I’m just having a bit of fun here. If you’re looking to upgrade your PC for gaming, or build one from scratch, I figured… why not give some recommendations?

I’m making a few categories here that will all be solid builds. Ultimate tryhard PCs, top gaming PC, decent mid-level PC, budget builds, non-gaming builds… a good variety. This is with all off-the-shelf parts, so nothing about custom loop water cooling or extreme overclocking or anything like that.

Let’s go!

I love PC gaming to bits. It’s objectively better than consoles in literally every way, from controller support, to troubleshooting to performance to game library. The only thing it does worse is… it costs more if you want WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY more performance… so it’s not actually worse. Heck, you could (in a regular non-stupid market) almost-realistically pay LESS than one of the current consoles and actually get pretty equivalent, or better, performance. But if you go mid-to-high-end, the consoles are basically potatoes in comparison.

That said, in 2021, things haven’t been… ideal. Namely, costs rocketed up, for EVERY semi-useable video card. To a really wild level. I was gonna put a mini-rant about PC in my GotY post, but it ended up taking a life of its own… so I’m just gonna separate that. My GotY post will focus on the console side of things, at least as far as my ranting about the big 3 console manufacturers in the industry.

So I figure… I’ve always wanted to talk about PC gaming, why not do it now! Let’s go!