

Shoppers looking for an entry-level or midrange system have many options. On the lower end, the GeForce RTX 3050 and RTX 3060, RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 4060, and RTX 4060 Ti are more budget-friendly to varying degrees but still decent 1080p cards. An RTX 3060 Ti or RTX 4060 Ti system suits high-frame-rate 1080p gaming (and capable 1440p gaming, in some cases). You can try ray tracing on a per-game basis, or just turn it off to your preference. While the RTX 50 series is upon us, the high-end cards launched first, so this family of cards won't be a consideration for cheap gaming desktops for some time.

Meanwhile, inside prebuilt gaming PCs, AMD competes mainly in the midrange and low end with its Radeon RX cards, and its cards compete better now than they have for a long time. The top-end AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT, which start at $999 and $899, really push Nvidia's RTX 40-series GPUs on cost-to-performance. Nvidia still holds the power crown, but AMD's cards make a strong case with their pricing. More recently, AMD pushed its case further with the AMD Radeon RX 7600 as a go-to value play for steady 1080p gaming, and the AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT, which launched in late 2023, may be the best midrange value from either company.

Finally, in 2023, Intel entered the discrete graphics market with its Arc GPUs. While the first efforts left us underwhelmed, follow-up GPUs have improved, starting with the Intel Arc A580 (one of the top-value budget graphics cards when it launched) and followed by the more recent Intel Arc B580. You won't see Arc cards in as many prebuilt desktops, but more competition from the Blue Team (Intel) may help keep the Red and Green Teams (AMD and Nvidia) honest on pricing.

Should You Equip Your PC for 4K Gaming and VR?

Equipping your system with any high-end GPU will boost your total PC bill by a few hundred dollars. Beyond adding extra power to your gaming experience, some graphics cards can power up to four displays, though few gamers go beyond two or three (and even then, only rarely).

In the long run, a better reason to opt for high-end graphics is to power 4K gaming and virtual reality (VR) experiences. Monitors with 4K resolution (3,840 by 2,160 pixels) and the displays built into the latest VR headsets have much higher pixel counts than a "simple" 1080p HD monitor. You'll need a decidedly high-end graphics card to drive a 4K display at the highest quality settings. If you mean to play games on a 4K panel with detail settings cranked up, you'll want to look at one of Nvidia's highest-end cards suited for 4K play, with the RTX 4080, RTX 4080 Super, RTX 4090, RTX 5080, and RTX 5090 easily the best picks.

Selecting a graphics card for VR is a different set of considerations and not quite as demanding as 4K play on recent AAA games. VR headsets have their own graphics requirements. Generally, a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti or a Radeon RX 5600 XT/RX 6700 (or higher, in either case) should suffice as the floor for VR. Naturally, more demanding VR games will benefit from superior GPUs. Look at the recommended minimum GPU specs for your specific VR headset and exceed it by at least a small margin to guarantee smooth performance.

Now, VR and 4K gaming are unquestionably high-end pursuits (the latter even more so than the former). You can still get a rich gaming experience for thousands of bucks less by choosing a desktop with a single but robust middle-tier video card (an RTX 3060 or 4060, for example) and gaming at 1080p or 1440p; 2,560 by 1,440 pixels is an increasingly popular native resolution for gaming monitors. If you're less concerned about turning up all the eye candy found in games—anti-aliasing and esoteric lighting effects, for example—then today's less-powerful graphics cards and GPUs will still give you plenty of 1080p oomph for much less money.

Which CPU Do I Need in a Prebuilt Gaming Desktop?

The main processor chip or CPU is the parallel heart of any gaming system to its GPU. While the GPU specializes in graphics quality and some physics calculations, the CPU takes care of everything else. It also determines how able your PC will be for demanding tasks that require non-graphics calculations.

On the CPU front, AMD and Intel are racing to see which of them can provide the most power to gamers. Mainstream speed lies chiefly with the Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 CPU options on the Intel side and the AMD side's Ryzen 5, Ryzen 7, and Ryzen 9.

The most common mainstream CPUs range from $150 to $500 in AMD's Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 lines and Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs. These provide the computing muscle needed for a satisfying gaming experience, mainly showing their pricing roots with their performance in some higher-end productivity and media-creation applications. Shopping in this still-capable tier will knock hundreds of dollars off the bottom line, so look for chips like the Intel Core i5-14600K.

On the higher end of this midrange, you have chips like the AMD Ryzen 7 7700X and the Intel Core i7-13700K, and the newer AMD Ryzen 7 9700X and Intel Core i7-14700K, which are impressive in this category. The latter two are some of the best-value gaming CPUs in Intel's and AMD's latest processor platforms. Chips like these are the sweet spot for gamers outside the entry-level or highest-end range.

At the top of the Intel and AMD mainstream stacks, we have the Core i9 and Ryzen 9 tier. The most recent powerhouses are the Intel Core i9-13900K and Intel Core i9-14900K, heading Intel's 13th and 14th Gen families, and the competing AMD Ryzen 9 7950X and the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X. AMD also launched its latest specialized 3D V-Cache CPUs, notably the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D and AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, to deliver targeted game boosts under some circumstances for extreme gamers using the very highest-end GPUs, like the GeForce RTX 4090. These are notably more expensive than the lower tiers. Ryzen 9000-series X3D chips are also a factor.

Intel's Core Ultra desktop chips are not currently much of a factor for gaming PCs, but they will be as Intel's "Arrow Lake-S" gains momentum and is likely refreshed in late 2025 with more power. Meanwhile, AMD has big plans for its X3D series with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D due out in 2025 for desktops. We'd expect the Ryzen 9000 X3D chips to be top picks for high-end gaming desktops in 2025.

We would be remiss not to mention the emergence in 2024 of Intel's Raptor Lake processor bug. This voltage-related issue has affected its higher-end 13th and 14th Gen processors with instability and worse. While patches have been issued, this fault has somewhat eroded customer confidence in these chips and created update headaches for current owners. The problem is in the process of being stomped out and should not affect new prebuilt systems. But double-check manufacturer warranties (and the system maker's stance on updates for the motherboards used in its PCs with these chips) before buying a desktop with an Intel 13th or 14th Gen processor.

What Are the Specs for an Average 2025 Gaming PC?

The average gaming PC sold today will likely house an Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor and a GPU from Nvidia's RTX 30 or RTX 40 series. (Look for the RTX 3060, RTX 3070, or RTX 4060.) You may sometimes see AMD-based PCs or the combination of a Ryzen CPU and an Nvidia GPU. More-expensive desktops will incorporate the Core i9 or Ryzen 9 CPUs and cards like the RTX 4070, 4080, 4090, 5080, and 5090, but these are not what we would call "average," even if they're tempting.

Factoring in the current lineups from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia, consumers have more options than ever. The baseline has come a long way, so even Intel's and AMD's less-expensive CPUs are well-suited to gaming. Even AMD's latest Ryzen 3 processors can do the job if you're shopping on a tight budget, though you'll seldom see gaming systems with anything below a Ryzen 5, Core Ultra 5, or Core i5.

Don't let the existence of the high-end parts dissuade you if shopping on a budget: Core i5 chips like the Core i5-14600K are perfectly acceptable for entry-level and midrange gaming, especially when paired with a hearty modern graphics card like an RTX 4060 or a Radeon RX 7600. These PCs won't top the charts, but in reality, this is the tier most gamers are shopping in.

If your choice comes down to paying for a higher-level GPU or a higher-level CPU, and gaming matters most, favor the graphics in most cases. A system with a higher-power Nvidia GeForce GPU and a Core i5 processor is generally better for 3D-intense FPS gaming than one with a low-end card and a zippy Core i9 CPU. But you may want to choose the latter if you're into games that involve a lot of background math calculations, such as strategy titles (like those in the Civilization series), or if you also mean to use the system for CPU-intensive tasks, like converting or editing video, or editing photos when you are not gaming.

How Much Memory and Storage Should I Get in a Gaming PC?

One thing that's often overlooked on gaming systems is RAM; modern games can severely tax it. Outfit your PC with a bare minimum of 8GB of RAM, and budget for 16GB if you're serious about freeing up this potential performance bottleneck. The most powerful machines out there will pack 32GB, though there are diminishing returns for gaming beyond 16GB. (See lots more about how to choose RAM in our memory primer.)

Meanwhile, solid-state drives (SSDs) have become much more popular since prices began dropping dramatically a few years ago, and the price drops have accelerated, especially over the last couple of years, unlike most PC components. They speed up boot time, wake-from-sleep time, and the time it takes to launch a game and load a new level. They are the de facto choice for boot drives now.

Although you can get an SSD of any size up to around 4TB (with the larger 8TB capacity still being relatively rare and expensive), the pairing of a small one (a capacity of 500GB or 1TB is a fine minimum floor to set) with a large-capacity spinning hard drive (8TB or more) is a good, affordable setup for gamers who download lots of games and want to keep them installed and local. You can keep a subset of your favorite games and applications on the smaller SSD, where they'll benefit from quicker loading, and install the bulk of your library on the hard drive.

Favor PCI Express SSDs over SATA ones. (You probably won't have to choose; the former, the performance darlings of the moment, are now the norm for boot drives in current-model desktop gaming systems.) Almost all of these drives come on gumstick-size modules in a format called M.2.

The Perfect Accessories for Your Gaming PC

Don't stop at internal components. Once you have your ideal gaming desktop, some extras can enhance your gaming experience. We recommend that you trick out your machine with a top-notch gaming monitor with a fast refresh rate and a reliable gaming headset to trash-talk your opponents. For smoother gameplay, a high-refresh-rate monitor can absorb the excess frame rates that a robust video card puts out. In-monitor support for Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync, matched to your brand of video card, can also eliminate artifacts that result from varying frame rates.

A comfortable gaming keyboard, mouse, or specialized controller can round out your options at checkout. However, you're often better off selecting these items separately rather than limiting your selection to what the PC's maker sells.

Ready to Buy the Best Prebuilt Gaming PC for You?

If you've made it this far, we trust you're more prepared than ever! In our review summaries and spec comparison chart, we've outlined the best gaming desktops we've tested recently. Some are configured-to-order PCs from boutique manufacturers, but others are from bigger brands typically associated with consumer-grade desktops. Note that many of the same manufacturers also make gaming laptops if you're weighing between the two.