Best gaming PCs for 2020 – CNET

HP

HP’s Pavilion Gaming Desktop is a compact, budget-friendly, spare-me-the-flashiness model, targeting the same “casual” gamer as Dell’s Inspiron Gaming or Acer’s Nitro lines, but a lot more understated and a good gaming experience. This $750 base model should provide at least the minimum you need to play relatively undemanding games in 1080p without poking your eyes out with a stick: i5-8400 with a free Optane upgrade to accelerate disk operations for the 1TB hard disk a little, a GTX 1050 Ti and 8GB of RAM. That’s about what you get with budget gaming laptops. It’s got a ton of connections on the front, though — four USB-A, one USB-C and an SD card slot. 

Another option that’s a little more powerful for just a little more dough, CyberpowerPC’s Gamer Xtreme VR (GXiVR8060A7) is aggressively priced for its components — for a little over $950, you get a GTX 160 and additional 120GB SSD over the HP. That little nudge in specs may be enough to tip performance into the acceptable range for some games.

Alienware

For less than a grand, you won’t get terrific performance from this midsize desktop — well, midsize for a gaming system — but you should be able to get more than 60fps in 1080p on action-oriented (i.e., not full of big-texture, detailed graphics) games. The chassis not only has a lot of connectors, it has a relative bounty of USB ports in the front — one USB-C and three USB-A.

The $900 base configuration includes an i5-9400, 8GB RAM, a Radeon RX 560X and a 1TB hard drive. If you can afford it, I really recommend going with a solid-state drive (SSD) instead, even though it’s much smaller capacities; Windows reallly does run faster. You can always get an inexpensive external hard drive for near-line storage. You may also want to spend a little more for the 2×2 Wi-Fi networking card.

However, if you’re just looking to blast through 1080p and can spend more, upgrade to a GTX 1660 Ti (a plain 1660 would be fine, too, but it’s not an option), 16GB of RAM and/or a 512GB SSD. Those should also bump your performance level up to decent 1440p performance on some games.

Digital Storm

While HD (1,920×1,080 pixels) is still the most popular gaming resolution, 1440p (also referred to as 2K for its 2,560×1,440-pixel resolution) is sl-o-o-o-o-wly starting to rise in popularity. A 1440p-capable system has the side benefit of allowing for smooth 1080p play at a higher quality as well, so even if you’re not ready to play in 1440p, you can think of it as future-proofing.

The GTX 1660 Ti is a solid choice here, and coupling it with an overclockable i5-9600K, 16GB 3,200MHz RAM and a 1TB SSD should give you great 1080p frame rates and decent 1440p at high quality. It’s not cheap at about $1,800 for the setup, but it’s reasonable for the components as well as Digital Storm’s gorgeous and compact Bolt X case (though not as small as the never-materialized Project Spark), plus moral support in the company’s relatively active on-site forums. 

Falcon Northwest

Falcon Northwest specializes in blazingly fast systems wrapped in custom paint jobs. The Tiki is its most compact system, yet you can cram up to a top-of-the-line i9-9900K and GeForce RTX 2080 Ti into it. 

The Talon, on the other hand, has the design of a mundane midtower, but that means it can pack in a lot of high-end components, including an 18-core i9-9980XE and dual RTX 2080 Ti cards (or dual Quadro P6000s). And once you customize the chassis it’s not so mundane anymore. 

Unfortunately, you’re stuck with the onboard audio and networking for some of the configurations, like the i9-9900K/dual RTX 2080 Ti we just tested, and of course, get ready to throw wads of cash at it. You do get personalized service, though the website is noticeably devoid of support information — all you get is the hardcopy documentation and media arranged in a binder — and FNW doesn’t have its own command center software. 

Sarah Tew/CNET

If you’re going for maximum performance or maximum configurability, then go boutique. You can get fast systems for the same breathtaking prices from companies like Alienware, but they’re a little more cookie cutter (though it feels odd to call anything that looks like the Area-51 “cookie cutter”), tend to be more conservatively tuned, and when you drop $10,000 on a system, you’re still just a drop in the bucket for Dell’s business.

In addition to the extra care, boutique sites like Falcon Northwest, Origin PC, Digital Storm and so on are a lot more transparent about the components you’re choosing — none more extreme than Origin PC, where your choices get pretty granular. In addition to picking the brand and speed of memory and power supply, which is typical, you choose which motherboard you want and what color the cover for the power supply cables should be. 

Being able to choose the motherboard rather than just the chipset can be important; they all have their quirks, lighting schemes (I love the visual of the MSI Z390 Godlike we had in the Millennium we tested) and connector differences, for example.

And if you want reliable, smooth 4K gaming, especially with HDR tossed in, you’re going to need at least an i9-9900K and RTX 2080 Ti. Probably two 2080 Tis if you want a side of ray tracing with that. 

Origin PC’s cases aren’t the prettiest on the outside, though you can get custom paint jobs and laser etching to bling them up, but they’re well designed — easy to open and work inside — and what you see through the transparent side panels looks great. And you can get ’em big: The Millennium is the second-largest case option and it still intimidated all the other desktops on the lab bench. 

Digital Storm also has thoughtfully designed cases. I love the Aventum X which has perks such as quick-disconnect fittings on the cooling tubes so you can actually get your hands in to swap components. Plus, it’s a sleek standing slab with cool lighting schemes that really give off the Tron vibe.