Buying a new gaming PC and kitting it out with accessories is a big investment, one rife with decisions and (unless you’re feeling extremely flush) compromises. But as we may all be spending a lot more time at home over the coming months, it could be a purchase you’re seriously considering.
To guide you through this complex process, here are the essential ingredients of a strong gaming setup for 2020 and beyond. We’re aiming for something that will surpass the recommended settings for today’s most demanding games, and will at least hit the required settings of major titles in several years time.
Helping me select the components are Alan Dexter, senior hardware editor at PC Gamer, Chris Wilson, design director at Cardboard Sword, Al Bickham, communications manager at Creative Assembly, and Nic Claassen, head of product business at Acer UK.
Central processor
You basically have two manufacturers to choose from here: Intel with its Core series and AMD with Ryzen. The latter has shaken up the market with its incredibly powerful multi-core products offering simultaneous multithreading, but these really only come into their own if you’re doing other stuff on your PC such as video editing and encoding or live streaming while you play. “If your remit is purely gaming, then Intel is the way to go,” says Dexter.
Both Dexter and Wilson recommend the Intel Core i5-9600K (£230). “You get a lot of chip for your money,” says Dexter. “The base frequency of 3.7 GHz means it’s nippy enough for most tasks, and with a turbo of 4.6 GHz across all cores, and up to 4.9 GHz on single core tasks, it can adapt to heavy workloads well. The K suffix denotes that the chip is unlocked, meaning those that want to squeeze even more performance out of the chip can do so by overclocking (provided that you have sufficient cooling).” For an AMD alternative, Dexter suggests the Ryzen 7 3700X (£270), and Wilson adds, “don’t discount something like the AMD Ryzen 5 3600 if you have no strong allegiance to either brand.”
At the more expensive end, an Intel i7 or even i9 will give you a boost. Id Software is recommending an Intel Core i7-6700K or better (or AMD Ryzen 7 1800X or better) for Doom Eternal.
“Some games will perform to a perfectly acceptable level on an Intel Core i3-9100, when paired with a decent graphics card,” says Claassen, who supplied a review PC for this article. “But for optimal performance on ultra-high settings, the Intel Core i7-9700K with eight cores, eight threads and turbo clock speed of 4.9GHz will set you right for a long time to come. If you have the budget and really want to be assured of no compromised gaming, then an Intel Core i9-9900X powered gaming machine, featuring 10 cores and 20 threads, will leave you speechless – assuming you have the gaming content and monitor to utilise all of the performance and bring the game to life in 4K with HDR.”
If all this is way out of your price range, the Intel Core i5-9400F (£140) does a decent job, but it’s as low as you’ll want to go, according to Dexter. “Game developers are beginning to make the shift to using more cores, so a six-core chip is a sensible minimum for any machine that is expected to last three years or more.”
Memory and storage
Most current mainstream PC games are asking for a minimum of 8GB system RAM, but are recommending 16GB. As Wilson confirms, “16GB is plenty. I see a lot of people spending way too much money on 32GB or more. While there is certainly a time and a place, we don’t even have that much on our dev machines!”
As for storage, solid state drives are more expensive than hard drives, but allow much faster access to data, which means quicker video game load times. They’re more expensive, though, so most people are still using combinations of both. “A common option is fast SSD for Windows and frequently used games, and then a larger capacity mechanical drive for everything else,” says Wilson. “SSD prices continue to go down, so consider going entirely for SSDs unless you have a lot of data that makes it too expensive.”
Wilson points out that the interface between the drive and the computer is also important. SSDs can use the older SATA interface or the newer, much slicker NVMe, so check the specs before buying. “A solid pick would be something like the SATA-based Samsung 860 EVO, with the high end being an NVMe-based Samsung 970 pro.”
Graphics card
Once again, there are two manufacturers here: Nvidia, with its GeForce series, and AMD with Radeon. At the budget end, Dexter recommends the AMD Radeon RX 570 4GB (£120) or the Nvidia GeForce 1650 Super (£150), both of which have limitations but will drive most games quite happily at 1080p resolution. “The recently released Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 is a solid graphics card for entry level gaming, possibly paired with the Intel Core i3-9100 processor,” says Claassen. “But for 1440p gaming, the GTX 1660 Super GPU, paired with an Intel Core i5-9400F processor, should deliver a very enjoyable experience.”
The fashionable thing to be thinking about is support for ray tracing. “It’s a new gaming graphics technique which traces the pathway of light and influences how it interacts with environments and objects to produce more dynamic and realistic lighting,” says Bickham, before adding: “It’s a costly effect to turn on, and will impact your framerate.” Only a few titles are using it right now, but they’re impressive.
The acclaimed first-person shooter Metro Exodus makes amazing use of the tech, with its apocalyptic cityscapes – you see the flames of nearby fires dancing on the walls of metal shacks, the interiors of broken train carriages dotted with sickly orange sunlight, and nearby mutants sending long dark shadows crawling across concrete floors. Major forthcoming releases such as Cyberpunk 2077 and Watch Dogs: Legion are onboard, too, while both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are set to support the effect, which will boost interest in the development community.
The intermediate-level Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Super (£330) is a great value card for those who want to experiment with ray tracing and don’t mind dialling down other performance features in return. At the high end, Dexter, Wilson and Bickham all recommend the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti (£990). “This is essentially the only card that can consistently hit 4K at the highest settings,” says Dexter. “Although even here you can’t set all of those ray tracing settings to max and expect silky smooth frame rates.”
Remember to match your GPU with your monitor – there’s no point spending hundreds more on a card that can deal with 4K visuals if your monitor tops out at 1080p.
Other kit
If you’re building a PC from scratch, you’ll also need to think about getting a case that’s the right size for all your components. Wilson warns not to scrimp on this component: “[Cheaper cases] are likely to have poorer design when it comes to airflow and have cheaper fans, a combination that’ll make your machine nosier and may bring in more dust.” He uses cases by Fractal Design in his studio.
You’ll also need a power supply unit that can cope with the demands of your specifications. “750W from a decent brand is more than enough,” says Wilson. “Quality (80+ Gold certified) is better than a cheap 1000W power supply that explodes and takes all your hardware with it.”
An adequate cooling system is another must. “As with high performance car engines, cooling is critical to get the maximum power out of a high performance machine,” says Claassen. “With all of this high-end computing power in a relatively confined space, it is going to generate a lot of heat. Your computer will automatically start throttling back performance if the CPU, GPU or overall system temperatures start getting too high, resulting in game lag and frame rate dropping. Advanced cooling systems are therefore critical, whether it is dedicated high performance fans, isolated cooling chambers or even liquid cooling solutions.”
Buying a PC
There are three main options here. The cheapest is to buy all the components, then physically build the machine yourself. It’s a reasonably technical undertaking, but there are lots of places to go for help, including this PC Gamer video. A specialist supplier such as Overclockers, Scan, PCSpecialists or Chillblast will supply the parts and, for a little extra, build a PC for you from the components you select. Otherwise, you can opt for a completely pre-built PC from a brand such as Acer, Alienware or Corsair, which can be more expensive, but has the advantage of providing you with a balanced, well-configured machine, where all the components have been selected to work together.
For the purposes of this article, I tested the Acer Predator Orion 5000, complete with Intel Core i7-9700K processor, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 graphics card and 16GB system memory. For me – the owner of a machine with an i3 processor and mid-level GeForce – it is an unfeasibly powerful setup. I’ve been running Metro Exodus with ultra high graphics settings and ray tracing turned on and it’s coping with everything, delivering smooth, seamless animation and gorgeous lighting effects. It’s a cool build, too – if you like your PC to resemble some kind of alien space helmet – and the interior is visible (and hauntingly lit) through a transparent side panel. There’s also loads of room for modification later down the line.
What the Predator has made very clear is that, with the right PC specifications, the top games of 2020 look utterly astonishing. The arrival of real-time ray tracing promises a new era of visual realism. But then, the Predator Orion model I tested retails at more than £2000. However, you don’t have to max out every element to get impressive results. As Bickham explains, “Pairing a card such as an RTX 2060 (around £300) with a 24” or 27” 1440P monitor will get you an extremely respectable 70-80 FPS in Battlefield V and Forza Horizon 4, and a whopping 120 FPS in Overwatch, with these games running on high graphics settings.”
The bottom line is: expect to pay around £1200 for a system that will play the best current games with high frame rates in 1080p or possibly 1440p resolution, and up to £2000 for seamless 4K support. It’s a lot, but it will last you several years and once you see the Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo running on an Intel Core i7 8700K and Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti, it starts to seem much more reasonable.
