Ever since there have been computers, there have been people trying to work out how to play games on them, and the video game industry has grown to be worth billions of dollars globally. And while phone and console games are a fine way to play, if you want to play the latest and greatest games at their best then you need a gaming PC.
These silicon monsters bring together the best that the hardware manufacturers have to offer. They use fast processors, graphics processors capable of pushing enormous numbers of pixels every second, large amounts of RAM and SSD storage, and billions and billions of individual transistors baked into their circuits to make it all work.
Add to this vast monitors to display the results to their best, and a whole raft of peripherals that are commonly covered in flashing coloured lights, and you begin to see why video games have become something that hundreds of millions of people take very seriously.
There are a few different types of gaming PC. Not only can you have laptops, which are much like the one you spend all day staring at but which have much more power and much less battery life as a result, but there are monstrous desktop PCs in huge, glass-sided tower cases festooned with fans and even liquid cooling pumps to keep the heat under control. At the other end of the spectrum there are handheld machines, which attempt to walk the line between being useful for gaming and extreme portability.
The distinguishing feature of a gaming PC is its graphics processor, or GPU. These chips, which often come on their own circuit board with dedicated memory and cooling, are capable of huge feats of parallel processing that makes them as useful for AI tasks as it does texturing and lighting polygons.
To own a gaming PC is to own a cutting-edge piece of technology, so here are some of the best out there.
Best gaming PCs at a glance:
Acer Predator Helios 18
Best for: portable power
The closest thing you’ll find to a desktop computer system you can sling in your backpack, this monstrous machine from Acer is big, heavy, hot and expensive. At its highest spec, it melds an Intel Core i9 CPU with up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, plus plenty of RAM and fast storage, to create a laptop whose 18in screen can display just about any game at its maximum settings.
You’ll certainly pay a lot for this capability though, and it doesn’t last long between charges, but right now there are few other laptops that can challenge it.
Buy now £3600.00, Acer
Alienware Aurora R16
Best for: desktop thrills
If you want something a bit more reasonably priced, try a desktop PC. Though you will need to budget for things like monitors and keyboards (or reuse them from a previous PC), the fact the components don’t need to be miniaturised for use in a laptop can keep the cost down.
This model from Alienware - a brand owned by Dell - can give you Core i9s, RTX 4090s, and as much as 8TB of SSD storage, but if you’d rather not spend north of £4,000 you can tone it down a bit and get a games PC that will play the latest titles without causing your bank manager to have a fit. And even if 8TB is probably too much storage, 512GB is too little, so it’s always worth bumping that up a bit so that you don’t fill half of it with a single game.
Buy now £1149.00, Dell
Steam Deck OLED
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Best for: a huge game library
The Stram Deck is a handheld made by Valve, the company behind the Steam digital game store, which is bursting with games from the last 20 years or so. It’s not particularly powerful, but thanks to Valve’s software wizardry it’s capable of running a surprising number of PC games, though not always at their top settings or resolutions - a feat made more notable as, out of the box, it doesn’t run Windows. Its SteamOS is a fork of Debian Linux, which gives it a console-like interface with an enormous game library. The OLED version is an upgrade over the LCD original, which you can still find for an even lower price, though it’s worth getting one with a larger SSD rather than putting up with the longer loading times you’ll get from a microSD card.
Buy now £664.19, Amazon
Gigabyte AORUS G6X
Best for: a budget gaming laptop
This model from Gigabyte one-ups a lot of other laptops at this price-point by packing an RTX 4060 graphics chip instead of the weaker but cheaper RTX 4050. This gives it more pixel-pushing power, which is exactly what you want in a gaming machine, but still keeps it out of the kind of cost bracket where you start thinking about beefing up your home security to protect it.
The 16-inch screen is a nice size, and capable of a 165Hz refresh rate (many older screens top out at 60Hz) but you’ll probably want an external monitor to make the most of it. And like any gaming laptop, its battery life sinks fast once you start making it work hard.
Buy now £1050.00, Scan
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14
Best for: a smaller laptop
With its compact frame and bright OLED display, this 14-inch gaming laptop offers a great blend of power and portability. It costs more than the Gigabyte model above, despite being smaller, thanks to its even more powerful Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 graphics processor and eight-core AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS CPU.
It has a less aggressive design than many gaming machines, which are often made of black plastic, with a machined aluminium look that’s not a million miles away from a MacBook Pro. As such, it’s a restrained model that will slide easily into your bag and will work just as well for work or play.
Buy now £2652.00, Amazon
HP Victus 15L
Best for: budget desktop thrills
Desktop gaming PCs have had a bit of a makeover recently, moving from bulky towers festooned with lights and fans to something more sleek and almost sensible looking. The lights and fans are still present, however, but now gaming desktops can take up less space than they once did, and so are an ideal choice if you want a desktop PC for a bedroom corner.
This model from HP is an excellent budget choice, bearing a rare all-AMD combo of the Ryzen 5 5600G CPU and Radeon RX 6400 GPU in its default configuration, which you’re going to want to spec up a bit as the 256GB SSD it comes with is much too small for modern games.
Buy now £849.00, Very
Asus ROG Ally X
Best for: a Windows handheld
The fact the Steam Deck doesn’t run Windows by default limits its uses outside of gaming. You can install Microsoft’s OS on it, or get going for free with a desktop version of Linux, but Asus has saved you the trouble with this machine, which is one of the most powerful gaming handhelds out there.
It may struggle to compete with full-blown gaming laptops when it comes to texture detail and framerates, but there's nothing quite like having a gaming PC you can treat almost like a Nintendo Switch.
Buy now £799.00, Asus
Raspberry Pi 5
Best for: making your own retro gaming box
The best gaming PC can often be the one you build yourself, and the Raspberry Pi 5 - a tiny single-board computer - allows you to build a compact machine that can play a lot of the great games of yesteryear, many of which are available without DRM from services like GOG. You’ll need a few parts, possibly a keen eye with a hacksaw and a paint pot too, plus enough technical knowhow to follow a tutorial in setting the thing up (there are loads online), but once you’re finished the PC games (and other emulated platforms) from the ‘90s suddenly become playable on your TV.
Buy now £80.64, Amazon
Verdict
A gaming PC is a great computer for just about everything, so if you’re looking for a PC that will handle video editing or 3D modelling, you’ll probably find something to like on this list as well as those who’d rather shoot aliens all day.
The Acer Predator Helios 18 at the top of the page is an absolute beast, will probably last many years with no sign of slowing down, and has the benefit that you can carry it with you, although it’s perhaps a bit big for a shoulder bag and you’ll need to pack the charger.
Not all gaming PCs are like that, however, and there are plenty of smaller, cheaper and even more portable options out there.
